Chapter 16 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
After Steph finishes speaking, there’s a long silence.
Zoe wants to talk to Mum about it, ask her if it’s true. To hear her mother laugh at Steph’s fanciful idea and draw her into a hug. Stroke her forehead and tell her what a fantasist Steph is. Of course Mum is her mother. How could she not be?
The tears are hot against her cheek. ‘Why didn’t Mum tell me?’ she sobs. ‘She would have known it would come out after she died. It seems so cruel that she left it to you.’ She glances up at Steph, who catches her eye and then quickly looks down at the table.
So is this what Mum was on about? The thing that would come out after her death that Zoe wouldn’t like?
Wouldn’t like. She thought it was not having a share of Highdown Hall.
Not a seismic shift in who she is. What she is.
She’s no longer her parents’ daughter. She can barely hold her head up, she feels so weak. Can it really be true?
‘I wonder if she had blocked it out, denied it to herself,’ says Sara, sliding another tissue across to Zoe.
‘She had plenty of opportunity to tell me,’ says Zoe, blowing her nose and then sniffing again. ‘She just chickened out.’
‘Maybe she didn’t have the words,’ says Alice gently. ‘She held that secret for a long time.’
‘You knew from the beginning, didn’t you?’ says Steph to Alice. ‘From that morning, when he . . .’
Alice nods and glances sideways at Zoe. She takes a deep breath. ‘Your mother was pregnant again when you ran away – I found the pregnancy test in the bathroom bin.’
All four women gasp in unison, their eyes on Alice.
‘But she was hospitalised months later and had a stillbirth. Another girl.’ Alice’s voice breaks. ‘I came and stayed here for a few days to look after Fiona and Sara.’ She lifts up the teapot, glances at the mugs and tops up her and Steph’s mugs.
‘I remember that,’ says Fiona. ‘When Mum had her appendix out.’
Alice looks at her and shakes her head. ‘And then a few months later, you returned home, Steph, and then the next day Milly told everyone she’d gone into labour overnight and here was a baby.
It just wasn’t possible.’ Alice took a sip of tea and looked at Steph.
‘The baby was small but it definitely wasn’t a newborn.
I’ve had three babies, I know what newborns look like.
But your mum had put on weight over the past year or so, so perhaps other people believed her. ’
She sighs. ‘And you were in such a state, you poor lamb. I knew it was more than what you’d been through when you’d been away. Your parents then deliberately kept you away from Zoe.’
‘Did Mum ever talk to you about it?’ asks Steph.
Alice shakes her head.
‘And you never said anything, to anyone else?’ says Zoe.
Alice presses her lips together. ‘It wasn’t my story to tell. And I’d worked for your parents for a long time.’
‘I remember you talking about Patrick, when you used to creep into my bed at night,’ says Fiona.
‘At the beginning you’d talked how much you admired what he was doing, how much he cared for the animals and how brave he was, risking arrest to free caged rabbits and monkeys and stuff like that.
’ Fiona stares out of the window. ‘But I noticed how your face changed when you talked about him, how you were slightly breathless, excited. And then a few months later you told me you’d kissed.
’ Fiona laughs. ‘I remember being so shocked. My sister, my big sister, had kissed a boy. So it was Patrick.’
‘Patrick,’ says Zoe, tasting the name in her mouth.
Nobody says anything for a long time.
‘I think I’m going to cancel my flight,’ says Fiona eventually. ‘I can go another day.’
Sara nods. ‘Yeah, me too. Let’s all stay here tonight, then decide what to do later. It feels like we need to let this rest a bit.’
‘I think I might go upstairs now.’ Zoe stands and the four women look at her, a mixture of pity and worry clear on their faces.
Steph half stands but Zoe shakes her head at her. ‘Not now,’ she says, and turns to the door.
Back in her bedroom, she lies down on the bed.
When she got up this morning, she thought she knew what was coming – saying goodbye to her three sisters, not certain when she’d see any of them again.
She had not even the tiniest inkling that a few hours later it would be revealed that everything she knew about herself and who she was isn’t true.
Her mother tried to warn her, she realises that now. After more than three decades of keeping it a secret, she wanted to tell her. Was it because she knew that Zoe would probably find out anyway? Or was the heaviness of the secret weighing on her all this time?
Mum had tried to bring it up a little over a month before she died. Maybe she knew that she was fading and that this would be one of the last times she’d be able to have a proper conversation. Have the energy and the brain power to structure a sentence and listen to the reply.
‘It’s difficult to understand other people’s lives, isn’t it?’ she’d started, gripping Zoe’s hand between her two hands. ‘When I’m gone there will be things that will be said, that will happen, that you won’t like.’
‘What do you mean, Mum?’ said Zoe, leaning forward over the bed and squeezing her mum’s hand in return.
‘I made decisions when I was younger, that I thought were for the best. For everyone. But looking back all these years later, maybe they weren’t.’ She tailed off and stared into space, her eyes glassy with cataracts.
‘Oh, Mum, it’s natural when you’re coming towards the end of your life.
’ She swallowed. The nurse had said that she should be honest with her mother, but her tongue stumbled against the cruel words.
‘To . . . to look back and think of the things you did well, and the things you could have done better. But you’ve had a good life.
You’ve been a wonderful mum to us four.’
The hand gripped hers tighter. More strength than her mother had shown for many months. ‘That’s just it. I haven’t always been. I made decisions that I thought were for the best, that I did for the best of reasons. But looking back now, I think I was wrong. And it’s now too late to put right.’
‘Don’t be daft, Mum. We’ve all turned out all right. Well, all but Steph, maybe.’
Her mum winced and Zoe laughed. ‘But that’s not your fault. Steph’s just a strange one, that’s all.’
‘Things may come out after I die that you don’t like. That hurt you. And I’m terribly sorry for that. I’ve always loved you very much.’ Her mum sighed and closed her eyes, the grip on Zoe’s hand releasing. ‘You were the best thing that happened to me and Dad.’
Now Zoe thought it had been unkind of her not to tell her then, when she had the chance.
To leave it to Steph to be forced to reveal it now, when they were all grieving, seemed an added cruelty.
Poor Steph. Her mother should have had the courage to tell her herself.
Having been so close to her, having looked after her for months and months.
Now it feels that Mum was just a complete stranger who she happened to know very well.
Her grief has been turned upside down. She’s not grieving for her mother, but her grandmother.
That suddenly seems less important, like her grief has been taken away from her.
Reduced in value. Now she’s also grieving for the relationship she hasn’t had with Steph, her true mother, though that doesn’t feel real either.
The worst is that Zoe can’t now ask Mum questions about it.
She can’t find out why she took her on as her child, how she felt about it.
Her mind flicks back to what Mrs Phillips said at the fete.
Happy accident. But Zoe wasn’t a happy accident that her parents had later in life.
She was a granddaughter they took on from their eldest child.
To replace their own much-wanted baby. The other Zoe.
Why did they keep it quiet though? Zoe thinks. It was 1990. Not 1950. Being an unmarried mother wasn’t such a stigma then. They could have helped Steph out, and told Zoe who her real mother was when the time was right.
There’s a quiet knock on the door. Zoe turns her head, her gaze catching on the mysterious key which she left on the mantelpiece. She could stay silent and they might think she’s asleep. Or gone somewhere. The knock comes again.
Who does she want it to be? Bossy Fiona? Caring Sara? Or Steph. Her weird older sister. Distant. Reclusive. All but estranged from the family. And all along her mother.
‘Zoe?’ The voice is so familiar, and yet a stranger’s.
Steph
1990
My breasts had never felt so full. Kylie couldn’t believe her luck. After three months of struggling to satisfy her, somehow there was more milk than even she could handle.
Mum sat on the side of the bed, stroking my hair. ‘She’s a good feeder, isn’t she? Just like you were. You never turned down anything. Well, until you became a vegetarian, of course.’ She laughed lightly but with less malice than she would have before. ‘How are you feeling?’
I nodded. ‘Better. I’m still so tired though. Like my bones feel tired. Like more sleep will never be enough.’
‘Oh, darling, you’ve been through the most horrendous trauma.
It’s going to take you time to recover. But you’re home, and we’re here to support you through it.
You don’t have to worry about Patrick coming back.
I spoke to the police and he’s not going to be let out on bail. He’ll be on remand until trial.’
I rubbed my eyes. Poor, poor Patrick. It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. It was all mine. A chain of events that I’d started. If only I’d remembered the phone number properly. I took a deep breath, trying to force down the panic.
I leaned my head against her and she half-cuddled me as Kylie continued to feed.
‘Can I see Fi and Sara?’