She doesn’t look up. ‘The wounds echo, Lottie, and looking ahead, you’ve got work to do, love. But Phylly knows how strong you are. You’re going to be fine.’
I have an overwhelming urge to curl up in a ball and sleep. I feel all the energy draining out of me.
‘Tarot’s like cleaning your teeth,’ says Mary. ‘Same as why I’ve got my generator in the garage hooked up to the beer fridge, ready for when the power goes out.’
I furrow my eyebrows in question.
‘It’s proactive.’
I smile, because you can’t help but smile at Mary’s particular brand of wisdom.
‘You got a nice smile, love. Seems like I haven’t seen it in a while.’
When I blink back tears, she says, ‘What happened with that nice bloke of yours? Thought you might pop out a couple of sprogs with him. Good-looking ones they’d be too.’
‘Why does everyone assume I’ll automatically want kids?’
Mary shrugs. ‘Beats me, love. The natural order, I suppose.’ She takes a sip of her beer. ‘Not that I ever followed the natural order.’
‘Did you want kids?’
‘Not sure. But I had an abortion when I was sixteen, love. Couldn’t have any after that, they said. The pipes were damaged or some palaver.’ She falls silent and there’s a moment when she isn’t the Mary I know but someone young and vulnerable.
‘I don’t want kids,’ I say. The words just slip out.
Mary shrugs, as if I haven’t just admitted my most frightening truth; something that’s been niggling away at me for years. I am only now admitting it out loud, but I know it drove me to end things with Hugo even though we never talked about it openly.
‘I mean, aren’t there lots of good things about not being enslaved to kids for your whole life? Not being penniless because you have to buy them shoes and vitamins and, like, Pokémon cards?’
‘Sure,’ she says.
‘I can travel any time of year. I can sleep all night. I can have actual conversations that don’t involve poo colour or the types of food I shouldn’t have eaten.’ I think of my friend, Lisa, with her three-month-old baby, Willow. She spent most of our last phone call talking about how chilli affects her breastmilk andthe various shades of Willow’s nappy contents, and even though I’m happy to have those conversations with my friends, I don’t want them to be conversations that take over my own life.
‘Good point,’ says Mary, fetching another beer. ‘Won’t hear any argument from me.’
‘Plus, I won’t be tempted to manipulate my kids and force them into spending their life as family negotiator. Like I am with Miriam and Phyllida.’
‘Fair play,’ says Mary.
When she doesn’t elaborate, I sigh, thinking about why I’m actually here. The information Miriam gave me in our last conversation about Phyllida’s shady pasthasto be related to the suicide attempt. But I’m not sure how to ask, so instead I say, ‘Why don’t Miriam and Phyllida get along?’
‘Ask your mum,’ says Mary.
‘I asked her already and she can’t seem to tell me anything useful. And Phyllida isn’t well enough to tell me right now. I need to know what happened.’
Mary regards me as if she is trying to make up her mind about something. ‘They had a falling out on that Sunday when David died,’ she says eventually. ‘Miriam was … not in a good frame of mind. She did a number on Phylly. But death does odd things to folk. The grief, you know?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your mum sort of took over with David when he got sick. Fair enough. She was his girl, I guess.’
‘How did Phyllida cope with that?’
Mary takes another long sip of her beer. ‘Well, you might say, she didn’t.’
40
PHYLLIDA
