The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, once I feel that we’ve covered that subject, ‘what about you two? Tell me about your holiday.’

  ‘Oh, it’s been crazy,’ Jess tells me. ‘We’ve been all over the place, haven’t we?’ She glances at Jude then, and I see him send her a hint of a glare.

  ‘We have,’ he confirms.

  ‘Where did you go?’ I ask. ‘Your text said you were in Nice. Was it nice in Nice?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jude says, either missing or ignoring my admittedly lacklustre joke. ‘It was fine.’

  ‘It was really hot in the sun,’ Jessica tells me, sounding desperately like she’s trying to throw something positive into the mix. ‘Jude even got a bit sunburned.’ She turns to look at Jude and adds, ‘Though it’s pretty much faded now, thank God.’

  ‘I looked like a lobster,’ Jude tells me.

  ‘Not a problem I have to deal with,’ Jessica says. ‘We had a weird sudden downpour as well. It clouded over, bucketed it down, and then half an hour later it stopped.’

  ‘And where else?’ I ask. ‘You were going to Cornwall to start with, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, but we never made it there, did we?’ Jude says.

  ‘No,’ Jessica agrees. ‘No, we didn’t. Bristol was the closest we got.’

  Seeing that both Jude and Jessica have finished eating, I fork a final mouthful of mushroom chop suey into my mouth and push my plate to one side. I could probably eat more, but the truth is that I’m too eager to hear whatever’s coming next.

  ‘So, come on,’ I tell Jude. ‘Spill the beans.’

  Jude sends another complex glance in Jessica’s direction and she replies with a sort of you-might-as-well-get-it-over-with shrug. ‘I should go,’ she says, beginning to stand. ‘I should go and leave you two to it.’

  ‘Jess,’ Jude protests. ‘We talked about this in the car. I want—’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ Jessica says, interrupting him. ‘But I changed my mind. This really needs to be just you two. Trust me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll be just next door,’ Jessica says. ‘If you need me, I’ll come back. OK?’

  She then sloshes some wine into her almost empty glass and apologising, perhaps for having served herself or perhaps for leaving, she exits the kitchen, pulling the door firmly closed behind her. I glance at the closed door and feel nervous: we never really close any doors in this house. When I hear her close the lounge door as well, I start to feel quite scared.

  ‘What’s this about, Jude?’ I ask.

  He finishes filling our wineglasses and then chews his bottom lip for a moment before replying. ‘OK, so . . . it’s . . . Well, it’s Zoe, Mum,’ he says breathily. ‘It’s about Zoe.’

  ‘God, she’s dead, isn’t she?’ I say. ‘Is she dead?’

  But Jude is already shaking his head, cancelling out that particular terror before it even gets started. ‘No, she isn’t, Mum,’ he says. ‘She’s actually living in France.’

  I gasp and raise one hand to my mouth. ‘Then you’ve seen her?’ I whisper. ‘Is that it? Jesus!’

  My son nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says quietly. ‘Yeah, Jess and I tracked her down.’

  My vision is blurring as tears of relief well up. My heart’s in my throat, making it almost impossible to speak. ‘But that’s wonderful news, Jude,’ I croak. ‘Isn’t it?’ Something about his delivery tells me that there’s more. Something about his demeanour doesn’t fit with the sense of relief that I’m feeling.

  ‘I suppose so, yeah,’ he says, confirming my fears. He sips his wine and glances regretfully towards the lounge.

  I have so many questions I want to ask him. I want to know how Zoe is; I want to know exactly where she is, what she’s doing . . . There’s so much I don’t know that I don’t even know where to start.

  ‘She’s . . . I mean . . .’ I splutter. ‘She is OK, isn’t she?’ Because something tells me that she isn’t. Perhaps she’s ill, I think. Perhaps she has cancer, or HIV, or hepatitis or . . . Perhaps she’s having a baby and there’s something wrong with it. Maybe she’s on a feeding tube in a hospital in France.

  ‘Yeah, she’s fine,’ Jude says, blinking slowly and nodding. He clears his throat, and I brace myself for whatever’s coming next. ‘She’s living on a campsite,’ he says. ‘Well, in a mobile home, actually. A caravan park, I suppose you could call it.’

  So she’s broke, I think. That’s it. She needs money. She wants to come home. But that’s OK. That’s the least of my worries.

  ‘She’s working in Snackway,’ Jude adds, unexpectedly.

  ‘What, the sandwich place? Or . . .’

  ‘Yeah, a sandwich shop. In a science park.’

  ‘They have that in France, do they?’ I say. ‘Snackway?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Jude says.

  ‘OK,’ I say, starting to frown. My mind’s running out of scenarios here, so I need him to get on and tell me.

  ‘She’s learning French,’ Jude says. ‘Her, um, girlfriend is teaching her French.’

  ‘Her girlfriend,’ I repeat.

  Jude nods and bites his lip. He looks down at his dirty plate and starts fiddling with his fork.

  ‘She’s with a girl?’ I say. ‘Is that it?’

  Jude nods again.

  ‘Oh!’ I say. I hadn’t seen that one coming. ‘OK, but that’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, as long as she’s happy . . .’ Having a lesbian daughter may not be every parent’s ideal, I suppose, but I’m surprised to see Jude this upset about it. Because frankly, that she’s not ill, or in hospital, or dead, means that all I’m feeling here is a huge sense of relief.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ Jude says. ‘Nick, her girlfriend, seems nice enough.’

  I put my glass of wine down and run my palm across my eyes. I brush a tear from the corner of one eye with my middle finger. ‘You don’t seem thrilled about something, Jude,’ I say. ‘Did it not go well? Wasn’t she happy to see you? Because something’s wrong, isn’t it? And I wish you’d just tell me what it is. Because I’m struggling to make sense of all this, sweetheart.’

  Jude stares at his hands and continues to fiddle with his fork, pushing a lone grain of rice around the plate. The noise, though hardly deafening, is setting my nerves on edge and I have to fight the desire to rip it from his fingers.

  ‘Sorry, this is hard,’ he says, glancing briefly up at me.

  ‘What is, Jude?’ I ask. ‘I really don’t get it.’

  ‘It made me so angry when she told me,’ he says. ‘That’s why I’m a bit scared, I guess.’

  ‘You’re scared?’

  ‘Of how you’ll react.’

  I reach for my glass and take a hefty gulp of wine, then put it down and reach for my son’s wrist. ‘I won’t,’ I tell him. ‘Whatever it is, I promise I won’t get angry. You know not to be scared of me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jude says. ‘It’s just . . .’

  ‘It’s just what?’ I ask. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘It’s why she left,’ Jude says. ‘She told me why she left.’

  Despite my best intentions, I pull my hand back from his wrist and use it to cover my mouth instead. ‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty fucking upsetting,’ Jude says. ‘Sorry, but it is.’

  ‘Was it Scott?’ I ask. ‘God, it’s Scott, isn’t it?’

  But Jude is shaking his head.

  ‘It’s OK if it is,’ I tell him. ‘I mean, it’s obviously not OK. But it’s OK to tell me. I need to know anyway.’

  Jude shakes his head again. ‘It’s not Scott,’ he says. ‘Scott never did anything.’

  I gasp at this, a gasp of relief and shock combined. ‘So what, then?’ I ask, my brain struggling to think beyond the mantra of Scott didn’t do anything, Scott didn’t do anything, lovely, beautiful, sexy Scott, the love of my life, didn’t do anything. Of course he didn’t. How could he have done?

  ‘It’s, well . . . it was nothing, really, Mum. That’s the thing
. That’s what’s so hard about the whole thing.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I repeat.

  Jude shrugs. ‘She feels really ashamed about it, if that helps. I’m not sure that it does, really, but she kept saying it anyway. She kept saying how ashamed she felt.’

  ‘Ashamed about what, though?’ I say. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘She wanted you to split up with Scott. She thought that you’d get back with Dad.’

  I exhale slowly and close my eyes. I massage the bridge of my nose. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Jude says. ‘It’s a bit mad, that’s why. It doesn’t really make any sense.’

  ‘Then start again at the beginning,’ I say. ‘Tell me exactly what she said.’

  ‘She spoke to Jess first, and she told her that she was in love with Dad,’ Jude says, blushing as he speaks.

  ‘She was in love with him?’ I repeat. ‘Or she loved him?’

  ‘She was in love with him,’ Jude says. ‘Jess says it’s the Electra complex or something.’

  ‘The what complex?’

  ‘Electra. It’s the female version of the Oedipus thing or something. But you’d have to ask Jess about that. You know how shrinky she is.’

  ‘OK . . .’ I say, doubtfully.

  ‘But that’s what Zoe told her. That she was in love with Dad. She said she worshipped him, actually.’

  ‘Well, she was always a bit closer to your father, but that’s not unusual for a girl.’

  ‘And when he left, and she had to stay, she says it made her go into meltdown. She thought that you’d get back together, that’s the thing. And when Scott came along, she decided she needed to get rid of him.’

  ‘Get rid of him?’

  ‘That’s what she believed. She told Jess that she used to have daydreams about killing him. Poisoning him and stuff like that . . . Because she was convinced that, with Scott gone, you and Dad would get back together.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ I ask. ‘That everything she did was on purpose? That these were conscious decisions that she made?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of.’

  ‘But . . .’ I close my eyes again as I try to run a condensed version of events through my mind. Wasn’t it true that Zoe was always happier when Ian and I were getting along? Had she really been imagining that we were making up? And Scott, my lovely Scott: was he really nothing but an innocent bystander? And if that’s the case, how stupid was I to let him go?

  ‘And he kind of was keeping you two apart, in a way,’ Jude says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, struggling now to stay calm. ‘I was never going to get back with your father. That was never on the cards, and you know it.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jude says. ‘You know that. But Zoe, well, she believed that it could still happen. And Scott did stop you seeing Dad. You know how jealous he used to get. So none of us got to see Dad much and, in a way, it was because of Scott.’

  ‘Jesus, Jude,’ I say, now standing and crossing to the bay window. I look out at the darkened garden, then focus on my son’s reflection in the window instead. ‘But Scott . . . I mean, she let me think . . . she pretty much let me think that he’d done something terrible.’

  ‘She did,’ Jude says. ‘I told her that. I mean, she knew what you were worrying about, obviously. For what it’s worth, she said the idea came from that shrink you took her to see.’

  I spin on one heel now to face him. ‘What do you mean, it came from the shrink?’

  ‘Apparently, she asked Zoe questions about Scott. To find out if he’d been touching her up or whatever. Zoe said she hadn’t even thought of it until then.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And . . . I don’t know, Mum,’ Jude says. ‘I’m just trying to work out this shit myself.’

  I understand, from his defensive reply, that I’m sounding increasingly angry. I consciously attempt to soften my tone. ‘It’s not you, Jude,’ I tell him. ‘You know I’m not angry with you.’

  ‘I know,’ Jude says.

  ‘So the shrink gave her the idea that . . . that what exactly?’

  ‘That if she carried on blanking Scott, we’d all assume something terrible had happened. And then you’d dump him. She said she felt disgusted that anyone could even imagine something like that, but I suppose she saw it as useful, too. I mean, it’s true that she never actually said it out loud. She never accused him or anything.’

  ‘But she didn’t have to,’ I say. ‘God, she didn’t have to, did she? She just let us think it, and we did. But that’s so . . .’

  ‘Shitty?’ Jude offers.

  ‘It’s outrageous, is what it is.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. I was so angry when she told me. I was . . . speechless. I was literally speechless, Mum. I couldn’t say a word.’

  ‘So it was all so that Scott would go away?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Jude says. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that was all so that your dad and I would make up?’

  Jude nods.

  ‘Christ!’ I say.

  ‘I’m still trying to piece it all together,’ Jude says. ‘I mean, she had half a conversation with Jess and the other half with me. I was so angry I didn’t ask the right questions, really, so it’s a good job she spoke to Jess as well. But it’s a real cluster-fuck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m not keen on the term, but yes, I suppose that does describe it pretty well.’

  ‘Once Scott left, we did see more of Dad, too. So that made Zoe think she’d pulled it off, I suppose.’

  ‘Until he announced he was marrying Linda.’

  Jude nods sadly. ‘Just before her birthday . . . She told Jess that it blew a fuse, like, in her brain. She says that when he told her, she just lost it.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Well, I suppose it makes a kind of sense. I mean, it’s an insane kind of sense, but . . . That still doesn’t explain why she ran away from home, though.’

  ‘I think it was the shame,’ Jude says. ‘Once she knew he was marrying Linda, she saw what she’d done. She realised she’d split you and Scott up for no reason. She understood how stupid it all was. That’s when she got that you were never getting back with Dad. So she hated Dad then, and she hated Linda for taking him away. She hated everyone and felt too ashamed about Scott to look you in the eye, let alone join in a big double-family birthday dinner.’

  My legs are feeling weak, so I pull out the chair at the head of the table and sit, cupping my jaw with my hands. I stare into the middle distance for a moment, remembering Zoe’s fleeting regard. A few tears slide silently down my cheeks. I run the whole thing through my mind once again as I desperately try to piece it all together. Scott, I think again. My God, poor Scott.

  ‘She ran off with some delivery guy,’ Jude says. ‘Did you know that? She couldn’t stand the idea of her birthday bash, what with Dad and Linda and you and everyone being there. So she went off with some delivery guy who’d been chatting her up.’

  ‘Not that blond guy from QuickParcel?’ I ask. ‘The one with the spiky hair who was always flirting with her?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Jude says. ‘That’s what she said. She stayed with him in Macclesfield for a bit. But then she ended up moving all over the place. She was in Bristol for a bit with him. He was working as a van driver. He posted the postcards from all those weird places.’

  ‘So she wasn’t even there? All those places I went to try and find her, and she wasn’t even there?’

  Jude shakes his head.

  ‘And do we know why she never came back? I mean, if nothing had really happened, why stay away?’

  ‘Like I said,’ Jude tells me, ‘it’s just the shame of it all, I think. She told Jess she was so ashamed she wanted to kill herself, and I kind of believe her. She got into drugs, apparently.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  Jude nods. ‘To try to forget, I think. She lived in some real shit-holes, too.’

  ‘But the drugs,’ I ask, surprised
at the lurch my heart is still able to make at the thought of my daughter being in danger.

  ‘She says she’s clean,’ Jude says. ‘She was just getting into heroin when she met Nick, but Nick helped her get off it all.’

  ‘Heroin?!’ I exclaim, my heart in my mouth again.

  ‘Relax, Mum,’ Jude says. ‘She only dabbled, apparently. And she only ever smoked it. She never got as far as injecting, thank God. And she’s totally clean now, thanks to Nick.’

  ‘But heroin!’ I say. ‘Jesus, Jude!’

  ‘I know,’ Jude says.

  ‘And this Nick . . . So that’s Nicola, is it?’

  ‘Yeah. But she calls herself Nick. She’s quite . . . you know . . . blokey. But nice. She was really nice, actually.’

  I nod slowly. I try to reach for my wineglass – I need a drink. As it’s too far away, I stand and return to my original seat opposite Jude. ‘It’s just so crazy,’ I tell him, noticing that my hand is shaking as I raise my glass to my lips. ‘I can, you know, piece it all together, what you’re saying . . . But it doesn’t really make sense, because it’s mad. I mean, it is all just a bit insane, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jude says, with a shrug. ‘Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up.’

  ‘And Jess?’ I say. ‘She knows all this too?’

  ‘It was Jess who got her to talk the most, really,’ Jude says. ‘I was so pissed off I couldn’t really think straight.’

  ‘And what does Jess make of it all?’

  ‘Well, like I said, she’s got this whole theory about Electra and what-have-you. It’s something to do with Dad being absent at a really important time for Zoe. Jess thinks that mucked up her development or something, so she ended up sort of fixated on him and heartbroken when he left. But you’d have to talk to Jess about that. Freud and Jung and whatever, that’s more, you know, her thing than mine. Do you want me to go and get her?’

  I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jude asks. ‘Because I pretty much blew a gasket when she told me.’

  I’m tapping the table with one fingernail. I’m wiggling my foot beneath the chair. ‘I think I’m OK,’ I say.

  ‘The whole Electra thing—’ Jude starts.