Chapter 20 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
The four women stand together outside the ice house in the woods staring at the moss-covered door.
Zoe takes the envelope marked Kai out of her pocket and removes the heavy key.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t check the ice house,’ she says.
‘I tried it everywhere but had completely forgotten this place.’ She hands it to Steph who looks at it for a long moment, weighing it in her hand.
‘After I’d told Mum what had happened that day, we went back to the bothy,’ she says, still looking at the key. ‘It was a twenty-minute drive and then a five-minute walk – that’s how close I’d been all those months.’ She looks up at Fiona and Sara.
‘I thought you were in town, you know. In a squat or something. I somehow felt you were close,’ says Fiona. ‘I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t find you.’
‘Mum said she’d walked near the place with Woody looking for me months before.
’ She takes a deep breath. ‘When we arrived, he was still there. Kai was still there. Tidied into the corner. Patrick had covered him with the baby blanket our friend Merry had crocheted.’ Steph puts her hands over her face, the key between them. Fiona rests her hand on Steph’s arm.
‘He was still perfect. It had been less than twenty-four hours but he was still perfect. Mum picked him up and cradled him, kissed him on the forehead.’ She swallows.
‘She was crying as she held him. We both were. She’d brought a bedsheet and a wicker basket, the one we had for picnics.
She said that if anyone asked, we could just say we were going for a picnic.
In November.’ She gives a strained laugh.
Steph puts her hand out on to the outer wall to support herself. ‘We walked back to the car like that and then she put him on the back seat.’ She sighs. ‘I wish I’d asked to hold him again, but I didn’t dare. I don’t know why.’
‘Where was I?’ asks Zoe. ‘Did you take me with you?’
Steph shakes her head. ‘You stayed at Highdown with Dad. It was still bitterly cold and Mum was worried that you’d spent enough time outside. I suppose she also didn’t want me being seen with you. But I didn’t think about that at the time.’
Fiona strokes her arm.
‘I can’t imagine what this must have been like for you, Steph. Just beyond awful.’ Sara is crying now, tears tracking down her cheeks.
Steph nods. ‘I think Mum had already decided on the ice house when I told her about Kai. I suppose it was an obvious choice. It was already a burial place.’
‘It was never locked then,’ says Fiona, glancing at the door.
‘I think she only locked it afterwards.’ Steph looks at the key again.
She looks up at the other three. ‘She dug the hole. She had brought a spade and a fork and I suppose she thought I would help, but I just couldn’t.
And really it didn’t need two people. It was such a tiny hole.
’ Steph puts her hand over her mouth and turns away from the door.
Zoe strokes Steph’s shoulder and Steph jumps under her touch. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says as she turns to face Zoe. ‘I know this is as much your grief as mine. It’s just all so fresh. It feels like it happened yesterday. I’ve never talked about this to anyone.’
‘No one?’ asks Fiona. ‘Did you and Mum not talk about it afterwards?’
‘No.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I tried to talk but Mum always said it was best not to mention it, to leave the past in the past.’ A sob gushes out of her closed mouth.
‘But it was impossible. He was buried here. You were in the house, but as my new baby sister. And then within the month I was at boarding school to resit my exams.’ Steph shifts the ice-house key from palm to palm.
‘Steph, that’s just barbaric. I can’t imagine what any of that was like.’ Sara wipes her eyes with her sleeve.
‘Mum said it was for my own good, as much as anything. That I’d be in trouble with the police otherwise. If we’d been living here, or anywhere indoors, Kai would have survived. It was because of us being outside that he died. It was my fault. He was never as strong as you.’ She shivered.
‘But you were just a child,’ says Fiona. ‘You couldn’t be blamed for that. How would the police have known about Kai anyway?’
‘She was worried about it, said someone would find out. She said by hiding Kai and then taking Zoe as her own, we’d all have a fresh start, a good life.
No questions would be asked and I wouldn’t get in trouble.
I think it was genuinely for both of us.
She wanted us both to have a good life and she felt this was the best way.
I was angry with her at the time, and devastated too.
But I can’t hold too much against her. She was from a different generation. ’
Zoe looks down at the key in Steph’s hand. ‘I have had a good life. But now I find out that it was all built on a lie.’
‘It wasn’t a lie, Zoe. Mum loved you as if you were her own.
It was so painful to see.’ Steph covers her mouth with her hand again.
‘When I came home for the holidays, you and her were such a little unit. You adored her. It was as if she’d made all her mistakes with me, relied too much on Fi – and that’s why you moved away and are so hyper-independent – improved with Sara – who’s a great mother herself as a result – and then perfected her mothering skills with you.
She wanted to be a great mother, and you gave her that chance. ’
‘I’d never thought about it like that, y’know. Until recently, I’d never thought about your lives with Mum and Dad before I arrived.’ How self-absorbed she’d been, thinking she was the centre of the universe.
‘I tried not to think about your lives after I left. It just hurt too much. But then I’d see you occasionally and think about what could have been. But it was too late then.’
‘Now I understand why you left,’ says Zoe, touching Steph’s hand.
‘After Mum buried him, she locked up the ice house. I suppose she didn’t want anything unearthing him. Or anyone finding out.’
‘So that’s why when Terry and June died, and then Tog, they were buried in the orchard and not here,’ says Fiona. ‘I wondered why Mum stopped burying the pets in the ice house, but then I’d always found it a bit creepy here, so I was glad in a way.’
They both stare at the door.
‘There are no pictures of you with me as a baby. Holding me. And I don’t remember you ever playing with me as a child.’ Zoe looks sideways at Steph.
Steph holds her face to the sky. ‘If Mum ever saw us together, she would intervene. She didn’t want me holding you, said it would confuse you and be too painful for me.
But actually having nothing to do with you, and then being sent away, was far more painful.
I came back here a lot,’ says Steph. ‘It felt like my only link to him – and to you. The only place that was a witness to the three of us. I would sit against the door wishing I could get in and lie on his grave.’
‘So you took the key after Zoe and I found it in the safe in Mum’s room?’ asks Sara.
Steph nods. ‘Yes, the next day. It was on the hall table. After all these years, I wanted to see Kai. I had the key for a few days, trying to build up the courage to come here. But when I eventually got here, I couldn’t bring myself to go in.’
‘That’s when I saw you crying in the woods that time,’ says Zoe.
‘Yes,’ says Steph. ‘I realised then that I wasn’t going to be able to do it, so I put the key back.’
Zoe shivers. ‘Shall we go in?’
Steph slips the key into the lock but it won’t turn. She rattles the key.
‘I can’t imagine Mum ever came here,’ says Zoe. ‘Here, let me try.’ She bends down and fiddles with the lock. ‘It’s rusted over.’
Steph takes out a can of WD40 from her bag. ‘I came prepared,’ she says and sprays it liberally over the lock.
Zoe coughs and covers her mouth.
Steph slips the key in again and, after an initial resistance, it opens. ‘I haven’t been in here for thirty-five years,’ she says, standing on the threshold.
‘You go first,’ says Zoe, the blood pulsing in her ears.
But Steph just stands in the doorway peering into the gloom. ‘I was sixteen when I was last inside here. You were three months old.’
Zoe stares at her. It’s difficult to breathe.
They wait there for several moments and Zoe wonders if Steph will be able to go on.
She glances at her, but Steph’s face is immobile.
She looks behind her at Fiona and Sara, who stand motionless.
Zoe takes Steph’s hand, which is cold despite the warmness of the day, and draws her inside.
‘It will be okay,’ she whispers. She needs to see whatever is here.
Steph stumbles after her, her breath catching.
Beyond the initial pool of light thrown through the door, it is as dark as night. Zoe flicks on her phone torch. Steph flinches.
They all tiptoe down the stone stairs, wet with grime and covered in moss.
The air is cool and dank. At each step the birdsong fades until it’s deathly silent.
‘They used to put straw and sawdust between the brick walls to keep it cool,’ says Sara, her palm flat against the brick to stop herself falling. ‘I’ve read about it.’
Zoe can feel the chill from the stone floor at the bottom through her trainers. The torch’s pool of light shrivels. She clutches Steph’s arm.
‘It’s okay,’ says Steph, leading her forward through a doorway. Zoe swings the torch above her head where the brick walls arch together. There’s a flicker of movement.
‘Bats,’ says Fiona.
They tiptoe onwards through another doorway. At the very back of that room, the stone floor ends and gives way to bare earth. There are wooden signs, the lettering unreadable, a dog bowl, the metal catch of a lead. Steph steps over them and then stops in front of an unmarked wooden cross.
She stands silently staring at it. ‘This is him. Your twin. Kai,’ she says eventually.
My twin, thinks Zoe. She kneels down and places her hand on the chilled earth.
How strange to think that another person she grew with for nine months inside this woman she’s always thought of as a sister, and then who she lived with for another three months, feeding and crying and sleeping together, now lies under this earth.
Years ago, she read that twins who didn’t grow up with their twin for whatever reason could feel the loss.
‘I never felt your absence,’ she whispers to herself, covering her face with her hands.
She spent all this time thinking that she was the daughter who looked at life differently, who really thought about the world, but in the end she was just as blind as everyone else, she thinks.
Zoe turns and Steph is standing behind her, motionless, her hand on her chest.
‘Can we give him a proper burial? A grave with his name on it?’ says Zoe. ‘It’s awful him being trapped here. So far away from all of us. So secret. Like a stain.’
‘Do you both want that?’ says Fiona. ‘There would have to be a police investigation, they’d talk to Patrick. The coroner would need to get involved. It would all come out about your parentage.’
Steph shivers and the light from the torch dances off the bricks.
Zoe realises she hasn’t thought about that. The very last thing she wants is people digging around, asking questions, potentially Steph being in trouble. ‘You’re right, we don’t want that. And Mum wouldn’t want that.’
‘I don’t think it’s actually down to Mum,’ says Fiona. ‘She’s gone now, the decision is down to both of you.’
‘It’s whatever you want,’ says Steph to Zoe. ‘He is your brother, your twin.’
‘Your son,’ says Zoe, taking her hand. Steph grips hers in response and they stand looking down at the cross in the unmarked earth.
‘My son. Kai. Kylie and Kai.’ She swallows.
‘Perhaps we could mark his grave with something more than a wooden cross. Have something made but not make it public,’ says Zoe. ‘Just so the four of us know.’
Steph nods. ‘And let’s get keys made for all of us, so we can come here whenever we want.’ She looks around. ‘I’d like to be able to do that. On his birthday and the anniversary of his death.’
Zoe lets go of Steph’s hand and instead they link arms. Steph takes a shaky breath and together they clamber out of the ice house, Fiona and Sara behind them.
‘You know you’re always welcome here,’ Zoe says to Steph. Then she looks at the others. ‘All of you. Highdown is your home.’
‘You said the other day that you had some ideas about its future,’ says Fiona, closing the ice-house door behind them and locking it.
Zoe nods. ‘Yes. I talked to Mum about it but she wasn’t keen.
Mum treated Highdown like it was a family home, because that’s all she’d ever known.
But things have changed. We don’t need a family home but we do want to keep Highdown.
’ She looks round at Fiona, Sara and Steph, all looking expectant, smiling at her.
‘I thought we could take out a mortgage against the house, enough to get it all done up, the barns and outhouses too, and then we could host weddings and big events here. People could stay in the rooms – there are twelve bedrooms when you count the old servants’ quarters – and we could do bed and breakfast. And then rent out the barns as self-catering.
I could run it from the oast house. I was going to move back in as soon as you all went home. ’
‘It’s a great idea,’ says Fiona. ‘I could do the marketing.’
‘From Singapore?’ says Zoe.
Fiona pauses. ‘I’ve been thinking about that.
I’m not sure I want to be there forever.
I’d like to come back soon, back home, and this could be the perfect thing to work on.
It would bring in enough of an income to maintain the place and help us.
Let’s look at some figures on the laptop when we get back. ’
‘Maybe this is something I could help with too, get my mind thinking about work things again,’ says Sara. ‘It would be fun to get the place back to how it was in Mum and Granny Evelyn’s day.’
‘I’d like to be part of it,’ says Steph. ‘I’m quite handy. I do all the building work at the shelter. And I’m only ten miles away.’
A warm feeling spreads out from Zoe’s chest. ‘It seems like it’s something we can all work on together, getting Highdown back to its former glory.
’ Perhaps they can be a proper family now.
Maybe Mum knew that this would happen, that the crisis of the will and the unearthing of the family secret would cause great hurt but in the end bring them closer together.
Zoe links arms with Steph again and together they turn and walk towards the house.