by Natasha West
‘How much was it?’
Zoe didn’t answer and Ellie was quick to retract.
‘You know what, it’s really none of my business. Forget I asked.’
Zoe sighed.
‘Let’s not talk about this. We’ve got better things to think about tonight, haven’t we?’, Zoe said. The flap that Ellie had walked into seemed to have vanished from Zoe’s demeanor. She was back to the excited parent-to-be.
‘The delivery came today so it’s a good job I got home a bit early to be able to sign for it. We’re all set.’
A few hours later, after dinner (which Zoe barely touched) they couldn’t put the big moment off any longer. It was conception time.
After Zoe had unpacked the home insemination kit and gotten everything ready, they went into the bedroom.
Once Zoe had put some classical music on low (‘Air on a G String’, a title which Ellie always had to stifle a laugh at or face Zoe’s judgemental look) and gotten the lighting right, they were ready.
‘You’d better get in the position’ Zoe said and Ellie obliged, lying back on the bed and pulling her knickers down. Once they were off, she opened up her legs and slid her knees up halfway to her chest.
Once Zoe was satisfied that Ellie was in the correct position, she picked up the syringe, filled with the necessary fluid, and stood at the end of the bed. She looked at Ellie and smiled.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
Ellie nodded and waited for Zoe. But she didn’t move any closer. Ellie kept waiting. But still, Zoe didn’t move.
‘Is everything alright?’ Ellie asked.
But Zoe didn’t answer. She was staring at the syringe. Ellie thought she was taking a moment to mark the occasion, to acknowledge the largeness of it.
But after thirty seconds, she still had yet to move or speak.
‘Zoe?’ Ellie asked gently.
Zoe looked over at Ellie as though she’d forgotten she was there. And then she said two words that would haunt Ellie’s dreams for weeks.
‘I can’t.’
For a second, Ellie thought she simply meant that she couldn’t do the procedure right this second because she desperately needed to go to the toilet or something. But Ellie only had to take a closer look at Zoe’s expression to know that she’d meant something else.
‘What, what, what….’ Ellie stuttered. She didn’t even know what she was trying to ask. They’d talked about this for a year, planned it for months. As far as Ellie was concerned, this was the start of officially ‘trying.’
‘I’m sorry, Ellie, I think I’ve made a mistake’ Zoe said and then stopped. All Ellie could do was lie there and wait for something else, anything, to come out of Zoe’s mouth to explain this abrupt about-turn.
But Zoe simply turned and sat down on the bed, facing away from Ellie.
‘What do you mean?’ Ellie probed, bewildered.
Zoe turned around.
‘I don’t think this is going to work.’
‘You don’t want to have a baby anymore?’
‘No, all of it. You and me.’
If Ellie had been standing up, she would have fallen down at the shock. In less than a minute, she’d gone from a person who was trying to have a baby with someone she loved to someone who was getting dumped. It was ludicrous.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There’s been something… I didn’t want to tell you about this because I thought it would pass. I wanted to want this. I didn’t want to want… her.’
‘Her?’
Ellie’s mind flashed back to a few hours ago. To the ‘her’ that had been standing in her home, arguing with her girlfriend. Over money, supposedly. Thinking about it now, Ellie couldn’t believe she’d swallowed such an obvious lie.
‘Caitlin’ Ellie croaked, her voice failing her.
Zoe nodded. And then she began the tale, right from the beginning. There was no point holding anything back now, Ellie guessed. Zoe had made her decision.
She explained how she’d met Caitlin at university and the affair that followed. That part wasn’t really a surprise to Ellie. She’d always suspected that something like that had probably happened between them. But since Zoe had never brought it up, Ellie hadn’t wanted to pry. But it was a much bigger story than she’d imagined.
Zoe had gone to university a virgin, at least as far as girls went. She’d known she had those sorts of feelings for women but she’d always been afraid to act on them. And then one night, a few months into her first semester, she’d gone to a party at her halls, a few doors down from her room. She hadn’t known whose party it was, some second year girl, but a friend had insisted they stop by. Zoe hadn’t wanted to go; she was a serious student with work to do. But the push of social pressure compelled her.
The room had turned out to be Caitlin’s, who was apparently known as the life and soul of the party and the thrower of many, according to Zoe’s friend. Zoe saw Caitlin from across the room and was absolutely thunderstruck by the gorgeous elfin girl with the big dark eyes, the girl who everyone seemed to want to be near.
As far as Zoe knew, Caitlin couldn’t have picked her out of a line-up. But that was OK with young Zoe, who’d yet to find confidence in her attractiveness. She knew she was smart. But hot? No. She never expected someone like Caitlin to notice her in a million years.
But unbeknownst to her, Caitlin had noted her. And she’d immediately rounded everyone up for seven minutes in heaven with people chosen at random by a bottle spin.
The game went on for a while, various couples going into Caitlin’s tiny closet. Then the game had made its way to Caitlin, who everyone but Zoe knew was an expert at getting the bottle to choose exactly the person she wanted to kiss. And guess who it landed on?
Caitlin led Zoe into the closet, still no words actually exchanged between them. Zoe had been almost shaking with fear. And then Caitlin had simply smiled and pulled Zoe to her.
Seven minutes later, someone’s phone alarm stopped the fun.
Zoe came out feeling like a changed woman. And Caitlin, already quite comfortable with both genders sexually, wasn’t done with Zoe. They snuck off to Zoe’s room where there was no seven-minute time limit.
The next morning, Zoe woke up next to Caitlin and knew it was love. She didn’t know how Caitlin felt but she didn’t seem eager to run off, which was encouraging. They spent the morning making love. That led to a real date. And then a second date. And a third. Before either of them realised it, they were a thing.
They dated for several months. Zoe fell for Caitlin deeper every day. But still, they never really talked about what they wanted from each other, how they felt. Zoe wasn’t sure if Caitlin’s feelings matched her own, but she prayed they did, because she couldn’t get enough of the girl. She was completely infatuated.
And then Caitlin, out of nowhere, sent her a text explaining that it was over. Zoe had run to Caitlin’s room, but it was an empty husk. All of Caitlin’s stuff was just gone.
Zoe tried to call her but it seemed Caitlin’s number was no longer in use. After desperately asking around, she was able to ascertain that Caitlin had left university, as well as the country, indeed the continent. She’d gone to teach English as a foreign language somewhere in Asia, so people said. Shock didn’t begin to cover how Zoe felt. One minute Caitlin was there, gone the next. It was madness.
Zoe was utterly heartbroken by Caitlin’s vanishing act. She fell into a depression and almost flunked out of her finance course. She finished her first year by the skin of her teeth.
After that, she got on with her life, worked hard to bring her grades back up, then went to work at the bank, where she climbed the corporate ladder as quickly as she could.
In time, she managed to forget Caitlin.
Then one day, up came a friend request from Caitlin on Facebook. Zoe wondered if she should reject it, but she knew in her heart that wasn’t really going to happen. They chatted a little online and eventually decided it was time to renew t
he relationship in person, albeit a more platonic version.
Zoe was happy to reconnect, but she was also scared. She didn’t want to fall for Caitlin again, not after last time. She never wanted that pain again. She’d barely survived it last time. But she’d missed Caitlin, she couldn’t deny that. She liked having Caitlin around and eventually they became good friends.
But despite Zoe’s efforts to keep things non-romantic, she felt something beginning to grow again. And it frightened her. She knew the most sensible thing to do was to remove herself from the situation. But she couldn’t seem to cut Caitlin out. She was addicted to her, stuck. And then she’d met Ellie at a spin class.
At this point in the story, Ellie began to feel sick.
Zoe explained that she’d liked Ellie and thought they were compatible, that they wanted the same things. Zoe had believed Ellie was someone she could build a life with, have children with, grow old with, all the things she wanted. Not like Caitlin, who jumped from job to job, bed to bed. Caitlin was simply not someone she could truly rely on, even if she’d wanted to try it again with her. It was too high risk. And banking had taught her never to engage with those kind of investments. It was an invitation to disaster. Ellie was more suitable, Zoe decided.
And she’d managed to forget about all that business with Caitlin for a long time. She’d made sure never to spend time alone with her, always having the safety net of Ellie and whomever Caitlin happened to be dating. And she really had loved Ellie, Zoe explained to her. In a way.
And then last week, Ellie had spilled the beans about the baby. Caitlin had called her today, asking to talk in private. Zoe had agreed, coming home early to meet her at the flat. And Caitlin had told her that she’d always been in love with her and that she had to know if Zoe felt the same before she did this thing that she couldn’t take back. Before they missed their chance with each other, forever.
It turned out that back in the day, that had been the reason that Caitlin had fled university. She’d felt the same as Zoe had, crazy all-consuming passion. But Caitlin had wanted to do all kinds of things with her life and those things didn’t include being tethered to another person. And Caitlin’s father, who had left her mother when she was three, had always told her that ties were bad, that they would hold her back from enjoying her life. He drummed it into her from a young age. There was only one way to avoid falling into the trap of another person.
Go.
Caitlin left because she knew that if she didn’t, she was going to end up with Zoe, feeling stuck. Caitlin feared traps more than anything else. Her father had made sure of that.
Zoe had been shocked and angry to hear about all this a few hours ago. Caitlin was trying to screw her life up for the second time, Zoe thought. But Caitlin promised her that things were different, that she was different. And she wanted to be with Zoe, really with her. Zoe had told her it wasn’t happening, that she was having a baby with Ellie. She told Caitlin that she should try to make it work with Jordan. Caitlin had left in tears.
But standing there with the syringe, Zoe knew she still loved Caitlin. She’d only ever loved Caitlin.
‘And I think I’ve got to give it a try’ Zoe finished. ‘If I don’t, I might regret it for the rest of my life. That wouldn’t be good for you or me.’
Ellie felt like she was experiencing the moment in a cartoon when an anvil drops on the roadrunner. She was the roadrunner. The anvil was Zoe’s horrible, awful, nauseating words. Ellie was dazed from them, punch drunk.
She realised she was still naked from the waist down, her legs up in the air. What an undignified position to be caught in while your life falls into ruins, she thought. Three years of her life had suddenly become a bad joke. And she was the punchline.
And then, somehow, it got worse. Zoe had been talking for a further minute while Ellie had fallen into a daze. But as she came back to reality, she heard Zoe say ‘… but I’m not a monster. I’ll give you a few days to pack. That’s only right.’
‘What?’
‘I said I’ll go to a hotel, give you some privacy while you get your stuff and find somewhere else.’
Yep, not only was she dumped, she was homeless to boot.
Jordan was at home, working in the living room of hers and Caitlin’s small but eccentrically decorated basement flat. Every wall in the place was a different colour, by Caitlin’s hand. Even if it clashed a bit, Jordan didn’t mind. It was pure Caitlin, so she loved it.
Jordan was sketching, designing characters for the graphic novel she was planning to write. As much as she loved the dog walking, it was really just the day job. In Jordan’s heart, she was an artist.
She heard Caitlin’s car pull up outside and she immediately put her pad away. She and Caitlin hadn’t really spoken properly in a while, but Jordan knew she couldn’t put this off anymore. She needed to know why Caitlin was in this foul mood.
She looked out of the window, up at the street where Caitlin was parked, and waited for her to get out the car. But the door remained closed. Jordan realised she was taking a phone call. She sat back down to wait.
Fifteen minutes later, the front door of the flat opened.
‘I need to talk to you’ Caitlin said.
That makes two of us, thought Jordan. But maybe Caitlin had realised how weird she was being, Jordan hoped. Maybe she was going to apologise.
‘Boy’, she thought a few minutes later, ‘did I read that wrong.’
She got a version of the speech that Zoe had just finished giving Ellie, although it was in somewhat more abbreviated form.
‘Jordan, I want to break up. I love Zoe. I’m going to be with her. I know this is probably quite shocking for you. But I can’t help how I feel.’
That was the entirety of her explanation.
‘I’m leaving now, off to a hotel. I think it’s best we don’t drag this out. But I want to get out of the flat tenancy, so you can either replace me or move out. It’s up to you.’
And she left.
Jordan had not spoken in the brief time that Caitlin had been there, had never responded to her insane and abrupt declarations. And her face hadn’t changed. Not so much as a narrowing of the eyes or a twitch of the mouth.
But after she’d gone, Jordan went into the kitchen and smashed every bit of crockery she could find.
And as she sat panting in the kitchen, surrounded by detritus, she looked at the one remaining bowl left uncracked and wished it was Zoe’s stupid smug face. She grabbed it and threw it at the floor. For some reason, it was the one item that didn’t break.
Chapter Three
Zoe was gone.
She’d grabbed a weekend bag, filled it with a few items and then said one thing before she left the bedroom.
‘I’m sorry for all this, Ellie. I really am.’
Ellie, still sitting in the bed, could not find words to respond. So Zoe turned and left. Ellie heard the front door click shut and she knew she was alone. In every sense.
After a good sob, she climbed out of bed and put a robe on. She picked up the syringe and went into the en-suite bathroom, throwing it in the bin. It probably wasn’t the proper way to dispose of such things but that wasn’t her worst problem right now.
She walked into the living room and then stopped square in the middle of it, looking around the room, thinking how strange it was that she wasn’t going to live here anymore.
As she assessed the room, her mind began to turn to the logistics of leaving, probably out of sheer need not to think about the horrid thing that had just happened. Instead, her frantic mind sought practical questions. What would she take? How would she move it? And where would she move it to? Her parents didn’t have the space for her. They lived in a tiny terraced house. Plus, Ellie wasn’t ready to explain all this to them. Ellie knew they would start to ask the kind of questions that would imply this was all her fault. She couldn’t handle that right now.
That was yet another subject Ellie’s mind was not willing to deal with. She turne
d it back to the things she’d need to take.
And then she noticed something. Nothing was hers.
There wasn’t one thing in her eye line that she could say belonged to her, even jointly. It was all Zoe. The decoration had predated her so that was Zoe’s choice. But the furniture had gradually been replaced in the three years she’d lived here, utterly without contribution from Ellie, financially or otherwise.
At the time, Zoe had told Ellie that since she didn’t make much at the crèche, it made sense for her to take on the household expenses. After all, it was originally her place and everything was set up in her name. And she could afford to do it on her bank manager salary. Ellie hadn’t been allowed to pay for anything.