Chapter 9
LOTTIE
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
My hand is shaking as I boil the kettle in the bookshop’s tearoom.
My visit to Phyllida in the ICU earlier has unnerved me.
My darling grandmother, frail and sleeping, a tube from her nose taped to her cheek, cannula in her arm attached to some fluid, another attached to a machine that glowed and beeped along with several others that hummed and flashed numbers or random signals.
Phyllida’s wrinkled hand in mine had felt cold.
I made arrangements to talk to her doctor later and that had buoyed me, briefly, until Miriam’s visit to the shop half an hour ago.
She was on her way to one of her outings—golf, mahjong, tennis.
Miriam has only worked sporadically since I was born and sometimes this feels like a slap, knowing how hard Phyllida works, and how hard I’ve had to work over the years to afford rent in even the most basic of city share houses.
‘You need to tell me what’s going on,’ Miriam had said.
‘I know it’s not a stroke. I went to the hospital to see if I could get some information and when I asked the nurse if Phyllida would walk or talk again after her stroke, she looked at me as if I had two heads.
’ Miriam had sniffed, as she often did when she came into the shop.
Dust, apparently. ‘I don’t appreciate being lied to, Charlotte. ’
‘Why would you think I’m lying? The nurse wouldn’t have shared anything because you’re not her next of kin. I am.’
‘I’m her daughter-in-law and quite entitled to know.’
It amuses me that Miriam calls herself Phyllida’s daughter-in-law when Miriam and Phyllida’s son were never married, and she dated David for all of six months (albeit the last six months of his life) thirty years ago.
‘I know I’m being lied to because a woman stopped at the nurses’ counter and the nurse told her there was an elderly woman in the ICU who would need to talk to her when she woke. So, I followed the woman down the hall and asked her what her speciality was.’
‘And?’ I asked.
‘She was a psychologist. They give you a psychologist if you’re suicidal.’
‘They must have been talking about some other old woman.’
I have no real excuse for lying to my mother, except that Miriam likes to gather village information and deal it out like candy to those deserving village serfs who please her best. Mary’s instinct to withhold this information until we know more feels sensible.
Miriam had departed the bookshop in the middle of a tantrum about the attention Phyllida was ‘obviously trying to garner for herself with this little stunt’, after which, I had emailed Mary.
Now I check my laptop to see if she has responded.
The reply makes me flush with mortification as I realise my error.
Who else had I accidentally included in the email chain?
I click into my sent emails and see I have sent the email to ‘Mary and Phyllida’s Last Chapter’—a book club organised by Mary and my grandmother.
It comprises a dozen or more villagers who meet at the bookshop on the last Tuesday night of each month to discuss whatever books have been selected.
One person is on duty for snacks, and everyone brings their drink of choice (home brew for Mary, wine for most of them, and tea or an occasional gin and tonic for Phyllida).
I scan the responses while swearing at myself for being an incompetent dickhead.
From: Lottie Peters-Banks
To: Mary and Phyllida’s Last Chapter
Subject: F#@*ing Miriam
Hi Mary
Just had an infuriating visit from Mum who is on her high horse about Phyllida getting too much attention in hospital. For god’s sake, Phyllida is barely alive! I can’t understand what my cow of a mother’s problem is.
I need a break from her so I’m going to move into Phyllida’s place for a while. She won’t mind. Do you have the spare key? I’ll come down after work.
Love Lottie
From: Mary Penhallidon
To: Lottie Peters-Banks
Subject: re: F#@*ing Miriam
Lottie you’re a dag.
Did you mean to copy the book crew in on that email? Don’t reckon!
Key under pot plant next to the blow-up dancing Santa and the flashing pink snowman I put outside Phyllida’s front door. The place needed cheering up while she’s in hospital.
From Mary
From: Judy Dingle
To: Lottie Peters-Banks
Subject: re: F#@*ing Miriam
Hello Lottie dear,
I think you accidentally emailed the whole book club an email meant for Mary? I’ve asked Patty to delete it. I can ring around the others if you like?
Just a request, dear. I note you are moving into Phyllida’s house.
The dreadful Christmas decorations that Mary put up yesterday at Phyllida’s front door are bringing down the tone of the village, don’t you agree?
The lights flashed all night and kept me awake too.
I sleep with the blind open to welcome the dawn naturally, but I’m worried the flashing will trigger a migraine.
Would you mind taking them down? Or at least unplugging them?
Regards, Judy
From: William Wanster
To: Lottie Peters-Banks
Subject: re: F#@*ing Miriam
Hi Lottie,
I’ll come round and do Phyllida’s lawns tomorrow, after the working bee on the river path.
Just answering one of your questions in that email to Mary that you sent to everyone.
Your mum doesn’t rate Phyllida because of what happened when David died.
David was pussy struck by your mum back in the day (most of us blokes were).
He moved straight in with her in the week they met, and it turned into a case of mother–girlfriend rivalry I reckon.
He was only a pup, so you can’t really blame Phyllida.
She was probably trying to protect him. Don’t know the full story, though, except that Phyllida left the village for a few months not long after David died.
Not sure where she went, but your mum reckoned everyone blamed her for running Phyllida out of town.
She’s probably holding a grudge about it.
Your mum sure was a looker back in the day and she turned David’s head. It was that sad when he died and I reckon nobody handled it that well. He was such a good bloke. But your mum got you to show for it, so that’s a win.
From Big Bill
I feel nauseous that the tentacles of village memory reach into every crevice of what should be my private life.
The people here know more about my family than I do.
They knew my father before he died, and they knew my mother as a young model, when her face was on the front cover of Vogue and Cosmopolitan; when Miriam had still liked her looks.
Some people think there is comfort in being known; at living in a small place where neighbours help each other out while wrangling with the whispers and undercurrents of long-shared histories.
They pity those poor city-dwellers who don’t know the name of the person in the next apartment.
But right now, I long to walk down the street past strangers who don’t require me to chat to them.
I want the sounds of traffic and sirens; to walk into a busy bar and disappear.
I look at the emails again. By all accounts, David was bookish and quiet.
He mowed lawns for the elderly. He probably opened doors for strangers and rescued cats from burning buildings.
The man sounded like a saint, and not much like any other man Miriam has ever dated.
Was it his kindness she fell for? He was certainly handsome and exceedingly tall.
Was that the basis of their relationship?
I sigh. Why can’t I get along with my mother, and why do I feel so unsettled?
I look back at Big Bill’s email: Phyllida disappeared in the months after David died.
Where did she go? Did her disappearance have anything to do with the mysterious person—Francis—I have been asked to find?
And, now that I think about it, how did two such different people—Miriam, a successful internationally renowned model in her mid-thirties living the party life in Sydney, and David, a sweet, twenty-year-old university student living at home with his mother in this village—even meet?