‘Dullingham, please,’ I said to the driver as he held the door open for me.
‘The village or the station?’ he replied.
‘Aren’t they at the same place?’ I asked.
‘Oh no,’ he said with a smile. ‘That catches lots of people out. The station is almost a mile outside the village. I know it well. My in-laws live there.’
‘Well, I want Eagle Lane, number three.’
‘Right you are,’ he said, and off we went.
Number 3, Eagle Lane, was a small, neat, modern detached house that looked somewhat out of place, sitting as it did alongside a chocolate-box-pretty thatched cottage.
I rang the doorbell, hoping I’d been given the right address.
I had.
Yvonne Chadwick opened the front door in her bedroom slippers, and she instantly recognised me.
‘What do you want?’ she asked gruffly.
‘Is Tony in?’ I asked.
‘No. He’s riding out in town.’
I’d hoped he was. That’s why I’d chosen this time.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because it’s you I’ve come to see. I want to ask you some questions about Zoe.’
‘I’m not interested,’ she said, and she started to close the door again.
‘Don’t you want to know why your daughter died?’ I said quickly.
‘She died a long time ago.’
The door was almost shut and, short of putting my foot in it, I was almost out of options.
‘Why did Zoe have an abortion?’ I shouted through the last few inches.
The door stopped closing, and then opened a fraction.
‘Who told you?’ she demanded through the gap.
‘Then it’s true,’ I said. ‘You made your thirteen-year-old daughter have an abortion and yet you never reported the matter to the police. Why was that, Yvonne?’
She opened the door wide and looked nervously past me both sides to check that no one else was listening.
‘You’d better come in.’
I followed her down the hallway into the kitchen. Why was it always the kitchen?
‘I didn’t make Zoe have an abortion,’ Yvonne said. ‘She arranged it on her own.’
‘I find that difficult to believe.’
‘Well, it’s true. She skipped off school and went on her own to a clinic in Cambridge. And, it appears, they were under no obligation to tell either her parents or the police.’
‘But she was only a child herself.’
‘It doesn’t matter. The stupid law says that doctors don’t have to tell if a thirteen-year-old doesn’t want them to. And Zoe didn’t. Some guff or other to do with medical confidentiality.’
‘So how did you find out?’
‘She told me, but not till about a year later. We were having a huge row about something else and she just blurted it out. Of course, I didn’t believe her, but she had some paperwork hidden in her room. She showed me. As you can imagine, I was horrified.’
‘But who paid for it?’ I asked.
‘The taxpayer,’ Yvonne said. ‘Seems it was done on the NHS.’
‘Did you ask her who the father was?’
‘Of course I did, over and over again, but she wouldn’t say. She was furious with herself for revealing anything to me in the first place. She claimed that she never meant to tell anyone, ever. I expect the father was some bloody boy from school taking advantage of her.’
I looked at Yvonne closely and wondered if she really believed that, or she was just saying it for my benefit.
‘Why did you say that she died a long time ago?’ I asked.
‘Might as well have done. I grieved for her when she first went missing. Prepared myself over those dreadful weeks for her to be found raped, strangled and dumped naked in a hedge. Then, when they found her alive in London, she refused to see or even speak to me. So I just went on thinking of her as being dead. It was easier somehow.’
‘But you’ve seen her since?’
‘Only once. She came here about five years ago with that damn husband of hers. They brought their children with them too. But I think she only did it to make me feel bad. To goad me. That and to accuse me of having had her sectioned. I told her it wasn’t true but I don’t think she believed me. They didn’t even come in. They just drove off again.’
‘But you knew where to go last week,’ I said. ‘I saw you at their home.’
‘Tony got the address for me. From Oliver. So I went. I don’t know why. It wasn’t a good idea. I had to sleep on the sofa. He didn’t want me there and the children didn’t even know who I was.’
There were tears in her eyes.
‘But why did you tell Catherine Logan that the Chadwick men had killed Zoe from a very young age?’
‘Did I really say that?’ She said it in a most unconvincing manner.
‘You know you did.’
‘Just that it wasn’t easy for Zoe growing up with three highly competitive older brothers, plus a domineering father. Particularly as she didn’t like horses.’
There’s nothing wrong with that, I thought.
I waited for Yvonne to go on.
‘Ryan was eleven when Zoe was born, Declan was nine, and I think they were jealous of their baby sister.’
‘Jealous?’
‘She was the apple of my eye. I’d always wanted a daughter. Perhaps I spoilt her too much. And I wasn’t the older two’s real mother, something they’ve never let me forget. They always called me Yvonne, not Mum. They still do. It’s as if they somehow blame me for their own mother’s death, which is nonsense, of course. She died of cancer before I even met Oliver.’
‘So they transferred their resentment of you onto Zoe?’
‘Yes,’ she said with realisation, as if it was perhaps the first time she’d appreciated it in that way. ‘That is exactly what happened.’
‘How about Tony?’ I said. ‘Didn’t he stick up for his sister?’
‘I think he was influenced by his brothers. It was difficult for him.’
Another thunderflash time.
‘So when did you first realise that the boys were sexually abusing her?’
A look of shock came over Yvonne’s face, but it didn’t quite wash. There was something about her eyes that gave her away.
‘Sexual abuse?’ She spat out the words as if they were somehow unclean and contaminated. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘And Oliver was doing it too, wasn’t he?’
Now the shock did reach her eyes.
‘No, of course not.’
Perhaps that bit wasn’t true, or maybe she just didn’t know.
‘But Oliver definitely knew what was happening and kept quiet about it, which is almost as bad. And you did too. Why was that, Yvonne?’
‘It was our family,’ she said, almost crying.
‘And family always came first?’
‘Of course.’
‘How about Zoe?’ I said. ‘She was your family too and you betrayed her. What must she have thought when her parents did nothing to protect her?’
‘We didn’t do nothing,’ she said indignantly. ‘We spoke to them all.’
‘Was that before or after you found out about the abortion?’
‘Before. Long before. And Zoe was as much to blame as the boys. She would always be climbing into their beds. She’d done it ever since she was able to walk. She was simply trying to make them like her.’
Yet all they were doing was using and abusing her, taking advantage, and damaging her for life in the process.
‘Oh no,’ I said to Yvonne. ‘I’ll not let you absolve yourself of guilt by blaming the victim. You and Oliver were Zoe’s parents. You could and should have stopped it. And Ryan is eleven years older than her. He, at least, must have known that it was wrong.’
Yvonne was visibly upset and, at this point, our discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Tony, back from riding out. He came in through the front door, slamming it shut behind him with a bang.