Chapter 9: The Wool Over Your Eyes

October brought with it pounding rain from the north and grisly news for Cokeworth. Mr. Chutley and Mr. Graves announced their joint decision to close Swanson Mill in thirty days, beginning a numbered vigil in the town pubs. Petunia hadn’t known who either of these men were, and she wasn’t the only one learning their names for the first time. The mill had changed ownership twice in ten years. The mysterious Mr. Chutley, suspected to be operating under an alias, was rumored to have plotted the mill’s closure three years ago in a bid to turn a profit by selling off the machinery to anyone foolish enough to believe Britain still had a leg standing in textile manufacturing. He was a ghost to this city who arranged his purchase through solicitors and sent his latest decision through the post by phantom hand. The no less elusive Mr. Graves owned a beautiful house on Acacia Close, which no one lived in. His portion of the letter published in The Cokeworth Mail was full of promises of clearer skies and cleaner waters as soon as the mill shut operations—amenities for his mausoleum. Cokeworth was going underground, see? The papers were calling it a “Brown Bread Winter” because half the city expected to croak on the dole queue on a cold Christmas morning.

The announcement had spurred a small band of workers to relocate, mainly the lads who had come from Scotland and Manchester a few years ago looking for work, people with no ties and nothing to lose. The trouble was, lack of jobs and factory closures brought them to the Midlands in the first place. There was nowhere else to go. Since the 60s, mills up in Lancashire were closing at a steady rate of one mill a week. Other industries couldn’t absorb the influx of unemployed textile workers because every sector of manufacturing was limping along.

You could read Cokeworth’s future in the recent past. Merton Mill in Rumworth, which had the tallest chimney in Bolton, was demolished six years ago. Croal Mill closed as a cotton mill five years ago. Stanley Mill closed as a cotton mill last year. Brook Mill in Bromley Cross closed a few months ago, and Bradshawgate Mill was closing after New Year’s. Nortex Mill in Halliwell demolished one of their production plants last year. Great Bridge Mill was still in the process of being demolished. Prospect Mills tore down two of their three mills four years ago and was currently in the process of demolishing their third. 

Cokeworth’s mill stood next in line for the gallows. While the deliriously optimistic hoped it could reopen as a soap factory or a canning plant, everyone else knew the next onsite job opening was going to be on the demolition team tearing the buildings down. The two questions remaining were “when” and whether such a project would include the mill housing complex.

Petunia sloshed through a large puddle of dirty water on Fleet Bank. There was no avoiding it; the whole street was waterlogged, flooding into the river that ran alongside it from this morning’s unexpected downpour. It had stopped raining an hour ago, but the air was still damp like the sky had gone weepy and could start its waterworks up again at any moment. 

According to most of the clocks in the display window of Prilov’s, it was ten after two, but a couple of figures were gathered outside the pub down the lane. On a Sunday, no less. Honestly! People ought to be at home with their families. And they were smoking. What a filthy habit. Three sets of embers glowed like tiny, winking fireflies against the overcast, gray brume. The fellow closest to the curb snuffed his fag in the rainwater pooling beneath his shoe.

Petunia stopped short. She could put a name to the man leaning against the wall of the pub, his cap pulled low on his brow. That was Tobias Snape up ahead. She’d never seen him up close, but she could recognize Mr. Snape in profile. He had the same hooked nose as his son. She’d heard all about him from Mum. Mrs. Snape’s husband was a brute and a drinker. He was puffing at a stump of a fag, keeping alive a smoke trail like the mill chimney. There were three of them blocking the street. 

Mr. Snape, barrel-chested and broad shouldered, had a raspy, grating voice like the coals he raked in the boiler room. 

The stocky, balding man in the center pointed his left ear at the conversation like it was a radio antenna. He had the weathered look of an old building you’d admire for being the lone structure on a street to survive a massive storm. 

Last, leaning against a postbox, was a much younger man who Petunia could’ve sworn was the same Jimmy Fetcher who used to turn heads passing Tuft Grammar a few years ago—except Jimmy Fetcher was supposed to play a heartthrob on Coronation Street once he moved on from making deliveries. This bloke had eye bags drooping overgray skin and rounded shoulders like he spent his days stooped over a sorting table. He was the one she heard first because he raised his voice for the man in the center with the bad ear.

“Way back, they opened up St. Helena Mills after five years an’ er still spinning cotton waste.”

Mr. Snape shook his head. “Fer now. Cotton mills are droppin’ like flies. Grecian New Mill on Settle Street closed in ’65 an’ got demolished for housing last year. The Courtaulds buyout didn’ save it.” He let out a smoky breath. “226,000 spindles.”

He delivered the news like a casualty number, and the three of them hung their heads for a moment of silence. The man in the center forgot the fag wedged between his fingers. A chunk of ash dropped onto the wet pavement.

“Miners unionized an’ got better pay,” the man in the center said passionately. “If all the weavers an’ spinners in th’ country started picketing—”

Jimmy Fetcher’s lookalike was quick to jump in.

“Dotten says the miners’ strike is why they won’t ride out the closure til the end o’ the year. Not enough coal to power the steam engine, an’ the power cuts don’t make it worth stayin’ open.”

Mr. Snape didn’t bat an eyelid. “He’s tellin’ porkies. They won’t keep til the end o’ the year else they’ll close round Christmas. Not worth the hassle.”

The man with the bad ear hadn’t seemed to have heard either of them. “It only took…2 months? Blimey, when’d they start?”

“January 9th”—Mr. Snape said. He took a long drag from his fag—“the lad turned twelve.” His face twisted at the news. Petunia found his expression unreadable and glanced away. She searched for the chance to dash across the street, but traffic was moving too fast to make a beeline for the opposite side of the road.

“Yer lad’s up in posh school, ar?”

Mr. Snape didn’t answer. He flicked his cigarette butt aside and stepped away from the pub wall. 

“Ay bab, yow waitin’ fer the buzz?” 

Why was he talking to her?

Petunia hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on their conversation; her feet had stopped walking on their own accord. Her right shoulder twitched reflexively under Mr. Snape’s stare, but to her relief there was no glint of recognition in his eyes. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him she knew his son. 

“Jim, go up the cut an’ see if there’s a Red fer the lass.”

“No, that’s al—” the words died in her throat. Whatever expression lined Mr. Snape’s face, it wasn’t one of kindness. He looked like a person determined in getting his way and with preciously little opportunity to do so. Mum had the same way about her—but she wasn’t a batterer. Like Mum, Mr. Snape must’ve had some kind of charm to his character because Jim immediately took off in the direction Petunia had come from. That meant Petunia would be taking the bus home. On the bright side, at least now she had an exit plan. She kept herself away from the two remaining men, who returned to their conversation. She could still hear every word because Mr. Snape kept his voice loud for his companion.

“It’s the young’uns like Jim I feel bad fer.”

The other man took so long to respond, Petunia wasn’t sure he’d heard Mr. Snape. 

“The steel industry, that’s the future. ‘S a good move nationalizin’ steel.If oi were startin’ out now, oi’d go to Sheffield.” 

“Nah, Bert. Wilson’s a tosser. If they can’t fix the coal mines, steel will be dead in a few years.”

What a cynic. All Dad talked about was how much potential the United Kingdom’s accession to the European Economic Community had. He was very optimistic about 1973 turning into a good year. Textiles were flailing, but who wouldn’t back British Steel?

“One’s on its way.” Jim’s movie star smile was yellowed and his breath was acrid like he’d swallowed up the smokestack.

Petunia hugged her arms over her chest and stared out onto the cars zooming past. The men switched to talking about her jacket. Mr. Snape had picked it out as acrylic wool on sight.

“—ain’t wool. It’s all cheap synthetics each Benny thinks ‘e saves a penny on. Worst o’ both. Ain’t warm, ain’t breathable—”

Cheap! How dare he? It was plenty warm, and she liked the pattern. 

The bus stop in the direction of Highcourt was across the bridge on the other side of the river. She wasn’t even standing on the right side of the street, but the Red stopped on Fleet Bank when Mr. Snape walked into traffic to flag it down. She scrambled onto the bus, mortified. Thankfully, none of the people in the stalled cars looked familiar and neither one of the bus’ passengers seemed likely to know Mum. They sat by complacently while driver took half a minute to chat. He told the clippie to let her on without paying fare because he was pals with Toby. She took a seat on the river-facing side, fixing her gaze on a graffitied ad for “Buy British” that was peeling off a lamppost.

As the bus pulled away, it occurred to her that, aside from Mum and Dad, Mr. Snape was the only other normal person she’d come across who knew magic was real. They both knew that witches and wizards were running around the country performing spells and that there was a magic school called Hogwarts in Scotland. Her stomach churned. She didn’t want to have anything in common with Mr. Snape. She shouldn’t have anything in common with Mr. Snape. They were the most unlikely pair in all of Cokeworth. Smothering her impulse to take a backwards glance out the window, she pushed Mr. Snape to the same corner of her mind she reserved for thoughts about magic. There were plenty of other things to think about—like the dark river water, which led to the mill, which Tobias Snape worked at, which Jimmy Fetcher also worked at. Was that really Jimmy Fetcher? That was a great question. Why was Jimmy friends with Mr. Snape? Who would go befriend the Snapes? Besides Lily. Her sister had to go and befriend that awful boy, who looked nothing like his father except for having the exact same nose. Though she hadn’t wanted to, Petunia had come full circle to seeing Mr. Snape in profile. The image popped into her mind as clear as a picture.

She wondered if he ever missed his life before he found out about magic…and when was that?

Or if he ever wished he could leave his witchy family behind. 

Or if he ever lay awake at night wondering if he’s mad. 

Did he ever envy the other residents of Cokeworth for being able to live their lives in blissful, oblivious peace the same way she did…or did he ever envy the people who could do magic?

She got off the bus and made her way to Highcourt Street, thinking back to his patched trousers and frayed shirt collar. Something didn’t add up. What part of the Snapes’ lives was magical? Maybe Mum and Dad were right about Mrs. Snape being some kind of criminal…it didn’t make sense. All of Lily’s letters pointed to a charmed, perfect existence where she’d never have to worry about breaking an object she couldn’t fix or scrubbing a stain clean. Lily already knew how to perform those spells as a second year student, yet the Snapes were worse off than the Evanses. How could that be? 

She shook the question from her mind as she unlocked her front door.

“I’m home! I have good news!” 

Lately, the only good news came from Lily, who still sent letters home once or twice a week. Her parents kept them as pages of a newly serialized fairytale. Lily made a cure for boils, all should be amazed. Lily is learning how to shrink objects with magic. Let’s bow down and worship her. Dad compared Lily to Rumpelstilskin, spinning straw into gold, while Mum joked Lily could do anything she wanted as long as she didn’t turn into the little old woman who lived in a shoe.

“—it’s simply unbelievable. She’ll be able to turn a pair of rabbits into a pair of slippers! Now, I wrote back that I know a furrier who can do the same thing—”

Petunia rushed to remove her galoshes and strode into the dining room with her jacket still on, plopping her note atop Lily’s latest missive.

“You found it?” Mum asked with wild excitement.

“Yes, that’s the phone number to the register and that’s their address. I could mail a written request for the certificate tomorrow on my way to school if you’d like.” 

Mum’s radiant smile was so wide Petunia could ignore the corners of Dad’s mouth sagging in dismay.

“Well, let’s get an envelope,” Mum sang appreciatively. In the background, Dad put on a show of sealing Lily’s letter and leaving the room. Petunia took his empty seat and inched it closer to Mum’s chair. 

Since the events of last year’s Christmas, Mum had a new hobby, which meant Petunia had a new hobby as well. It was more like a mission. Mum had taken being excluded from the McDermott family Christmas party to heart. Despite multiple assurances Nan and Grandad would invite the Evanses to the upcoming family Christmas, something changed in her. Mum was like a tempest, that wasn’t new. For weeks following Christmas, she had been too disconsolate to rouse out of bed most days, torrential in her grief. Then, with lightning swiftness, she decided she would scour the Earth for her biological family, and her mood improved overnight. Petunia and Dad had attributed the sudden change to Lily’s return for spring holiday because Mum kept her plan to find her family a secret through the summer. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Dad overheard her making inquiries on the phone and pieced together what was happening. Now that the cat was out of the bag, the Evans family was swept up in the whirlwind of her adventure.

Petunia loved helping Mum. For a whole year, the sun rose and set on her sister. With the hunt for Mum’s real family underway, she and Mum could once again have entire conversations that had nothing to do with Lily. This was an area where magic had surprisingly little currency. Mum, whose mantra was ‘I can’t wait until Lily turns 17,’ never suggested they rely on Lily finding a magical solution to their mystery. She probably didn’t want to wait that long, or maybe she felt this should be her own accomplishment. Petunia didn’t want to risk Mum changing her mind by asking. Lily didn’t know much about this project, and Petunia preferred to keep it that way. At fourteen, she was much more helpful than Lily could be at twelve. 

Lily didn’t care about anything non-magic anyway. Dad was the only one in the family who outright disapproved.

Mum’s gaze unconsciously travelled to the ceiling as though she could watch Dad pacing their bedroom with X-ray vision. Petunia took the envelope from her limp fingers.

“Don’t worry, Mum. Dad will come around,” she whispered. 

“You don’t have to tell me, Pet. Believe me, I know.” Her voice rang so loudly, Dad would have heard her from the house next door. “If only I could’ve saved myself the grief of listening to him whinge about Nan, Grandad, and your uncles for fifteen years!” Petunia winced.

“—like he changed his mind about the birdbath!” she said hurriedly. She wanted to make the situation better, but her words triggered the real avalanche.

“That’s right! He changed his mind about the birdbath too!” Mum shouted. Petunia waited for the ceiling to fall down on them—or worse, for the neighbors to come calling—but nothing happened. Dad didn’t make a sound from his upstairs hideout.Satisfied, Mum grabbed the pen on the dining room table, wrote a short, formal statement of her request and folded it up, turning to Petunia with a gigantic smile, scary and sharp-edged in its beauty. “Let’s get that stamp!”

Her enthusiasm was contagious. They moved from the dining room into the corridor whereMum kept her handbag next to the phone. She passed the stamp booklet to Petunia and rifled through her bag for a tube of lipstick, a glamorous shade of bright red called fire flower. She let Petunia fix the stamp and address the envelope while she stared into the mirror hanging above the little table, turning her head from side to side, getting a good view of each dangling earring. They were costume pieces Petunia had given her two years ago, large, black geometric ovals. She leaned in closer to her reflection.

“You know, when I was little, strangers on the street used to come up to me and tell me they’ve never seen green eyes like mine. I’d ask Nan how come I was the only one in the family with green eyes, and one day your Uncle Connor was so cross with me, he told me I was adopted. Nan was livid, but I got it into my head that if I found anyone else with green eyes, I’d find my real family.” She turned away from the mirror, looking into Petunia’s pale blue eyes with a frown. “Now I know it doesn’t work that way. Well, Lily has green eyes,” she added as an afterthought.

“Yes,” Petunia nodded dutifully. Lily’s irises were green.

“—but I still picture my father with green eyes. I think they came from him.” She returned to her reflection, smoothing her pearl necklace against the winged collar of her blouse, pursing her lips in disapproval. Taking a step back, she judged the pearls as clashing with the bold print and unclasped them. “He probably served in the war. Dashing, tall—”

“Probably shorter.” From behind Mum, Petunia stooped to fit herself inside the mirror’s frame. It was set for Mum’s height, which meant it cut off everything above Petunia’s nose unless she backed up to thewall and bent her knees.

“You’re tall,” Mum pouted, sizing up her pearls against Petunia’s neck.

Petunia smiled. She shared her height with Dad. In all likelihood, her tall, skinny frame was the Evans side of the family peeking out, but it was fun to speculate on the half of the family that was a complete mystery. Although she and Lily knew Mum was adopted, they had never been allowed to talk about it before. Mum and Dad had claimed it was disrespectful to Nan and Grandad.

She handed the stamped envelope to Mum, who positioned it on the table with great care in the center of her loop of pearls.

Petunia couldn’t begrudge Mum for approaching the search with wide-eyed optimism because she found herself falling into the same pattern. When she imagined who could be out there, it was always a cousin her own age who would be an instant best friend or a rich, doting aunt who wanted them to move out of Cokeworth and into her palatial country house. Most children in care weren’t orphans in the proper sense, meaning children with two dead parents; they were children without a single parent able to take care of them. Mum could have aunts and uncles or more siblings with their own children. Statistically, someone was out there, and the less they knew, the easier it was to fill in the gaps with the breadth of their imaginations. Petunia secretly thought it would be nice to have family similar in personality to her. Maybe they would find this magic business bizarre and unnatural, and she could commiserate with the likes of someone who wasn’t Tobias Snape. Or, if they couldn’t know the secret, perhaps Lily being away at boarding school would give Petunia more time to bond with them. Sometimes being the first grandchild was important to grandparents. Nan cared, which was why cousin Juliet was her favorite. And even if they didn’t care about that sort of thing, they might be impressed that Petunia reunited the family. She just had to manage it first. 

The first step was getting Mum’s adoption records from the Adopted Children’s Register. Unfortunately, this first step was also the easiest step. The register provided details of a person’s adoption, but adoption certificates contained zero information regarding an individual’s birthdate, birthplace, or birth parents. 

“My apologies. There may a small chance of documentation existing if the arrangement involved an organization or a private solicitor, but this information is nearly impossible to trace. Due to the sensitive nature surrounding most cases of surrendered children, these type of records were simply not kept.”

“I understand. Thank you.” Petunia cupped a hand around the phone receiver as the front door unlocked noisily. She could now appreciate why Mum made these types of calls outside the house. She did not want to lose her call with the records officer after all the effort it took to get this man on the line. Dad took his time removing his hat and flittering through his coat pockets, dawdling by the coatrack.

She turned her back to him just as he began to untie his shoelaces one-handed.

“But where would I start if I wanted to try to find—I know it’s impossible—but where would I start?”

The officer’s voice was clipped on the other end of the line. “If you’re asking for my experience, most searches follow the same pattern—and the same result. The best place to start is a case file, if one exists. These are routinely destroyed for space once a child in care reaches the age of 21. In your mother’s case, her file would be long gone. If you still feel the need to continue searching, you could attempt to consult the old register from her children’s home. These tend to be lost or damaged after a children’s home disbands. The last place to check is council minutes, but individual cases are rarely the subject of these meetings, so if you find these records, don’t expect anything to come of it.”

His words hit her ears like a hammer.With Dad a short distance behind her, Petunia kept her tone as upbeat as she could muster. “I see. And where would I look if I wanted to find someone who was working in the same care home my mother stayed in during the months she was residing there?”

He took a deep, weary breath.

“I sympathize with your family’s plight, but here at the General Register, the last thing we want is to assist a harassment campaign. We get calls every day begging to release the name of a birth mother, or a hospital, or of other orphans who had been in care at the same home. It’s for the best these records remain inaccessible.”

A harassment campaign! That was what they called a few questions! Petunia gritted her teeth. It was settled. She would need to get a name to make any progress in this search.

She perfunctorily thanked the director for his time in case she needed to call the office back and hung up the phone, flipping through the pages of her notepad.

Dad looked on smugly. “Search going well?” he asked with a false heap of cheer. He craned his neck back and she angled her notepad away from him as she drew a big X across the phone number to the general register. Despite knowing it wouldn’t be applicable to Mum’s situation, she jotted down a bulleted list: case file, children’s home register, council minutes.

“It’s going as expected,” she sniffed.

“I expected it to end a week ago,” he said with a hollow laugh. Petunia ignored him and snapped her notepad shut. Dad was practicing all his arguments on her to be prepared to wield them against Mum later. She tried not to take it personally.

He followed her into the sitting room, where she organized the notes she left on the coffee table and he took up his usual spot in the armchair, unfolding the morning paper and disappearing behind it. The show was unconvincing. He held the paper upside down. To anyone snooping through their window, they were a catalogue-worthy snapshot of a father reclining in his pinstriped armchair, his daughter on the pea-green sofa in fashionable domestic bliss. Petunia relished the silence while it lasted. The room was so quiet, she could hear the ticking of the clock counting down how many more seconds to hold their pose. 

Dad licked his index finger to turn his upside-down article to the next page. It gave a loud rustle, like an aluminum shield folding in on itself.

“I wouldn’t waste my time, Pet. Let dead dogs lie, so to speak.”

This again. It was no different than the dealing with the records office. She squared up the papers on the table without looking at him. “Nan and Grandad are still healthy, and Mum’s real parents could be even younger. They’re probably alive.”

“But have you stopped to wonder whether that’s better?” Dad argued, dropping his newspaper a few inches. “Think about what sort of people would have abandoned their baby at an orphanage, hm. It won’t be King George and the Queen Mother.”

Petunia remained silent. A death or two would be a noble, tragic reason for Mum’s parents to have left her in an orphanage. The circumstances got muddier and progressively worse from there. Out of wedlock births. Affairs or prostitution. Rape. There could be some horrible, dark secret waiting to be exposed at the end of this search. Dad pointedly raised his eyebrows like he could read her mind.

“Do you really want to open that can of worms?” he prompted. He lifted the newspaper high enough that it hid his face, though he was still holding it upside-down. “The more family members you deal with, the greater a chance to find rotten apples. They could be all be shiftless drunks or in debt up to their eyeballs. It’d be best for everyone if you stopped.”

“Maybe I should,” she said waspishly. “They could all be dreadful nags!”

“Knowing your mother!” Dad shot back over the top of the paper. He disappeared behind it once more, then flung it aside, a desperate, panicked expression crossing his face. “I didn’t mean that! It was a poorly made joke. Petunia, please don’t tell your mum I said that,” he pleaded. 

Petunia gave him her most judgmental look and silently returned to her notes, leaving him to tremble in his chair. They could hear the clock again.

With Dad stowed safely behind his newspaper once more, Petunia glanced down at the copy of Mum’s adoption certificate, which arrived in the mail two days ago, searching the document for a clue she and Mum had overlooked. The only information it provided that Mum hadn’t known already was the court and officer legally attesting her adoption. Otherwise, it was as barebones as they come. Rosie McDermott was adopted by Ryan McDermott, civil servant, and his wife Juliet on November 16, 1938 in Painswick in the Stroud district. The place of birth had been left blank.

The records officer had been right: very little could be done with this information. The adoption process had been structured to create a new—and separate—life for the adopted person. Without birth records, Rosie Evans, née McDermott had no life in legal terms before November 16th of 1938.

Mum knew one more piece of information that the certificate didn’t include. Originally, she had been named Barbara, either by someone in the orphanage…or by her real mum. Barbara was a popular enough girls’ name at the time, but Nan and Grandad changed her name to Rosie when they adopted her. They desperately wanted a daughter and when they laid eyes on a beautiful toddler with strawberry-blonde hair, decided to call her Rosie for her rosy glow. They loved telling the tale how Mum went from a barb to a rose. Out of anyone, Nan and Grandad would be the best people to ask to recall any useful information that could point to Mum’s birth parents, but Mum hadn’t shared a peep with them about her recent ambition.   

It made the search more difficult.

The name was key. Rosie McDermott could unlock an adoption certificate, Barbara Doe could unlock so much more once that surname was discovered—a birth certificate, hospital records, the names of other relatives.When it came to accessing private, sealed records, a name opened doors to a treasure trove of information.

Mum’s battle plan was to scour the Cotswolds for children’s care services operating in the 1930s. Her certificate had given them a starting point in Painswick, although Mum had already known she’d been adopted from Painswick’s Little Oaks Nursery in the same town she spent the first few years of her childhood. She was rather enamored with Painswick, Queen of the Cotswolds, its quaint cottages of honey-colored stone, its whimsical Rococo gardens with famed winter snowdrops, its rolling hills dotted with flocks of spotless sheep. Painswick was a mill town too, but the picturesque kind that wasn’t dirtied by heavy industry. 

The trouble was, Painswick was a dead end. Like most children’s homes, Little Oaks Nursery closed in the 1950s as England transitioned to using the foster care system. Its former building was refurbished into flats. Petunia and Mum spent hours on the phone until they had finally reached a person at the parish council with access to old documents from the nursery, but no one working for the council could tell her a single piece of new information. They didn’t know Mum’s actual birthday. They didn’t have a record of whom brought Mum to the nursery. No one could even say what month that was; their date for the event was imprecise. “Perhaps in July or August” was a guess based on the one solid written record they had, scratched in the margins of an old daybook, which noted, “six girls c. age two” in October of 1938, a steady number from the six reported in June despite an adoption taking place in September.

It was consistent with whatever old stories Mum had heard from her adoptive parents. The carers at the nursery hadn’t told Nan or Grandad anything about her arrival or her background. In those days, it was considered better not to know. These days, there seemed no way to find out. 

Petunia had called the local maternity hospital in Stroud only to be informed their records from the 1930s would be sealed for 60 more years. Mum was so frustrated by the limitations of official channels, she decided to widen their net. In a desperate bid to cover ground, she mailed a series of photographs to print in Gloucestershire’s papers, hoping someone would recognize the baby in the pictures and would be moved to come forward with more information.

This was where Lily helped in her own way. 

Convinced those green eyes would be the key to finding her family, Mum splurged on a full color spread of photographs of Lily and herself side by side, with Lily’s baby photos filling the gap missing from Mum’s early years.Mum only had one quality photograph of herself around the time of her adoption. She was about two years old, smiling into the camera, her loveliness undiminished in black and white. A nearly identical photograph of Lily existed in the Evans family photo albums, taken in full color. The only sign that the toddlers were different in the two images was that Lily’s auburn hair was a few shades darker than Mum’s original strawberry blonde color. Otherwise, they could have been the same child dressed in different outfits. The early resemblance was uncanny. At some point in time, Lily and Mum diverged like a single stem that split into two shoots and bore the same type of flower, still very similar in appearance but with clear distinctions. Mum had fuller lips, more prominent cheekbones, and the occasional temptation to buy a bottle of hair dye in Lily’s shade when she shopped for usual brand (before remembering why she changed to a golden blonde in the first place).

It was their eyes that were identical, the color and shape of rose leaves. Mum believed those mesmerizing green eyes would sing their siren song and anyone who had seen her as a baby would be tricked they were seeing her again in Lily’s newborn and infancy photos. She mailed as many of them as she could alongside photos of herself through the years, including one from her wedding day when she still wore her original hair color, and one recent photo, which Petunia had taken, in case the added years brought out any resemblance to her unknown relatives.

With Lily’s face circulating Gloucestershire, finding Mum’s real parents started to feel like a race. It would be Lily’s luck that she would be rewarded for a quality she was simply born with and reunite Mum with their biological family without lifting a finger. Petunia redoubled her efforts to find any new leads. She paid fees to access the names of several Mum and Baby Homes in Stroud that operated between 1935 and 1938 and was able to eliminate two Cotswolds contenders. There was the now-closed Charitable House Shelter for Destitute Women and Girls, which ruled out Mum’s presence through process of elimination. Petunia marked it with a fat, red X. Then, a nun at St. Enoch’s House for unmarried mothers assured her if Mum had been born on site, her adoption records would have listed Stroud as her place of birth. She went a step further and insisted it was a real oddity that neither Stroud nor Gloucestershirewere listed as Mum’s official place of birth.

She told Petunia Mum couldn’t be born in the Cotswolds at all. 

“Where does she think I was born then? Did she tell you the stork brought me?” Mum scoffed. “Honestly! Those nuns pretend sex doesn’t exist until you’re one baby in.” 

People looked over at their table and Petunia quickly raised her menu to shield herself from view. She chose this table specifically because she wanted Emma Downer to see her and Mum having lunch at The Whistle Cafe instead of an average Wimpy (and tell Hattie Blight all about it) and now she was regretting her choice. 

“No, Mum. She said that in the ‘30s, a lot of families couldn’t afford to keep their children because of the Depression. Children’s homes were overcapacity, and big cities like London were sending small children to care homes in the countryside.”

Mum puckered her face til it resembled Lily’s expression when being told not to jump off swings. “It all sounds so…convoluted,” she gestured with a dismissive wave. “I think it makes more sense to keep the search in the Cotswolds. I’m sure the Gloucestershire papers will turn up something. Our miracle girl is on the case.” She winked and turned back to scanning the lunch options.

Petunia lowered her menu to glimpse Emma out of the corner of her eye. The sentiment salted her wounds, and to make matters worse, there was no telling what Emma would tell Hattie at school. She was sitting over at a table with her well-dressed siblings and rich parents, inscrutable. 

Petunia absentmindedly swirled the straw in her water. Lunch wasn’t living up to her hopes. She and Mum were eating here because The Whistle Cafe would close long before Petunia’s birthday. The restaurant was one of a long line of establishments in Cokeworth shutting its doors after the mill closure in November. Since Swanson Mill shut down, the city had been hit with mass unemployment. The loss of freight trains to carry cargo to and from the mill meant fewer shifts on the railway. Dozens of deckhands were out of work now that no one needed to man the barge or towboats ferrying goods to and from the mill. The dye works plant in the next town went out of business, adding to hundreds of layoffs in the area. The whole city felt like it had gone up in smoke, and Mum’s search simply couldn’t. Petunia was determined to see something come of it—and not because Lily saved the day—this time she would be Mum’s miracle girl.

“Don’t get the piccalilli, love. It’s bitter.”

❀

December ushered in a miserable holiday season. Mum had been sick with stress. Despite all the work went into arranging her newspaper feature, it produced zero leads thus far, and her mood sank by the day. On some occasions, Mum would wear such a sad look on her face, Petunia wished a phone call would come from Gloucestershire, even if it made Lily into a lifelong hero for doing absolutely nothing. Although she still hoped she could pull a Christmas miracle for Mum, Petunia hadn’t been getting anywhere in her inquiries, and if nothing came from her current phone call with the Greater London Record Office and History Library, the only means to continue the search would be going through the Cotswolds door to door.

“—-we think she arrived in Painswick in the summer of 1938, but she would have been just over two by that point.” Petunia had repeated the story so many times, she could recite it in her sleep.

“It’s difficult to confirm, dear. At that time, it wasn’t unheard of for a children’s home to take in a needy child and send them elsewhere to be cared for. Few records existed of those transfers. To complicate matters, that was the summer the Government Evacuation Scheme was developed. While the bulk of those evacuations didn’t start until 1939, small scale child evacuations from London into the country were taking place at the height of the Munich Crisis in September of 1938, with nursery-aged children being prioritized. Your mother could have been part of such an evacuation, but there wouldn’t be an existing record to prove it.”

Petunia capped her pen. Although the archivist had been nothing but helpful so far, she couldn’t help her disappointment. 

The archivist muttered something indistinct. “I can give you a list of the care homes that accepted infants to narrow it down…one moment, please…”

Petunia heard the archivist rifling through papers, but tuned her out when she began to list names of nurseries in Whitechapel and Shadwell. Mum wouldn’t agree to be some poor East Ender. As the impenetrable wall of names droned on, Petunia’s focus shifted to Mum and Dad’s conversation about Christmas plans from the sitting room, which was beginning to grow frosty, but then the archivist switched boroughs and she snapped back to their phone call.

“Wool’s Orphanage in Westminster may have. They were in the middle of a chicken pox outbreak that summer. It says here, the home was over capacity in the ‘30s and closed their nursery late in 1935. If your mother was born in 1936, she would have missed the cutoff. That’s not to say she couldn’t have been an exception…” There was a sound of more papers shuffling in the background. “Look at that, they had a child born on site—but that was considerably earlier. December 31, 1926.”

1926. That was a decade before Mum was born. Ten years…was that really such a long time? She twisted the cap of her pen.

“Do they have any record of a Barbara in the 1930s?”

“Barbara Cole, the matron, has her signature on everything—you would need to access their register for names of orphans,” the archivist said off-handedly. The sound of flipping pages quickened like an accelerated heartbeat. “I’d love to check their minutes. I have never seen such a detailed collection.”

Barbara Cole. Petunia jotted down the name. The archivist seemed lost between their conversation and the one she wanted to have about Wool’s extensive file, and it worked in Petunia’s favor. Names weren’t supposed to slip out like that.

“It’s a rather special home.” 

“Special?” her voice hitched. There was that word again, gleaming dangerously like a promise. “What’s so special about Wool’s?”

The archivist’s voice turned electric with excitement. “Wool’s had many unique qualities. For one thing, it was a co-ed home that accepted boys and girls of all ages, from infancy to age eighteen. The only one of its kind in London. It wasn’t run by a religious group. It didn’t partake in the Child Migration Programme. It didn’t put the children in workhouses—very unusual for the teenage boys. Most entered the workforce at 14 in those days; meanwhile, Wool’s had an annuity to take the children to the seaside in the summer.”

Petunia twirled her finger around the phone cord. This was the safe kind of special. The velvet-lined, ribbon-wrapped kind of special. Mum’s kind of special.

“So Wool’s was a good place then? For children in care?”

The archivist hummed thoughtfully. “It was a tough time for children in general. I’d say it was a better fate than those horror stories most orphans shipped to Canada or Australia suffered. Or the children forced into workhouses. You’ve read Oliver Twist, haven’t you?”

“It has a happy ending,” Petunia said distractedly. As happy an ending as a child can have with two dead parents. She was thinking about how much Mum would enjoy the book. Oliver finds wealth and a family in the end and discovers he was born deserving both. His parentage made him special all along.

Mum might enjoy a copy of Oliver Twist as a Christmas present, but how much better would it be if Petunia could give Mum her a piece of her own story? What if, by some serendipitous chance, Mum had been brought to Wool’s originally and sent off to Painswick? It would be a breakthrough in the search. Suddenly, Mum appearing in Westminster didn’t seem so farfetched. If Lily could get magic powers out of the blue, there was no reason why Mum couldn’t have been born in London. 

“Would you have an address listed for Wool’s Orphanage?”

The archivist agreed to check, which left Petunia free to overhear the conversation in the front room. Mum and Dad were rowing over Mum unilaterally declining their invitation to McDermott family Christmas party.

“You’re letting one Christmas ruin your life.” Dad was upset. From outside the door, it sounded like he was arguing with a hissing snake. “They took you in. You never cared before.”

“Adopted children are never fully a part of the family,” Mum said decisively. “They never stop caring about their birth parents. Why do you think I never wanted us to adopt? I only wanted biological children! I’ve always been excluded. I have two nieces, two nephews, and I’ve never been chosen as godmother once—”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Dad argued incredulously. “Didn’t Esther and Joan deserve a say in choosing their children’s godmothers? Esther chose a sister every time.”

“We chose them! And Joan chose her best friend,” Mum said bitterly.

“She only had one child,” Dad protested, but Mum plowed over him.

“I wasn’t in either wedding party—”

“You were a teenager when Connor got married. That was so long ago, why does it even matter?”

“It matters because you’re supposed to invite any sisters of the groom to your wedding party,” she hissed. “Why do you think they were both part of mine? Connor and Patrick should have said something! It’s always been this way. Why do you think Patrick latched onto Esther’s family and became so obsessed with showing off his holidays? Connor and Joan never call us. They don’t even send us cards. To them, the family includes everyone except me, you, and the girls.”

Dad sounded bewildered. “Your parents gave us money for the house, remember that? Not Patrick. Not Connor. Only us.”

“Of course I remember,” Mum bit back with a shrill laugh, “Connor’s never let me forget it. Mr. I’ve-worked-for-everything-I-have. I’m surprised you’re defending him when he’s called you a—”

“—You twist everything, Rosie,” Dad snapped, gearing up for his diatribe. “They’ve both said you were the favorite, your parents wanted a daughter. Every old family photograph has you center stage. You got brand new clothes while Patrick wore Connor’s old things. You got a bedroom to yourself—the bigger bedroom—while your brothers shared. You—”

“—Who cares about a bloody bedroom!” Mum shouted. “I would’ve been happy to sleep on straw in a matchbox if it meant my parents were alive!” 

“Maybe you would have been sleeping in a matchbox,” Dad said in a quiet, stony voice. Mum was already half way up the staircase, but Petunia could hear him so clearly, there was no way Mum hadn’t.

“Hello? Hello, Miss Evans, are you there?”

“Yes,” Petunia whispered, staring up to the landing.

“There’s no phone number,” the archivist said, “but listen very closely. Wool’s Orphanage is located at Number 8 Partridge Place, Westminster. Did you get that?”

“Yes.” She put Wool’s Orphanage on her list. No. 8 Partridge Place.

A minute later, she found Dad splayed across his favorite armchair, looking like a man washed up from a shipwreck. For the first time in months, Petunia noticed how thick Dad had let his mustache grow. Usually trimmed into two thin brushstrokes, it now hung low enough to swallow his frown.

“Should I go try to cheer up Mum?” she asked delicately.

“What’s the use? Nothing’s ever good enough for your mother.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Lily’s coming home soon.” The words shot from his lips like a sprig of holly through the frost.

Petunia lifted her notepad to protest, but thought better of telling him the news about Wool’s Orphanage. He wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. They would find out which of the two would cheer up Mum soon enough.

“I’m home!” Lily shouted at top volume, her arms stretched out like she was embracing the house. The noise made Petunia lose her grip on the garland she was hanging and she shot Lily a dirty look, like she’d burst into “Jingle Bells” during the chorus of “Silent Night.”

“Who’d be happy to be back in Cokeworth?” Petunia groused.

“There are plenty of fun things to do if you know how to have fun,” Lily chimed. She disarmedone of the outdoor plastic Nutcrackers as proof.

“That’s the spirit, Lily!” Dad cheered, lugging her trunk from the car. He was practically giddy with excitement.

Petunia rolled her eyes and slumped against the bannister. Of course it’s easy to have a positive attitude about Cokeworth when you get to live in a castle on the Scottish countryside for 9 months out of the year.

“Whatever happened with Mum searching for more family?” Lily asked. She tried to pull the fake sword from its scabbard but tossed it aside when she realized the single piece of plastic didn’t detach.

“Nothing came of it,” Dad said in a hushed tone. His eyes darted to the upper floor, fearful Mum could have overheard. 

“Oh.” Lily shook a plastic snow globe obliviously. “I checked if there’s a spell that does that. I asked a bunch of my friends at school.”

Petunia and Dad froze, two ice sculptures melting under the lamplight.

“They all said no spell to find family exists,” Lily finished. Petunia caught her breath sharply. This was her chance! A golden opportunity just presented itself. She could do something magic couldn’t. Dad sighed in relief, far happier than Petunia had seen him at any point since summer. Lily’s words took years off of his brow.

“There’s no…abracadabra?” he joked, slashing his arm through the air like a whip.

Lily’s eyebrows climbed her forehead. Her lofty, critical voice followed Petunia up the stairwell. “That’s not a real spell.”

She just had to ignore Lily for the two weeks she was home. It was a family compromise she, Mum, and Dad had agreed upon before Lily’s arrival. Mum and Petunia wouldn’t say a word about the search for the two weeks Lily was back for Christmas holiday. In exchange, Dad would drive the three of them to Wool’s Orphanage after they dropped Lily off at King’s Cross. They would do some real investigating and if any more fees were required to access records, Dad promised to pay them.

They put on a jolly show for Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s, and an early celebration of Lily’s thirteenth birthday. On January 7th, the three Evanses found their faces stretched into identical, plastered smiles as Lily disappeared behind the brick barrier between platforms 9 and 10. Dad’s smile disappeared with her, but Mum was ecstatic. The only location exclusive enough to entice her imagination away from picturesque Painswick was Westminster.

“This could be it,” Mum said approvingly as they drove past a posh row of houses in handsome red brick. Her green eyes roamed over the bay windows and exterior cornices with a covetous hunger. “It’s so strange, I don’t know how to describe it. This area feels familiar.”

Dad tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “You were a baby. You wouldn’t remember any of it,” he scowled.

They ignored him. Mum turned in her seat to face Petunia as though they were having a private conversation.

“Who knows? Maybe your grandparents live in one of those buildings.”  

Petunia put on the most strait-laced, stiff-necked Ned Evans voice she could muster. “Well. It won’t be King George and the Queen Mother.” Dad shot up a hand to readjust his rearview mirror in her direction. She stared out the window to hide the smile on her face and kept her eyes sharp for Partridge Place.

They drove past the palace, past Parliament, through the frigid air blowing frost across the Thames onto a street so small, they missed it until Mum asked for directions and they circled back. 

Partridge Place sat crooked, like a distorted limb or a beckoning finger curling from the main road. Inconspicuous and gray,it was no wonder why the street had escaped their notice. The entirety of Partridge Place was undergoing a construction project. What should have been Number 8 was shuttered up behind makeshift fences drawn like curtains around a naked lot.The three of Evanses were the only gawkers. The road ahead lay bare, stark white from frost, its pavement stripped of lampposts and letterboxes. The stately buildings facing the adjacent streets stood with their backs toward Partridge; not one window looked onto the street, like the neighbors knew it as a source of shame.

Petunia and her parents exited the car simultaneously, Petunia out of disbelief more than anything else. She took a few shaky steps towards the improvised nameplate with the hope they had come to wrong place. They hadn’t. Partridge Place was sloppily painted on one of the fences. This whole trip had been for nothing.

“It’s gone,” Mum said, sounding as disappointed as Petunia felt.

“But we’re here,” Dad said, his spirits skyrocketing. For a moment Petunia thought he might ask Mum if the area looked familiar, but he didn’t dare. He spread his arms wide as though posing against a glorious vista while she and Mum shot him looks of loathing. “We might as well take a look around.”

“Who are we going to find? It’s a Sunday,” Mum huffed, but Dad had already strode up to the gap in the fencing.

“Hello!” he called. Mum sighed in exasperation as Dad ducked underneath the chain blocking the entrance to the lot. He disappeared out of view, and Petunia wrapped her arms around her jacket, growing annoyed on top of cold and miserable. She reached for the car’s door handle when she and Mum heard a second voice call out beyond the fence. As the muffled conversation continued, Mum doubled back and ducked underneath the chain herself. Petunia followed her lead and found herself standing in a disorienting, maze-like demolition zone. The space resembled a chaotic nest made of rubble and flanked by giant cranes with bowed heads. She looked around for Mum and spotted her walking behind a parked car, where Dad was talking to a man in a hardhat. He gestured to them as they approached.

“This is my wife, Rosie, and my eldest daughter, Petunia. We dropped off my youngest for boarding school.”

“Oh, Westminster School?” The man sounded deeply impressed.

“No. It’s in Sweden,” Dad smiled proudly. The man looked confused and started to ask if they drove here from the airport when Dad cut him off. “—Yes, we’re here about the orphanage building. Ben, if you could tell my wife what you just told me.”

“Of course. Mrs. Evans,” he nodded in greeting. “I was just telling your husband most of these buildings had been boarded up for two decades. I don’t know anything about an orphanage, we’re building office towers. Number 8 was deemed unsafe and inhospitable from an old fire that happened in the ‘40s. The building had been unoccupied since.” 

Petunia’s heart sank. The archivist hadn’t said anything about a fire at Wool’s on the phone, and now the whole expedition seemed harebrained and threadbare. What had she truly expected to find? Ben began to tell her parents about the beleaguered office tower construction, and she wandered off, willing a clue to manifest itself among the rubble.

She neared the skip, which was overflowing with so much rubbish from the building it formed a small mountain made from broken pieces of furniture. Wooden legs from a chair or desk stuck out near the summit like trail blazers. More debris was haphazardly stacked on the side as though the demolition crew hadn’t expected a fire-damaged building to be extensively furnished. One plank of charred wood leaning against the skip looked as though it had been the door to a wardrobe; it still had a knob attached its middle.

She circled to the other side. While the skip was predominantly filled with wood, the rubbish further away contained more and more metal parts until she reached a section waiting to be consigned to the scrap yard. She stopped in front of a tower of twisting, corroded metal, like a sculpture of hellfire made from…prison bars? She leaned in closer. It was a pile of disassembled iron bed frames, small enough to fit single beds. 

So Number 8 Partridge Place had been an orphanage.

On the ground, no more than a yard away from the frames, was an old, rusted metal lunchpail. She nudged it upright with her shoe and felt something shift against its dome-shaped lid. Curious, she crouched down to inspect it further. B. Stubbs was engraved on the discolored leather strap. The name didn’t mean anything. It would be a long shot for “B.” to stand for “Barbara,” but she was out of other options. She could check inside the gross lunchpail or leave Partridge Place empty-handed. Tentatively, she reached for the ice-cold latches. All she really had to lose was coming across a moldy sandwich, she grimaced. The left clasp was broken, giving easily. The right was so rusted it refused to budge when she pulled it. With a force that sent the pail flying out of her hands, she pried the lunch pail lid free and screamed at what tumbled out of it.

Mum, Dad, and the construction worker came running round the corner.

A snake was coiled lifelessly on the ground.

Ben let out a swear, which he apologized for. “Sorry. I just couldn’t believe there was another one of those buggers. It’s like a house of horrors here. Must’ve been about a hundred of ‘em. That’s another reason they wanted this building knocked down.” He took off his hardhat and ran a gloved hand down his face.

“A-a hundred of them,” Mum balked, wrapping her arms around Petunia. “There aren’t snakes in England!”

“There are a couple. The common adder, the smooth snake,” Dad said, taking a step closer to the snake’s dead body. It had a yellow-green undertone with heavy, dark bands across its back. 

“Ned, don’t be ridiculous,” Mum snapped. “What would a hundred of those be doing here?” 

Perplexed, Mr. and Mrs. Evans turned to Ben for an answer.

“Doesn’t look native, and I’d be surprised if it were,” Ben whistled. “Most of the snakes we’ve seen in this building have been exotic. A huge boa was coiled up in the rafters! Nine foot monstrosity—dead. We think they all came from the London Zoo.”

“The Zoo?” Mum repeated warily. The Evanses banded closer together, and Ben shifted his feet under their cold, unfriendly stares.

“Where else? The zoo reported some of their snakes as missing ages ago, but I’d say someone must’ve stolen them and hidden inside the building.”

“A snake thief?” Dad gasped. “Good Lord! What lunatic would steal so many snakes?” 

Ben shrugged helplessly. “The snakes didn’t get here themselves, did they? All in the same spot? Makes no sense. We think some weirdo must have brought them here after the building closed and bred them. That would explain why there were so many.” 

A chill descended on the group that had nothing to do with the cold.

“What did they eat?” Petunia asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Rats or mice, I’d expect. Maybe they were fed at one point, but so many died that they must have starved or froze to death.”

Petunia flinched. She didn’t know what was more frightening, the prospect of a hundred snakes or a hundred rats to feed them. Dad still looked skeptical, as though deciding between genuine unease and a story so far-fetched he’d accuse Ben of planting the dead snake himself and fabricating the tale.

“So you believe that between the time of the fire that damaged the building and the time it was demolished, a disturbed individual hid here with a hundred snakes?” he challenged. 

Ben toed the tail of the dead snake that flew out of the lunch pail like it was evidence. “Look at this one. It’s not rotting. Little one like this, I doubt it reached its full size. This had to have happened recently enough because most of the snakes we found haven’t been in a state of decomposition. There were some snake bones, layers of shed skin lining the floor thick as carpet in some spots, but nothing in-between.”

Mum looked horrified. “Did you call the police?”

“We did. They let the zoo know, but all we heard from them was that their herpetologist was very sad to learn of the situation. They said none of their snakes have gone missing or escaped in the past seven years. ‘Course, most of these died a short time before our demolition crew arrived. They were mainly concentrated in two clusters if you’d believe it. One was behind the first door off the second landing. The other group was on the first floor.”

The Evanses exchanged troubled expressions. It was a very strange story that made less sense the more they considered it. Ben hadn’t mentioned finding any cages. Why would someone steal snakes, find a hiding spot to breed them, care for them for years and then abandon them freeze or starve to death? And yet, there was no alternative. A hundred snakes couldn’t have decided to come to a single spot themselves, could they? That would be ludicrous. Snakes don’t talk to each other and make travel plans. The whole thing had to have been orchestrated by some madman—a mystery for the police to solve.

“And then what? Did they find him?” Mum said sharply, snapping her head round the demo zone like the snake man was slithering between the torn rubbish. “Is he behind bars?”

She lurched forward so aggressively Ben stepped back, startled. “There was no sign of forced entry—” he stuttered, but Dad cut him off with an even, measured tone.

“Rosie, you can’t expect the police to know how lunatics think. Only a lunatic could trace another lunatic’s thought patterns. No one in their right mind could retrace the steps of this maniac.”

Mum nodded in agreement and Petunia felt suddenly relieved to have no idea how this alleged lunatic operated. She was so sane, she would never figure it out. Ben must have been just as eager to exclude himself from the lunatic list because he didn’t say another word on the subject. He merely nudged the snake back into its lunch pail casket and bit his cheeks, like there was a piece of the story he stopped himself from sharing.

After the dead snake, Mum insisted they leave, and no one made any objections. Dad was happy to go. Petunia couldn’t think of any reason to stay. There was nothing left for them on Partridge Place, and Mum was keen to strike Wool’s Orphanage from their list. She didn’t want anything to do with a creepy snake den, regardless of how many years might have elapsed between her surrender to a children’s home and the snakes’ arrival into the abandoned building.

The Evans family returned to their Cortina and started home. 

They drove in silence until they left Westminster. Dad caught her eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Alright, Pet?”

“I thought…I thought it would lead to something,” she said numbly. She tried to summon words for what possessed her to believe they had to visit Wool’s Orphanage, but the momentum driving her here vanished like smoke. In the end, they had driven here for Petunia’s rat race. “It felt important,” she mumbled, feeling rather foolish.

“That’s what happens when people are driven by gut instinct. You have to make all choices with your head. Like I do.” He tapped his temple.

“Ned, the road!” Mum grabbed the wheel, swerving it sharply to avoid getting clipped by another car. Dad turned his full attention back to the drive and the three didn’t speak again until they reached their home.

❀ ❀

Mum never said she was disappointed by the disastrous visit to Wool’s Orphanage, but it began to show itself in small ways as January frittered away. She opened the door before the postman could drop off their mail. She picked up their phone on the first ring. She moved all of Lily’s photographs to the sitting room, so dozens of eyeballs stared out onto Petunia until they blurred into a single green-eyed monster. Petunia accustomed herself to ignoring them, which, thanks to her recurring dreams of dead snakes and fires, wasn’t too difficult. Today’s bad news made it especially easy. Poppy’s mum was mugged on her way home from her shift at the hospital last night. She was supposed to call Poppy in another hour. Dad, by contrast, bore the changes with an ingrained patience, having finally gotten his wish for everyone to forget the orphanage business. Like most nights, he contented to lose himself in front of the telly.

Mum announced herself with a noise maker that shocked them out of their seats. “It’s Lily’s birthday!” She waltzed into the sitting room wearing a party hat and carrying a small cake, which she placed on the coffee table so she could shut off the telly unceremoniously. Petunia shot Dad a pointed look and he clasped his hands together, gesturing to the knife Mum brought with her. “This only happens once a year. We should sing.” 

“Lily isn’t here,” Petunia said crossly, directing her scowl to the multitude of photographs depicting Lily’s smiling face. 

Dad cleared his throat. “Yes, I sent a card along. It should have arrived on time.”

Mum looked between them with an unfriendly smile. “We should celebrate,” she said through barred teeth.

“We already celebrated,” Petunia huffed. She was not going to sing happy birthday to a stupid photograph.

“We already celebrated,” Dad repeated more gently. “With Lily.” His eyes darted to Lily’s shrine, willing any of the photographs to come to life and save the day. Petunia felt ready to feed them cake.

Mum’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed into slits. “Who cares if we change the day,” she muttered, glaring between them. “The day isn’t important.”

She pivoted on the spot and marched upstairs, directly to Lily’s empty bedroom, slamming the door behind her. There was no telling whether she intended to stay there until Lily came home to reclaim it.

Dad shot a weary look at the ceiling, then glanced to Lily’s shrine before picking up the remote. “Pet, when is spring holiday?”

“I’m off for Easter, but Lily’s is earlier. They don’t overlap this year.”

“Not so long til she’s home again,” he smiled. He trimmed his mustache back to its usual shape, so she could see the corners of his mouth turn upwards even if his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Petunia settled into the sofa cushions. She had long since given up on cheering anyone in this family.

On the last Sunday of March, when the orphan business was far behind all of them, a letter arrived. It had several stamps in its corner, but no postmark and no return address. Petunia flipped it over with mild interest. It was addressed to Rosie Evans of 22 Highcourt Street.

“Where did you get that?” Dad asked queerly. She stepped into the sitting room and lifted the envelope so he could see it. 

“It was in the letter basket.” Dad gave a start. He stood up so quickly he knocked his shin into the coffee table. Petunia regarded him warily. “It’s addressed to Mum.”

Dad put his hands up and they began to move in a very slow circle.

“Pet, I think we both know what letter that is.” The Gloucestershire newspaper lark.

She forced herself to remain calm. “How? There’s no return address.” Her eyes darted to the envelope once more. It was a ticking time bomb between them, and she hid it behind her back.

Dad pawed at his mustache. “Petunia, hear Daddy out. How about we take a quick peek, hm? Make sure that letter is prim and proper.” She stepped back as he stepped forward. “It could make your mother very upset.” 

He held out his hand for the envelope, but she didn’t budge from her spot in the doorway. They both knew Mum had spent the past several months in thinly veiled misery. Dad stuffed his outstretched arm into his trouser pocket. 

“Lily would do it.” That was true. Lily had no qualms about opening other people’s mail. Her disapproval must have shown on her face because Dad resorted to pleading. “Come on, Pet, it could be our secret. If it’s good news, Mum won’t mind we opened it. We could—we could even seal it up again.”

The second half of that proposition went unmentioned. If it’s bad news, Mum won’t have to know. The offer was tempting. She didn’t want to play messenger to another tragedy, especially not after the Westminster fiasco, and Dad was guaranteeing she wouldn’t have to. On the other hand, she knew knew how it felt to have people spy into your failures. Failure was infinitely worse with an audience.

Dad’s face was already lined in resignation. She knew she could take the letter up to her room; he wouldn’t chase her up the steps, but she couldn’t stop picturing Dad chasing after Lily on the train platform last year. He had never been that sad to see her go or happy to see her home. It was no secret he loved Lily better. And in its own way, this letter would determine if Mum loved Lily better. If Lily's face in the newspaper feature reconnected Mum with her biological family, Lily's spot as the favorite child would remain forever uncontested.

“Alright.” 

Dad took the envelope from her hand before she had extended it out to him. 

“Pet, we’re doing the right thing.” 

Even as she followed him into the kitchen, she felt unsure of her choice. There was ample time to change her mind. Although Dad held the envelope, it took time for him to set the kettle to boil. As the two of them waited for steam to seep out from it, Petunia considered what sort of news this could be. This letter didn’t necessarily mean Mum had stumbled upon her parents. Someone could be writing from Little Oaks Nursery, or that nun from St. Enoch’s… The letter might not even be related to the Gloucestershire business. No return address, no postmark. A neighbor probably slipped it into the letterbox by hand and disappeared before Petunia arrived to the door. Suppose this was a new promotion for a ladies’ charity luncheon, or something else equally harmless and ordinary? She studied the handwriting on the envelope. Too plain-faced for Mrs. Wallace, too narrow-spaced for Mrs. Ross. 

Ever since she was small, Petunia fixated on having neat penmanship, practicing in her workbooks until she shaped every letter in the exact same fashion as the examples in her book. That’s what this handwriting looked like, as though its author had set out to painstakingly shape their letters to be entirely undistinguished in their neatness—with one exception. Whoever it was got lazy at the end: their ‘g’ in Highcourt Street was positively loopy.

A jet of steam began to flow from the kettle. Dad hadn’t been joking about resealing the letter so Mum would never know; clearly he was professional. He worked with a nimbleness belying his earlier anxiety, fanning the sealed envelope flap over the steam. Then, after he tested the gum, he began to peel away the flap with surgical precision. 

Dad finished prying the envelope open and the blood drained out of his face as soon as he had the letter in hand. Petunia peered around his shoulder. Two sentences were printed in type.

You were a mistake. We never wanted you and will never want anything to do with you.

Petunia’s hands clamped over her mouth. Whom had Mum tried to contact? And this letter—didn’t it mean she found the person she was looking for? Mum was someone’s mistake and someone’s rejection.

“We did the right thing,” Dad said shakily, hastening out of the kitchen. 

She couldn’t see how that could be true. What on earth were they going to tell Mum?

“Dad, what are you doing?”

She found him in the sitting room, kneeling in front of the fireplace, a small flame already flickering from the corner of Mum’s letter. Petunia’s conscience protested against the burden of a second huge secret, but she shut it up. It was too late anyhow. The flames in the fireplace licked the envelope and consumed the letter whole. Burning took longer than she expected. Mum’s envelope curled in on itself, like there was something very human and painful struggling to survive the fire. Petunia and Dad took turns spying out the sitting room window, as though Mum would walk through the front door at any moment and demand they explain themselves. Petunia felt as though someone were watching them, but every time she glanced over her shoulder, it was only the multitude of Lily’s green eyes staring onto the scene. She clutched her arms, though she wasn’t cold. How many pairs of eyes were behind the “we” of the letter?

Resentment seeped out of her—this was yet another load Lily wouldn’t bear—but she twisted the feeling as quickly as it came. This was a good thing. She and Dad had their own special secret in the family. This was what she wanted. With grim satisfaction, she realized Lily had been rejected too—whoever was behind this letter had seen her baby photos, stared into those green eyes, and still chose to wash their hands of her. This time, Lily proved no more a miracle girl than Petunia. Petunia rubbed her arms, which had broken out in goosebumps. She forced her gaze towards the fireplace. All that was left of the mysterious message was ash and the smell of burned paper. For a second, she almost believed the ash would ignite again and burn itself back into an envelope, the same way she had once seen a magic feather reform—but this letter had been perfectly ordinary. It stayed ash. 

The smell made her sick. 

“There. It’s gone now. Like it never happened.” Dad’s words anchored her, his tone calm and reassuring. It was just like her rejection letter from Dumbledore, the sting of it rent with the writing. 

A wave of nausea crashed over her and she sat down on the sofa to get ahold of herself. Dad was busy handling the ashes, and she didn’t notice what he was doing until he came close to the coffee table again, unwrapping a cigar. She watched him in bewilderment—he didn’t smoke, but he was shockingly well-prepared for such an unforeseeable scenario. He was really going to get away with it. They both were.

He set up an old jar of bovril for a pretend ashtray. 

How many lies was this one letter leading to?

Dad did a double-take over his shoulder. He noticed her staring and crouched in front of her.

“Sometimes, doing the right thing doesn’t always feel very good,” he said softly, patting her hands. She didn't quite believe him, but the feeling of her hands in his soothed her. He withdrew them all too quickly as the key turned in the front door. 

“Hello!” 

Her stomach flipped as Mum sashayed into the room. Dad already took his place in his armchair unaffected.

“How was the shopping trip?”

It was a haircut. Mum went for a haircut. Petunia wanted to tell her how nice she looked, but her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. 

Mum searched round the room, ignoring his question. Her eyes honed in on the cigar and the bovril jar lined with tinfoil and ashes, and they narrowed immediately. “Were you smoking?” she asked with an expression of absolute disgust. She didn’t seem to notice to cigar was uncut or the way Dad's mouth twitched at the corners.

“That’s from Donny Schmidt. His wife had the baby—a boy.”  

“And you decided to smoke that indoors? Have some consideration for other people, Ned! You’ve gone and made Pet ill.”

Mum opened the window for her, and Petunia felt guiltier than she knew possible. Dad awkwardly leaned forward in his armchair. “Er—Sorry, Petunia,” he said stiffly. They locked eyes, passing a secret message between themselves, but she looked away as Mum joined her on the sofa and patted her arm.

“There, love, you’ll feel better in a jiffy.”

She was a horrible daughter.

“Any mail while I was out?”

Dad jumped in his seat like Mum caught him red handed. “Mail? Why would there be mail? Darling, you know there’s no post on Sundays.” He gave a nervous titter. Rosie raised her eyebrows. 

“Mail from our daughter,” she gestured in the direction of the kitchen window like it was a perfectly sensible letterbox, which it wasn’t. It was as fitting a place for receiving mail as going to bed in the bathtub or knitting in the loo. 

Ned settled back down comfortably in his armchair, sighing in relief. 

“No, Lily didn’t write. A shame, I want to hear what’s new with the Mandrakes. She said she can’t wait til it’s time to chop them up now that they’ve hit puberty.” 

He looked positively chuffed and Petunia scowled at him darkly. Of course Lily’s freaky witch world would make you raise a plant that looks and acts like a baby only to chop it up later for magic potions. She should just be glad it’s not human babies like the witches in children's stories. She shivered. 

Something about the comment saddened Mum and, seeing her frown, Dad quickly worked to patch up the situation. “Pet, here’s something you can help with! Lily wants to get out of a Death Day Party—it’s like a birthday bash for ghosts but for their death anniversary. She’s already went to one and said they’re utterly dreadful, full of rotten food. What should she do?”

If Dad had asked Petunia to drink a carton of spoiled milk, her face would be less sour and her stomach less volatile. “Tell her to fake sick!” she yelled queasily, bolting for the toilet. She never wanted to hear about something so disgusting in her life! She could hear Mum’s voice ringing out behind her.

“It’s still a party,” Mum weighed in. “If Lily agreed to go, she has to attend. You have to keep your social engagements.”

Petunia closed the door to the loo and sank against it. Death day parties filled with rotting food! It was worse than a horror film! They probably watched their decaying bodies get eaten up by worms for entertainment. Death was supposed to be some great mystery, but the existence Lily painted of ghosts was worse than the imagination of hellfire preachers. Lily had come home over Christmas holiday announcing that ghosts at her school told her only a witch or a wizard could become a ghost, to the delight of Mum and Dad, who joked what it implied for Scrooge and Jacob Marley. Only Petunia lay awake at night and wondered what that meant. Do witches and wizards have a separate afterlife from regular people? But that made sense, didn’t it? Everything about them was strange and different. It would be better if there was nothing beyond the grave than being stuck wandering around—nearly headless in some cases!—forever.

She wished she could peel the knowledge of magic from herself like a second skin. She’d had enough of witches and enough of dead things! She knew that school was off from the moment she found out they accepted the Snapes.

And with that unpleasant thought, Petunia retched the contents of her lunch into the toilet.