Chapter 13 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
She picks up her glasses from the string hanging around her neck and pinches them on to her nose.
‘She hasn’t registered this morning, no.
But let me check if she’s managed to get past without registering.
’ Mrs Baker bustles off down the corridor.
The eyes of thirty teachers stare at me from the display, judging me.
They know me as well as I know them. Stephanie Wright’s mother.
There’s Mrs Longman who teaches science, who was quite a fan of Steph’s as she showed such promise.
Until Steph smashed up some expensive equipment when Mrs Longman brought in a rabbit to be dissected.
Mrs Smith has been amazing supporting Steph over the past few years.
And me, I think, remembering the times I’ve cried in her office when it all got too much.
I’ll be sad when Steph leaves here in a few months’ time.
It’ll be the end of an era. The new sixth form on the other side of town seems so grown-up in comparison.
I hope they’re as supportive as this school has been.
By that time Fiona will be here, hopefully making less of a name for herself than Steph has.
‘No sign of her, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Baker says, smoothing down her perm.
‘Thanks anyway,’ I say. ‘It was a long shot.’
I drive home via the butcher’s in the village to pick up some pork chops for supper.
I’ll do an omelette for Steph. If she’s home.
Highdown is silent as I open the front door.
The library door is closed and I go straight to the kitchen for another coffee.
The clock strikes ten. It’s my day to play cards with the Cornfords, so I’d better get Woody walked and back before noon when I have to leave.
The Downs’ green velvet hills don’t soothe me as they usually do, though it’s such a clear day that I can see as far as Chanctonbury Ring.
There’s something niggling at the back of my mind that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Yes, Steph is missing and yes, it’s seriously close to her GCSEs.
But that’s not unusual in itself. She often stays out all night.
Three years ago if you’d told me I wouldn’t be a nervous wreck because my daughter had disappeared, I wouldn’t have believed you.
There’s nothing like repetition to normalise trauma.
I suppose that’s why doctors and police officers and the like can cope with such stressful jobs.
The sense of unease stretches through the game of bridge with the Cornfords.
I lose deal after deal, making silly mistakes.
Old Mrs Cornford, who used to be as sharp as a tack until cataracts made the cards milky, asks me what’s wrong but I just shake my head.
I’ve talked so much about Steph to the three of them over the years but for some reason I don’t want to admit that she’s gone again. It might make it all the more real.
Fiona is unusually chatty on the walk home, talking about the teacher’s reaction to her saying that Elizabeth I made a cult of virginity.
I smile at her, imagining the teacher’s face.
She and Sara sit down for a snack and I cradle a cup of tea while I watch them munch through toast and Marmite.
‘Neither of you know where Steph might be, do you?’
Sara shakes her head but Fiona talks through toast. ‘Have you looked on the roof? She often hangs out there when it’s sunny.’
‘The roof outside her bedroom?’
‘No, along from that,’ says Fiona as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘Here, I’ll show you.’
Back in Steph’s room, she opens the window and uses the desk chair to clamber out. ‘Be careful,’ I say, visions of her rolling down the roof and then dropping to the ground making my stomach plummet.
‘It’s fine, Mum. You just have to crawl along this bit and then you get to a ledge where you can see everything.’ She disappears from view but then calls back. ‘She’s not here.’
I turn to Sara who’s busy looking through Steph’s desk.
‘Don’t move and definitely don’t follow me.
’ I pull myself out of the window and go in the same direction as Fiona, careful not to look down, and place my feet firmly against the tiles.
I round the corner to the side of the house and there’s Fiona sitting on a wide ledge, surveying the woods and the garden.
She moves along as I squeeze next to her, my stomach somersaulting.
‘So Steph regularly comes out here?’ I say, looking around.
‘Yes, we both do,’ says Fiona, looking very pleased with herself.
‘You both do?’
‘Only me occasionally,’ she says quickly.
‘But what do you do, just hide?’
Fiona glances to the left where an orange Sainsbury’s bag is visible under the tiles. ‘Nothing really, just talk.’
I reach forward and pull out the bag.
‘Don’t tell her I told you, she’ll kill me,’ she says.
Inside the bag are some papers, rolling tobacco, and a pack of condoms. There’s nothing in here I haven’t seen before. I stuff it back under the tile. ‘Come on, miss, down you go. You go first. And for God’s sake be careful.’
I glance again around Steph’s room, but everything seems exactly as chaotic as it usually is. Downstairs we go through the routine of homework and supper.
‘No sign of Steph?’ says Paul, as he sits down.
I shake my head. ‘Not yet.’
‘She’ll be back,’ he says again.
‘She will Mum,’ Fiona says, touching my hand. ‘She just needs more space than she gets here.’
What a strange and very grown-up expression for her to use.
I look at Fiona, her blonde hair dipped over her plate.
Half child, half adult. I hadn’t realised how much Steph confided in her and wonder if she knows more than she should.
How much impact has Steph’s behaviour had on Fiona? I should spend more time with her.
After the girls’ bedtime, Paul and I spend a rare evening together, even if it’s just in front of the television.
As always when Steph is missing, I’m on constant alert, listening for footsteps or, worse still, a car.
How many times has she been brought home in a police car for one reason or another?
While Paul gets ready for bed, I check Steph’s room again and turn on the bedside light.
Just in case she comes home during the night, which has happened before.
I think it’s going to take me ages to fall asleep.
I remember nothing after getting into bed, though at some point during the night I wake, my heart pounding.
That was what was different about Steph’s room.
I slide out of bed, careful not to move the mattress and disrupt Paul. I avoid the creaky bits of the landing and hurry into Steph’s room. The wardrobe door is shut. That’s what’s different. It’s always gaping open, clothes spilling out. I’m always nagging her about it.
I open it with difficulty and gasp. It’s almost empty. All the clothes have gone, just a few old jumpers and a bag I meant to take to the charity shop at the bottom. My heart is like a stone. I swallow.
The main light floods the room and I go methodically through the room and then the bathroom.
All her usual toiletries have gone – toothbrush, soap, kohl eye pencil.
She left two boxes of tampons but maybe she already had more.
Almost all the clothes she wears on a daily basis have gone.
Her felt tips and even her school books.
Her school books? So she’s planning to go to school.
Paul groans as I turn on the main bedroom light. ‘She’s run away,’ I shout. ‘She’s gone for good this time.’
‘What do you mean?’ He’s sitting up, blinking against the light.
‘All her stuff has gone.’
He’s out of bed and in Steph’s room and I show him the wardrobe. He rubs his face, which looks grey in this light. ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘Well, I’ll call the police first thing in the morning, report her missing.’
‘First thing in the morning.’ I can’t help but raise my voice. ‘We need to look for her now.’
‘Milly, she’s already been gone over twenty-four hours, another couple of hours won’t make any difference.’
We go back to bed but I lie there tense, still waiting to hear Steph creep back into her bedroom even though I know it’s not going to happen.
Paul is snoring within minutes. Maybe he’s actually relieved she’s not in the house.
That she might have gone for good. The grandfather clock strikes three in its night-time tone and I creep out of bed again.
Downstairs, I pull a light coat on over my nightgown and head out to the car. I must do something.
I don’t know what I’m hoping to find, but the village is just as deserted as I would have expected at this time of night.
I’ve often driven around in the early hours of the morning looking for Steph.
A fox stares at my headlights and then swaggers across the road. I head out of the village towards town.
On the high street, a couple of boys, leaning against each other to keep upright, stagger past me.
A homeless man is slumped in a doorway. I pass a boarded-up building and wonder if that’s the squat that Patrick lives in.
But I can just about make out threatening security notices pasted on the door.
It doesn’t look like anyone could be living inside.
But there must be countless places like this, not maybe in this town but elsewhere.
Lights shine from the occasional terraced house and I wonder why people are awake. Shift-workers, perhaps. Party-goers. Is Steph in one of those houses? I consider knocking on the doors but then realise how crazy that would seem and that I’d probably end up being arrested.
I stop outside her school. I’ll go back there tomorrow morning and explain the situation.
The minute she turns up, I’ll be waiting for her and take her home.
Three years ago when she started, we were so excited for her, so full of hope.
She was already excelling, and the school would give her a chance to do what she really wanted to do – study to be a vet.
Perhaps that dream is still there, just. But everything else is in tatters.
I wish we could go back three years, do things differently.
I wish I’d been able to get through to her, to help her, then she might not have run away.
I start the engine again and drive slowly back to Highdown, scanning the streets as I go.