I am married to a good man called David. He is happy I have found you and is really supportive of my wish to be reconciled. We have two boys, twins. Their names are Darren and Craig, and they are eight years old. I have not told them about you yet, but I will, should you decide you wish to take things further. My mum and dad don’t know about all this yet, but when they find out, I’m sure they’ll be delighted, and that means you’ll have grandparents to meet too. When you were taken from me, I did not speak to them for a long time, but that is all in the past now. I also have a sister, Miriam, so she would be your auntie! I’m sorry, I’m saying too much. Don’t worry if you’re not ready for any of that – we can take our time. I could write to you all day, all week, and never stop. I feel like I could burst with all I want to tell you.
It is, of course, up to you. I cannot lay claim to anything at all – I know that. I will take my lead from you. I’m sorry if I’ve said too much already. I can’t help myself!
I’m asking for you to give me a chance. What do you say? I used to kiss your baby photo each night. Now I have the one you sent. You are so handsome! I carry the picture in my purse. One day I hope to be able to take it out and show people and say, there, that’s my boy, that’s my son.
To be reunited has been my dream for more than half my life. None of what I have written in this letter can convey the strength of my feelings. My feelings are stronger than words.
Yours,
Phyllis
He pressed the letter to his chest. The radiator gave a loud bang, which made him jump. The wind blew outside, rattled the loose sash windows in their frames.
He had worried about the power of his feelings, so much so he had not dared to reveal them. But she, Phyllis, had dared to write her feelings – all of them. She had not been able to, perhaps not even wanted to, rein herself in. It had not occurred to her to try. She loved him as he loved her. It was as he had thought. As he had known! They were connected, in tune, as one, before they’d even met. This, this was his gift and his curse – his knowledge of how things would be before they had come to pass. She wanted to see him every bit as much as he wanted to see her. He had not doubted it. He had known it.
With his coat still on, he took up his fountain pen and wrote:
6 January 1978
Dear Phyllis,
I have just this moment returned to Leeds and to your wonderful letter.
The page swam. He touched his cheek and found it to be wet. He sat back from his desk, unable to continue. This was preposterous. He did not cry. He had not cried since he was a child, and only then it would have been after scuffing his knees on the paving stones in the back garden. But he wasn’t in pain. It wasn’t that. Yet here were tears just the same – hot and streaming down his face, girlish, shameful.
There was no one there to see him, so he pressed his fists to his eyes and let it happen, let himself sob and shake, slump and slacken. The surprise of it gave way to something he could not name but which was not unpleasant. Relief, something like that, a draining down of his very blood – like when his father, Jack, bled the heating and as a boy he would watch and hear the hiss of the air as it blew out of the radiators, the softening of the hiss as the pressure fell, until, with a gurgle, the brown water came and his father would wind the T-shaped key and stop it. She had said her feelings were stronger than words – how right she was. How could anyone contain such feelings? It was not possible. They were too big. Only now, in the release of this strange weeping fit, did it occur to him what a strain it had been within the walls of his family home to feel his every word scrutinised and censored, to be watched for signs of change as one watches for a malevolent outsider. He was the outsider. Had been even before he had left. University had changed him, but it was knowledge – knowledge that had pushed him out of his home, possibly forever.
Was it wrong to have changed? Was it wrong not to belong? The wrong here, perhaps, was neither of those things themselves but the secrecy of them. Why had he kept hidden his search for his birth mother? That did not mean he was seeking to replace the mother and father, the brother and sister he already had, did it?
Not necessarily.
But by saying nothing to his parents, he had lied to them. And no matter how you looked at it, that was a sin. But the sin had been committed, the air had been bled out, and it could not be forced back in now.
He wrote:
You have been braver than I in expressing your true feelings. Your bravery has given me the courage to share my feelings, although in these matters I am by no means an expert. My adoptive family are good people, but when I look at them I do not see myself – no browline, no jaw, no eye or hair colour. That is no one’s fault.
Mrs Samantha Jackson at Liverpool Council did indeed give me your details, and yes, I knew you had registered with NORCAP. I knew you’d had me when you were very young and that my father was called Mikael and a sailor. I knew that you taught English and that you were married with twin boys. Samantha urged caution but I think she meant where there was hesitation on the part of the parent or child. There is no hesitation here. Far from it! I would be agreeable to a meeting as soon as February if that is all right with you. Oh my, I am aware of sounding formal! I keep making mistakes. Forgive me – I can’t help it. I am rather quiet, you see. I am studious by my room-mate’s standards and I hope that is OK. I was not brought up in a family that laughed very often. I don’t mean that critically, it is just the way we were. But I have laughed a lot with my friends here at the university and find that I understand more easily now when people are pulling my leg. Adam pulls my leg all the time.
Adam came into his mind, standing at the door of their room one evening before Christmas on his way out to meet Alison, or Sophie, or some other woman.
‘You need to get laid, man,’ he’d said. ‘That’s your trouble.’
Christopher dismissed the thought and returned to his letter.
Do you have a photograph you could send? I would love to have a picture of you, if that is not too forward. Did you feel like you recognised me at all from my picture? What I mean is, did you recognise yourself or perhaps my father? I suppose the picture was too small to tell.
I await your reply. Please write soon. It doesn’t need to be a long letter. We can tell each other everything if and when you decide you would like to meet, if you still do. For my part, I would like to. I vote we write not one or two long letters but many short letters and aim to meet next month but not if you have changed your mind. I don’t want to rush you.
With love,
Your son,
Christopher
8 January 1978
Dear Christopher,