Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

This ‘blowing hot and cold’, as Ed called it, characterised her mother’s approach to many things, including religion. Ostensibly espousing a dogged, left-wing atheism, Ellie periodically dragged her children off to the Orthodox church in Moscow Road. She and Ed had married there in 1958 and they’d baptised both babies there as well. Daphne remembered various occasions standing under the gilded dome, yawning her way through Easter midnight Mass, standing for an eternity and clutching her decorated candle in a sea of small flames. One year, Ralph had been there with Nina and a baby or two. In the chaos that ensued after midnight struck, when everyone was kissing and greeting friends (‘Christ is risen’, ‘Truly he is risen’), they’d escaped into some sort of vestry and snogged. Outside, firecrackers exploded like warfare.

By the time she picked up Libby and Paige from the party, Daphne felt overheated with anger. It was like an allergic reaction that spiked when she thought of Ralph, of the casual carelessness of her parents and of her own gullible stupidity. The girls stumbled along the pavement, collapsed into the back seat of the car and hardly greeted Daphne. They were evidently drunk.

‘Yeah, fine,’ answered Libby to her mother’s question of how it went. There was a love bite on Paige’s neck. Daphne felt helpless and furious. What could she do? What do mothers do? There was certainly no role model.

‘You sound as though you’ve had a drink or two.’ It came out sullen and stupid. Should she roar and rant? She couldn’t do that to Libby, especially in front of her new friend. She had done far worse at their age.

Back home, her body was rigid with unabated fury and, above all, fear.

‘You need to drink lots of water now or you’ll be ill.’ She made the girls down two large glasses each and, when Paige went to the bathroom, she spoke to Libby. ‘I’m not happy about this. You must be careful, my lovely.’ She hoped to draw her daughter in close, impart some motherly words of wisdom, show her there was no need to hurry with these new experiences. There was so much time ahead.

‘Yeah, Mum. I’ll be careful.’ It sounded patronising. ‘Night, then.’ Libby turned to leave, wiping her face and smearing a streak of black mascara across a pale cheek.

After the girls were in bed, Daphne returned to her sewing. She held a small figure of Ralph, wondering how he fitted into the scene this time around. She no longer thought of him as a romantic, floating character in the sky, and she began to wonder about the real, living Ralph. How did he see their story now? Did he harbour any doubts at all or was he as sure as he’d been in 1976, when he’d committed adultery and child abuse simultaneously? She had never formulated that thought before and it had a satisfying cut to it, like a knife. Had it ever crossed his mind? Perhaps she should ask him.

Locating some black rubbery material – scraps of fetish clothing – she snipped out a tiny mask, attaching it so it covered much of the Ralph doll’s face. A bit voodoo, she thought with satisfaction.

‘Jane! Jane? Aren’t you coming?’ Michael’s voice had a mix of concern and annoyance as he returned to the kitchen. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I’ve been calling you for ages. We ought to go now if we’re going to miss the traffic.’ Having finished the washing-up, she was standing at the sink, staring out of the window at the weak sun that had just broken through the morning mist.

‘Sorry, my love. I was a million miles away.’ Probably more like two thousand, if she was honest – somewhere in Greece, where Daphne had been, supposedly working, for the last few weeks. This gap in proceedings had been difficult. It had the blank, empty summer feel she had hated as a girl, when she waited in Wimbledon for her friend to return from the Mediterranean.

This summer, it was waiting in Wandsworth, with brief flurries of commotion each time Toby returned from a festival where his university troupe was performing. The previous week, he had arrived home happily exhausted and unwashed, his head shaved and a sparse auburn beard sprouting from his youthful chin. He had four actor friends with him and the two girls took over Josh’s old room, while the boys spread out rolls and sleeping bags on Toby’s floor. They spent most of the days asleep, emerging in the late afternoon, and Jane had enjoyed coming home from work and cooking suppers for the students, before they went out for the night. Crowding round the kitchen table they put away platefuls of food and quoted lines from their comedy show that had them laughing so much the girls said they would pee themselves and the boys lay cackling on the floor. She was pleased to see Toby happy and doing something he enjoyed, but she had to admit that even having her youngest son home didn’t prevent her thoughts being dominated by Daphne and Ralph.

‘OK, time to go,’ Michael said. ‘Car’s all packed. Got the coffee?’ She held up a basket with a Thermos, some sandwiches and a few apples. Was she turning into her mother, she wondered, remembering the family’s long drives down to Cornwall, the sodden beaches, her summer-holiday impatience to see Daphne again. She and Michael were heading in the opposite direction: a few days in the Lake District and then on to Edinburgh to see Toby’s troupe perform at the Fringe.

It rained every day in the Lakes and, while Michael insisted on swathing himself in waterproofs and heading for the highest points, Jane mostly stayed indoors. Whenever he returned triumphant and soaked, she pretended she’d been reading. In fact, she’d spent most of the time on the Internet, churning up the bottomless pit of information about children whose lives had been trashed by sexual predators. Uncles with cameras, stepfathers with friends who paid, neighbours watching and waiting, deep-web promises of overwhelming horrors… an apparently endless supply of marauders looting and plundering youth.

Toby’s Edinburgh show was on at an inauspicious 11 a.m. in a tent that smelled of damp and the previous evening’s beer spills, but the space was filled with cheering young people Jane presumed were university friends. The play was a satire about transgender aliens and, by the end of it, she felt old and crabbed from not understanding all the jokes and straining to smile as the audience roared and guffawed around her. Afterwards, she and Michael hugged Toby and congratulated him and his friends but, in truth, the best part of her day was getting an email from Daphne that afternoon. It contained a photograph of a vast, ancient-looking olive tree, golden-leafed in low sunlight, and a brief message:

Leaving poor old Hellas tomorrow. Can’t wait to see you. Can you come over on Saturday? Lots of love, D.

Daphne welcomed her into the flat like a long-lost friend. At first, Jane suspected her of overstating the affection – exaggeration had always been a Greenslay trait – but it became clear she was genuine.

‘Here, I brought you something from Greece.’ Daphne handed over a small box tied with a bow. ‘I’ve been thinking about you. I missed you.’

Jane removed the lid to reveal a pair of earrings made from two small pebbles, their matt-grey surfaces crossed with slivers of gold.

‘They’re beautiful. So unusual.’

‘A friend of mine makes them. Finds little stones on the beach and treats them like jewels. It’s like walking around with a bit of Aegean seaside hanging from your ears.’

Jane walked over to a mirror and tried them on.

‘I love them. Thank you so much. That’s far too generous.’

‘They look perfect.’

They did look perfect, but they reminded Jane of the treasure she had once stolen from Daphne. The smooth oval lozenge of amber had been a present from Ralph, and it contained a leggy caddis fly suspended within its golden interior. As an eleven- or twelve-year-old, Daphne had been fascinated by the translucent fossil, which she kept on her bedside table. She showed Jane how to hold it up to the light to examine the perfectly preserved veins on the fly’s fifty-million-year-old wings. The miracle of the prehistoric insect had made Jane jealous. It symbolised the unusual, enviable bond between her friend and this adoring man. She wanted to be given strange and precious gifts that hinted at unknowable places and infinite love. One day, on a visit to Barnabas Road, Jane had noticed that the walnut-sized piece of amber was missing from its usual place and, when she spotted it underneath Daphne’s bed, she said nothing. On her subsequent visit, it was still there, collecting dust, and Jane pocketed it. Daphne only mentioned its absence once and Jane feigned ignorance. The weighty burden of guilt was balanced by the rapture inspired by the creature trapped for eternity in its petrified resin.