Chapter 6 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
‘We can look through it all and there will be stuff that just needs to be thrown out, like the milkman bills, and other stuff that we’ll want to keep,’ says Fiona, lifting up a box and walking towards the door.
The others follow her, the attic settling back into silence.
There are footprints in the dust now, ornaments have been unpacked and left all over the floor.
Already it’s all changing and they’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.
Zoe bites her lip to stop herself from crying.
She wants it all left the same. Untouched.
Just as their mother had it. But at the same time, it feels comforting to have them here, talking about Mum. People who really knew her.
She takes the key out of her pocket and stares at it. She knows that it must be significant in some way. Otherwise why would Mum have kept it in an envelope at the back of her safe, surrounded by expensive jewellery? Kai. Who is Kai? What does it mean?
The door opens and Fiona reappears with the others. ‘C’mon, Zoe.’
Zoe stands, shaking her foot to get the circulation back. She takes a deep breath and picks up the nearest box and walks towards the stairs.
Half an hour later, the kitchen is covered with tea crates and cardboard boxes. Sara fills up the kettle to make tea and the other three take a box each to look through.
‘Look there’s some photos here,’ says Fiona. ‘Of us on that train. Gosh, we look young.’
‘What train?’ asks Zoe, craning her neck.
‘Before you were born, we went to the South of France on the train for a holiday,’ says Fiona.
‘I remember that,’ says Steph, who has stopped reading the letter she’s holding. ‘We went with Mum and then Dad joined us later.’
‘Yes, poor Mum having to take the three of us on the train on her own,’ says Fiona.
‘I must have been, what three, four?’ says Sara. ‘But I remember it quite clearly. All that beautiful sand. I can’t imagine doing that with my girls.’
It’s so annoying how she references her children at every opportunity. Like she’s done something incredible by procreating.
‘Mum constantly trying to put sun lotion on us and make us wear hats.’ Steph smiles. She has one of those faces that seems to look miserable most of the time, Zoe thinks. But when she smiles it completely changes. Of her sisters, she feels she knows Steph the least.
‘I remember the food most. Eating steak frites for the first time. Trying horse,’ says Fiona. ‘You were already a vegetarian then, weren’t you? I think you had omelette for every meal.’
Steph laughs. ‘Yeah, the French aren’t known for their veggie cuisine. And especially not in the eighties.’
They all lapse back into silence again, flicking through the various papers, creating piles across the table.
Everyone remembers, Zoe thinks. Maybe Mum knew that after her death we’d all come to the house together like this.
Maybe that’s what she wanted. She can’t work out whether she wants them to stay forever or leave as soon as they can.
She twists her thumb rings round and round.
‘You’ll get a blister doing that,’ says Steph, stilling her hand.
Zoe jumps in surprise and snatches her hand away.
‘Sorry,’ says Steph, blushing.
‘It’s fine. It’s just a habit. I won’t get a blister. What’s wrong with your hands, anyway?’
Steph spreads out her fingers, which are covered in patches of red raw skin. ‘Childhood eczema,’ she says. ‘It comes back now and again. Stress, I guess.’
‘It seems sore,’ Zoe says, looking away. Stress. So perhaps this is as awful a time for Steph as it is for her. Mum always said their relationship was strained and maybe when someone dies after you’ve had a difficult relationship with them, it’s harder than if you were close.
‘I have some really lovely calendula and lavender salve upstairs. You can try some if you like. It might help.’
Steph looks at her and smiles. ‘Thanks, that would be great. I didn’t bring anything with me and it’s come up so quickly.
’ She hides her hands in the box. ‘Underneath all the old receipts are a load of letters,’ she says.
She has a stack of them on the table and is digging through the box on the floor.
‘These ones are from before even I was born.’
‘Who are they from?’ asks Fiona.
‘There’s a few letters from who I think must be Mum’s grandmother,’ says Steph, turning over tissue-thin paper. ‘She’s writing about Dad. Listen.
‘Dearest Milly,
Who you want to marry, dear, is your choice.
You’re going to have to live with that person for the rest of your life – through all sorts of difficulties that you can’t even imagine now – so choose wisely.
Choose someone who is a solid friend as much as anyone else, whose mind you admire as much as his face.
If in your heart of hearts you know Paul is that person, then ignore what your mother and father say.
But take your time. It may feel like there’s a need to hurry, but there isn’t. Don’t be in a rush to start your life.
Come to the oast house one afternoon. We can go for a walk in the woods together.
Love Granny.’
Steph looks up. ‘I didn’t know Mum’s parents didn’t approve of Dad.’
‘Yeah, I remember Mum telling me when I was getting married to Charles,’ says Fiona.
‘That I was lucky she and Dad approved of my marriage because that hadn’t been her experience with her parents or her grandparents.
Grandpa Edward forced Mum to have some sort of pre-nup, apparently. They thought Dad was a gold-digger.’
‘Oh,’ says Zoe, her forehead concertinaed together. ‘How weird. Dad was so far from being a gold-digger. And he loved Mum. You could tell, right to the end. I wonder why she didn’t tell me?’
‘I guess she only told me because I was getting married.’
‘But still,’ says Zoe. ‘So Mum’s grandmother, our great-grandmother, lived in the oast house?’
‘Yes,’ says Steph. ‘I think generally what happened was that as soon as a couple married and had children, the older generation would move out into the oast house or one of the cottages, and the younger generation would take over the hall. The hall was handed down as some sort of wedding present.’
‘Some wedding present,’ says Zoe.
‘This place is a massive responsibility,’ says Fiona.
‘Tell me about it,’ Zoe says, then tries to soften her comment with a smile.
There’s silence as the four women flick through old bits of paper.
‘Listen to this,’ says Steph suddenly. ‘It’s another letter from Mum’s grandmother to her.
The agreement is nothing to worry about, dear.
It’s just a precaution to ensure the hall stays in the family.
We’ve had it for hundreds of years. It was passed to Grandpa on his marriage to me and we had to sign something similar, and the same when it was passed down to your father.
You will pass it down to your children in turn.
Please don’t blame your mother for that, her hands are tied. ’
‘That’s the pre-nup,’ says Fiona, looking up from a sheaf of photos. ‘But they needn’t have worried about Dad. He loved Mum fiercely. They’d never have split up.’
Zoe looks at the letter Steph hands her.
Even later in life the love between her parents was obvious.
They still held hands. She found love notes he’d written to her, caught up with shopping lists.
Will she ever meet someone and feel like that?
She thought Ben was that person, but he turned out to be as flakey as the rest.
Steph mumbles something about going to the loo and Zoe takes over looking through the pile of letters.
She opens one dated 1972. ‘Your mother told me about the miscarriage, dear, I’m so sorry to hear that.
What an incredibly upsetting thing for you and Paul.
Do take good care of yourself. Now is the time to nourish your body, put your feet up a little and prepare for the next pregnancy.
Because there will be a next pregnancy, even if it doesn’t feel like that at the moment. ’
‘I didn’t know Mum had a miscarriage,’ Zoe says.
Sara stops sorting out receipts. ‘Yes, she had several,’ she says.
‘One before Steph was born, then two between Steph and Fiona, then again before I was born and several before she fell pregnant with you. It turned out later she had a problem with her cervix, but they didn’t realise that at the time. ’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Zoe says, looking back at the letter. There seems to be so many things she doesn’t know about Mum.
‘I guess she only told me because I’d had trouble getting pregnant and we went through all of the IVF.
She wanted to reassure me,’ says Sara. Zoe looks at Sara but doesn’t say anything.
There’s so much she doesn’t know about her sisters too.
Somehow she painted them as uncaring in her mind.
But she realises now that’s not true. They all have their own lives, their own challenges.
They’re good people. She’ll ask Sara about the IVF later, when they’re on their own.
‘It really is like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ says Fiona. ‘Her thinking behind the will may not even be among this stuff.’
‘In some ways, that doesn’t matter,’ says Steph, coming back into the kitchen.
‘I don’t mean that badly, Zoe,’ she adds quickly.
‘Just that it’s interesting to look back at this.
To remember it all.’ She picks up another letter from the pile.
‘To find out more about Mum and perhaps parts of her life that we didn’t know about. ’
Zoe smiles at her. ‘You’re right, it is. It’s important to remember all of this. I never want us to forget her.’
‘She’s our mum, Zoe, none of us will forget her,’ says Fiona.
Zoe stands up and stretches. ‘I think I might go outside and try that key in the outhouses.’ She needs to get away, to think. She realises it feels lovely being here, the four of them. But she’s so used to being on her own with Mum that it feels a bit much suddenly.