Chapter 18 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
‘But as the years have gone by, I’ve realised I maybe did it for selfish reasons.
Dad and I had desperately wanted another baby.
I was pregnant when you left – I realise we were actually pregnant at the same time, which seems so odd.
But I lost that baby a while after you left and was very ill.
We were told that we couldn’t have any more.
Somehow when you turned up with a baby and saying you wanted a fresh start, I mistakenly saw Zoe as my second chance.
But now I realise that, with our support, you would have been able to raise Zoe as your own.
Our relationship was so difficult at the time and I couldn’t see past that.
With time, I’ve realised that much of that was my fault.
I just panicked so much about what was happening and didn’t know what was for the best.’
Steph’s voice breaks. Zoe wants to reach out to comfort her but hesitates at the thought of touching her.
Steph takes another sip of the cold tea and picks up the letter again.
‘I’m sorry for not being the mother I should have been to you.
I tried but I know I was often wrong and we ended up at cross-purposes.
I know now that if I’d behaved differently and tried to get more of a support network for you, you may not have run away but would have come to me when you found out you were pregnant and everything would have been very different.
‘I wonder if you will show this letter to Zoe. I hope so as it will mean that you will start to reconcile and can begin a new life together.
‘I have tried many times to write to Zoe, but there are no right words really. What I did to her was as wrong as what I did to you. I know I deliberately turned her against you by talking you down. I was scared that she’d recognise you for who you are and she’d leave me.
After you, Fiona and Sara had left, I was terrified of losing Zoe too.
Especially after Dad died. So it was easier to continue with the pretence, than face facts and tell her the truth.
‘I’m so very sorry to both of you. I hope more than anything that you can start to reconcile.
‘With love always,
‘Mum.’
Steph’s gaze raises from the letter to meet Zoe’s.
Is there a chance of reconciliation? her eyes seem to be asking.
Zoe swallows and turns to look out of the window at the kitchen garden.
This all feels too much, too soon. To hear from Mum from beyond the grave.
She wishes more than anything that Mum had left her a letter too.
There’s the sound of the door closing and when she turns back to look, Steph has gone. The letter settles on the table.
Steph
1990
‘Did you realise Mum was having a baby?’ asked Fiona. ‘She said that we’d get too excited if she told us beforehand, but it’s not that big news. I don’t get why she didn’t tell us that she was pregnant and then leave it until she had the baby.’
God, she’s stupid, how can she not see? But I just shook my head. When I told her I wanted it to be on my terms.
‘It’s so weird,’ Fiona said, pulling a face. ‘She’s so old for starters.’
I shrugged. ‘Forty-one.’
‘Ancient,’ said Fiona. I turned away so she couldn’t see my smile.
Fiona flopped down on to my bed. ‘I’d noticed that she was fatter but I didn’t think she was pregnant. Mrs Edmunds at school was huge for months before she had hers.’
I wanted her to know, I wanted her to keep asking questions. ‘Do you think it’s her baby?’
Fiona propped herself up on her elbows. ‘What do you mean?’
It’s my baby, I screamed at her in my head. Can’t you see?
‘Well, she could have got it from somewhere.’
‘Even Mum’s not that weird.’ She pushed her fringe out of her eyes. ‘I just didn’t think they’d still be doing it.’ She pulled a face again and stuck her tongue out. ‘Not at their age.’
From upstairs in the nursery, Kylie started to cry. Even though my milk had started to dry up, the sound made my breasts tingle. I crossed my arms.
‘She’s always crying too,’ said Fiona, sighing. ‘And Mum has no time for anything today. It’s all about the baby. Baby this, baby that. Thank God you’re back.’ She looked up at me. ‘Sara was so boring to play with.’
I smiled at her. I’ll tell her one day. Mum can’t stop me. I’ll tell them all. Fiona, Sara and Kylie. Kylie has a right to know who her mum and dad really are.
‘Mum said that you were sleeping on the street. Is that true?’ Her eyes were wide, like I was straight out of one of her adventure books.
I shook my head. ‘We stayed in Patrick’s squat for a bit and then moved to a little hut in the woods.’
Fiona tipped her head to one side. ‘How romantic.’
I think back to the ice on the inside of the windows in the morning, how it felt to be always some degree of cold. The ache in my belly that never seemed to be filled. ‘It wasn’t romantic, not really. Mum is a bitch but being at home is better than where I was.’
Fiona grinned at the word bitch. ‘I hate her,’ she said without feeling.
‘Me too.’ She’s trapped me here, taken my baby and left me with nothing. I’m warm and full but nothing else. ‘She’s a bitch,’ I said again, grinding my teeth against the word.
I lay down next to Fiona and we stared at the ceiling.
I wondered what Patrick was doing. Had they really charged him with endangering life?
That seemed so ridiculous. He wasn’t endangering anyone’s life.
What they did was murder. Killing innocent animals.
I wondered if I could find him, write to him.
I wanted to tell him what was happening, what Mum was doing to me.
Maybe he could escape and we could grab Kylie and run away again.
He’d talked about going up north. The ALF was growing up there too and needed new people. We could start again. The three of us.
‘D’you wanna game of Connect 4?’ asked Fiona, turned on her side, her eyes shining.
I nodded. Anything, anything to distract myself from Kylie. Hearing her, seeing her. It was a hunger, a need. I wanted to grab her and run. Whatever the consequences were for both of us. If only Patrick was here.
Fiona disappeared out of the room and then reappeared a minute later with both the Connect 4 box and Sara.
‘Sorry,’ Fiona said, shrugging. ‘She insisted.’
Sara jumped up and down on the bed. ‘We can come in your room again,’ she said.
‘Stop it,’ I said, but I didn’t mind, not really. They were the only good things about being home. That and Kylie seeming happier.
‘How about me and you against Steph?’ Fiona said to Sara. ‘She’s too good at this game.’
‘Why don’t we see if the baby wants to come and play with us too? It could be me and her against you two,’ I said.
Sara pulled a face. ‘The baby’s boring. She doesn’t do anything. I thought it’d be fun having a baby sister but she just lies there.’
‘She can roll over.’ She’d done it for the first time the day before we left, looking as surprised as I was to be staring up at the roof and not the blanket.
Fiona screwed up her face. ‘Not that useful a skill for Connect 4,’ she said, pulling the blue frame out of the box, pushing it down into the duvet and dividing up the yellow and red counters between us.
Upstairs Kylie started crying again, and thinking of her made me miss Fiona and Sara getting four in a row.
‘We win, we win,’ shouted Sara, jumping on the bed and turning the Connect 4 frame upside down.
Fiona laughed and I picked up the grid to reset it.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ Fiona said quietly, as Sara whirled around the room shouting.
My face started to wobble and I swallowed back the tears. Despite it all, I was glad to be back too. It was better that Kylie was safe and well, than spending the winter in that hut. I leaned forward and hugged Fiona.
I didn’t think I heard her right the first time. It was only when she said it again that I caught it properly.
‘What did you call her?’ I asked, watching the steaming water fill Kylie’s bottles. Mum paused for a moment and put the kettle down.
‘Baby Zoe,’ she said, as she reached towards Kylie in the bouncy chair. ‘Didn’t I, baby?’ she said in that irritating sing-song voice. An image of me punching her flashed across my mind and I was on my feet. But she’d got Kylie in her arms then, bobbing her up and down.
‘Her name’s Kylie,’ I said, a sickness boiling in my stomach.
‘I know that’s what you called her first,’ said Mum, using the baby voice. ‘But Dad and I have talked about it and we just don’t think it’s a good fit.’
‘A good fit?’ I echoed. What the hell did she mean?
‘People are going to think it’s really odd that we’d name our child after an Australian pop singer. Stephanie, Fiona, Sara and Kylie just sounds strange. Wrong somehow. We thought Zoe would be a better option.’
The sickness spurted up into my throat and I gagged, swallowing it back down. ‘You can’t change her name,’ I said. ‘That’s what we called her. That’s her name!’
‘I think it’s for the best, Steph.’ Mum rested her hand on my shoulder.
‘It’s best for you too. It’ll give you some sort of mental separation from the baby you gave birth to.
’ Her voice was odd, strained somehow. But her face was the same as always.
Rigid. She seemed a different person to the one who’d opened the back door to me yesterday.
I was on my feet again before I realised it.
It was like watching a film as I caught the underside of the empty bouncy chair and flipped it across the room, smashing into the fireplace, the poker and tongs clattering on to the hearth.
A brown streak fled out of the door. Terry.
Kylie’s screams added to the chaos, and my heart twisted at her voice, but there was a stillness in the centre of the noise.
I stopped running when I reached my bedroom and I threw myself on the bed, the thumping of my heart filling my ears.
‘Steph?’ She’d sent for backup. Dad’s head appeared around the door, disembodied. I couldn’t look at him.