For Better for Worse

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…’

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‘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.