For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  She heard him whisper her name as he moved towards her but she rolled over on to her side, keeping her back towards him, ignoring him.

  Ben was not the type to force himself on her in any way; she had always been the one to take the lead…

  * * *

  It was no good. He couldn’t sleep. Throwing back the covers, Ben carefully eased himself out of the bed. Zoe was asleep, genuinely so now.

  Where had she been when he had telephoned her earlier? He knew she had lied to him. He had seen it in her eyes.

  Had she found someone else; a man who could give her all the things he could not? He had thought that after what he had seen today he was numbed against pain, but he was wrong. He could feel it seeping slowly, with agonising thoroughness, through every sensitive emotion.

  His feelings, his love for Zoe were so intense that he was sometimes afraid of admitting them even to himself. All his life he had struggled against this vulnerability within him, against loving too much. He had recognised it first as a child when he had rescued David Bernstein from his antagonists, had recognised it and resented it.

  That kind of emotional vulnerability was a luxury someone like him could not afford. He could not allow himself to fall in love. He had other duties… other responsibilities, and until he met Zoe he had thought he had mastered his neediness.

  Zoe… He looked across at the bed. In theory she was a product, a child of everything he most resented. Her self-assurance, her confidence, her belief in herself and others’ willingness to please her sprang not from reality but from the protective security of an upbringing which had sheltered her from every kind of emotional and material harm. And yet, instead of resenting her, he had fallen in love with her, letting her bully and chivvy him, letting her take control of their lives and at the same time doing what he had always done for all those closest to him—watching over her with a protective anxiety he never allowed her to see.

  He had often thought about what he would do if she left him, if he lost her, trying to do what he could to prepare and arm himself, knowing that if she ever wanted to go he would have to set her free. Ironically, over these last few months, he had actually begun to feel that perhaps after all he might have been wrong, that she might actually stay. But what he had never prepared himself for was the fact that she might lie to him.

  It was just something he had not expected. A bald, defiant statement that she had met someone else, yes, but lies, deceit… no.

  He glanced again at her sleeping figure. He had ached so much to hold her tonight, to let the pain spill out of him as he filled her with his body and felt her own quicken in response.

  He couldn’t tell her about what had happened, about how he had felt. It had never been easy for him to reveal his emotions, and besides, how could he tell her about those long hours spent waiting, hoping, and then knowing… ? Standing with Sharon, holding her hand, trying to comfort the terrified girl who screamed out to him to help her and to stop the pain while her body purged itself of that poor, pathetic, lifeless little body.

  You wanted it to happen, Zoe had accused him bitterly, but she had said it without knowing anything of the agony, the anguish, the anger and despair he had suffered in knowing that not all his love, not all his support, nothing he or anyone else could do could save his sister from her pain, nor her child from its death.

  He looked back at the bed. His body ached, craved for sleep—he had been up all the previous night with Sharon—but his mind, his thoughts would not allow him any rest.

  ‘Zoe?’ they had told him at the hotel. ‘No, I’m sorry, she left ages ago. She said she was going to see someone.’

  It made him feel more guilty than he could bear to acknowledge that tonight, when all his thoughts should be with his sister, selfishly too many of them were of his own needs and his own fears.

  This was what he had always dreaded: that in loving someone he would lose his awareness of his responsibility to others, replacing it with the selfishness of his own needs and desires.

  In her sleep Zoe cried out sharply, a small, tortured, almost animal sound of fear and pain.

  Ben walked over to the bed, smoothing the damp hair off her face, touching her gently.

  ‘It’s all right, Zoe,’ he lied softly. ‘Everything’s all right.’

  Bleakly he straightened up and walked over to the window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘CLIVE wants to see us.’

  Zoe looked listlessly at Ben. ‘What for?’

  He had been increasingly less affectionate with her recently, complaining that Aldo was making things difficult for him at work, and despite the fact that she could hear the anxiety he was trying to mask she had not, as she would normally have done, tried to calm and reassure him.

  Somehow she just didn’t seem to have the energy… for anything.

  Life seemed to have taken on a blurred, out of focus quality—a dangerously protective numbness which isolated her not just from everyone around her but from reality as well.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ben responded, frowning slightly. ‘He rang while you were out. I arranged that we’d see him tomorrow morning…’

  He paused and looked at her. ‘You won’t be working late, will you?’

  Zoe focused on him. There was something in his voice, in his expression, a hint of bitterness and sarcasm, that was alien to him.

  ‘I don’t think so…’

  ‘It’s time I was at work.’ He got up and then, as he started to move past her, he stopped and looked hard at her.

  ‘Oh, by the way, there was a phone call for you.’

  Zoe felt the tension grip her stomach. It was almost a week since she had visited the clinic and she had still heard nothing. Remembering the counsellor and all that she had said to her, she had begun to wonder if the woman was deliberately making her wait… making…

  Making her what? There was nothing to decide, she told herself firmly, clamping down on her panic. Nothing to say… nothing to think. Ben had hardly mentioned the hotel since his return from Manchester, but yesterday, when he was at work, she had been looking for an envelope and had come across some notes he had made, a small but ruthless analysis of his goals and hopes.

  He might not be saying much about the hotel, but she already knew how much it meant to him. How could she not do, when for the last six months they had thought and spoken about very little else; when virtually from the moment they had met they had had this one common goal in mind?

  She realised that he was still waiting for her to make some response to him.

  There was a phone call for you, he had said casually, not knowing, not dreaming…

  ‘Who? Who was it?’ she asked him, her voice hesitant, stammering almost as her anxiety tightened its coiled grip on her nervous system.

  As he watched her, Ben forced himself to harden his heart against the misery he could see in her eyes.

  ‘A woman. She said she’d ring back.’

  If she didn’t care enough about him to at least be honest with him, then why should he help her, make it easier for her to tell him that there was someone else? Was it serious, or was it simply something casual? Casual—Zoe? He remembered her passionate commitment to all that she did, her sexual intensity… her way of giving herself so utterly and totally to all that she did, and he was almost tempted to take hold of her and demand that she tell him the truth. Instead he asked her quietly, ‘You’re still keen on going ahead with the hotel then, are you, Zoe? You’re not having second thoughts or anything?’

  Zoe stared at him. For a moment he looked different… older somehow and grimmer, a glimpse of how he would look in years to come when maturity and life had set its seal upon him. It suited him, Zoe recognised starkly, gave him added weight and authority, made him look the kind of man a woman—people could rely on and turn to. The kind of man who…

  Who would what? Make a good father?

  ‘No, I’m not having second thoughts,’ she told him, and then added, ‘I do
know how much it means to you… how important it is. It’s what you’ve always wanted.’

  What he had always wanted? How much it meant to him? What about her? Ben wondered painfully.

  ‘I shan’t let you down.’

  ‘Let me down! Zoe, what—?’

  ‘I thought you said you had to go to work,’ Zoe interrupted him quickly. She knew her face was flushing, betraying her nervous agitation.

  Why on earth had she said that? She could see from his expression that her comment had disturbed him. If she wasn’t careful he might start to query and question, to find out…

  What good would it do if he did? she asked herself wearily once he had gone. What would it change? Not his feelings… his beliefs.

  The day of his return from Manchester he had tried to tell her that she was being unfair in saying that privately he was pleased that Sharon had lost her baby.

  But she had stopped listening to him.

  Things had changed between them. There was an awareness, a tension, a distance which she would once have scornfully derided as an impossibility.

  There was nothing they could not discuss… share… resolve, she would once have said. There was no subject they could not discuss… nothing which was taboo.

  How wrong she had been.

  Even sexually they were withdrawing from one another. The intimacy and closeness they had always shared taunted her now as she recognised how impossible it was for her to share her body with him when she could not share her thoughts and her fears.

  And she was afraid, she acknowledged miserably… afraid and angry, sometimes hating the life growing within her for all the havoc it was wreaking, sometimes hating herself… sometimes even hating Ben… and yet at the same time she was still driven to protect him.

  Because he needed that protection from her, or because she needed to give it to him? Who was she really protecting… Ben, or herself? What did she really fear? That he might not perhaps need her after all and that if he didn’t he might not want her?

  She remembered the way he had looked this morning; the unfamiliar maturity and hardness she had seen, the feeling she had had that somehow she was no longer necessary to him…

  No. She was wrong. He did still need her. She had heard the tension and anxiety in his voice when he’d asked her if she was having second thoughts about the hotel.

  The hotel… Even that had been spoiled now, her excitement and anticipation doused by the shock of discovering her pregnancy.

  This baby… this thing which she had never planned, never wanted, was like a parasite, draining her, not just physically stealing her energy and clouding her brain, but stealing from her as well her happiness and her future… And Ben’s love?

  She shivered.

  ‘I don’t want you and I don’t love you,’ she told the child within her bitterly. ‘What right have you to do this to me… to take over my body… my life? Can’t you see? There is no place for you here… not with me and certainly not with Ben. We don’t want you…’

  She said the words out loud and could almost feel the force of her own emotions trembling on the air.

  She could feel the angry tears pressing against her hot eyeballs and she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, willing them to disappear. What was the point of crying? What good would it do? She needed time to think things through properly, the counsellor had told her gently, but she had been wrong. There wasn’t anything for her to think through.

  Resolutely she picked up the phone.

  Yes, she had telephoned her, the counsellor confirmed. Luckily the appointment with the doctor fell not only in her own off-duty time, but while Ben was at work.

  ‘And once I’ve seen the doctor… how long… when…?’ Zoe discovered that her mouth had gone almost too dry for her to speak.

  ‘The doctor will discuss the arrangements for any termination with you,’ the counsellor told her.

  Was she imagining it, or had the woman’s voice become slightly cooler? Despite the fact that she had claimed to be impartial, in Zoe’s mind there had been no doubt which decision she had wanted her to make.

  How did she think of her? As a murderer, destroying the life of her own child? But she didn’t know what it was like. She didn’t have Zoe’s responsibilities.

  Zoe could picture what her life was like: a nice, safe, comfortable marriage, two neat, clean, tidy children who were now doubtless married with children of their own, their marriage secure carbon-copies of their parents’ marriage, in which parenthood would be a sacred, cherished commitment.

  Angrily Zoe dashed the tears from her eyes and glanced down at her body.

  Outwardly nothing had changed; if anything she was even slimmer, the sickness she was still suffering occasionally leaving her looking slightly paler than normal, slightly frailer perhaps; but so far there was nothing about her body that proclaimed that she was pregnant.

  She touched her still flat stomach, closing her eyes, willing herself to reject the image she could see in the darkness.

  ‘I can’t help it. Can’t you see that? Can’t you understand? I don’t have any choice. Damn you, stop doing this to me. It isn’t my fault… I don’t want you…’

  As she said the words out loud, she felt physically sick, and then, as she opened her eyes and glanced down at her body a second time, she realised that her hands were pressed protectively across her stomach, almost as though she was trying to prevent the baby from hearing what she was saying about it. The baby… It wasn’t a baby. There wasn’t going to be any baby. There couldn’t be any baby.

  * * *

  ‘Zoe, what is it… what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Zoe responded tersely.

  Next to her in bed she could feel the restless movement of Ben’s body. She heard the faint sigh he expelled.

  ‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all,’ she told him shortly. ‘Why should there be something wrong just because I don’t want sex?’

  Ben winced as he listened to her.

  Sex—was that all it had become to her? Even though she had her back to him and was lying over a foot away from him, he could sense her tension.

  He wanted to reach out to her and to hold her, to explain to her that it wasn’t the fact that she was too tired to make love to him that bothered him, but the fact that he knew she was lying.

  She had been too tired last night, and the night before, and yet he had known she was lying beside him awake, long after anyone who was genuinely tired would have been deeply asleep.

  Miserably Zoe clenched her muscles. What was wrong with her? She still loved Ben, she knew that. Only this evening, watching him with his head bent, his shoulders hunched as he worked on the restaurant’s weekly wages-just one of the extra and unpaid tasks Aldo had foisted on him—she had been overwhelmed by a tide of emotion so strong that she had had to blink away the tears it brought to her eyes. Yes, she still loved him; it was just that, sexually, something within her froze into a desire-obliterating block of resentment at the thought of making love with him.

  It was a reaction she couldn’t explain even to herself, and even now a part of her almost wished he would overrule her, take hold of her and love her, help her to obliterate even if momentarily the emotions she was trying to reject.

  It amazed her sometimes that neither Ben nor anyone else had actually guessed. Some days she felt as though the full horror of the truth was written clearly in her face for everyone and anyone to see. And surely Ben, who purported to love her, must somehow sense… must have some awareness of what she was suffering? Or was he merely concerned with his own emotions, his own needs?

  No one seemed to care about her, not Ben, lying now with his back towards her, sulking no doubt because she had refused him sex; not her mother, who was so preoccupied with her own life that she barely had time to speak to Zoe on the phone any more, never mind listen to her.

  * * *

  ‘Ben, Zoe… I’m glad you could both make it.’

  Clive looked preoccupie
d as they were shown into his office and Zoe was aware of Ben’s tension.

  Irritably she glanced at him. What was there for him to be tense about? He was getting what he wanted, wasn’t he? Why didn’t he simply relax and enjoy it instead of permanently looking for problems? If he wasn’t worrying about the hotel he was worrying about his present job. Only yesterday he had made some comment about Aldo being increasingly difficult.

  ‘Well, it won’t be for much longer, will it?’ Zoe had responded unsympathetically.

  ‘No,’ Ben had agreed quietly. ‘I don’t suppose it will.’ And after that he hadn’t said anything else. Didn’t he realise that sometimes she simply did not feel like reassuring and supporting him; that sometimes she was one who needed… ?

  ‘I thought it was time we got together so that I could update you on what’s happening,’ Clive was saying.

  ‘There isn’t a problem, is there?’ Ben asked him quickly.

  Zoe watched as Clive carefully realigned the papers on his desk with precise, controlled movements.

  ‘Not a problem exactly,’ he responded. ‘It’s just that things may not go ahead as quickly as we’d originally hoped. I’m seeing the architect next week and…’

  ‘Doesn’t he think the house is suitable—is that it?’ Ben pressed, while Zoe stared at him and frowned. Wasn’t Ben listening to what Clive had said? He had just told them that nothing was wrong, and yet as she looked back at Clive again she saw in his eyes a flicker of both hesitation and respect as he studied Ben.

  ‘No. It isn’t that the house isn’t suitable,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s just that Adam Wheelwright, the architect, feels that it could be difficult getting planning permission—that it might take rather longer than we’d originally believed. I’ve got his plans here, as a matter of fact. He’s done a fine job on them; there are two different sets, the first showing the conversion to the restaurant and the second showing the later stages of extending the house into a hotel complete with conference suite and leisure complex. He’s drawn up the designs in such a way as to ensure that the basic layout of the grounds will hardly be altered at all. He feels that will be a plus point when it comes to applying for planning permission.’