When I was four years old, my mother put me on a bench in a church and said: ‘Stay here. God will take care of you.’ Then she turned around and walked away, smiling, hand in hand with my father and sister. I was too stunned to cry – I could only sit and watch as they left me behind. But twenty years later, they came into that same church, looked me straight in the eye, and said: ‘We are your parents. We have come to take you home!’

Chapter 1: The Polished Bench
I was four years old when my mother placed me on a mahogany bench in St. Agnes’ Church and carefully dismantled my world.

The memory is not blurry, like many traumas from my childhood; it is a razor-sharp image, etched into my subconscious with the immovability of a fossil. I remember how my patent leather shoes dangled a few centimeters above the floor and tapped rhythmically against the heavy wooden floor. I remember the scent of flickering votive candles and the dry, old smell of hymnbooks that had seen thousands of desperate prayers. But above all, I remember the yellow glow of the winter light shining through the stained-glass windows depicting saints and casting crimson and azure shadows across my mother’s face.

She squatted down before me, her fingers resting for a moment on the collar of my little blue jacket. Her touch was not trembling. She was determined, almost professional. She smoothed the fabric with a terrifying tenderness, as if she were preparing me for a Sunday school presentation rather than crossing me off the list of her loved ones.

‘Stay here, darling,’ she murmured, her voice like a calm, translucent ribbon. ‘God will take care of you now.’