Finding phoebe, p.28
Finding Phoebe, page 28
I cleared my throat, a little awkwardly. ‘Is everything resolved?’
Reverend Collins smiled at me. ‘No, Phoebe. It’s still a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. But we’ve decided we’re just going to have to work through it together. It doesn’t matter how difficult the circumstances are.’
The words were familiar, but it took me a second to figure out why. It was an echo of the conversation we’d had in the church two days ago – the conversation I’d thought had made no difference.
‘You’re going to stay, then?’ I asked. ‘On Holy Island?’ I was almost certain, now, that this was the case, but old habits die hard, and I don’t think I’ll ever lose my distrust of subtext entirely.
‘We’re staying,’ Reverend Collins confirmed.
Mrs Collins nodded, giving Bethany’s shoulders a final squeeze before they separated. ‘You look lovely, Phoebe,’ she said. ‘You should both go back inside. Enjoy the rest of your evening and we’ll pick you up afterwards.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That sounds like a nice plan.’
And as Bethany took my hand and we walked back towards the hall, I felt a bubble of happiness expanding within me, shooing all other emotions away.
Epilogue
Looking Forward
Dear Mum,
Summer was uneventful, in the best possible sense. I spent most of it writing. I spent some of it working in the shop. I spent some of it hanging out with Bethany, enjoying the simple fact of that.
My feelings for Bethany have become much clearer since the threat of her leaving came and went. She may have been my first crush, but now that the initial shock of that has passed, I’m happy to report that I have no lingering regrets about us remaining ‘just’ best friends. We’re both agreed that this is one relationship that’s perfect as it is. It requires no modifications.
As for Bethany and her parents, they are working through their issues one day at a time, and making significant progress. I went over for lunch at the beginning of August, and Reverend Collins performed a special non-religious grace, suggesting that we should all take thirty seconds to think about the things we’re thankful for. It was a good idea. I’ve realised that there are innumerable things in my life that I’m thankful for, and I know that Bethany feels the same. I no longer have to ask her if she regrets telling her parents. She does not.
Despite everything else that was going on, we both did well in our exams. I attribute my success to my ability to compartmentalise – to focus obsessively on one thing at a time. Bethany attributes her success to being grounded for the duration of the exam period. It may have been a stressful time for her, but on a practical level, she didn’t have much to do other than revise.
We started Sixth Form four weeks ago. Bethany is studying French, Spanish and Italian, to further her life goal of working with languages or something, probably somewhere sunny. I am studying English Literature, Psychology and Physics, to further my more immediate goal of raising a metaphorical middle finger to Mrs Shepherd, the travelling careers advisor. This is mostly a joke, of course. I still plan to be a writer because it’s what I love and it’s what I’m good at; that said, I’m no longer ruling out going to university, either. It’s not necessary, but I can see why it might be good for me, in all sorts of ways. I’m going to visit Oxford and Cambridge and Durham and St Andrew’s in the next year, and I’m going to get a better idea of what living in any of these places might be like; because I now realise, there’s no reason I cannot.
In the meantime, school is providing plenty of stimulation and is, in all dimensions, far better than it was. The classes are smaller, which obviously suits me, and I now feel confident enough to raise my hand and talk in front of my peers. I was worried, at first, about not sharing any lessons with Bethany, but this, too, has had its positive side in that it has given me an extra push to make some new friends. There’s a new girl called Amara who sits next to me in Psychology, and so far, we seem to get on very well. She’s from Nigeria and wants to study Medicine at university; we’ve arranged to visit the Anatomical Museum together during half term.
With a view to expanding my social circle even further, I have also set up my own after-school Enrichment activity, following a successful PowerPoint pitch to the English department. The Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book Club will have its inaugural meeting in the first week of November, and several students, including Hu, have already expressed an interest in joining. It has been scheduled for Thursdays, so it will not clash with Yoga, which I’ve now started doing on Wednesdays, or Chess Club, which I will continue to attend on Mondays. Having finished second in the league last year, Mr Finch has high hopes that we can ‘go one better’ this time round, and even though I’m not competitive, I must confess that I’m somewhat excited by the possibility. I have no plans to return to Jigsaw Club in the immediate future.
This brings us pretty much to the present.
It took me just under four months to get here, writing and rewriting an average of a thousand words per day over the summer. It wasn’t my intention at first. I sat down to continue planning my fantasy novel (which I will get back to!), but found that I had an awful lot of clutter I needed to clear from my mind first. Writing it down seemed like the logical thing to do, and the project just sort of snowballed. It became a type of therapy.
Mrs Frost has been advising me again; I went to see her back in July to apologise for smashing her milk bottle, but it turned out she hadn’t even realised I was the culprit. (She’d thought it was a wild animal.) Anyway, we’ve been on good terms ever since. I told her that I’d taken her earlier advice – namely, the last year, which had provided me with plenty of material. Once I’d outlined my proposed project for her (omitting the details about Bethany’s abortion) she was generally supportive. She said in most cases, she’d question the wisdom of a sixteen-year-old writing a ‘memoir’, but in my case, she could just about see it working. At the very least, it would be good practice for me.
As to what comes next: I’m not sure.
I wrote this for you, Mum, because in the beginning, you were the only person I could imagine sharing it with. But I don’t know if that’s still the case. In the future, I might ask Daddy if he wants to read some of it, or Bethany, if she feels OK to do so. I don’t know.
But one of the things I’ve learned in the past year is that you can’t have a concrete plan for everything. Sometimes, you have to try different things to see what fits. Sometimes, life is messy, and you just have to work through it, one day at a time.
A little under a week from now I’ll turn seventeen. I’m looking forward to it. Daddy says he’ll start teaching me to drive over the quiet winter months, and I’m looking forward to that too.
I’m looking forward to at least two more years of education.
I’m looking forward to being myself, and not worrying too much about what that entails.
I’m looking forward to learning new things, experiencing new things.
I’m looking forward to reading new books and watching new films. I’m looking forward to hearing the new Nightwish album, which comes out next year. (I even considered listening to some different music, before deciding that I’m not quite there yet.)
Most of all, though, I’m looking forward to your next letter, the penultimate one. I’m looking forward to what you have to say.
Author’s Note
Dear reader,
I wrote this book for my daughter, or a future version of my daughter. Let me explain.
When she was a baby, Amelia wasn’t keen on being hugged. At eighteen months, pretty much all she wanted was to be read to, often for many hours at a time. She’d sit in my lap and stay perfectly still throughout, her eyes fixed on the page. Sometimes she’d repeat her favourite lines as we read them, and when we reached the end of the story, she’d immediately demand it ‘gen’ (and again and again; with some books she was insatiable).
By the time she was two, she could recite Peter Rabbit verbatim, and would do so several times a day. By two and a half, she could read fluently, having apparently taught herself. But she still wasn’t fond of being hugged, and with most people, she wouldn’t even tolerate being touched. If her grandmother tried to pick her up, she’d start screaming.
Amelia was diagnosed with autism at the age of four, which did not come as a surprise. But it did raise the question of how and when we – my wife and I – were going to talk to her about it. After some debate, we decided that we wanted her to know sooner rather than later. We wanted her to grow up understanding that she was not neurotypical, and this was just one thing among many that made her a special and unique human being.
So my wife wrote her a letter (I helped, but the words were hers, and are reproduced almost verbatim in chapter three). Our aim was to explain to Amelia, in as simple terms as possible, why she experienced the world a little differently to some other people; why she found some things hard and other things easy; why other children her age had to learn how to read, while she had to learn how to join in with social games (something she seemed interested in doing, as long as the rules of the game were set out and understood in advance!). The message, essentially, was that it’s OK to be different – and often it’s more than OK. That as much as our differences can present us with challenges, they can also, sometimes, be the source of our greatest strengths.
Amelia is ten now, but I know she’ll be a teenager in the blink of an eye, and that will bring a whole host of new challenges. Being a teenager is tough for anyone, but it can be especially tough for autistic girls. It’s the time when social dynamics change, when hormones kick in, when relationships with friends and parents become more complicated – when life, in general, becomes more complicated. In short, it’s messy, and this book is about two girls, best friends since childhood, trying to navigate that mess. It’s about love and friendship, self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. My original hope was that it might help my daughter to negotiate the weird, knotty and sometimes frightening transition from childhood to adulthood. My additional hope, of course, is that it’s a compelling story that many readers – including you – will have enjoyed.
GE, Sheffield, September 2022
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Chloe Sackur for looking after Phoebe with such love, care and attention.
Many additional thanks to: Nicky Watkinson, Eloise Wilson, Charlie Sheppard, Jack Noel, Rob Farrimond, Sarah Kimmelman and Paul Black.
Final thanks, as always, to Stan for sticking with me through this long and arduous process, and to Alix, Amelia and Toby, for everything.
Gavin Extence, Finding Phoebe
