Ten minutes later, after she had replaced the receiver, a wave of nausea struck her.
When she emerged from the bathroom, her stomach empty and her head dizzy and light, she leaned against the wall, closing her eyes.
Of course she was doing the right thing. Of course there was no real choice… even less now than before, if Ben actually was made redundant and they had to live on her salary.
Of course there was no question of her getting all sentimental and silly about a baby she had never planned or wanted to conceive in the first place, but that did not stop the hot salt trickle of tears piercing the barrier of her tightly locked eyelids, nor the dull ache of loneliness and sorrow welling up past all the positive and determined thoughts she was trying to focus her mind on.
She wouldn’t be feeling like this if Ben were here with her because she wouldn’t be able to wallow in self-pity and self-indulgence, or dwell on things. She would have been far too busy worrying about Ben and making sure he didn’t guess what had happened.
But Ben wasn’t here. Ben was in Manchester. Ben was with his pregnant, dependent sister.
What she needed right now was some company, she told herself firmly. First thing in the morning she would ring the clinic and make the necessary appointment and arrangements, but now… She would drive over and see her mother, she decided. That would take her mind off things.
She was not a child, she did not need Ben with her to hold her hand and give her reassurance and comfort. She knew, after all, what had to be done. There was no choice to be made, only a simply logical sequence of events to be followed.
No choice… She shivered as she let herself out of the flat. Was that what was disturbing her so much, making her feel so uncharacteristically full of nebulous, difficult-to-understand emotions and needs? The fact that she had no choice?
The sight of her father’s car parked in the drive of her parents’ house lifted her spirits and, on impulse, instead of knocking on the door as she normally did, she decided to do as her mother was always urging her to do and use her key, give them both a surprise.
As she unlocked the door she was smiling, for the first time since she had realised she was pregnant, but then her smile disappeared, to be replaced by a cold chill of shock as she walked into the hall, her arrival masked by the sound of her parents’ angry raised voices.
They were quarrelling! But her parents never quarrelled. Never!
Through the half-open kitchen door she heard her mother saying bitterly, ‘Don’t you understand… I want to work, to do something with my life other than sit around here waiting for you to come home? After all, it isn’t something you do very often these days, is it?’
Zoe heard the sound of a chair scraping back over the tiled kitchen floor and then her father’s voice, unfamiliarly sharp and edged.
‘You, work? Don’t make me laugh. What would you do? You don’t have any qualifications…’
‘And whose fault is that? Who was the one who always insisted that you needed and wanted me here? You complain now that I’m too dependent on you, that you don’t have time to run the business and to entertain me, but you were the one who always insisted that you wanted me here at home. At home…’ Zoe heard her mother laugh acidly. ‘This place isn’t a home any more. It hasn’t been since Zoe left and we both know it. She’s the only thing that really held us together. Oh, I’ve gone along with the pretence, made sure the rest of the world believed we were happy…’
‘We were happy, dammit. We are…’
‘You may be, but I’m not. I need something much more in my life than a husband who complains he’s too tired and too busy to spend any time with me. Who says he’s too tired to make love to me, who lies about where he is and with whom…’
As Zoe stiffened in disbelief she heard her father slam his hand down on the table and protest, ‘Look, I’ve already told you that was a mistake. I was there, the receptionist had changed shifts and…’
‘It’s always the idiotic wife who’s the last to know about these things, isn’t it? The classic situation… The affair…’
‘I am not having an affair.’
‘Whether you are or not doesn’t make any difference. Not to my plans. I still intend to go ahead with this training programme. I need to do it; I need to feel that I’m of value to someone. Even if I’m no longer of any value to you.’
Quietly Zoe turned round and slowly reopened the front door, letting herself out, her movements jerky and filled with tension as she hurried back to her car.
Her parents, quarrelling. Her parents betraying a side to their relationship, their marriage she had never ever dreamed existed; she had laughed at them so many times for their devotion to one another, never guessing… never dreaming… She was shivering as she started her car and reversed out into the road.
As she drove back to the flat, the tight knot of tension in the middle of her chest seemed to expand and ache, a hard, threatening ball of fear and confusion that was slowly turning to fierce anger and resentment.
Her parents… Ben… She was always there when they wanted or needed her, but when she was the one who was wanting, who was in need, where were they? When she needed someone to turn to, to lean on…
To lean on? But she never needed to lean on anyone. She was the strong one.
What was wrong with her? Why was she so afraid, so angry; why was she torn between the calm and logical awareness that there was no reason for her to need to share her knowledge with anyone, that it would after all be much simpler and easier if she just went ahead with what had to be done and then got on with her life, and this terrifyingly and illogical sense of injustice and anger that the people who were supposed to be closest to her should be so oblivious to what was happening to her?
Did she really expect Ben, her parents to somehow possess the ability to see into her mind, to sense intuitively what had happened?
No, of course not. How could they? She had always been the one who had insisted to Ben that they could not be expected to know what one another felt, who had laughed at the idea of even the closest of lovers being able to read one another’s thoughts. And yet here she was, beneath the smothering blanket of control she had thrown over the panic and fear she had felt earlier, still fighting to suppress an anger whose intensity totally bewildered her.