Chapter 6 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
Zoe first tries the key in the drawing-room door, then the heavy-panelled door of the library and then the kitchen.
But it’s far too big for any of them. ‘Let’s try the cellar door,’ says Sara.
Through the scullery, behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain, is the way down to the cellar.
But the key nowhere near fits in the keyhole.
Sara examines it more closely. ‘Maybe there’s something down in the cellar that it might fit. A huge trunk, or something. Another door, perhaps? If it doesn’t, we could try outside.’
‘I haven’t been down there for years,’ says Zoe. ‘God knows what state it’s in.’ The door complains as they release it, a stillness of stale air greeting them. Zoe fumbles for the light switch, which she knows is somewhere on the right wall, and golden light slides into the corners of the stairs.
They pick their way down the stone steps, avoiding the animal droppings. ‘This is disgusting,’ says Sara, wrinkling her nose. ‘And so close to the kitchen.’
‘Mum doesn’t store anything here because it’s damp.’ Mentioning our mother casually makes Zoe’s throat tighten. It should be ‘Mum didn’t’, past tense, now.
The further down they go, the more earthy the smell becomes.
Zoe pinches her nose and breathes through her mouth but can taste the smell on her tongue.
The tiled floor at the bottom is barely visible under layers of dirt and more droppings.
The cellar is largely empty. At one end, a huge wine rack stretches from one side of the cellar to the other, bolted into the wall.
A row of unlabelled bottles is covered in a thick layer of dust. ‘I wonder if they’re anything special? ’ says Sara, gingerly picking up one.
‘I reckon that’s Dad’s old elderflower wine. It was like rocket fuel when he made it. It’d probably kill you now,’ says Zoe. ‘I’d forgotten it was here.’ Sara slides the bottle back into the rack.
There’s a row of Welsh dressers along one wall – a reminder of when this was used as a kitchen when the original house was first built in the 1400s.
At the other end there’s an old chest, which Zoe doesn’t remember noticing before.
‘Try it in here,’ says Sara. The keyhole looks quite big and sure enough the key fits in. But it won’t turn.
‘Let me try,’ says Sara, resting all her weight on it. It isn’t the right lock. The key refuses to budge but the catch breaks off anyway and falls to the ground with a clatter.
‘Well done,’ says Zoe.
Sara grimaces, and lifts the lid of the chest. There’s very little inside, save for some old dusty cookery books and some Ladybird books. ‘Oh, I’ll keep these for the girls. They’ll love them,’ she says, blowing the dust off the top. ‘I wonder if we should try searching for Kai online.’
‘We could try,’ says Zoe. ‘But just three letters isn’t much to go on.’
Back in the kitchen, Fiona is sitting at the table on her laptop. ‘No luck?’ she says.
Zoe shakes her head. Steph is nowhere to be seen.
Sara gets out her phone. ‘Kai, Kai,’ she murmurs as she types. ‘Hmmm, mainly just a fashion company, a Korean singer and a restaurant in Mayfair. It can’t be any of those.’
‘Why don’t we try the attic?’ says Zoe. ‘I know there’s loads of stuff up there. Old family bits and bobs, and boxes of paperwork. I had to move some of it when I patched up the roof last time. There may be something the key fits.’
Steph comes into the kitchen and stands by the Aga. Missy rubs her body against her legs, miaowing. ‘Do you want to help get some stuff down from the attic?’ Zoe asks her.
‘Okay,’ she nods, bending to stroke the cat.
The four of them traipse upstairs, past their bedrooms and then up the back stairs.
What had once been servants’ rooms and the old nursery was used as a playroom and sewing room for their generation, and has since been left empty.
At the end of the landing is another set of narrow stairs to the attic.
These open out into a huge space which runs the length and breadth of the house.
A weak light penetrates through a tiny window, covered with decades of grime.
Several old rugs patchwork the floorboards.
In the far corner is a tangle of old wooden furniture.
Lined up against the low walls are several old leather trunks, tea crates and sagging cardboard boxes.
A huge chaise longue in a garish purple sits in the centre of the room.
‘Bloody hell, there’s a lot up here,’ says Fiona, falling on to the chaise longue. ‘When did this become purple? Wasn’t this in the library for years?’
‘I reupholstered it when I was in sixth form and doing textiles. Mum was horrified. She must have put it up here when I moved into the oast house ten years ago. Seeing it now, I’m not surprised.’
They laugh and Zoe feels warm inside. It’s good to talk about Mum with people who knew her, who loved her too.
Steph delves into a crate, unwrapping the newspaper from an old teapot. ‘Look at this,’ she says. ‘Didn’t we used to have tea out of this?’
‘Maybe,’ says Fiona. They dig through the crate taking out orange and brown cups, saucers and small plates. ‘These are just horrific,’ she says.
‘I reckon you could get a lot for these on eBay. People love retro stuff,’ says Steph.
Under the tea set are a number of increasingly odd ornaments.
An art-deco-style dancing woman menu holder.
A figurine of a girl stroking an otter. A huge china toad eating a bird.
‘I’m not sure anyone would want this stuff, not even the charity shop,’ says Fiona.
At the bottom of the tea crate are piles of Financial Times from the late 1960s.
Fiona takes one out, lies back on the chaise longue and starts reading.
Zoe kneels in front of the first trunk and gets out the key. But the keyhole is far too small. The others are all the same. She wanders to the far end of the attic space, but there’s nothing else with a keyhole. ‘I can’t see anything here,’ she says.
‘We should try the barns or the cottages,’ says Sara. ‘Like I said, it looks like it could be an outdoor key.’
‘Yeah, I’ll do that later.’ Zoe hasn’t been down to the cottages for ages.
Sara is sitting cross-legged in front of one of the open trunks. ‘What’s in there?’ says Zoe, coming over to her. Inside are piles of old paperwork.
‘Mum seemed to keep everything. Look, it’s the milkman’s bill from 1979. Half a dozen eggs were only twenty pence, a pint of milk was fourteen pence. And the milkman delivered chicken.’
‘I remember that,’ says Steph quietly. ‘Dad had to build a special box to put it all in because the fox nicked it otherwise.’
‘Is it just receipts and stuff?’ says Fiona, putting down the newspaper and looking up.
‘No, there’s all sorts,’ says Sara, rifling through. ‘Photos, letters, bills, everything.’
‘We really should bring as much downstairs as we can. We need to sort through all the paperwork anyway and there may be something in there that will help with the will.’
With all the focus on the key, Zoe has almost forgotten about the will. That she’s now living in a house that is no longer hers. ‘And give us a clue to who or what this Kai is, and what the key is all about.’
Steph opens a cardboard box. ‘Oh my God, this is all fur.’ She picks out a white stole, her mouth gaping. ‘I remember Mum wearing this.’
‘Me too,’ says Fiona. She reaches over and lifts out a black floor-length cape with a hood, a white trim around it. ‘This is beautiful. What animal would it be?’
Steph looks at it. ‘Mink, probably.’
‘Would anyone mind if I had this?’ says Fiona, looking around.
‘You absolutely can’t wear it, Fi,’ Steph says.
‘I agree,’ Zoe says, standing behind Steph. ‘It’s socially unacceptable. You’d get abused. And rightly so.’
‘Not in Singapore,’ says Fiona with a little smile.
‘Fi, don’t be daft. I’ll take them. We can use these in the shelter. They’re great for animal beds,’ Steph says.
‘For an animal bed? Oh my God, that’s criminal,’ says Fiona.
‘I agree,’ says Sara. ‘I get that you might not want to wear them, but Fiona and I can split them between us. We’d both get wear out of them. My girls could wear them in time. It’d be a shame not to get use out of them. I wonder why Mum had them up here and not in her wardrobe.’
Steph looks down at the box. ‘I begged her to put them up here when I was a teenager. I showed her pictures of the mink farms and how they’re gassed to death and then skinned. She said it had put her off wearing them and she packed them up years ago.’
Fiona and Sara share a look and Fiona puts the cape back into the box slowly. ‘Maybe you should take them back to your animal shelter. Use them as bedding, as you said.’ Missy jumps into the box and nestles down on the coat. They all laugh.
‘I think Missy’s decided what’s to be done.’ Steph carries the box, with Missy inside it, towards the attic door.
Zoe opens up another box. ‘This is paperwork too.’
‘Okay,’ says Fiona. ‘Why don’t we all grab a box and take them downstairs to the kitchen? Then we can go through them together and decide what to keep and what to throw away.’
Throw away? ‘I don’t think we should throw anything away,’ says Zoe. ‘Mum would have kept it for a reason.’
‘A milkman bill from 1979?’ says Fiona.
‘There’s a receipt here for a pair of Clarks shoes, May 1980,’ says Sara.
‘They must have been mine then,’ says Steph.