Chapter 11 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
‘I’m starving. We haven’t eaten since those canapés yesterday.’ Sara’s voice comes through the front door.
‘I told you to stop at that petrol station. We could have grabbed something.’ Fiona.
Zoe sits at the kitchen table, her knuckles white against the mug. Alice touches her on the shoulder and then slips out the back door. Zoe wants her to stay, to help.
‘There’s a lot of leftovers from yesterday. We can start . . .’ Steph’s voice trails off as she sees Zoe at the table.
Zoe rises from her chair. ‘Hi,’ she says.
Steph swallows and looks down. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘For hitting you. Your poor face.’ She comes towards Zoe as if to touch her eye and then stops a metre away.
‘I’m so glad you came back.’ Zoe steps into the distance between them and then suddenly they’re hugging. Steph grips her tightly and Zoe winces as her eye catches the button on Steph’s shirt. She draws away. ‘I should never have said those things. I didn’t mean them, and they’re not true.’
‘I think they are true,’ says Steph, nodding. ‘But thank you for saying that.’
Fiona and Sara stand in the doorway of the kitchen watching.
‘I’m sorry to both of you too,’ adds Zoe. ‘For messing it all up yesterday.’
Sara squeezes her arm and starts taking more leftovers out of the fridge and putting plates and cutlery in the middle of the table.
Fiona nods and fills up small tumblers from the tap.
‘I should never have ordered so much booze and so little food. Everyone was plastered, including you two,’ she says, looking between Zoe and Steph.
‘But the main thing is that we’re all here together.
Perhaps we can use the time between now and the interment to talk things over and get a few things out in the open. ’
The four of them sit down and start picking through the leftovers.
‘I know I’ve already said it, but I’m sorry I said those things, Steph. They’re really not true. Mum wasn’t ashamed of you at all.’ Zoe picks up the pieces of falafel that have fallen out of the wrap. As she says it, she wonders again if it’s true. Mum always talked about Steph differently.
Steph puts her sandwich down. ‘We’ve never really talked about those years,’ she says, glancing up at Fiona. ‘I’m not sure how much you remember, Sara, but I know you do, Fi.’
‘Yes,’ says Fiona, taking a sip of water. ‘I remember.’
‘Remember what?’ says Sara, spearing a cocktail sausage.
‘It was difficult for a while,’ says Steph, not looking at anyone.
‘You and Mum had a pretty strained relationship,’ says Fiona eventually. ‘The others don’t remember because they were too young. But I do.’
‘Yeah,’ says Steph, looking down at her hands. ‘That’s why, when you said what you said yesterday, Zoe, I flipped. It just brought it all back.’
Zoe swallows. The air feels thick.
‘I remember you and Mum shouting at each other once,’ says Sara, suddenly sounding very young.
Fiona looks like she’s going to say something but doesn’t.
‘Yes,’ says Steph, getting up from the table and standing at the kitchen window. ‘It felt like the minute I became a teenager I couldn’t do anything right in her eyes.’
‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ says Fiona, pushing her hair from her face. ‘You were awful to her.’ Fiona stares at Steph’s back.
‘Please don’t,’ says Steph without looking at Fiona.
‘Why not? It’s true. You were—’ She takes a deep breath. ‘You were violent towards Mum. I was there. I saw it. You broke her arm that time.’
‘Mum said things were bad, but I didn’t realise they were that bad,’ says Zoe, her eyes wide. ‘You broke her arm. How?’
‘It’s like I’ve blocked it all out,’ says Steph.
‘Nobody ever talked about it at the time, or afterwards, but you were scary,’ says Fiona again. ‘I don’t want to be negative but we never talked about it and I think we should now.’
‘I didn’t mean to be. It wasn’t like that,’ says Steph, not looking up.
‘I can’t imagine any of my kids being violent towards me,’ says Sara.
‘I really struggled as a teenager,’ Steph says, looking directly at Sara, before sitting down and tracing the grain of the wood on the table with her fingers.
‘I can’t explain it now. I can’t even really remember it that well.
Just this incredible restlessness and anxiety.
Mum didn’t get me and I couldn’t understand her.
I hate to think of the times I hurt her but—’ She swallows and then carries on.
‘Looking back, I know that a lot of the things I did – like staying out all night – must have been awful for her. But I just didn’t think at the time.
It’s not like I was out partying, drinking and taking drugs.
I was trying to make a difference, protesting, or going on raids or whatever. ’ Her voice trails off.
‘You not coming home was worse, I think. The worry.’ Fiona taps her fingers on the canapé platter. ‘The first time it happened, Mum was beside herself. She kept coming into my room and asking if I knew where you were, or who you were with.’
‘I’m sorry, Fi,’ says Steph quietly, her eyes downcast. ‘I didn’t think of you being in that position.’
‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Mum if you stayed out all night,’ says Sara. ‘I’d be terrified if one of my children did that.’
Fiona sighs. ‘Mum and Dad were so worried all the time. The police came, some of the neighbours came with torches and volunteered to search for you. It was horribly, horribly scary and stressful. I couldn’t sleep when you were away.
I was frightened of what you might have been doing, frightened of what Mum might do because she seemed like she was going crazy. She never slept either.’
‘I remember it,’ says Sara suddenly. ‘On the drive, all the flashing lights. It must have woken me up.’
Steph’s face is blank. A splash of colour stains her cheeks and she looks back into the hall.
‘It wasn’t something I believed I could control.
It just happened. I’d get so angry that my body just took over.
I couldn’t help it. It sounds silly but it was like it wasn’t me.
I could feel it inside me yesterday, that flare of anger that I haven’t had in years and years. ’ She catches Zoe’s eye.
‘Is that why you went away to boarding school then?’ asks Sara.
Steph looks away. ‘Probably. That first year at boarding school was awful. But being away helped a bit. And then afterwards, when I got the job at the rescue centre, I felt I found my place. Those animals, especially the injured dogs, needed someone to love them unconditionally. And they loved me back. In a way I never felt Mum did.’
‘Oh, Steph.’ Sara reaches forward and touches Steph’s hand. ‘Have you thought that you might be neurodiverse?’ she says gently. ‘Something like autism or ADHD? I’ve been looking into it because of one of the twins.’
Steph crosses her arms across her chest. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Just that what you’re describing sounds like it might be ADHD, and what I’ve seen of you this past week feels like you’re wired differently. Not in a bad way, just different. I see it in Izzie.’
‘I thought that too,’ says Zoe, nodding.
‘It might explain a lot,’ says Fiona.
Steph glances between her three sisters. ‘I’ve always felt different from other people. I never really understand why people do the things they do and then realise I’ve misinterpreted things and get really angry. So I tend to avoid other people.’
‘It might be worth talking to a doctor about it, seeing if you can get a diagnosis?’ Sara says.
‘Maybe, though I’m not sure a diagnosis will change anything,’ says Steph.
‘Maybe not,’ says Sara. ‘But it might help you to understand yourself better. And forgive yourself.’
Steph wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Zoe is close to tears.
‘I really regret that Mum and I weren’t close. That we never talked about things,’ says Steph. ‘And now it’s too late. All this time we lived ten miles apart and we never spoke. I should have made the effort. Being here has made me realise that. She was my mum.’
There’s a long silence, then Sara blows her nose.
‘Being back here has made me think about it all again too,’ says Fiona, biting her lip. ‘I haven’t thought about it for years and years. I think perhaps me going to Singapore was me running away from it all. I’d never realised that until now.’
‘I don’t remember it being like that at all. I had a happy childhood,’ says Zoe.
‘It was different with you. I think Mum felt she had a second chance,’ says Fiona.
Steph opens her mouth to speak but then says nothing.
The four of them sit in silence for a while, picking at the food on the platters. ‘We should spend the afternoon doing some more clearing out,’ Sara says.
‘Good idea,’ says Fiona. ‘Come on.’ The chair squeaks as she pushes it along the floor.
‘Let’s share our favourite memories of Mum,’ says Sara. ‘That would be a nice thing to do while we sort out her clothes. Something she would have wanted.’
Zoe looks at her. She knows she’s trying to make everything right again, to take them all back to the morning of the funeral, before the unsayable was said.
Somehow it feels that more should have been said.
That they have only skated over the top of everything.
Maybe they’ll have a chance to talk more, before the interment.
Maybe over a bottle of wine one evening. But just the one bottle this time.
Mum seems to have had a lot of clothes, although she only wore a few outfits over the past year or so. Her world shrunk after she became unwell.
‘Good idea,’ says Fiona, holding up a twenties-style flapper dress. ‘This is exquisite. We should keep things like this. It’s almost a family heirloom.’
It feels like the four of them have been here forever, although it’s only been ten days. How easily they’ve slipped again into the routine of being sisters, a slight jostling for position, but with no parents left to tell them off.
Sara looks out of the bedroom window. ‘It’s just so hard to remember that far back.’