For Better for Worse

hat odd mannerism he had noticed her adopting so frequently recently.

‘Ben… I…’

‘I finished work early,’ he told her, and then heard himself saying curtly, ‘I thought you were going to see your mother.’

Her face changed, her skin flushing, her eyes flooding with hot tears. He had to fight not to go over to her and take her in his arms, to tell her that it was all right… that he would make it all right… that whoever had hurt her, made her cry, would be punished for it… He wanted, he recognised grittily, to tell her that he loved her, and that he would never hurt her, unlike this other man.

Instead, he sat down on the bed, facing away from her, keeping his voice as steady as he could as he told her quietly, ‘Zoe, we can’t go on like this. I can see how unhappy you are now. What is it? What’s wrong?’

Still struggling with the shock of seeing him, with the trauma of all that happened, Zoe had no resistance left. She had fought hard to protect him, to protect their love, but now her strength was gone and in its place all that was left was a terrible enervating weakness, both physical and emotional.

She focused on his back, so broad, so strong, so powerfully male, his shoulders broad, firmly muscled. Physically he looked so strong… so dependable… but appearances could be so deceptive.

Closing her eyes, she turned her head away from him and took a deep breath.

‘I’m pregnant.’

She had no sense of tension or anxiety, no thrill of shock at having at last told him, no sharp nervous questioning of whether or not she had done the right thing, of wondering how he would feel… how he would react. She had gone far, far beyond all that now.

Earlier, in the clinic, watching the downward descent of the nurse’s arm, knowing what was going to happen, she had suddenly known that she couldn’t go through with it, and had known it so compellingly, so strongly, that it had been as though she had been anaesthetised against some gigantic pain and that anaesthetic had suddenly worn off.

They had all been kind to her… kind and concerned, and, she suspected, although they were all far too professional to show it, pleased by her decision.

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.’