Chapter 10 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
‘I’m sorry to bother you with it all, at a time like this,’ Mrs Crawford says. ‘It’s just that it’s been a couple of months now . . .’
Zoe pulls her face into a smile. ‘Don’t be silly, of course you should.
’ She looks around for something else to say.
‘Your garden looks beautiful.’ It’s true.
The little cottage garden is already a kaleidoscope of colours and it is only April.
Rosebuds have formed along the wall, and shoots of delphiniums, hollyhocks and foxgloves are competing to be the tallest. The lavender along the path is bursting into life.
Climbing roses and clematis are curling around the old wooden door.
It’s worrying how early everything comes out these days.
‘Thank you, dear. Your mother and I loved our gardens.’
Zoe smiles and turns away. She planned to walk around the cottages but now she remembers another unanswered email about a broken back door.
And didn’t the new tenants at Jasmine Cottage mention something about an overflowing drain the other day when she bumped into them in the village?
She can’t face anyone else and turns back in the direction of the house.
Eventually she finds herself by the pond again and sits on the stone lip, trailing her hands through the thick green algae. It’s surprisingly warm. Maybe the algae keeps it warm, she’s not sure how it works. She’ll look it up one day.
When she was a child, they had fish in here.
But that seemed too cruel. It was too small a pond for fish, she thinks.
Now tadpoles come here naturally and then turn into frogs.
Missy seems to instinctively know when they are due and sits on the side of the pond, her paw poised to grab them as they take their first tentative hops. Nature is cruel.
She wonders if they’re back yet, if they managed to persuade Steph to come home.
Home. Is this Steph’s home? Is home the place you grow up in, or where you choose to live as an adult?
They must be home by now, it’s only ten miles to Steph’s place.
But when she rushes on to the drive, already breathless, Sara’s car still isn’t there.
Her heart thuds. Steph must be refusing to come back. And that will be her fault.
There’s a figure on the drive and she starts. But it’s only Alice. She hugs Zoe. ‘I’ve just come to see if you’re all okay,’ she says.
Zoe shakes her head and then starts to cry. Alice draws her into another hug, patting her on the back like a child. ‘C’mon, let’s go inside.’
‘I messed up,’ says Zoe, falling into a chair at the kitchen table as Alice makes tea. ‘I can’t think why I slapped Steph, it was an awful thing to do. And now she’s left and she won’t come back. I know she won’t.’
Alice puts two mugs on the table and reads Steph’s note. She rubs her face and suddenly looks very tired.
‘It’s my fault, isn’t it?’ says Zoe, holding the mug.
Alice shakes her head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she says.
‘You should all have sat down and talked a long time ago,’ she says.
‘You, your sisters and your parents. There’s been far too much sweeping things under the carpet.
And it’s come to this . . .’ She waves her hand at Steph’s note. ‘And yesterday.’
‘Mum would have been so angry, wouldn’t she? That we behaved like that.’
Alice nods slowly. ‘Yes. But your mother is not blameless in this. And nor is your father.’ Zoe looks up at her, her head tipped to one side. What does she mean?
She’s about to ask her when there’s a scrunch of tyres on the gravel and the sound of a car engine. Zoe jumps to her feet and rushes into the hall. There are three silhouettes in Sara’s car. Thank God.
‘She’s here,’ Zoe calls over her shoulder to Alice and runs back into the kitchen, suddenly worried that the three of them will see her watching.
‘Good,’ says Alice. ‘Now perhaps the four of you can start to talk.’
Milly
1989
I crack open Steph’s door. It’s the usual riot.
Clothes strewn all over the four-poster bed, paper covering the desk and much of the floor.
On the dressing table is some black eye pencil I haven’t noticed before, fresh pencil shavings crushed next to it.
I pick up Fiona’s Barbie pencil sharpener and put it in my pocket.
She’ll never see that again otherwise. Steph’s terrible at taking other people’s things and forgetting to return them.
The tie-dye material Steph’s rigged up for curtains for the four-poster is actually an improvement on the heavy brocade curtains that used to hang there.
They made the room so dark. I wonder where she put them, they’re probably valuable.
I should really pack them up properly and put them in the attic.
Now it’s a clash of purple and pink, blue and black.
Somehow it suits Steph. The pile of laundry Alice put on the bed yesterday has tipped over.
It looks like Steph slept on some of it.
I start picking up t-shirts – brushing off cat hair – folding them and sliding them into drawers.
Inside the drawers themselves, everything is a tangle of fabric.
I pick out my striped blue and white t-shirt – I wondered where that had gone – and throw it by the door.
At the back of the top drawer is the unopened tube of eczema cream.
Steph refuses to use it, even though her skin is terrible, because the company tests other products on animals.
And meanwhile her hands are red raw and getting worse.
The lavender salve I bought from the health food shop does nothing.
I want to cry with frustration, but there’s no point.
I put the cream on top of the chest of drawers in case she changes her mind.
Maybe I can sneak it into the lavender salve when she lets me dress and bandage her hands.
It feels soothing to reorganise everything.
Pants, bras and socks at the top, t-shirts and jumpers in the next drawer and jeans and leggings underneath.
There are dirty knickers under the bed, some stained with period blood.
I throw them into the empty washing basket.
There’s the purple t-shirt she was looking for last week and said she’d looked everywhere for.
I’ll wash it and get it ready for when she’s back.
She’s always losing things, I’ve never known anyone like it. The other two girls are so different.
She liked it the last time I sorted her room out for her. Said that it was such a relief for it to be tidy – she gets overwhelmed with the mess and doesn’t know where to start. I can understand that. Maybe this will help her and bring us closer together.
The paper on the floor is covered in doodles.
It looks like the start of more protest posters.
But as I get closer I realise it’s Steph writing her name over and over again.
But instead of Stephanie Wright, she’s written Stephanie Head.
Patrick’s name. Stephanie Head. Stephanie Head.
Stephanie Head. It’s suddenly hard to breathe.
The others are protest posters and I carefully stack them together on her desk and put the felt tips back in the chipped mug.
I don’t want to look at the doodles. Stephanie Head.
At least she’s passionate about something.
Some teenage girls are only interested in the latest make-up and perfumes, at least Steph has a cause.
That’s what Emma said. I should be grateful.
She frustrates me at every turn but I can also feel so proud of her, of how different she is from other girls her age.
Carving out her own path and not following others.
Stephanie Head. It’s just a childish thing.
We’ve all done it. I did it with Paul’s name when we first met.
Writing Milly Wright for the first time was exciting, made me feel so grown-up.
So much more normal than Camilla DeProse.
That’s what it’s about, that’s all. But Patrick is nine years older than her.
A man. And we’ve still never met him. He’s an ethereal figure floating round the edges of our lives.
Both bedside tables are covered in half-filled mugs of tea, one with a mouldy top, which I gather up and put outside the door together with two plates of crusts and a half-eaten apple, brown with age.
The coffee rings look ingrained into the wood but maybe Alice will be able to do something about them.
The drawer of the dressing table is half open, and the glint of something metallic draws my attention.
Before I even think about it, I’ve opened the drawer and am staring at three condoms in shiny red wrappers.
My arm feels heavy as I reach out to touch them.
They weren’t here before, when I last looked.
I’m shocked at the visible confirmation that she’s having sex.
I’m about to close the drawer when I spot a tiny plastic bag at the back of the drawer.
I open the drawer completely and take out a small bag of browny-green crumbly stuff.
Hash. My fingers get stuck trying to open it, but the woody, earthy smell is familiar.
Paul and I shared the occasional joint when we were first together.
Steph is only fifteen. Bloody hell. I reseal the bag and put it in my pocket.
I can’t leave it here, it’s illegal for starters.
I rub my face and stand up, closing the drawer.