Chapter 1 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
Okay, okay. I’ll speak to one of the mums and get them to wait with Fiona and Sara.
Then I can wait here for fifteen minutes for Steph to show up.
And I’ll have just enough time to get back to the village to pick up Fiona and Sara.
Not ideal, but. If she doesn’t show . . .
My whole face is screwed up and I consciously relax it.
‘Is Steph in trouble?’ says Fiona, a smile on her face.
‘Not at all. I’m sure she’ll be here later.’ I put the car into first and pull away. It will all be fine.
‘She won’t,’ says Fiona. ‘She never is.’ I grit my teeth. Fiona knows her sister too well.
With Steph out of the car, I push in a Beatles cassette and the three of us sing along all the way back to the village.
Outside the school, Fiona jumps out of the car, hugs me and joins a group of friends.
Sara gives me a sloppy kiss as she says goodbye outside the nursery door.
The feel of her warm pudgy hands across my back makes up for the earlier stress and I feel myself smiling.
In the car, I turn the music up to full volume for the short drive back to Highdown.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. How very true. Everyone tells you that wonderful little girls one day become sullen teenagers who despise your very existence, but nothing actually prepares you for what that feels like.
Was I like that with Mum? Probably, I can’t remember.
The library door is ajar. Paul must hear me come in as he shouts out, ‘All okay?’
I push open the heavy door. It’s gloomy inside, the room lit by a pool of green light spooling around the desk lamp. He moves aside a pile of paperwork and slides a paperweight on top.
I shake my head and drop on to his lap. ‘I just feel like I can’t do anything right.’
He strokes my hair. ‘We’ll get through it, Milly. She’ll be fine.’
He’s right, of course. I just didn’t think it would start this early. Thirteen is so young to be properly stroppy. ‘I was thinking, at least our three girls are all four or five years apart. Imagine if they’d been born closer together. We’d have two Stephs in the house at the same time.’
He makes a face and gives an exaggerated shudder. ‘How are you feeling? Any better?’ He glances at my stomach.
I shrug. What is there left to say? This time last week I had the beginnings of a baby in me.
Ten weeks old. Now I’m empty. Again. At least this time they’ve diagnosed the problem – an incompetent cervix – so they might be able to fix it.
Incompetent cervix, incompetent mother. Steph certainly makes me feel that way.
Paul’s hand is soft on mine as he strokes it. ‘We’ll get there,’ he says. ‘Zoe or Tommy will be born before you know it.’
I try to smile to make him feel better. I’m thirty-eight.
He knows as well as I do that as every year passes it’ll be much harder to get pregnant.
We should start trying next cycle, whatever the doctors say.
Zoe or Tommy. I know Paul wants a boy and who can blame him after three girls.
But secretly I want another girl. Little girls are so wonderful.
Zoe. Steph, Fiona, Sara and Zoe. The house would finally be full then.
‘What are your plans for today?’ he asks.
‘I’ve got a few bits to do here then I’ll take out the dog for a W-A-L-K before going back to school. Ballet tonight.’
Woody thumps his tail. He must be learning to spell in his spare time. I’d like to spend all day just sitting in here with Paul, reading and watching him work, but he glances back at his papers. It’s hard to drag myself away. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorting out some repairs on Honeysuckle Cottage,’ he says.
‘The back wall is crumbling and needs rebuilding before there’s an accident.
I need to have a proper look at the roof on the oast house.
Since your parents moved up to Scotland, it’s all become a bit dilapidated in there.
And then I want to walk over to the Wilsons’ later – I need to talk to them about crop rotation.
There’s been a few issues. Come with me? ’
He always knows exactly what I need. ‘I will,’ I say, ‘thank you,’ kissing him on the head as he bends back over his papers.
However hard he works, there’s always so much to do across the estate.
In my grandfather’s time, they’d have had a team of people doing Paul’s job. Now it’s just him and some odd-job men.
Woody gets up and stretches. ‘Not yet, matey,’ I say, scratching behind his ears.
He follows me upstairs and along the gallery, his claws clattering on the wooden floor.
Mum’s portrait glares down at me. Maybe I’ll write to her, I haven’t responded to her last letter from more than a month ago.
It’s still in the bedside table drawer. I take it out and begin to read, and the first few lines remind me why I have stalled on replying.
I did warn you against marrying Paul. If Stephanie’s difficult, it’s bad blood from his side.
We’ve never had anything like that in our family.
You must make the best of it. Perhaps some time away might help, bring the girls here in the holidays?
The very idea of spending time with Mum and the girls in Scotland makes my jaw constrict again.
Fiona and Sara would love it, Steph would go mental with all the rules.
Mum would be judgemental and it’d be a disaster.
Woody puts his paw on my knee, looking up expectantly.
I slide the letter back into the drawer.
‘C’mon, boy, let’s go out. Enjoy the weather.’ As we pass Steph’s bedroom door, he starts growling and scratching at the wood. ‘What is it?’
He barks twice, and pushes his nose against the door.
I turn the handle, holding on to his collar.
There’s nothing obvious that he could have been barking about when I open the door, just the usual heap of chaos.
Unmade bed. Desk covered with bits of paper.
As I let Woody go though, he dashes to the far side of the bed and starts barking at a cardboard box covered by a towel.
I drag him away and put him outside the door.
Underneath the towel, hunched in the corner of the box, is a crow, its wing splinted with what looks like lolly sticks.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
The crow stares up at me, unblinking. From the bottle of water and half-empty box of seeds underneath the bed, he’s been here for a while.
Why haven’t I noticed? The poor thing must have been terrified with Woody barking at him.
I cover the box back with the towel. I wish Steph had told me.
I could have helped somehow. No wonder she insisted the cats sleep elsewhere at the moment.
I knew it wasn’t a sudden allergy but I didn’t press it with her.
I straighten the duvet, careful not to move too fast and disturb the crow.
That’s very Steph though, to be nursing a crow back to life.
She’s always been different from the others, even as a young child.
So impulsive, so willing to take risks and never behaving quite how you’d expect.
It has often felt like she’s wired differently from the rest of us.
But give her an animal and she’s amazing – all the empathy she finds so hard to express to other humans.
There was the incident a few years ago when she took a rabbit from a cage in the garden of one of the old biddies in the village, because she didn’t feel it was well looked after. She just couldn’t see that it was wrong. But maybe she was right.
Voices drift up from the front door. I finish plumping the pillows and go over to the window.
There’s Alice talking to the postman. How can she not have noticed the crow if she’s here every day?
The window is slightly ajar and as I open the catch to close it, I see a flash of red.
I know what it is before I see it properly.
A lighter. Bloody hell. I pocket it, and shut the window.
Smoking at thirteen. Bloody hell. I’ll wait until later to tell Paul.
‘Morning, Milly,’ says Alice as Woody and I come downstairs. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay,’ I say. ‘Feeling stronger every day. Just got to keep going.’ I don’t know what I’d do without Alice, she’s so thoughtful.
She nods. ‘Do take care of yourself though.’
‘I’ve just been in Steph’s room. Did you know about the crow?’
‘Crow?’ She shakes her head. She’s a poor liar. She and Steph have always been very close. It’s rather lovely, especially as Steph has few friends.
‘I’ll speak to her about it tonight,’ I say. ‘I don’t mind but she needs to tell us. Perhaps don’t clean in there today. Woody’s already upset the poor bird. Any more noise might finish it off.’
At the back of the top shelf of the pantry is my emergency packet of Silk Cut.
Just the feeling of the white and purple packet in my hands makes me relax, though when I open it there seems to be fewer than I remember.
Again. I thought it was Paul who was nicking the occasional one, but maybe it’s Steph.
I shake my head. I’ll have to find a new place to hide them.
On the back doorstep, I light one, pulling the smoke into my lungs. And relax.