‘We didn’t know what you’d need,’ she said. ‘There’s ten pound in there.’
‘Thank you. That’s too much.’ He thought of the travel fares ahead, once he was allowed to go and see Phyllis, and put the money in his pocket. ‘But thank you.’
Christopher gave Jack Junior two new cars for the Scalextric, to Louise he gave a jumpsuit for her Sindy doll and to his parents a bottle of Warninks Advocaat. A mistake. His father peered at the bottle as if he were reading the instructions on a tin of paint to check which solvent he needed.
‘Warninks,’ he said, pronouncing it ‘warnings’. ‘Isn’t an advocate some sort of lawyer?’
‘You mix it with lemonade,’ Christopher said, kneeling up to point at the label on the back. ‘It’s called a snowball. It’s a popular cocktail at Christmas apparently. Thought it might make a change.’
His father’s eyes creased in disdain.
‘It’s a pretty colour anyway,’ trilled his mother. ‘Lovely warm yellow, isn’t it, Jack?’
‘Not sure I’m too keen on cocktails,’ said his father.
‘No,’ said Christopher, hearing his own voice quieten. ‘Me neither really. It was just supposed to be a bit of fun…’
Chapter Ten
They made me walk around the yard earlier. Nurse linked my arm, said I was doing grand.
‘This’ll give you an appetite,’ she said. I wonder at her indefatigable hope. It is like a plant that blooms again no matter how many times you cut off its flower. And I am a weed, I suppose, killing it by stealthier means.
She stands over me while I eat, urging me on as if I’m running a marathon. Chicken broth. God only knows what’s supposed to be floating in it – they look like fridge magnets. I manage half and push my bowl away.
‘Another mouthful, come on, my darling.’ She picks up the spoon and scoops up the thin soup. ‘Come on, for me.’
I watch myself from above: opening my mouth, being fed like a baby. I know that if I let her feed me, she will leave me alone. Then I can get back to Christopher. Ironically, it is Christopher who is keeping me alive.
Christopher returned to Leeds on Friday, 6 January, as a compromise. His parents took him to the station, and as he waved them off, he found himself wondering when he would return, then if he would return. It wasn’t that he no longer wanted to see them; only that, since the only meaningful conversation possible between them was the one they could never have, he wasn’t sure what there was left to say.
At Devonshire Hall, he found the longed-for letter from Phyllis in his pigeonhole. He told me he’d known it would be there before he saw it; it was why he had come back early. He rushed up to his room, threw down his case and tore open the envelope.
Morecambe, 26 December 1977
Dear Christopher,
Well stop calling me Mrs Griffiths for a start! I’m Phyllis – please call me Phyllis from now on. Promise?
I prayed this day would come! You have no idea. I’ve waited for it for so long, and since I gave my details to NORCAP, not a day has gone by that I haven’t checked the post in case there was something from you. So you can imagine how excited I was to receive and read your marvellous letter. I have read it many times since then, I can tell you. So many I think I must know it off by heart! I’m guessing the adoption counsellor told you I’d registered with NORCAP – did you know I did it the very day of your eighteenth birthday? I prayed you would look for me – I lit candles for you at St Edward’s at the end of our road, and lo and behold, you did look for me! I should pray more often because now here you are and here’s me, sitting in my bedroom, where I can be in peace away from the rabble, so that I can write back to you. Only now I’ve started, I hardly know where to begin!
I never wanted to give you away, that is the first thing I must say to you, something I have wanted to say to you all your life. You were my flesh and blood. You are my flesh and blood. I have felt the loss of you all these years as if I had lost my own foot. But, you see, I still felt the itch in my toes all that time, and that’s because you were out there, alive, and I could feel it. If I tell you nothing else besides, if you know at least that, then I will have at least a small comfort. The thought of you thinking I’d abandoned you has just about killed me these last eighteen years. I was fifteen when I fell pregnant, you see, and I had no choice but to give you up. My parents would not have supported me and your father was long gone. He was a sailor, he was Polish and his name was Mikael Dabrowski, but you know all that by now, I think. You didn’t ask about him so I’ve assumed that is so. I’m afraid I have no idea where he is. I don’t even have a photograph of him. I wish I could tell you he was the love of my life, but he was not. He was very handsome and I was very sheltered. Parents think they should protect their children, and of course they should. I would have protected you had you been allowed into my care. But too much protection results in greater danger sometimes. At least it did for me, and I paid a terrible price.
But all that is in the past. Here you are and here I am and it strikes me that forward might be a good way to go. What do you say, Christopher? After eighteen years, we’re maybe a few letters, maybe a couple of months away from one another! And it’s funny, because now we are so close to finally meeting, the months we have to wait seem almost longer than all those years. Do you feel like that? Although I suppose you have only known about me for such a short time, whereas I’ve known about you your whole life.
I have been told we should go slowly too, but now that I have found you, I am so impatient to see you. I wish to get to know you, Christopher. I wish to meet you, if not immediately, then at some point. Please write and tell me we can. I have to hope, please let me. I want to know every little thing about you – how you take your tea, what television programmes you like, all about your childhood. I hope that doesn’t scare you. I would not want to frighten you, but the truth is, Christopher, I’m frightened too.