I do exist, I'm pretty certain about that, but at the moment I find myself in the embarrassing position of not being able to prove it.

I may not be invisible to the naked eye but unfortunately all the official paperwork documenting my life (entry, marriage, motherhood, divorce) has vanished.

This means I have nothing in writing to prove that I am whom I say I am.

My slide into the ignominy of non-personhood began at the weekend when I was asked to provide evidence of my time upon this earth, birth certificate, marriage licence, that sort of thing.

Personal documentation? That'll be in the orange Sainsbury's "Bag for Life" carrier, under the stairs by the vacuum cleaner.

Except it wasn't, of course. In its place was a blue Tesco's "Bag for Life" carrier full of shoe polish and brushes.

"Have you been moving things around in here?" I asked The Mother.

"What have you lost now?" she replied as if my losing things was becoming something of a habit.

"What I've lost is my life," I said.

"You've been saying that since you were a teenager," she said.

I explained, with my usual patience, what had happened and she explained, with her usual perspicuity, what she thought I should do.

"You'll have to get copies," she said.

I groaned. "That'll take weeks, months even. I haven't time for all that bureaucratic fussing about, I need those papers now."

The Mother was not sympathetic. "Well unless you can find them in that mess you call a filing system, I don't see you have any alternative," she said.

My "filing system", of course, continued to let me down. I climbed up ladders and peered on to the top of cupboards, shone torches into dark corners, dismantled a bookcase, disturbed masses of cobwebs. Absolutely nothing.

"There is a possible way round this which might be acceptable," I said later in the day, after we'd had a good lunch and the Mother was hopefully more amenable.

"What if I wrote an official letter stating who I am and then you countersigned it, saying who you are - my mother - and vouching for who I am? It would be something like a character reference ..."

The Mother dismissed this with a shake of her head.

"You mean you won't do that, even for you own daughter?" I asked.

"Sometimes, for a woman of your age, you can be remarkably silly," she said and left me to seethe.

On Monday morning The Mother and I were having breakfast when the post arrived. As we opened our letters I found one, addressed to me, with a cheque inside.

"Well at least I should be solvent this month," I said showing it to her.

"Just a minute," she said taking hold of the cheque. "This is made out to a Vanora Leigh but according to you no one of that name exists officially. Perhaps I should take this to the bank and have it put into my account for safe keeping."

I was having none of that. "Really?" I said. In that case perhaps you ought to take care of this too," and I handed her a slip of paper.

"What's this?" she asked, reaching for her glasses.

"It's the phone bill," I told her. "It's also addressed to Vanora Leigh but as she doesn't exist she couldn't possibly have made all these expensive itemised phone calls, could she ...?"