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Phyllis

Phyllis stared at Michael in mute shock.

This man was her son? She’d imagined him every day for the past sixty years: pictured what he might look like at six and sixteen. But at sixty? For some reason, she’d never allowed him to get that old in her head, and yet here he was, with gray hair and a beer belly. Phyllis searched his face for signs of herself but saw nothing apart from the eye color. And yet the chin…that chin belonged to Michael’s father, without a shadow of a doubt.

“I’m so sorry to spring this on you,” he said. “Believe me, I never meant for you to find out who I was. I know it must be a huge shock.”

“Is that why you came to the book club?” Arthur asked, and Phyllis jolted at his voice; she’d forgotten anyone else was here.

Michael nodded, but his answer was to Phyllis. “After Graham sent me your details, I didn’t do anything at first. It was all such a lot to take in. Within the space of a few months, I’d not only lost my dad and learned I was adopted, but also discovered who my birth mother was. But after a couple of weeks, curiosity got the better of me, so I drove over to St. Tredock and sat in my car outside your house until I saw you come home. After that, I told myself I wouldn’t go again, that it was too dangerous in case you spotted me, but I found I couldn’t keep away. I started following you when you went out; not in a stalkerish way, I swear, but just to get a sense of who you were and what your life was like. And then one day, I followed you into the St. Tredock Community Center and Nova saw me and asked if I was there for the book club, and I panicked and said yes.”

Phyllis thought back to the first time she’d seen Michael at the book club; how he’d sat there silently, refusing to catch her eye. “Is that why you came to the meeting last week; to see me again?”

Michael nodded slowly. “That afternoon, my mum received a letter from their solicitor, telling her about Dad’s gambling debts. I have no idea why the solicitor did that, but Mum was understandably furious that I’d kept it a secret from her, and we had a huge fight. I was so upset, and I knew that if I stayed in the house, I might end up saying something about the secrets she’d kept from me my whole life, so I ran upstairs and packed some things. I didn’t know where to go, just that I had to get away. But then I saw my copy of Where the Crawdads Sing and realized you’d be at the book club that evening, and I suddenly wanted to see you again before I left…” He trailed off, staring at his feet.

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“I thought about it, once or twice. But I kept thinking that if you’d given me up for adoption, that meant you wanted nothing to do with me.”

Phyllis felt a lump in her throat so huge that it took her a moment to speak. “Did you really think I wouldn’t want to see you?”

In answer Michael just shrugged, and for a moment he looked not like a sixty-year-old man, but like a six-year-old boy, scared of being rejected once again.

Phyllis’s mouth was dry and she wished she hadn’t given her water away. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse.

“I owe you an explanation.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do. After all this time, it’s the very least I can do.”

“Truthfully, you don’t have to. I—”

She raised her hand to silence him. “Please, Michael. You’ve told me your story, now let me tell you mine.”

—

Phyllis had been fifteen when she met Billy Saunders, the day they both reached for the same copy of The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side in the library.

Up until that moment, Phyllis had had virtually no contact with the opposite sex. The only child of a fierce, disapproving mother and an absent father who was never spoken of, she’d grown up in relative isolation. Her mother had homeschooled her, believing the only things a woman needed to know were how to read the Bible, write a shopping list and manage a house. Phyllis wasn’t allowed to socialize with children her own age, and the only places she was permitted to go outside the house were to church and the shops, to a youth Bible studies class at St. Tredock Community Center, and to the library.

The library was the one beacon of light in Phyllis’s small, dark world. Her mother allowed her to read the classics, as long as their subject matter was godly and there was no mention of romance, and so Phyllis would visit the library every week and come back clutching copies of The Chronicles of Narnia or The Pilgrim’s Progress . And yet, what Eliza Hudson never knew was that inside her bag, young Phyllis would also bring home copies of the books she really wanted to read, smuggled to her by a kindly librarian who took pity on the shy, unworldly child.

Late at night, once her mother was snoring in the bed the two of them shared, Phyllis would creep downstairs and devour these illicit books. She got her first sense of social justice with Scout and Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird , was swept away by Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights , and sobbed her eyes out over the ending of Anna Karenina . But it was the mysteries that Phyllis loved the most. She devoured anything she could get her hands on by Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey and, above all others, Agatha Christie. It was in the pages of these books that Phyllis learned of the world outside her own small prison: a world of crime and scandal, freedom and adventure. And, above all else, a world in which anyone, including a woman who had barely left the confines of her small English village, could solve crimes and change people’s lives, simply by using her curiosity, common sense and female intuition.

And so, it was entirely fitting that it was Miss Marple who led Phyllis to Billy. He laughed as she pulled the book off the shelf before him, revealing a dimpled chin and charmingly crooked front teeth, and told Phyllis she was welcome to borrow it first, as long as she lent it to him straight after. She’d been too embarrassed to speak and had hurried to the librarian’s desk, her cheeks aflame. But the following Tuesday, when Phyllis returned The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side to the library, Billy was there again, clutching a copy of The Big Sleep by an American author called Raymond Chandler, who he boldly told her was better than Agatha Christie. Phyllis agreed to read it, and so began their bookish courtship.

There was no way her mother would ever allow her to date a young man, especially one from a heathen family like Billy’s, but such is the determination and cunning of young people in love that Phyllis and Billy soon found other ways to meet up. When Phyllis went to the butchers on a Wednesday, Billy would be waiting for her outside, and again at the fishmongers on a Friday. He even started attending her Bible studies class at the community center, despite the fact he’d never been to church in his life. And although they didn’t dare sit together in case the woman who ran it got suspicious, Phyllis would allow herself greedy glances at Billy throughout the meeting. Best of all, once they left at the end, they had a glorious ten minutes together as they walked from the community center down the hill to Phyllis’s road. And as spring turned to summer, that ten-minute walk stretched to fifteen and then twenty, and from holding hands to urgent kisses behind the community center, and then a whole lot more.

Phyllis had never been taught about the birds and the bees, beyond her mother’s vague mutterings about men and mortal sin. She therefore didn’t think much of it when her monthlies were late. It wasn’t until early winter, when she struggled to fasten her skirt and her brassiere no longer fitted, that she thought of poor Anna Karenina and realized what was wrong. Horrified, she told Billy the next time they met, and he got down on one knee and proposed to her there and then, in the mud behind the community center. He was apprenticing to a local builder, but soon he would earn a small salary, and he told her he’d save every penny so that he could afford the rent on a cottage once they were married.

When she estimated she was about six months along and could no longer hide the growing bump under her clothes, Phyllis realized she had to tell her mother. She knew the woman wouldn’t take the news well but hoped that once the initial shock died down, all her mother would care about was that her daughter and Billy got married as quickly as possible to minimize the inevitable scandal. But Phyllis had underestimated Eliza Hudson.

The next few days were a blur. Later, she wondered if the fact she couldn’t recall the exact chain of events was because it had all happened so fast, or because she’d simply blocked the memories out. All she knew for sure was the locked bedroom door and the trays of food shoved through with rough hands. Of hearing Billy’s voice outside the window and her mother’s shouts at him to go away. Of Reverend Platt’s brief visit and his cold, disapproving eyes, and then a nighttime car journey, the reverend driving and her mother sitting in the front passenger seat, rigid with shame. Then there were black iron gates and a winding driveway leading to a tall, austere building, and a nun refusing to make eye contact as she led her into the building. It wasn’t until Phyllis had been taken to a dormitory and seen the other girls in the same way that she had any inkling what was happening. By then her mother had already driven away, without so much as a good-bye.

Despite living in the mother and baby home for almost three months, nothing was done to prepare Phyllis for labor or birth, or for what was to come after. In fact, so naive was she that when her contractions started, she thought they were just indigestion and carried on working in the laundry. It was only when her waters broke all over the staircase, much to Sister Agnes’s annoyance, that Phyllis learned what was happening. She asked if she could telephone her fiancé, just as she had done every day since she arrived at the home, but her request was ignored, as it always was. Instead, she was driven to a hospital where she was taken to a small, cramped room off the labor ward so as not to alarm the other mothers.

Phyllis remembered little of the labor itself. She was refused any pain relief, and when she cried out, she was told to keep the noise down so as not to give the midwives a headache. Finally, after seventeen hours without so much as a drink of water, Phyllis’s baby was born in a rush of blood and hot liquid. For the briefest of moments, the swaddled baby was placed in her arms. Phyllis stared down at his tiny red face poking out above the blanket she’d knitted for him, and felt a surge of love so strong she thought it might lift them off the bed. She was vaguely aware of movement around her, of whispered conversations, and then a midwife took the baby out of her arms and carried him away, leaving Phyllis panting on the soiled bedsheets.

“My fiancé,” she finally managed to say to one of the midwives who was mopping the floor. “Can someone call my fiancé and tell him our baby is here.”

The woman stopped her mopping and came to stand by Phyllis’s bed.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen.”

She heard the midwife inhale through her nose. “It’s for the best, pet. It really is.”

“What do you mean?” Phyllis asked, but the midwife resumed her mopping.

For the next two hours, Phyllis lay on the bed in agony, not daring to even get up to spend a penny in case she was needed for her son. Several times she called out for someone to come and tell her how her baby was, but no one came. Eventually, when Phyllis was about to climb out of bed and limp down to the nursery herself, the door opened. Phyllis felt a rush of relief, but the person who walked in wasn’t a midwife with a baby but her mother, dressed in her church coat and hat. She didn’t say anything as she came to stand at the foot of Phyllis’s bed.

“Hello, Mother,” Phyllis said, for despite her anger at being sent away, Phyllis wasn’t going to let those emotions ruin this magical day. “Have you met my son yet?”

Her mother visibly recoiled at that word.

“Get yourself cleaned up. We’ve a long drive back to St. Tredock.”

“But I don’t have my baby yet. He’s still in the nursery.”

“No, he’s gone.”

Phyllis felt her stomach drop as if on a fairground ride. “But that’s not possible. The baby was healthy, I heard him cry.”

“He’s alive. But he’s gone already, with his parents.”

“But I’m…Me and Billy are…”

Phyllis stopped when she saw the expression on her mother’s face: the narrow, almost squinting eyes and the hard line of her mouth. And then the realization hit her, and she finally allowed herself to scream.