Garden Hopping

Book excerpt: Garden hopping was when you leapt through a line of people's gardens in the dead of night. Only a few boys did it. The air rushed through you. You were like a phantom. You could have been anyone. It is an apt metaphor for the adoption business. Jonathan Rendall was adopted in the 1960s when it was easy. People could just pick out the children they wanted, right down to the colour of their hair. But what of the children themselves? And what happens when years later they trace their real parents? Garden Hopping is a harrowing, and often shocking, journey into the dark night of identity.