Chapter 15 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
‘But I’ve got my birth certificate,’ says Zoe. ‘It’s clearly got Mum and Dad’s names on it.’ It’s like being drunk – she’s confused and disorientated, as if nothing is how or where it usually is. She stares at Steph who shrugs.
‘I don’t know how they got that. I presume they must have known someone, bribed someone, maybe. I never registered your birth.’ Her voice cracks.
Her stomach is boiling with nausea, ready to erupt.
Zoe covers her mouth with her hand and swallows.
‘It can’t be fake,’ she says, her voice wavering.
‘I’ve used it for all sorts of things. No one’s ever questioned it.
’ She can feel herself begin to panic, to hyperventilate, her chest tight.
It’s written in black and white on her birth certificate.
Her parents’ names are there. But here she’s being told by this woman, her distant older sister, that what’s there isn’t true.
She tries to draw in a breath. Alice touches her shoulder.
‘Your parents were influential people,’ says Alice. ‘They might have found someone who was prepared to write a genuine birth certificate, especially as there wasn’t an original.’
‘I just don’t see how all this can be right,’ says Fiona, shaking her head and looking at Steph. ‘I remember Mum being pregnant. I remember Zoe being born.’
‘You remember what you were told to remember,’ says Steph. She pushes away the mug of tea.
Fiona turns to Zoe. ‘You arrived overnight. We came down in the morning and Mum was sitting in the armchair holding you in front of the fire. You were there, Sara, so were you, Steph.’ She pauses and looks up to the ceiling, rubbing her eyes.
‘Mum said she’d gone into labour after she put us to bed the night before, when Steph arrived.
She said she hadn’t wanted to tell us before because we’d get too excited.
But I remember her being bigger, pregnant.
She was definitely pregnant . . .’ Fiona tails off. Zoe can hear her breathing.
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ says Sara, looking between Steph and Zoe.
‘Mum felt it would be better for you to be her child, that people wouldn’t accept you being my child, that your life would be easier.’ Steph glances at Zoe. ‘That my life would be better too.’
The sickness explodes and Zoe rushes to the sink retching.
Just liquid comes out. Alice follows her and pats her back as she did when she was a child.
Sara joins them, a glass in her hand. ‘Let me get you some water, you’ve had a terrible shock.
’ She fills up the glass and guides Zoe back to the chair. Her legs are weak.
‘But I never saw you pregnant, Steph. You were never pregnant.’ Fiona’s voice is shrill, her eyes wide. She’s still shaking her head.
‘I wasn’t there. I’d run away.’ Steph swallows.
‘You ran away?’ says Zoe, taking a tiny sip of water to try to get rid of the sick taste in her mouth.
Steph nods. ‘When I found out I was pregnant with . . .’ Zoe looks at her, and swallows again. Her mouth is dry. Alice pushes the glass of water towards her but she shakes her head.
Steph stumbles over her words. ‘I knew Mum and Dad wouldn’t accept it, that they would go mad, that they’d try to make me give you up, so I ran away.’
The five women sit silently, each staring at the table. Zoe rests her head in her hands. It feels better to just shut everything out.
‘Are you sure, Steph?’ Fiona says at last. ‘This is not just one of your wild fancies?’
‘Of course she’s sure,’ says Alice sharply. ‘Steph has kept this secret for thirty-five years. It’s not something she’d make up.’
Fiona doesn’t respond.
‘You never forget having a baby. I know I never will.’ Zoe looks up as Sara takes Steph’s hand. ‘But Zoe was brought up as Mum’s baby. How did that happen?’ Sara’s eyes are full.
‘Hold on,’ says Zoe, the sickness receding, leaving her with so many questions. ‘So I wasn’t born at Highdown. Where was I born?’
Steph is looking at her lap, still twisting her shirt. ‘Not that far away. We were living in an old bothy on the South Downs. We’d been living in an abandoned warehouse in town but the police were after us so we went into the countryside. We thought it was safer.’
‘Christ,’ says Sara. ‘I can’t imagine that. With a baby. It must have been so hard.’
‘It was quite comfortable,’ says Steph. ‘Warm and dry all summer. At least until the autumn came. It was an early winter that year.’ She tails off.
‘The autumn?’ says Zoe, staring at her. ‘But I was born on the twenty-first of November.’ She looks at Steph who is shaking her head. ‘Wasn’t I?’
‘You were born in August, the seventh. I came back to Highdown in November and that’s when Mum—’
The doorbell rings again, but for much longer this time.
Fiona sighs and stands up. ‘Let me just pay off the driver. Don’t say anything until I’m back.
’ She disappears into the hall and they all sit quietly as murmured conversation drifts into the room.
A minute later, Fiona slides back into her chair and looks at Steph.
There are black marks around her eyes where she’s rubbed her mascara.
‘I think you need to start from the beginning.’
Steph
1990
I woke several hours later, my breasts aching. A cold light filtered through the flowery curtains. Terry and June had both disappeared. I stretched out, my fingertips touching the bed post. It felt amazing to be in a bed again after months of sleeping on the floor. Everything was so soft, so warm.
I’d only been away eight months. Nearly two school terms. But it felt like a lifetime.
It was a lifetime. I touched my tight breasts and wondered if Kylie needed feeding.
But Mum would have brought her to me if she had.
Maybe she was still asleep. It must be strange for Kylie being inside. Maybe she was relaxing too.
What would Patrick be doing? He would have realised immediately that I’d gone and he must know that I could only have come home.
This was always my home. I tiptoed to the window and peered around the curtains.
He’d come for me eventually. He wouldn’t accept me leaving.
He couldn’t lose Kylie, not after what had happened.
On the bedside table was a book. Matilda.
Fiona had been reading this when I’d left.
Why was it in here? I’d read it years ago.
I opened it and started reading. It was like being a little girl again, tucked up in bed, reading an adventure story.
A few pages in, I heard footsteps on the gravel outside.
I froze, not even moving my eyes. Whoever it was didn’t go straight to the front door, but was walking around the perimeter of the house.
The footsteps stopped almost underneath my bedroom window. Something was wrong.
I wondered if anyone would hear me if I shouted out.
Alice would be downstairs somewhere, but she probably didn’t even know I was there.
Dad did, but he was locked up in his library with Kylie on the other side of the house.
Maybe I was being paranoid and it wasn’t Patrick at all.
It could be anyone. John the gardener. The milkman. A delivery man.
I inched off the bed, careful to make no sound, and crept to the window.
It was shut but the old metal windows had bloated, leaving gaps.
I didn’t dare move the curtain but I pressed my ear as close to the window as I could.
Whoever it was, was still there. Maybe it was Terry.
There was a flower bed beneath the window with Granny’s roses.
I had the scars from falling into them. He might be pruning them, readying the garden for winter.
‘Steph,’ a voice called quietly. ‘Steph, please don’t do this.’
My heart hammered in my chest. It had only been a few hours but already his voice sounded foreign.
‘Steph, I know you’re in there. No one closes the curtains in the middle of the morning.’
What a mistake. He was just a few metres below me. I could almost hear his breathing. I tripped over the rug running away from the window but righted myself and launched into bed, pulling the covers over my head.
‘Steph,’ he called a little louder. ‘You can’t take her away from me. Not after everything we’ve been through.’
I slowly lifted the covers, enough to peek out.
There was a strange scraping which I suddenly realised was the drainpipe.
He was on the drainpipe, climbing up, just as I’d used it to climb down.
But he couldn’t be. He was terrified of heights.
He always got someone else to do any roof work when we were doing surveillance. But the scraping was getting closer.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I shivered. Any minute now I would see his shadow at the window. I wanted to close the curtains on my four-poster. Surround myself with the fabric, curl up in the dark.
‘Can I help you?’ said a voice from outside the house, in a way that suggested no help would be forthcoming.
Alice. Thank God. She would know what to do.
She certainly wouldn’t let him in. The scraping stopped and there was a thump, the sound I always made when I landed in the flower bed. He’d jumped down.
‘I’m looking for Steph.’ He sounded almost polite.
‘We’re all looking for Steph,’ she said. ‘Mr and Mrs Wright especially. But why are you climbing up a drainpipe?’
‘She’s in there, inside that room, with my baby.’
‘What on earth are you on about?’
‘Steph has my baby and she’s here. Inside there.’
He sounded desperate and my heart twisted. Kylie was his baby too.
‘Steph is here?’
He must have nodded because there was a long silence. ‘I think I know who you are and I know you’re not wanted here.’