Crisis of Identity

‘The cop asked me to locate evidence of my birth… Things such as my birth certificate, baby photos anything like that to prove I was born in WA.’

Mum placed her wine on the coffee table then stood from her seat. She adjusted her dress. ‘That’s easy…’ she said before disappearing into the hall towards the stairs.

I finished my red and was topping up our glasses when mum eventually returned carrying a small box with a lid. She dumped it on the coffee table and removed the lid.

Mum lifted a blue photo album and slid in beside me. She flipped over the pages as we took a trip down memory lane with mum providing a narrative to most photographs.

The album was over flowing with typical proud new parent photos. There were various photos of dad and of mum each holding me as a newborn, wrapped tightly in a blanket.

There were photos of me in a little cot. Photos of me tucked up in a pram. Photos of me naked on a sheepskin rug. I particularly remember that one from my 21st. After a while, as the page turning continued, even I started to get bored.

Mum returned to the box and removed a handful of loose photos. She handed them to me one-by-one, each one accompanied by a short narrative.

These loose ones were all photos of me around my early teens. There were photos of dad and I playing cricket; dad and I fishing; dad and I playing footy. There were photos of me in my college uniform on the first day of year seven at St Xavier’s. They just kept coming.

When the photos ran out, mum returned the loose photos and the album to the box. She removed a white A4 envelope and handed it to me. I slid out the single page document. It was my birth certificate.

‘I’ve got a copy of this somewhere,’ I said as I examined the record. ‘Kade Ross Miller born 16 January 1991. Place of birth…’ I read, lifting my questioning eyes to mum. ‘This records my place of birth as our Karratha address…’

‘That’s correct. You were a home birth, but not by choice. You remember we used to live in that small remote mining town…’

I nodded my recall. ‘Yeah, I do. It was incredibly hot…’

‘That’s right. Well that little town was probably five hours from the nearest hospital, so there was a medical centre and a nurse in the town. Unfortunately you decided you didn’t want to wait for me to go to hospital… you came early. The town nurse had to deliver you.’

As expected…It records mum and dad as my parents and it has a 1991 registration number at the top. Not sure how much more he needs as proof of birth…

I slid the birth certificate back into its envelope; that was until something caught my eye. I slipped it back out. I felt my eyes widen as I locked onto the section near the bottom of the certificate titled “PARENTS’ MARRIAGE”.

‘It says here that you and dad were married in Mudgeeraba, Queensland…’

‘That’s right…’ mum replied, matter of fact.

‘That’s on the Gold Coast, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right…’

‘Is Mudgeeraba near Robina…?’

‘It’s about… five or six kilometres away. Why?’

My first thoughts were, if detective Dawes finds this information, he will have a field day, birth mark or no birth mark. Given what I’d just been through in Queensland and given what Dawes was pushing, this was not good. This plays right in to his hands.

He will notice that not only do I resemble this lost kid, in his mind at least, but now there is evidence that my parents lived in a suburb near where the kid went missing. He already believes my parents are the kidnappers.

‘Why the concerned look, Kade?’ mum asked.

‘This cop worries me. If he finds out you lived in Mudgeeraba, he’ll be back on my trail again.’

‘We didn’t live in Mudgeeraba… We got married in a church in Mudgeeraba.’

I exhaled heavily. Part of me was relieved to hear that. ‘So you lived somewhere else…?’

‘We did. We owned a lovely water front home in Varsity Lakes.’

‘Varsity Lakes. Sounds flash.’ I booted up Google Maps on my phone as mum continued boasting about their previous home.

‘It was. We lived in a gated community. We had a beautiful property built on the canal. The back yard had a large infinity pool and led down to a private jetty.’

I stopped listening when Google Maps loaded. ‘That’s even worse…’ I blurted. ‘Varsity Lakes is closer to Robina than Mudgeeraba.’

‘I don’t see the problem, Kade. I don’t understand how any of this matters, when you were born over here in WA.’

‘You don’t know Detective Dawes.’

‘By the sounds of it… that’s a good thing.’

‘Why Varsity Lakes…? I thought dad was an engineer in the mines.’

‘He was. He worked as a FIFO... two weeks on, one week off. He did that for years until he was head-hunted for an executive position in the Pilbara. It was too good to pass up. Your father was a very clever man. He was remunerated very well for what he did.’

‘So, you moved from Varsity Lakes to Karratha…?’ I asked, making sure there were no other surprises placing them even closer to Robina.

’We did… We sold the house somewhere around late ’89, I think it was.’

’And I was born January ’91,’ I said crunching the numbers out loud. ‘In Karratha after you moved…’

‘That’s right.’

That’s good enough for me. I snapped some photos of my birth certificate and some of the more relevant photos taken around my birth. I dispatched these to Dawes, via text, while mum packed everything back into the box.

With all the birth information Dawes requested out of the way, we sat down to enjoy mum’s roast.