Chapter 31 PHYLLIDA
PHYLLIDA
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
Lottie has been in. She has been sitting by the bed. Phyllida felt the warmth of Lottie’s hand holding her own and had focused on its comfort. The warming of her cold skin.
It is strange, this existence between life and death. Phyllida hovers, right at the edge of something. It’s as if she is about to reach out and grab it, but when she does, it slips through her fingers, like smoke. Her whole life has been like this. Indelibly true, and yet not quite … there.
She has not allowed herself to wallow in regret.
To think about her life without a partner, or about what she had stolen from Francis.
To think about Cricket; the girl’s reckless rage; her damaged soul.
She cannot abide it. She writes her sadness, her remorse at times past, and seals the letters and puts them away.
She carries on. Sometimes the smile is an effort, but life is for living.
The letters kept her grounded in the present with one eye to tomorrow.
Occasionally, Phyllida still thinks of her first affair of the heart, James.
Is he still alive? Did he marry an American?
What went through his head each time he read the newspapers that blared out her name—her old name—Dorothea Stewart?
Did he flinch, wondering how he had once made love to a thoughtful, bookish girl but had somehow missed her potential to shoot a gun at a man’s heart?
She pictures his dear earnest face. Poor James.
She wants to say to Lottie, to Miriam, happiness is a choice.
Yes, she was lonely, after David died. She was still a young woman.
Only fifty. Still had the remnants of her looks.
Plenty of energy. If she’d married it might have changed things.
Might have given her someone to chat to about the state of things; whether Australia should become a republic for example, back when that was all anyone talked about—she’d prefer it not to be, but she’d probably forfeited the right to an opinion when she’d burned up so many resources of the British police.
Their bungled efforts to find her had come as no surprise; her father had called in a favour; used the best master forger for their false passport and other documents.
Cost a fortune for a rush job, he’d complained.
(The chance to lament the extortionate cost was never going to be wasted simply because there was a hurried final goodbye to get through in the dead of night.
Her father loved her dearly, but he was a Scotsman first and foremost.)
Phyllida pondered the qualities of this imaginary husband of hers. He would have been solid. Unflappable. He would have talked her out of her momentary insanity when she’d stocked the pantry with so many cans of vegetables before the Y2K bug arrived, even though she’d known it was all silly.
A husband might have soothed her too over the injustices of the world.
The things she couldn’t change. Instead, she’d read books and pondered life and the nature of death.
She had remained single and stayed in the background.
The orphanage she supported; the charities, they were not using her skills, simply her funds.
Money was not enough to put things right, but it was all she could think to do.
She certainly hadn’t done the only thing that might have made a difference. Return to Francis. Is that the reason she is still alive?
She wants to break from this heaviness. She wants to wake. There is obviously more to understand. More to do. She will work to get better.
Phyllida wills herself to live.