Numbly she kissed her goodbye and wished her luck.
* * *
She was sick again during the afternoon at work, arousing the curiosity of one of the other g
irls who came into the cloakroom while she was there.
She couldn’t go on like this, she acknowledged numbly as she stared at her pale face in the mirror. If she did, it wouldn’t be long before someone guessed.
In her office she opened the telephone directory and then picked up her phone.
* * *
‘You seem very sure that you want a termination.’
‘Yes,’ Zoe agreed wearily.
Her appointment had been at five o’clock but it had been closer to six before she had actually seen anyone. The woman seated opposite her was professionally detached and calm. She had already explained the various options open to her, but Zoe had not really listened. They both knew the reason she was here.
There was only one reason why people… women… came to these places, wasn’t there?
‘The child’s father… what does he think or want?’
Zoe stared at her. ‘Ben? He doesn’t know,’ she told her, caught off-guard by the question. ‘I haven’t told him.’
‘Don’t you think you should? It is, after all, his child as well as yours,’ the kind, firm voice pointed out.
His child… Bitterness curled Zoe’s mouth, hardening her eyes.
‘Ben doesn’t want children,’ she told her flatly. ‘Not ever…’
‘A lot of men say that and then change their minds. Even these days men… boys grow up with the inbuilt male belief and fear that it’s up to them to support their partners and their children, and this is often why they seem to fear and reject parenthood. Who can blame them? Having a child is a frightening emotional and material burden. Is that why you feel you should have a termination? Because you believe it’s what Ben wants?’
‘I don’t believe it’s what he wants. I know,’ Zoe told her curtly, ‘and I’m not just doing it for Ben’s sake… I’m doing it for my own as well. We can’t afford a child… not just financially but professionally as well…’
‘For Ben’s sake and for your own… but what about the child?’ the woman pressed.
Zoe felt sick. She stared at her in mingled resentment and disbelief.
‘I came here for an abortion, not a lecture on the sanctity of life,’ she told her furiously.
The woman remained calmly unruffled.
‘We provide a counselling service for pregnant women, offering them a variety of options, allowing them to make their own decisions. It is not my job to persuade you either to continue with the pregnancy or to terminate it, but it is my job and my responsibility to make you aware, not just in the short term, but in the long term as well, of the far-reaching consequences of whatever course of action you decide to take.
‘What we can give you is a physical end to your pregnancy; what we cannot give you is emotional immunity to the consequences of such an action.’
She saw Zoe’s bitter expression and sighed gently.
‘Believe me, if I could promise you that a termination would resolve all your problems, that it would be guilt-free and that you could continue your life as though you had simply never conceived, I would. The only way we could do that would be if we had some way of wiping the mind, the memory clean of its knowledge.
‘We may have invented a process which will remove the physical reality of what has happened from your body, but so far no one has produced one which will have the same effect on our minds and emotions, and, left up to the male sex, I doubt that we ever will,’ she added sardonically.
‘I know you think I’m trying to persuade you to go ahead with your pregnancy. I’m not. Just as much suffering can be caused by doing that as can by termination. All I’m trying to do is prepare you for the fact that you will suffer pain. Contrary to what the media appear to believe, I have yet to deal with a woman who has not done so… maybe not always immediately…
‘Think about what I’ve said. Tell your partner. Let him make his own decision.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Zoe protested. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to burden him.’