She put her tea down and smiled at him sadly. ‘I can.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked,’ he said quickly, feeling himself blush. ‘I shouldn’t have asked like that. I’m sorry.’ He stood, took off his sweater, sat down again. ‘Sorry, I’m overheating.’ He reached for his drink, but she caught and held his hand.
‘What did I say about apologising? You should save it for when you’ve done something wrong. And you’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Sorry. For apologising.’
She laughed, cocked her head as if to study him. ‘You’re shyer than your letters.’
It was his turn to laugh, out of embarrassment. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.’
He turned his hand in hers, flattening the back against the cool tabletop. Their hands lay palm to palm, the tips of her fingers at his wrist, his fingertips at hers. Her hand was much smaller than his, her skin pinker, her nails longer. Her watch was a blue Timex. It looked like a boy’s watch and he wondered if it belonged to one of the twins. Beyond the strap, her pale arm vanished into the burgundy wool sleeve of her sweater.
‘What do you want to know?’ she asked him.
He made himself meet her eye. ‘Everything you can tell me, but only if you can. I don’t want to upset you.’
She took his hand in both of hers and lifted it as she stood. She led him through to the living room and told him to sit down.
He sat on the sofa, felt it sink beneath his weight. The fabric of the cushions was velvet – green, the colour of wine bottles. The carpet was paisley – greens and yellows, thick under his stockinged feet. Although the room was warm enough, she crossed to the opposite wall and lit the gas fire all the same, as if the merest chill could not be allowed, as if she were in fact trying to keep him warm forever now she had brought him in from the cold. Above the fire were photographs in frames. He wanted to go over and look at them but did not.
Phyllis returned to him, took his hand once more in hers and laid their knotted fingers on her leg. Normally such a gesture would have filled him with angst, but it didn’t, not with her.
‘When I got your letter…’ She stopped and inhaled deeply. She was dressed much like the girls at university – a casual sweater and jeans. Not like Margaret – not like a mother at all.
‘You don’t have to tell me right away,’ he said. ‘It’s enough just to be here for now. It’s a miracle to be here with you.’
‘It is.’ It was barely a whisper. Her fingers tightened around his. ‘It’s an absolute miracle.’
He could feel the warmth radiating from her. Human warmth. A human bean. The line where their thighs ran down to the sofa’s edge was dark. He could not see the cushion beneath. He wondered if he had ever sat this close to his mother, Margaret.
‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me,’ he said. ‘That’s not why I came.’
‘I want to.’ She looked up into his face and smiled. Her eyes were wet – they had not dried in all the time they had been together – and she reached up and tucked his hair behind his ear. The tenderness of the gesture was almost unbearable. He closed his eyes a moment and opened them again.
‘You’re Christopher now,’ she said.
‘Yes. But I was Martin. Your baby.’
On the mantelpiece, a carriage clock ticked. The gas fire hissed. A car passed by, though he wasn’t sure if the noise came from the road in front of the house or the one behind.
‘Every morning,’ she began, taking his hand again, ‘when the post drops through, I get a moment where I feel this little pulse of excitement. And then when I see there’s nothing but bills, bank statements and the like, the feeling drops like a stone and all I feel is disappointment. Most people get that probably, but I think it’s more so for me because of what I’m always hoping for. Maybe I’m no different to anyone else. Maybe we’re all longing for something special to happen. Maybe life is just a constant process of readjusting our expectations.’
‘But that day you got my letter,’ he interrupted – couldn’t help himself.
‘Yes,’ she said, and squeezed his hand so tight it hurt. ‘That day I didn’t have to readjust anything because something special did happen. There was your letter in its little white envelope, all neat and precise.’ Her left eyelid lowered halfway in a comic expression, as if she were joking or being ironic, or perhaps she had something in her eye. He did it too, felt his eyelid tremble. ‘And the address was written in this painstaking handwriting. Black ink. So neat. It was addressed to me, of course. And I knew. I just knew. I was shivering before I even opened it. Standing in the hallway shivering.’
He said nothing, stayed utterly still, held his breath in case the sound of it stopped her from continuing.
‘Of course it was five o’clock by the time I got to read it. The house was like Clapham Junction. I had to do the packed lunches, get the kids sorted, go to work. God knows how I did. Then after work I had to pick up the twins, get their dinner, get them settled. I fed them early then put them in front of the television, took the letter upstairs and into the bathroom. It’s the only room with a lock in this house. Not very picturesque, I know, but I sat on the loo and read your words, and I felt as if my bones were melting. Literally, Christopher. You should’ve seen me. I was crying so much my jeans were covered in wet spots. You’ll think I’m romanticising, but I’m telling you it was like that. It was like forgiveness and redemption all at once, except I only realised in that moment that I’d been waiting to be forgiven, if that makes sense. I’d waited for your letter for over half my life and there it was in my hands, and all I had to do was hold on, not mess up, and I had a chance of seeing you again. Even as I was reading your words, I thought: this will be my first story for him, this right now, sitting in this bathroom on this loo seat, crying over his letter. I’ll lighten it up for him, I thought. Joke about having the loo paper right there, how handy that was to dry my tears.’ She sniffed, smiled, rolled her eyes, as if to suggest she was silly.
He wanted to tell her there was nothing silly in anything she had said, but could not speak. He had imagined her reading his letter in her room, perhaps, or in the kitchen. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.