The Blue Folder

Text 1: Names in Ink, by Safiya Morrow

An original novel extract.

Leah had spent twelve years asking to see the file. Now that it lay on the table, she kept both hands beneath her chair.

The records office was almost empty. Fluorescent lights shivered overhead, whitening the walls and the clerk’s tired face. He pushed the blue folder towards Leah, told her to leave the papers in their original order and walked away. His footsteps faded. The door sighed shut behind him.

The folder was thinner than she had imagined. Leah examined its blunt corners, the pale scratch across its cover, the black number stamped near the top. She read the number twice. Then again. Anything before opening it.

At last, she lifted the cover. A form. A hospital card. Two envelopes, both unsealed.

Not yet.

She opened the first envelope. The paper inside crackled so sharply that she glanced towards the door. The letter began in a stranger’s careful handwriting. Each word stood apart from the next, neat and patient, while Leah’s pulse battered at her wrists.

Halfway down the second page, she found her own name.

After it came a sentence crossed out so heavily that the paper had almost torn. Leah held the page close, but the hidden words remained buried under the ink. At the bottom waited a signature she recognised. Beneath it, on a separate line, was a single word.

Because.