Chapter 9 Zoe Spring 2025 #4
The adrenalin surges through Zoe and her hand stings as it makes contact with Steph’s cheek.
The crack echoes around the hall and up on to the gallery.
It feels good to defend Mum, to do something to make Steph stop.
Zoe can’t remember ever slapping anyone before, so she doesn’t even think about taking evasive action.
Then Steph’s hand catches her straight on her right eye, the pain full and bright.
Zoe staggers back and falls against the hall table, the abandoned wine glasses and canapé plates spiralling to the floor and skittering across the parquet in millions of pieces.
Her head bounces off the parquet, and she feels dizzy.
‘Oh my God.’ Steph’s face is in her hands and she sinks to the hall stair. ‘Not again.’
Alice stands between them, flapping her hands.
Sara rushes over to Zoe and helps her up, picking the bigger pieces of glass out of her hair.
‘Why did you slap her?’ Sara asks Zoe. ‘It’s Mum’s funeral, for God’s sake.’
‘You heard what she said about Mum,’ says Zoe. ‘On the day we’re supposed to be celebrating her life.’
Steph mumbles something unintelligible from the staircase. Fiona is sitting next to her, her head in her hands.
Sara disappears into the kitchen. More catering staff appear with dustpans and brushes and cloths and try to clean up.
One of Sara’s daughters is crying. Zoe can hear the murmur of voices from the drawing room and from outside but everyone seems to be leaving.
That’s one good thing. She struggles to her feet, her hand bloodied from the broken glass.
She pulls a splinter out of her palm, the pain fresh and a relief.
Fiona slips an arm around Steph’s shoulders. ‘I know your relationship with Mum was difficult.’
‘She was awful to me.’ Tears are sliding down Steph’s cheeks, the imprint of Zoe’s hand still visible.
Fiona looks up to the ceiling. ‘You were awful to her too.’
Steph glances at her and clenches her hands.
‘I was there,’ Fiona says, staring Steph straight in the eye.
‘I know,’ Steph mutters. ‘I don’t know what happened really.’
Sara comes back from the kitchen with two glasses of ice. She wraps several pieces in napkins and passes one to Steph, who holds it against her cheek, and the other to Zoe who presses it against her eye, wincing at the cold and the pressure against the bruise she can feel forming.
Brushing glass shards off her dress, Zoe stands over Steph sitting on the bottom stair. ‘How dare you say all that at her funeral,’ she hisses. ‘And in front of everyone Mum knew. She would be ashamed of you. She was ashamed of you, actually – that’s why she sent you away.’
A surge of pleasure mixed with guilt fizzes through her as she sees the shock on Steph’s face, and the open mouths of Fiona and Sara. Zoe runs up the stairs, across the gallery and into her old childhood bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Milly
1989
‘We need to do something about Patrick. Things were fine before he got involved with Steph. If he wasn’t around, it would go back to being fine.’ Paul’s red in the face, breathing heavily. I wonder if he’s been drinking but I can’t smell anything on his breath.
‘What could we do?’ I ask.
‘Shoot him?’ He laughs but it comes out wrong.
‘Don’t joke like that.’ I get up from his desk and walk over to the library window.
‘I’m not.’
There’s a silence. There are lots of silences between us these days. And secrets.
‘There’s not much we can do, except try to talk to her. You know we can’t keep her in.’ But still. We have to do something, he’s right.
Paul rubs his face. ‘A twenty-four-year-old man is taking our fifteen-year-old daughter away from us, and you say there’s nothing we can do?’
‘The police are on it, you heard them. They’re trying to build a case against him, and the others.’ The whisky in the decanter has gone right down. Maybe he has been drinking.
‘But that’s for the protests, and nothing to do with our daughter. By the time they’ve caught up with him, Steph will be firmly in his clutches. If she isn’t already.’
‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ I say. ‘That we go and talk to him? We don’t know where he lives.’
‘There are ways of finding him. Town’s not that big. People will know.’
I breathe out. ‘Just don’t do anything that will upset Steph. If she finds out, she’ll be really angry.’ And I will bear the brunt of her anger.
‘I’m not suggesting I kill him, although that’s tempting.’ He tries a laugh again. ‘Just frighten him. Perhaps hurt him slightly. Not put him in a wheelchair or a grave.’
‘Paul, stop.’ I turn to face him. ‘This is too much. Steph is almost sixteen. She’s almost an adult, she can make her own decisions.’
‘What if he wants to start sleeping with her? Would you be happy with that? A man sleeping with our daughter?’
I swallow. Jan mentioned that her sister had seen Steph in the family planning clinic.
I think she only said it to shock me, but I was glad.
At least she’s being sensible. I just hope she remembers to take the pill every day.
She’s so chaotic and I worry she’ll forget.
But I don’t want to remind her because then she’ll know I know.
‘Well?’ Paul is looking at me. ‘Do you want that man having sex with our daughter?’ He has had a drink. There’s no way he’d talked like that usually.
‘She’s almost an adult, Paul.’
‘But she’s not an adult. There’s something about how she behaves – she doesn’t act like a normal person.
’ I realise as he says this that it’s true.
I hadn’t really formulated the thought properly before but there is something different about her.
‘She’s incredibly impulsive, you know that.
She never thinks about the consequences of what she’s doing.
It’s not normal.’ He sighs and looks down at his desk.
‘She’s just a typical teenage girl,’ I say, trying to dismiss it. ‘They’re all a bit difficult at this age. Other people I speak to say the same thing.’ The room suddenly feels very stuffy and I try to open the sash window.
‘Leave that to me, silly,’ he says, coming up behind me and opening it easily.
‘You can’t do that with your arm in plaster.
And knowing how clumsy you’ve become recently, you’ll make the whole thing collapse on your head or something.
’ He laughs and looks a lot like the old Paul.
I smile back and he kisses me briefly on the lips.
He slides back behind his desk and I stay by the window.
I look down at my plaster cast. I feel broken by trying to hold it all together, mentally and physically.
I can’t talk to Paul about anything. Maybe I could talk to someone else.
I think of Emma in the coffee shop all those months ago.
I’ve avoided her since, and everyone else.
Could I talk to her? Maybe I should try at least. She was once my closest friend.
Emma hands me a bunch of flowers as she comes through the front door. ‘It’s so good to see you, Milly, it’s been ages. I was really glad to get your note.’
In the kitchen, I busy myself with the kettle and arranging the flowers in a vase.
We sit down on chairs facing each other in the drawing room, the tray of tea on the side. ‘I haven’t been at Highdown for a long time,’ she says. ‘A couple of years, at least. I remember all the parties you used to have.’
It seems like such a long time ago that we’ve had people round.
In the before time. But she’s right, we used to host big parties here.
Highdown would be full of noise and laughter, bowls of punch on the hall table, people spilling out into the garden, cigarette butts ground into the gravel and the lawn.
Kids running between legs. In my mind it’s like some kind of Gatsby-esque golden time.
I can’t ever imagine that again. Being relaxed enough to have people round, not worrying about what could happen.
‘I miss those times,’ I say, nodding. ‘It was fun.’ Everything was fun. Before.
‘Maybe you should host a summer party,’ she says, cradling her enormous bump. ‘It would be lovely. I’d help.’
I shake my head. ‘Things are a bit tricky at the moment.’
She glances at my plaster cast again. I saw her clock it the minute she walked in, the slight opening of her mouth, the widening of her eyes. ‘Your arm?’
I lick my lips. ‘It’s not what you think,’ I say. ‘I fell down the stairs, missed my footing on the runner where it’s frayed. I keep meaning to get it fixed.’
A quick smile, she accepts the lie, knows it’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie.
‘It’s been quite difficult ,’ I begin. ‘Steph’s going through a tricky time.’
‘Yes,’ she says, her eyes soft. ‘I’m so sorry about that, it must be very hard.’
I wonder how much she knows. How much everyone knows.
‘It feels like it’s more than the usual teenage angst,’ I say.
She tips her head to the side but doesn’t say anything.
‘It feels like she’s gone completely off the rails in the last couple of years,’ I start. ‘She’s so far off the rails, she’s in another county.’ I laugh in the way that I know Paul hates. But I have to laugh or I’ll just be permanently crying.
‘What’s been happening, Milly?’ Emma leans forward and touches my knee.
I lick my lips. ‘Well, I guess it started with just the normal stroppiness. You know, rudeness and so on.’
She nods.
‘But it’s sort of escalated. She fell in with the wrong crowd.
Actually, I don’t know whether they are the wrong crowd.
They’re animal-rights activists. I’ve looked into it, and learned a lot from Steph, and I broadly support what they are arguing for.
You know, that we shouldn’t test products on animals, that we should treat all animals with respect.
’ I see her glance at the stag heads on the wall.
‘I agree with all of that,’ I repeat. ‘But it’s the way they go about it. Violence and so on.’
‘It’s good to have a cause, Milly. At least she’s passionate about something. Most girls don’t think beyond whatever’s in Just Seventeen.’
‘It’s not just that, though.’ I take a deep breath to steady myself.
‘In some ways, I think she became involved in the group for the sheer excitement of it all. No, that’s wrong.
She’s always been very passionate about animals.
Do you remember when she took Mrs Petworth’s pet rabbit out of its cage, and released it into the woods, because she thought she’d been mistreating it? ’
Emma takes a sip of tea. ‘Oh yes, Brenda was furious. But to be fair to Stephanie, she wasn’t looking after that rabbit properly.’
‘Yes, she’s always been into animals, but it feels like she’s used that as a sort of excuse to become more extreme.’
‘Extreme.’ Emma’s eyes are wide now, and I see her glance at my wrist. She’s guessed what’s coming, maybe.
‘It started with small things. Just shouting at me, swearing sometimes. But it’s built up over the past few months, years.
’ I stop and look out of the window. Terry is walking along the wall of the formal garden, delicately putting one paw in front of the other.
‘She started pushing me when we were arguing. And then I tried to stop her leaving one day and she caught me with a paint can on the side of my head.’
‘A paint can?’ Emma whispers.
‘And it’s just gone from there.’ I hold up my wrist.
‘Oh, Milly.’ Emma slides on to the settee next to me and puts her arm around me. ‘I’m so sorry, I thought—’ She shakes her head a fraction. ‘I didn’t realise it was Steph.’
I give her a sad smile. ‘It’s unthinkable, isn’t it? That your own child would hurt you.’
She nods, and I can see that she’s trying to work it out in her mind.
‘Please don’t tell anyone about this. I can’t have this getting around, it’s just too awful.’
Emma shakes her head. ‘Of course not, Milly. I’m one of your best friends, I won’t tell a soul.’
I swallow. ‘It feels like it’s getting worse. The incidents are bigger and it’s happening more often. I feel like I can’t cope.’ Saying the words out loud makes it feel more real. I can’t cope. My mouth has articulated what my brain has been afraid to admit.
‘What are you going to do? Can Paul help? What’s Stephanie like with him?’
I sigh. ‘I can’t talk to him. I worry that if I say anything to him about what she’s doing he’ll send her away or something. Or worse.’ I think of the look on his face after the paint can incident. ‘So I’ve lied, told him the injuries are accidents.’
‘So Steph only hurts you when you’re on your own?’
I nod. She’s rude and difficult in front of Paul, but only violent when it’s just the two of us. Or am I imagining that? ‘I’m frightened of her. And frightened about what the future holds for her.’
We sit there in silence for a while, letting the words settle around us.
‘The strange thing is, just as I think I can’t face anymore, that I’m going to call up the police and ask them to take her away or walk away myself, she comes up, the anger completely gone, and gives me a hug and says, “I love you, Mum”.’
I bury my head in Emma’s shoulder and sob.
‘I feel so ashamed. Of what she’s doing but also that I’ve failed as a mum.’
‘Oh, Milly.’ She strokes my back. ‘I had no idea. I thought Paul . . .’
‘It would be easier if it was Paul in a way,’ I say through the tears. ‘I could walk away or make him leave. There are places to go. Like you told me about. But you can’t leave your own child, even when they’re hurting you.’ I lean back. ‘It’s not even something you can talk about openly.’
‘Where’s Steph now?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I last saw her the day before yesterday. She wasn’t there when I went to pick her up from school. I worry so much. What’s she doing? Is she safe? But then when she’s here I worry for me.’
‘And how are the other girls?’
‘I worry for Fiona too.’ The school said the other day that Fiona’s not playing with her friends and not listening in lessons. With everything that’s going on I haven’t paid her enough attention.
‘You think Steph would hurt her?’
I shake my head. ‘No. Never.’ I somehow know that instinctively. ‘It’s just me.’
‘This is impossible Milly. What are you going to do?’