For Better For Worse

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it yesterday she had been so excited; now, like an opened forgotten bottle of champagne, her excitement had gone flat, superseded by other emotions.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. It was Ben who measured his reactions, who monitored everything he said and felt, measuring them against some personal and, to her, bewildering measuring stick of personal standards.

But now, forced to deal with her own shock at what she was feeling, she had to question whether Ben might be right when he accused her of not being able to really comprehend or understand, of not wanting to accept the reality of his family’s lives.

How would she feel if she were in Sharon’s shoes, for instance?

She gave a small cold shiver. It could never have happened to her, of course.

There had been girls at school who had disappeared for a brief period of time and who it was rumoured had been discreetly hustled off by their parents to some expensive private clinic to remove the evidence of their unplanned and unwanted conception long before their bodies showed any signs of it, and rumours were all there had been.

Parenthood out of wedlock and children born to middle-aged fathers with almost grown-up families and second wives, often as young as their own daughters, were a familiar pattern of life to her, of course, but her friends’ unmarried parenthood was nothing like that so graphically described by Ben.

Her friends’ babies were always ‘desperately wanted’ or ‘an accident really, darling, but now both of us are thrilled and Mummy is simply over the moon’, or the product of serious committed relationships between couples who shuddered in distaste at the thought of their commitment to one another needing anything so proletarian as a marriage ceremony to cement it.

No, there were no Sharons in her world, or, if there were, no one talked about them.

Ben was her friend and her lover; the differences in their upbringing gave her no qualms at all. She was proud of him, fiercely proud… of the person he was and the things he had achieved. She felt no sense of being his superior, nor of being his inferior; they were equals, true partners.

And normally she did not allow herself to brood on the fact that there was a part of Ben’s life from which he seemed to want to exclude her.

Now she was angry with herself for the small-mindedness of her feelings, for her selfishness in her irritation at the way Sharon’s problems had overshadowed their own happiness. And angry with Ben for letting them?

What would she have preferred him to do—come back from Manchester pretending that everything was all right, keep the truth from her so that it need not spoil her pleasure, shield her from his own pain?

No, of course not. She loved him. She wanted to share his pain as well as his pleasure; the bad things as well as the good.

Before she left for work, Zoe propped the letter up against the kettle and scrawled a note, which she put beside it, saying, ‘I love you too,’ and then drew a heart which she filled with tiny kisses.

Poor Sharon. Did she lie awake in bed at night with her hands on her swollen belly, dreaming of a man who would love her—and her baby? She was so lucky, Zoe admitted. If she were in Sharon’s shoes…

Ben had made no secret of the fact that he felt that Sharon should have had her pregnancy terminated, and Zoe couldn’t help agreeing with him. It would surely have been the best solution for everyone. But Sharon had not taken that option and now it was too late.

Another mouth to feed, Ben had said bitterly, and Zoe had sensed his anger, his frustration, his refusal to see the coming baby as anything other than an extra financial burden he did not want to have to shoulder.

‘I don’t want children,’ he had told her, but then neither did she. Not at this stage in her life. Maybe later, much, much later, when she had done all the things she wanted to do.

Her shift started at two and finished officially at ten, but it was gone half-past eleven before she was finally able to leave the hotel and almost one before her battered but reliable Mini brought her back to the flat.

She had expected Ben to be in bed; after all, he had to be up at four. But as she searched for her key he surprised her by opening the door for her.

‘Ben!’ She smiled her happiness up at him.

‘I’m sorry… About last night,’ he told her gruffly as he opened his arms to her, kicking the door shut behind her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered back. ‘You were upset. Did you see the letter?’

‘What letter?’ he murmured, lazily nuzzling the delicate vulnerable flesh just behind her ear, but his casual tone did not deceive Zoe. She knew him too well.

‘You know which one,’ she told him. ‘Have you opened it?’

His tongue was slowly exploring the shape of her ear, sending small frissons of sensation racing down her spine, making her want to move her body against his, to stretch languorously and sensually against him like a cat being stroked.

‘Of course I haven’t.’ Ben smiled at her as he released her. ‘You didn’t really think I’d open it without you, did you? Come on, let’s open it now…’

‘No,’ Zoe told him, watching him frown. ‘Let’s open it in bed instead,’ she suggested, her eyes narrowing with laughter and warmth as she added, ‘Then we can really celebrate if it’s good news.’

‘And if it’s not?’ Ben cautioned.

She smiled lovingly at him.

‘If it’s not, then we’ll be in the right place to commiserate with each other, won’t we? But it won’t be bad news,’ she told him firmly.

She insisted that he should be the one to open it and then closed her eyes, urging him to hurry because she couldn’t bear the suspense any longer, crossing her fingers behind her back as she listened to the sounds of him tearing open the envelope.

She could feel his tension and stillness as he read whatever was inside and then, unable to bear it any longer, she opened her eyes and begged.

‘What does it say?’

Silently Ben handed her the contents of the envelope. She scanned the letter quickly before dropping it on to the bed to scrutinise the thick glossy brochure which it had been attached to.

‘Oh, Ben! Look… it’s perfect!’

‘You haven’t read it properly yet,’ he derided her, but he was smiling and she could tell, although he was struggling hard to conceal it, that he was almost as excited as she was herself.

‘Don’t start getting your hopes too high,’ Ben warned her later when the brochure had been read and re-read at least a dozen times. ‘As Clive points out in his letter, there’s a long way to go. We’ll need planning permission to convert the stable block for one thing, and then…’

‘But it’s so perfect,’ Zoe interrupted him excitedly. ‘All that land…’

‘Which will have to be maintained. Gardens are all very well, but they don’t look after themselves, you know.’

‘No. No, of course not, but that walled vegetable garden… You said yourself that with people becoming more aware of the importance of how their food is grown as well as prepared…’ she began impatiently, but Ben shook his head.

‘We’re a long way from growing our own produce, Zoe. That’s something that will be way, way ahead in the future.’

‘But with a house like this at least we’ll have the potential for that kind of future development, won’t we?’

‘We don’t know that Clive will be able to buy the place yet,’ Ben reminded her. ‘He only says in his letter that the property is suitable and that, because of its situation, it won’t be overpriced.’