‘Ifhe’s my father,’ I say.
Miriam crosses her arms, her eyebrows raised like mini volcanoes peaked to explode. ‘She’s always manipulated you.’
I stare down at my chipped toenail polish. My ankles look fat. A wave of depression engulfs me as I think of Phyllida in her hospital bed. Miriam has never openly rejected Phyllida in our lives. It’s more of a passive aggression that is not always obvious when they chat at village events or when they used to make arrangements about my care when I was growing up. But it’s always there, simmering below the surface. Perhaps part of Miriam’s new bitterness is because I refuse to show her the letter Phyllida left me.Find Francis. You will soon have the means at your disposal. I hope he will let you know the real me.I’ve no idea what it really means, but perhaps Miriam’s jealousy is driven by fear of some kind.
‘Phyllida’s a sick old woman. She might not even get better. Why are you so angry?’
‘Oh,poor, poorPhyllida. I’m bloody sick of everyone kowtowing to Saint Phyllida when she has a very muddy past.’
‘For god’s sake, Mum. You said yourself she might have been running from a violent partner.’
‘Where does all the money come from, then?’ Miriam finishes her glass of wine and gets up to refill it.
‘Why are you so worried about her money, Mum?’ It occurs to me suddenly that this is Miriam worrying about money for herself. Now that I’ve read some of Phyllida’s letters to Francis Fitzhenry, I realise that Mum’s income must be from Phyllida. She has barely worked in a decade. She once told me she invested, that it was income from shares. But she never reads the financial pages or discusses the ins and outs of the stock market.
‘Has Phyllida been giving you money?’
Miriam closes her eyes. ‘Yes, she has. To look after you.’ Her eyes are angry when she opens them. ‘To put a roof over your head. I’ve provided for you all these years and it was her responsibility to help.’ Miriam pauses, the muscles of her face twitching. ‘Her son fathered you and left me nothing. The money is from him, really, for your school fees and your groceries, your clothes, and your endless treats and trips and follies.’
I ignore the barb. ‘You’ve given me nothing since I left uni. Have you been getting the money since?’
‘It’s paying for the upkeep of your family home! Do you think it costs nothing to keep the gardens tidy, the gutters clean, the lights on, Charlotte? Do you think you would have had a family home to move back to when you couldn’t manage your own adult life if I hadn’t been maintaining this property that you will one day inherit?’
‘And when I couldn’t afford my rent increase last year? It felt okay for you to just not tell me that my dead father was sending money into your bank account to make sure I was cared for? You didn’t think it was worth passing on?’
‘Don’t be dramatic.’
I scoff. ‘I asked you for help, Mum. Several times when I couldn’t get a job.’
‘If you’d stayed at university and finished your law degree, you would have walked into a job! I supported you while you were studying law. It was your choice to drop out!’
‘I wanted to study history! Law was your dream, not mine. And I’m pretty sure Phyllida would have wanted you to help me when I needed it.’
‘I do help you,’ she says, breathing heavily. ‘I paid off your HECS debt last month.’
I turn away. This is news to me, but I can’t muster the gratitude she is looking for. Knowing it is Phyllida’s money and that it was probably Miriam’s therapist who suggested she pay the HECS debt (because she suggests most things that surprise me about my mother these days) makes me irrationally resentful that she has meddled in my finances. I try to slow my thoughts. I wonder what Phyllida thought of me sometimes crying poor when she was supposedly providing money for me. Thankfully, I never let her give me money because I didn’t want her to think I couldn’t make it on my own, knowing how she’s had to support herself all these years. Plus, I know she gives a lot to charity, and I never wanted to be a charity case.
This conversation with Miriam feels like a watershed, so I choose my next words carefully. ‘So, Phyllida has money. Why does it worry you?’
Miriam gives me a weary look. ‘Your father asked me not to talk about the money or her past. To you or her. Because hewasworried about where it came from and didn’t want to get her into trouble.’
She assesses me. There is a glassy edge in her eyes, the one that arrives towards the end of a bottle of wine. I think about how sad her life has been, never having a long-term partner, remaining devoted to the memory of David.
‘I just want you to be careful if you’re digging around in Phyllida’s things,’ she says. ‘David was worried, and now I am too.’
‘David was a kid, Mum. Jesus, he was barely an adult. Andyou hardly knew him. You were together, what, six months? Just stop with the histrionics.’
‘Age made no difference,’ says Miriam haughtily. ‘We were in love, Charlotte. Proper, head-reeling love. You haven’t experienced it yet. If you had, you would know that age, or anything else for that matter, makes absolutely no difference. Love trumps everything.’
‘How would you know what I’ve experienced in love?’ Anger engulfs me again—probably because I am feeling conflicted about Hugo, whom I do love, and whom I have run away from because he wanted to move in together and I was terrified of what that might mean. Hugo loves kids, and I don’t. Some of our friends have had babies recently, and he picks them up out of their prams and walks around rocking them as if being a parent is the most natural thing in the world and not the most difficult, head-screwing inconvenience. ‘You were thirty-five when you had me. He was twenty. I don’t think you can give me advice on relationships.’
She rolls her eyes.
‘Seriously,’ I continue, riding a strange urge to push into this dangerous, unexplored territory, ‘that’s like me sleeping with Harry from two doors down. Except that would belessof an age difference.’
‘Harry’s eighteen.’ Miriam shrugs. ‘I don’t see the problem.’
‘He only finished high school last month, Mum! He’s achild.And I’m sure his mother might have something to say about it.’ I glare at her. ‘I’m sure Phyllida had something to say to you about seducing her very young son.’
