by Penny Jordan
And although she had known it was still far too early for anything like that yet, she could have sworn she felt a sensation within her, as though the baby had somersaulted with joy and relief at her decision.
It’s all right for you, she had told it silently. You will live, but Ben’s love for me will die.
After that initial surge of emotion, she had felt no euphoria, no relief, no sharp, clear awareness of having made the right decision, of having a burden removed from her shoulders; only a slow, pervading numbness… a distancing of herself from her decision and what it would mean to her life.
She hadn’t thought even as far ahead as what she was going to say to Ben…
‘Pregnant?’ Ben turned round and stared at her, his body stiff with shock—and rejection?
‘When… how long… what… ?’
‘Nearly twelve weeks,’ Zoe told him emotionlessly. ‘I won’t have an abortion, Ben,’ she added more firmly. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it… I’ve tried…’
‘What?’
She could hear the horror, the loathing almost, in his voice, and it was like the first scalpel incision in her heart, the pain so hard and tight that it cut off her breath and made her body jerk in reaction against its agony.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told him brokenly. ‘It’s no use trying to persuade me. I… there’s still time for you to find someone else to take over my role in the new business… I hate letting you down, Ben, but…’
Ben wasn’t listening to her disjointed words. He had stopped listening. His face stern and bleak, he demanded, ‘Why didn’t you say something—you tell me you’re three months pregnant with our child and you’ve said nothing… Why?’
Zoe shrugged tiredly. ‘What was the point? I already knew what you’d feel… what you’d say. You’ve always made it clear you didn’t want children.’
‘Neither of us did,’ Ben interrupted her sharply.
‘No,’ Zoe agreed. How could she explain to him what had happened to her? He couldn’t share her emotions or her inner conflict. He couldn’t feel, as she had done, the fiercely demanding tug of that new life and its claims upon her.
‘Zoe, you should have told me…’
She could hear the emotion in his voice. ‘I hadn’t planned for this to happen,’ she told him bleakly. ‘At first all I wanted to do was to stop what was happening… but I couldn’t. I’d never really thought about the emotional aspects of having an abortion. I’d only seen it in practical terms. I thought it would be easy… that we could just go back to being the way things were before. I didn’t want it to be like this, Ben,’ she told him, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at him for the first time. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you… to burden you. And anyway, I knew what you would say… and… and it had to be my decision…’
‘Your decision?’ Ben asked her in a hard voice. ‘Your decision about our child, our lives?’
Zoe focused on him, her body tensing. ‘I’m not changing my mind, Ben,’ she warned him. ‘You’re not going to force an abortion on me the way you wanted to on Sharon.’
For a moment they stared at one another, not lovers any more but antagonists, Zoe recognised achingly.
It was Ben who spoke first, his voice raw with anger, overloud in the confines of the small, cramped room. ‘You thought I would do that? That I would force that kind of decision on you…?’
‘You would have forced it on Sharon,’ Zoe reminded him.
‘Sharon is sixteen years old… a child still, carrying the child of an equally irresponsible boy, neither of them fit or ready to become parents… to give that child the love and security it deserved and needed.
‘They are children… we’re adults. Do you honestly think…?’ He took a deep breath. ‘Zoe, for God’s sake, I love you and, all right, I admit that having children, a child, isn’t something I’d wanted or planned; but your pregnancy, our child is a joint responsibility… something we should both have shared…’
‘It was for your sake that I didn’t tell you,’ Zoe repeated, but the look Ben was giving her said that he didn’t totally believe her. Her heart missed a small beat, but stubbornly she ignored its message.
‘I didn’t tell you because I love you…’ she insisted doggedly.
‘I love you as well, Zoe, but perhaps you don’t think my love is as strong as yours… perhaps you don’t think I’m as strong as you are… as capable of shouldering life’s burdens. I hadn’t realised you saw me as someone so pathetic and weak that I needed to be shielded from life’s harsh realities.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Have you told anyone else… your mother…?’
Zoe shook her head.
‘She’s going to get quite a surprise then when she discovers that she’s going to be a grandmother in six months’ time. So will my mother.’
Zoe gave him a wary, uncertain look, watching as he stood up and then leaned over the bed.
‘I can’t pretend that I wanted a child, Zoe… I’m not going to he about that. But now that you are pregnant…’ He gave a small, tired shrug. ‘It’s happened, and we’re both responsible. It doesn’t change my feelings for you… my commitment to you. I just wish…’ He gave her a brooding look. ‘I just wish that you’d trusted me enough to tell me about it, Zoe… that you’d felt you could rely on me to give you whatever support you needed, regardless of my own feelings.’
As he straightened up, Zoe recognised how much she had hurt him. A sharp quiver of pain went through her. Could she have damaged their relationship more by not telling him than by trying to protect him? She had seen the bitterness in his face when he had contrasted their love for one another, and the worst of it was that she hadn’t been able to deny what he was saying, to reassure him that she did believe in his strength and his ability to support her.
* * *
‘Zoe, darling, I know being pregnant isn’t always very easy or comfortable, but…’
As Zoe looked up at her mother, the reproach died from her voice and her expression changed. ‘What is it, Zoe, aren’t you feeling well?’
‘No, Ma, I’m fine,’ Zoe reassured her mother. She knew how tired and tense she looked and she knew why. It wasn’t so much the growing bulk of her baby that exhausted her, but the constant feelings of guilt and misery that tormented her.
Not once since she had announced her pregnancy had Ben done or said anything to indicate that he was angry or resentful about what had happened.
The strength and support she had ached and yearned for in the early weeks of her pregnancy, alternately railing against the fate which had decreed that she should conceive and Ben’s lack of awareness of what she was going through, were constantly in evidence now, and yet, instead of feeling relaxed and reassured, she found that her tension and anxiety had only increased.
Ben might say that he loved her, he might claim that, while he might never have deliberately wanted them to have a child, the fact that she had accidentally conceived changed everything—he might on the surface appear to have accepted things—but what was he really thinking… what was he feeling inwardly?
He might have been able to adjust to her pregnancy, but how would he feel once the baby was a reality? Would he reject it, hurt it with his lack of love for it? Would he reject her?
‘You and Ben don’t seem to get much time to spend together these days,’ she heard her mother saying quietly.
Zoe looked at her, a small frown touching her forehead.
‘I don’t want to interfere, darling, but you must be careful not to shut Ben out. I know how easy it is to get wrapped up in what’s happening to you, to become absorbed in it almost to the exclusion of everything else. I suppose that’s nature’s way of protecting its new life. I know you don’t mean to do so, but you do seem to be pushing Ben to one side a little bit.’
Zoe stood up irritably. ‘For heaven’s sake, Ma, stop lecturing me. The next thing you’ll be saying is that I should be grateful to Ben for standing by me. We…’
‘Zoe, I wasn’t going to say any such thing,’ her mother protested quietly. ‘I know how independent you are, but independence can sometimes be seen as a form of rejection. Don’t let yourself become so wrapped up in the baby that Ben begins to feel you don’t want or need him any more. I must go…’ Her mother got up too. ‘I’m meeting your father at Covent Garden at eight. He’s taking me out to dinner to celebrate my being about to begin my course.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Your poor father; I’m not sure which has been hardest for him to adjust to: the prospect of having a working wife, or the thought of becoming a grandfather. How are things with the hotel, by the way? You haven’t mentioned it for a while.’
Zoe gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t really know,’ she told Heather, but her voice suggested that she not only didn’t know but didn’t really care either. ‘Ben’s had more meetings with Clive and everything seems to be going ahead without any problems. I’ll have to have a word with Clive and see if we can’t arrange to have a small part of the garden fenced off for the baby…’ She was frowning again, fretting slightly at the prospect of her child having to spend its time shut in an airless suite of rooms. Babies, children, needed fresh clean air. They needed love and security, two parents who loved them, not one who did and one who did not. It was unfair of her mother to accuse her of neglecting Ben, she decided after she had gone. For one thing, her mother didn’t know all the facts; she didn’t know, for instance, how guilty Zoe herself felt about the way she had initially not just rejected her child, but almost actively hated it, selfishly resenting its existence, blaming it for something that was not, after all, its fault.
She would make it up to him or her, of course. Already she knew how fiercely she would love it. Already she felt intensely protective of it, ready to shield it from any sign that Ben might reject it.
She still loved Ben, of course, but things between them were not the same. How could they be? Along with the burden of guilt and remorse she carried for her initial rejection of her baby, she was miserably aware that, unlike her, Ben had not chosen parenthood freely; that she had made the decision for both of them.
It didn’t matter how often he told her that it was not anger he felt that she had not chosen to discuss her plans with him, but unhappiness because she had not trusted him enough to confide in him—and she sensed that, no matter how often she reiterated that she had wanted to protect him, he did not fully believe her—increasingly she was tense and irritable with him, anxiously watching for every small sign that he regretted his decision to stay with her… with them.
He might not say it, but inwardly she was sure that he blamed her for making the wrong decision; that he wished she had gone ahead with the termination.
Three nights ago, when he had not returned home until the early hours of the morning, having been gone since five the previous morning, she had accused him of wanting to avoid being with her, regretting his commitment to her.
‘Zoe, I’m working extra hours because we need the money,’ he had told her wearily. ‘When the baby comes…’
‘When the baby comes we’ll be in the hotel,’ she had snapped at him. ‘There’s no need to turn yourself into a martyr, you know, Ben,’ she had added bitingly.
‘No,’ he had agreed quietly. ‘One of us doing that is more than enough.’
He had apologised later when he’d found her crying in the bathroom, urging her not to get upset, but to think of the baby…
She had laughed then with half-hysterical bitterness, tempted to say what must be in both their minds: that from his point of view it would be a merciful release if something did go wrong and, like Sharon, she lost her child; but somehow she had bitten the words back, not for Ben’s sake, but for the baby’s, not wanting to tempt fate even in the smallest way.
Was it true that babies experienced some kind of awareness of their mother’s emotions while they were in the womb? Would hers know that initially she hadn’t wanted it?
It amazed and appalled her now that she could ever have felt like that. Looking back, it was like looking at another Zoe… another life.
She had changed, her mother had told her, and she had sounded as though she regretted that change, but Zoe didn’t. She had been too selfish… too light-hearted, too prone to skim the surface of life. Now she felt different.
Every day she exercised, gently, not for her sake but for the baby’s. Books, articles, features on pregnancy and childbirth absorbed her; she was determined only to eat and do those things which most benefited her child… she was determined to make it up to it for the irreparable harm she had so nearly done it.
Since their quarrel the other night, Ben had seemed to become very quiet and withdrawn, but stubbornly Zoe was refusing to respond to the way he was behaving. She had to put her baby first now. Ben was an adult… it was ridiculous of him to claim that he needed to work all these extra hours when they both knew that, once they were in the hotel, they would be much better off financially. Since they would be living in it, it shouldn’t be too difficult for her to combine her work with looking after the baby, although Ben would have to find someone else to front the restaurant, since she would not be able to leave the baby alone in the evenings.
She frowned, remembering an article she had been halfway through the previous evening before her mother had telephoned to ask if she could call round.
Irritably she started to hunt for the magazine. Her mother had amazed her with her casual approach to the baby’s arrival. Of course, if she hadn’t been so taken up with this new career of hers… No wonder her father was feeling a little bit left out and resentful—and her mother had the gall to accuse her of neglecting Ben!
She made a small sound of satisfaction as she saw the magazine under a pile of junk mail on top of the cupboard.
As she reached up for it, she dislodged the whole pile and had to kneel down on the floor to pick up the flood of papers.
Most of it was for throwing out anyway, she acknowledged, as she retrieved the magazine and then set about picking up everything else.
There was a letter in among the brochures, and she frowned as she realised it was from Clive.
Ben hadn’t said anything about his writing to them. She gave a tiny shrug and was just about to pick it up and put it back on the cupboard when something made her stop and read it.
She did so quickly, and then more slowly, the pins and needles in her legs ignored as the contents of the letter sank in.
They were not going to be able to go ahead with the hotel after all, Clive had written. The problems with the planning permission could not be overcome and, as he had explained to Ben at their last meeting, he was also having second thoughts about the wisdom of getting involved in such a costly enterprise when it was becoming increasingly obvious that many similar ventures were not succeeding.
Zoe sat back on her heels and stared blankly at the wall, a terrible surge of anger and fear engulfing her.
How dared Ben not tell her about this? There was not going to be any hotel… there was not going to be any secure income… any healthy country garden… there was not going to be any anything.
How dared Ben not tell her about this? How dared he simply push the letter to one side and ignore it?
* * *
It was gone two o’clock in the morning when he finally came home. He was working in a restaurant that specialised in entertaining parties and which consequently stayed open late. The tips were good, he had told her wearily when she had complained that he was working too late.
Zoe watched him walk into the bedroom, hardening her heart as she saw the weary way he moved, throwing off his jacket and running his hand through his hair; he looked older tonight, his shoulders hunched and rounded.
‘Zoe!’ She heard the tension in his voice when he realised that she was still awake.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Clive’s letter?’ she challenged him before he could say anything else.
A small grimace touched his mouth. �
�Dare I say it was because I wanted to protect you? Because I didn’t want you to worry… ? But no, of course, I’m not strong enough to do that, am I? I’m the weak, dependent one; you’re the strong decision-maker.’
As she heard the bitterness in his voice, Zoe flinched. He was never going to stop blaming her, was he? No matter what he might claim outwardly, inwardly he resented what she had done.
‘You don’t have to stay, you know,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I can manage without you.’
Even as she said the words, she knew suddenly and painfully how false they were. As he stared at her in the silence, she could feel the panic and fear building up inside her. She longed to reach out to him and to beg him to hold her, to wrap his arms around her and tell her that she was safe… that he loved her… that he would always love her and that nothing else mattered.
But it wasn’t love she could see in his eyes, it was anger, and she shrank back from it as he leaned across the bed and told her savagely, ‘Can you? Well, I’m damn sure that I can’t manage without you, and if that makes me weak and dependent, another burden for you to carry, then I’m sorry, but…’
He saw her face, saw the tears pouring down her cheeks and made a small fierce sound in his throat before reaching out for her and holding her.
‘Zoe, Zoe… what’s happening to us? I love you so much and I don’t want to lose you.’
As she clung to him, Zoe heard herself saying something she had once believed it would be impossible for her ever to say.
‘I’m afraid, Ben,’ she told him, shivering intensely. ‘I’m so afraid. What are we going to do… what will happen?’
She tensed as Ben started to kiss her. They had made love since she had told him about her pregnancy, but not with the abandonment and intensity she could sense in him now.
‘Don’t shut me out, Zoe,’ she could hear him telling her as he held her, smoothing his hands over her stomach, bringing her closer to him. ‘Don’t shut me out.’
Later, exhausted and serenely, almost snugly content, she lay in his arms, sleepily aware of the weight of his hand where it lay possessively against her stomach.