“So, you hadn’t wanted to give me up?” His voice was so faint Nova could barely hear him.
“It had all been arranged behind my back,” Phyllis said. “I later learned that the nuns usually insisted the babies spend a few weeks with their birth mothers back at the home before they were adopted, but my mother wouldn’t allow it. She and Reverend Platt arranged to have my baby taken away within hours of birth.”
Michael shook his head, clearly too stunned to speak.
“It can’t have been legal,” Arthur said, anger in his voice. “Putting a baby up for adoption without the mother’s consent must have been illegal, even back then.”
“Apparently I signed the papers when I first arrived at the mother and baby home. I had no idea what I was signing; nobody let me read them.”
Michael lifted a hand and ran it through his gray hair. “I can’tbelieve that my parents knew about this. They were good people, I swear. They’d never have adopted me if they’d known what was really going on.”
“I’m sure they didn’t know,” Phyllis said. “And anyway, things were different back then. Thousands of girls like me had their babies taken away from them in the fifties and sixties, and most of them were unregulated private adoptions.”
“What happened to you after that?” Michael asked.
Phyllis paused for a moment, and Nova could see her struggling with the memories.
“My mother drove me home in silence, and we never talked about what happened again. I’d turned sixteen while I was in the home, and so as soon as my bleeding stopped, she got me a job cleaning local houses. I wasn’t allowed to go to the community center or library anymore, so I didn’t even have books as an escape. It was just me, Mother and church.”
“You must have hated your mum; why didn’t you leave home?” Nova asked.
Phyllis sighed. “Of course I resented her, but I was young and naive. My mother had always controlled every aspect of my life, and I didn’t know it any other way. Besides, back then, I truly believed I’d done something terrible and deserved God’s punishment. And that punishment was staying with my mother, a woman who hated me and never again believed a word I said.”
“What about Billy?”
Here Phyllis slowed for a moment. “I’m not sure. A few months later, I heard he’d got a job in Plymouth and moved there, but I never saw or heard from him again.”
“Oh Phyllis, I’m so sorry,” Arthur said gently.
There was a pause as they all took in the enormity of Phyllis’s story.
“Can I ask you one more question?” Michael said.
“Of course.”
“Why did you stay in St. Tredock all these years? I understand why you stayed with your mother to begin with, but once you were older and more independent, surely you could have left?”
“Ah, now that’s a good question,” Phyllis said, nodding. “For a long time, I told myself I stayed because of my mother: first because I thought I had to and then, when she got older and her arthritis got bad, to be her carer. But that’s not the real reason.”
“What is it?”
Phyllis looked up at Michael, and Nova saw her eyes were damp.
“I stayed for the baby. For you.”
He frowned. “But why? You said yourself, you had no idea who’d adopted me or where I’d been taken.”
“I knew nothing about you or your parents, and I suspected you knew nothing about me either. But I suppose on some level, I always hoped that one day you might find out about me and come looking. And for that reason alone, I chose to stay in St. Tredock, in the house I’d been born in, to make it easier if you ever tried.”
“And did you ever try to trace me?” Michael asked, and Nova heard a slight break in his voice.
“No, but only because I was too scared. What if you hated me for giving you up and wanted nothing to do with me? So, I decided that I’d leave it in your hands as to whether you wanted to find me or not.”
“But you wanted to be found?”
Phyllis smiled then, her eyes wet with tears. “Not a day has gone by when I haven’t dreamed of this moment, Michael. Admittedly, I never imagined it would happen on a cliff edge, but this is all I ever wanted. To finally get to see my son—to seeyou, Michael—and tell you how sorry I am that I never got to be your mother.”
Michael smiled, too, and it was such a tender, private moment that Nova turned away. Arthur did the same, and Nova could see tears in his eyes too. They both walked to join Ash and Dan, who were standing together by the cottage door.
