And yet at the same time she had been aware of his pain and despair; of his love for his family, and for his sister, even though he had tried desperately hard to conceal it.
But why should she, just because she was female, a woman, be the one to make allowances… to understand… to forgive?
Why should he, just because he was male, a man, be allowed to offload the pain of what he was experiencing on her by attacking her?
His sister’s pregnancy and his reaction to it was something they should have been able to share, to talk about. Ben should have been able to accept that, even though she lacked his experience, his perception of what that pregnancy could mean, she was nevertheless capable of listening, comprehending… that she might even have a viable viewpoint to put, and one which, although different from his, was still worthy of being heard and discussed.
His final comment to her last night before he had flung away from her had been an acid, ‘You don’t really understand even now, do you? You just don’t have a clue. Outwardly you’re sympathetic, sorry; but inwardly you’re recoiling from what I’ve just told you, just like a healthy man recoiling from a leper!
‘Nothing’s really changed in two thousand or more years of civilisation, has it, Zoe? You in your nice, clean, sanitised, privileged world—and it is a privileged world no matter how much you might want to deny it—you just don’t have any conception of what life’s really like for people like my sister.’
Hurt, and close to tears, she had tried to defend herself, and it was then that she had made her worst mistake of all.
‘She could come here and stay with us,’ she had
suggested eagerly. ‘I could find her a job. The hotel is always looking for—–’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Ben had interrupted her in disgust. ‘Have her here? She’s damn near seven months pregnant, Zoe, and all she wants to do is sit watching television all day long. She doesn’t want a job. She doesn’t want anything other than this damned baby which she thinks is going to miraculously transform her life.
‘And so it bloody well will, but not in the way she imagines, the little fool.
‘Are all you women the same, so blindly prejudiced that you can’t see what having a baby really means?’
She had tried hard to stand her ground, inviting him shakily, ‘What does it mean, Ben? Tell me.’
He had given her a bitter, cynical look.
‘It means an extra mouth to feed, and less money coming in; it means endless nights without any sleep, and the stink of sour milk and worse pervading everything. It means the total destruction of the relationship you thought you had with one another; that’s if you’re still together when the child arrives.
‘It means… Oh, God, what the hell is the point in trying to explain to you, Zoe? Children, pregnancy… to you they mean giving birth in some fashionable private ward of a hospital and then going home with a clean cooing bundle wrapped in something expensive and impractical bought by Mummy. It means agonising endlessly over finding a nanny, and then agonising even more over finding the right school. You don’t have any real idea.’
She had wanted to tell him that he was wrong, totally and utterly wrong, but instead she had asked him quietly, ‘And what does parenthood, fatherhood mean to you, Ben?’ But as she waited for his answer, she suspected she already knew.
Even so, his reply had shocked her.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he had told her harshly. ‘Because I don’t intend to ever be a father.’
And with that he had got into bed, put out the light and pointedly turned away from her.
Later, lying silently in bed beside him, she had waited for him to relent and turn to her; to take her in his arms and hold her.
Only he hadn’t done, and now this morning she was alone in their flat with anger as well as misery, a cold, hard lump of indigestible solidity wedged firmly inside her.
She got out of bed reluctantly and headed for the bathroom.
She pushed open the door and then stopped, staring at the paper images pinned, taped to almost every surface.
Eyes widening, she went into the living-room. It was full of them as well, huge hearts cut from newspapers and magazines, with the words ‘I love you’ scrawled across them in red felt-tip pen, tiny smaller ones cut from silver kitchen foil and strung together like the tail of a kite, and hung from the doorframes so that they danced in the draught, big fat pigs with drawn-in tiny mean little eyes and droopy would-be-curly tails made from wrapping ribbons that made her laugh as the tears filled her eyes.
He must have spent hours doing this, hours when he should have been asleep. Hours when she had been asleep.
Across the largest pig of all, propped up against the kitchen taps, he had written the words, ‘I’m sorry’.
Oh, Ben!
As she carefully collected every single heart, and every single pig, smoothing out the paper before gently folding it and then searching for a large envelope to put them in, she was still crying, her heart aching, not for herself but for him.
She knew how much his family meant to him, how fiercely protective of them he was. And she knew as well how much Sharon’s pregnancy and all that it would mean to her life must hurt him. She had been a clever girl, he had told her, and in those words she had heard all his frustration and disappointment.
‘It will be another mouth to feed,’ he had told her and no doubt he had been thinking that he would be the one who would have to help to feed it.
Neither of them ever discussed the financial help he gave his mother. They didn’t need to. Zoe felt no resentment of his loyalty towards his family.
‘That’s because you’ve never needed to worry about money,’ he had told her cynically, and then she had smiled sunnily, refusing to allow him to aggravate her.
It wasn’t until she had finished tidying away all the scraps of paper that she noticed the envelope on the table.
She had forgotten to mention it to Ben last night, and he obviously had not noticed it when he got up.
She picked it up, scanning it uncertainly. When she had seen it yesterday she had been so excited; now, like an opened forgotten bottle of champagne, her excitement had gone flat, superseded by other emotions.
For the first time she felt, if not resentment, then certainly a sudden awareness of irritation with Ben’s family. She wriggled uncomfortably, frowning as she refocused on the envelope.
This was their future here in front of her. Hers and Ben’s… The exciting, enticing, challenging future they had worked so hard together for. It belonged to them. They had worked for it… planned for it, and Ben… Ben deserved it; and yet now, because of his family, because of last night, somehow its promise was shadowed, her excitement doused, their right to share and anticipate the pleasure of taking their first major step into the future and success dulled by the sharp contrast between their future and that of Ben’s sister and her child.
And if she was so aware of the discrepancies in those futures, then how much more so must Ben be?
She gave a small shiver of distress and guilt. Was she really so selfish, so shallow that she resented Sharon for inadvertently casting a shadow over their lives? By rights what she ought to be feeling was sympathy and concern, not wishing that Ben’s sister had not spoiled this special moment in their lives by inflicting her problems on her brother.
She picked up the envelope and then put it down again.
She was not normally given to self-analysis or questioning her feelings—her life was too busy, her responses too immediate and instinctive.