She had made all her arrangements and her decisions. It had been a piece of good luck that both her mother and father happened to be away. Ben had given her one of those quick, sharp, assessing looks she was getting from him increasingly these days when she had made her announcement.
‘Ma’s been feeling a bit down lately,’ she had told him, striving to appear casual and relaxed. ‘So I thought I’d spend a bit of time with her, go and see her on my day off and stay overnight.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Ben’s voice had been edged with an unfamiliar hardness that made her ache inside.
Things had been different between them since he had asked her if she was seeing someone else. Part of her had wanted to laugh hysterically at what he was implying, and another part was so filled with anger and hurt that he should be so blind to what was really happening to her that she had almost been tempted, goaded into telling him that there was. Did he really believe she was capable of that kind of deceit? Didn’t he know how much she loved him? How much she needed him?
Tears flooded her eyes now as she got out of bed. She felt sick and shaky; the relief she had anticipated would follow the final making of her decision had not come; instead…
Instead she was filled with a nerve-grinding mixture of panic, fear and despair.
As hard as she fought to suppress the growing demands of the new life inside her and tried to cling to the reality of just how devastating an effect having a baby would have on not just her life but on Ben’s as well, the baby fought just as hard, mustering some kind of deceitful hormonal trickery into making her vulnerable to its presence, its claims on her.
Sometimes she even found herself talking to it, trying to reason with it, to explain that it wasn’t simply a matter of Ben’s claims on her over its own.
Even if she left Ben, ignored her love for him, made it easy for him to walk away from them to a life without them, she would still be guilty of damaging Ben’s future. Without her, it would be impossible for him to go ahead with the new venture; he needed her to work alongside him and to shoulder the day-to-day administration of the business, leaving him free to concentrate on providing the food which would bring people flocking to the restaurant. How could she let him down?
‘You must understand,’ she had told it fiercely. ‘I cannot let myself love you. There isn’t any po
int. Ben needs me… I owe it to him not to let him down.’
And yet all the time, at the back of her mind, a tiny, bitter voice asked why it was that Ben did not seem to recognise her need… why it was that she was always the one who had to do the giving, the supporting.
She made her way slowly to the bathroom. There was after all no need to rush. Her appointment wasn’t until late morning.
In the mirror, she tried to avoid looking at her naked body. Not that there was anything to see; if anything she had lost weight rather than gained it… all that sickness, all that tension.
‘You’re getting too thin,’ Ben had told her abruptly only the other day.
At first, naïvely, she had assumed that it would all be over quickly and that she would be able to go straight home, but the doctor had shaken her head, explaining that they would want to keep her in overnight, as she had told them that she had no one at home to keep an eye on her. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’
Zoe’s stomach had churned and knotted ferociously as she had added quietly, ‘It’s a very safe procedure medically, but an extremely traumatic one emotionally and physically.’
Zoe put her hand on her stomach, shivering frantically. This was perhaps the last time she would do this… the last chance she would have of talking to her baby, of trying to explain…
She removed her hand, curling her fingers into tight fists, tears burning her eyes. How could you explain why you had to end a life, to destroy it before it had even properly begun? How could you explain to a child that its father did not want it, that there was no place in your life for it, that it wasn’t wanted or loved?
Her body started to shake violently, every instinct screaming rejection of what she was thinking, the intensity and passion of her instinctive and immediate denial overwhelming her with pain.
‘No! No!’ she muttered savagely under her breath. ‘You can’t do this to me… I won’t let you.’
It was just her mind playing tricks on her, she told herself fiercely. What she had to do was concentrate on reality, write down all the reasons why it was impossible for her to have this child.
In her mind she visualised the list; it would be long and logical, the facts plain and inescapable, the weight of them heavily outweighing the pitiful, single emotional claim that was all there was to put in the opposing column.
It was too late to change her mind now. The decision was made, everything organised… arranged…
* * *
The receptionist was calmly efficient, greeting Zoe with a professional smile as she gave her name.
A firmly competent nurse came to take her through to her room, her fingers lightly cool and soothing on Zoe’s arm.
‘You haven’t had anything to eat or drink, have you?’ she asked.
Zoe shook her head.