Lorna Felt and Toby Felt's stepmother-step-son relationship

Lorna Felt and Toby Felt’s stepmother-step-son relationship is marked by Lorna’s suspicion that Toby hates her and by the lack of any direct exchange between them in the scenes that establish that suspicion. The relationship is therefore presented less as an openly stated feud than as an uneasy domestic bond filtered through Lorna’s anxious attempts to find evidence of rejection.

Identity and Household Context

Toby is Lorna’s stepson, and the family connection shapes an intimate but strained household context. In a morning scene, Lorna lies beside Mark Felt, who gets up and leaves the bed; afterward, she considers making an appointment with Peter Radley and wonders whether she can ask her neighbor a question that has been on her mind since the previous year’s barbecue. Her attention is divided between tensions within her household and an attraction to someone outside it, but the passage gives no indication that Toby knows about or responds to that attraction.

The same scene makes clear that Lorna experiences her relationship with Toby as a problem Mark does not help her address. She wonders why Mark has never supported her in anything concerning Toby and why he cannot see how much she believes the boy despises her. The phrasing locates the hostility in Lorna’s perception: the passage establishes her conviction and her sense of being unsupported, not Toby’s own account of their relationship.

Suspicion and the Telephone Call

Lorna’s response to this uncertainty is to listen in. When the bedroom telephone rings, she hears Toby’s voice and remains on the line without speaking. The narration notes that this is something she has done before while scouting for evidence of her stepson’s hatred. Her repeated surveillance suggests that the relationship is not settled by an explicit confrontation; instead, Lorna looks for indirect signs and interprets the household through the question of whether Toby rejects her.

The call itself offers little confirmation. Toby asks Mrs. Harper whether Stuart is there, and the voice is described as almost unrecognizably polite. Mrs. Harper then calls for Stuart and explains that Toby is on the phone, but no sound from Stuart is heard. Toby’s courteous manner is directed toward Mrs. Harper, not Lorna, so it cannot establish how he feels about his stepmother. The episode instead sharpens the distinction between Lorna’s expectation of hostility and the limited facts available to her: she listens for evidence about herself, but overhears an exchange that does not address her.

Unequal Perspectives

The relationship is presented from Lorna’s side, and that restricted perspective matters. Her suspicion is strong enough to shape her behavior: she has listened before, listens again, and searches for proof of a dislike she already believes is present. Yet the telephone scene does not disclose Toby’s thoughts, nor does it show him behaving cruelly toward her. The account therefore preserves uncertainty rather than turning Lorna’s interpretation into an objective verdict on Toby.

That uncertainty also leaves the relationship without an evident avenue of repair in the cited scenes. Lorna questions Mark’s failure to support her, but the passage does not show her raising her concerns with Toby or Mark. Instead, private observation takes the place of conversation. The result is a relationship defined by suspicion and incomplete knowledge: Lorna feels targeted by her stepson, while the reader sees her searching for confirmation without receiving a direct answer from him.

Narrative Significance

The telephone episode makes domestic estrangement visible through an ordinary act of listening. A call intended for Stuart Harper becomes, for Lorna, an opportunity to gather evidence about Toby; its polite opening frustrates rather than satisfies that purpose. The scene does not disprove her sense of rejection, but it does keep that sense distinct from what the reader can verify.

The relationship’s importance in these passages lies in this gap between conviction and proof. Lorna’s belief that Toby despises her affects how she attends to him, while Mark’s perceived lack of support deepens her feeling of isolation within the family. Toby, meanwhile, remains largely outside her interpretation, represented by a brief voice on the telephone rather than by an explanation of his own. The stepmother-step-son bond is thus portrayed as strained, but deliberately unresolved in the available scenes.