At quarter to seven, Zoe was waiting for Win at the garden gate. He used to be home at six thirty but he was walking wounded so everything took him longer now. She watched him limp slowly down the road, his head down, and as much as she hurt for herself, Zoe also hurt for Win. Both of them needed to get back to the people they’d used to be. If Zoe was to take anything from Libby’s diary maybe it was a little bit of the other woman’s old-fashioned grit and determination. Back in 1936 there was no counselling, no websites offering advice or support, you were just expected to carry on regardless. To somehow still find meaning in your life and Zoe was pretty sure that she’d just found that meaning…
‘What’s wrong?’ Win called out as he caught sight of her. ‘What’s Gavin done now? Or hasn’t done?’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Zoe said and she tried to smile, which made Win narrow his eyes suspiciously. There hadn’t been much smiling lately. ‘Close your eyes. I’ve got a surprise for you.’
Zoe saw hope flare up in Win that she might have found something, a cunning contraption or device, which would make all that was bad and wrong instantly better.
‘OK,’ Win said warily, closing his eyes. ‘Do we have a boiler now? Or did you hand over the house to a TV makeover crew for the day?’
‘’Fraid not,’ Zoe said and she took Win’s sleeve to guide him down the garden path, even that inconsequential touch nervous and hesitant. ‘Better than that.’
Slowly and carefully she led Win into the house, down the hall, into the kitchen where she’d put the surprise, then let go. ‘Can I open my eyes now?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’ Win must be able to hear the scrabble of something on the floor. ‘That’s right. No need to be frightened. Come here, sweet girl. That’s it. Win, I want you to meet Beyoncé.’
‘Meet who?’ He shook his head, opened his eyes because there was no way, no bloody way, that Beyoncé, the lead singer of Destiny’s Child, world-famous successful solo artist and bootylicious feminist icon, was in their kitchen.
Of course she wasn’t because Beyoncé was a small yet rotund dog, white with brown splodges, including a darling patch over her right eye and a ferocious underbite, which made her bottom incisors poke out of her mouth in a way that Zoe had now decided was completely adorable.
‘What have you done?’ Win asked, his voice flat as if he didn’t even have the energy to snap.
‘Well, I’ve seen the dogs from the local rescue centre in Highgate Woods a few times and that day you fell, I bumped into Beyoncé and we kind of hit it off, didn’t we?’ Zoe scooped up Beyoncé, who smooshed her face against Zoe’s neck. ‘She hasn’t been coping very well in kennels and everything has been so horrible lately and we both needed cheering up so I said we’d foster her…’ Zoe tailed off as Win looked at the dog and the dog looked at him with an equally discomfited expression.
‘How could you think this was a good idea? And who calls a dog Beyoncé? Who in their right mind would do that?’ Win demanded of Zoe, who held Beyoncé in front of her like a canine shield to deflect Win’s wrath. ‘The house is a building site. The garden is a builder’s yard. We are broke. Broker than broke and you decide this is a really good time to get a dog.’
‘Something needed to change. We both agreed on that,’ Zoe insisted. ‘And you’re the one who always wanted a dog.’
‘Sometime in the future and it was meant to be a joint decision…’ They’d hardly spoken to each other these last few weeks but suddenly they were in the middle of an argument, when Zoe could count the number of arguments they’d had in thirteen years on her fingers and still have a hand spare. They weren’t shouting at least, but talking in fierce, angry whispers so as not to upset Beyoncé. ‘God, that is the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.’
Zoe held Beyoncé out for closer inspection. She was very placid, quite happy to nestle in Zoe’s arms, comfortingly solid and warm. ‘She’s not ugly. She’s a crossbreed.’
‘A cross between what?’
‘A pug crossed with a Staffordshire bull terrier with some French bulldog in there too. Come on, Win, look at her little face!’
Zoe thrust the dog at Win and, as if she sensed that her entire future might rest on this moment, Beyoncé cocked her head, stuck out her lower jaw even further and made an odd grunting noise.
‘I suppose she is kind of cute.’ Win was definitely wavering. She’d heard all about Brandy, the beloved Labrador they’d had when Win and Ed were kids and yes, she and Win might not currently have a back garden but the people from the shelter had said that it wasn’t an issue if they had Highgate and Queen’s Woods on their doorstep.
Win took the dog from her then Zoe saw his eyes widen in disbelief as he caught sight of her still swollen belly, the enlarged, elongated teats… ‘She’s pregnant? Oh, Zoe, how could you?’
‘She isn’t pregnant,’ Zoe said hurriedly, snatching Beyoncé back and cradling the dog to her chest. ‘She had a litter a few weeks ago but she was picked up as a stray in Chingford. They think she was used as a breeding bitch, but the rescue centre have said that she’ll be spayed —’
‘No!’ Win put up her hands to ward off any more attempts by Zoe to thrust the dog at him. ‘She is going back first thing tomorrow. How can you even bear to look at her? What is wrong with you?’
Win walked out without another word. Limped into the living room. Zoe left the dog in the kitchen, to follow him. She’d never seen Win look at her like that. His anger blunted by a dull resignation as if he couldn’t see a way to be rid of her.
‘You know what, Zo? I can’t do this. I can’t clear up another one of your messes,’ he said, his back to her as he stared out of the windows, his hands resting heavily on the sill.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I can’t always be the grown-up. The one who fixes everything,’ Win clarified. ‘Fixes you.’
Zoe hated him then. Just a little. For being so dense, so determined not to understand what had happened to her, to them. ‘I don’t need you to fix me. I’m not broken!’ Though in a way she was, Zoe knew that, but she had to believe that she wouldn’t stay broken. That the hurt would recede, become something that she’d learn to live with, because if the hurt completely disappeared then it would be an insult, an affront to the memory of what would have been their first child. ‘Being sad after what happened is normal. It’s not a mess that should be cleared away as quickly as possible. There’s no set time to get over it.’
‘You’d get over it much faster if you stopped dwelling on it,’ Win said. ‘And now you get a dog that’s a constant reminder of what happened so you’ll be even more miserable.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a schedule for how long I am allowed to dwell on losing our baby…’
They both winced as Zoe said the three words that they’d somehow silently agreed to never utter out loud.
‘I’m not talking about this,’ Win said as if that were a surprise. ‘Change the subject.’
‘No, we are staying on this subject because I’m fed up with you shutting me out, punishing me and I don’t even know what for. Losing the baby? Or getting pregnant in the first place, because that was way ahead of the schedule you’ve mapped out for the next fifty years of our lives?’ Zoe had always suspected that Win saw their future as a gigantic to-do list. All the big events: getting married, buying a house, having kids, weren’t happy occasions to be celebrated but items to be ticked off.
It was one of Win’s more annoying foibles; they’d had their worst ever row in Sainsbury’s one Christmas Eve over Win’s ridiculously detailed shopping list, which even had sub-sections, but Zoe knew that she had her own foibles too. That her habit of not opening post and how she ate her yogurt off the back of the spoon drove Win to distraction but she’d always thought that was what love was in its purest form; loving someone despite all their infuriating habits.
Maybe that was what this was about; that they’d simply stopped loving each other. It was there in Win’s face, the way that he’d shut down, not just since the baby, but how he now responded to Zoe’s accusation. Not even trying to deny it, to defend himself.
‘We’re not doing this,’ he said, limping past her. ‘And that bloody dog is going back where it came from.’
Zoe rushed after him. ‘Don’t walk away from me,’ she snapped as Win hauled himself slowly up each stair. ‘We have to talk about the baby.’
‘There was no baby,’ he mumbled so Zoe wasn’t even sure that she’d heard him properly. ‘You were barely even two months gone and you didn’t even know you were pregnant so why? Why are you still so down about it? Why, for God’s sake, won’t you let it go?’
He turned awkwardly on the widest step where the stairs curved around the corner so he could see the stricken, dumbfounded look on Zoe’s face. ‘It would have been our first child. How can that not matter to you?’ she asked. ‘I thought that a new house, a new adventure would bring us together again but God, you’re not even trying!’
‘I never wanted to buy this house,’ Win said, turning to continue his flight away from her.
‘You know why we had to buy this house.’
Zoe had spent a week in hospital recovering and even though she felt as fragile and as flimsy as a butterfly’s wing, she was sent home.
Home.
It didn’t feel like home any more, but a collection of rooms that housed her belongings while her heart was somewhere else.
And the bathroom. Someone, probably Jackie, had done a deep clean so the white tiles, the bath surround, were spotless, but even so Zoe was sure she could still see speckles of red clinging to the grouting and when she shut her eyes all she could see was her own body prone and bleeding on the floor.
She came out of the bathroom to find Win waiting for her in the hall, hands hanging by his side, the same helpless look on his face that he’d had ever since she’d woken up in hospital.
‘I can’t live here any more,’ she said without preamble. ‘We have to move. Now. Sooner than now.’
‘Zo, it’s not as easy as that,’ Win had said gently.
‘It is that easy. There’s still the house in Highgate. We can live there. We’ll make it work. Do you think we could be in before Christmas?’
Win tried to talk her round. Kept talking money so that Zoe imagined thought-bubbles with a string of numbers in each one floating above his head. She let him talk, use reason and logic, until he ran out of words. ‘So, we’re agreed, right? We’ll wait until the new year and make a decision when you’re feeling better.’
She’d never been surer of anything in her life. ‘I will never be able to walk into that bathroom without seeing myself nearly bleeding to death on the floor.’
Zoe had expected more arguments, more thought-bubbles with numbers, not Win dropping to his knees in front of her. He put his hands on her hips in that hesitant way that he’d learned in the last week, as if he were scared to touch her. Though Zoe wanted to run her fingers through his hair, hold him to her and make Win promise to never let her go, she couldn’t bear to touch him.
Because Win had seen her almost bleed out in front of him and now something between them had shifted, was altered, splintered and would never be made right again.
She’d never be right again, she was damaged and she didn’t want to infect Win too so she held herself very still.
Win took his hands off her. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘We’re moving, right?’ Zoe clarified. ‘To Highgate. Something new. Something that hasn’t had a chance to be spoiled. OK?
‘OK?’
‘I can’t be happy in this house, when I know we’re bankrupting ourselves,’ Win said, hobbling into the back bedroom. ‘We didn’t have to move. We could have found another solution. I told you time and time again that this house was too expensive but it was what you wanted. I did what you wanted, I always do, but enough, Zoe. Enough!’
It would never be enough. ‘I don’t care about the money. I care about you. About us, but I’m not even sure there is an us at the moment.’ Zoe raised her head to meet Win’s gaze and she wasn’t holding anything back, wasn’t afraid to let Win see her vulnerability, her pain. He turned away. ‘Do you still love me?’
‘Of course I do! Do you even have to ask?’ Win only had eyes for the holdall he snatched up, the folded piles of laundry that Zoe had placed on the bed earlier. ‘But we’re not making each other happy right now, are we?’
Zoe was looking forward to a time when she could get through a day without crying, when she simply felt all right. Happiness – something that she used to take for granted – was currently an unattainable goal. ‘I know I’ve been difficult lately but have I been so difficult that you can’t even live with me any more? Win! Stop that and talk to me!’
Win didn’t stop but continued packing with sharp, jerky movements. ‘I love you but I just can’t do this. Not any of it. Especially not having to listen to you cry night after night when you think that I’m asleep.’
‘I’m not going to do that any more. Look, I want things to be different. I want them to change; but you storming out in a huff isn’t the change I want.’
‘I’m not storming out,’ Win said, which was true. He wouldn’t be carefully balling up his socks if he was storming, but he was still packing to leave. ‘I’m going to stay at my mum’s for a bit.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ Zoe said, when she should have been pleading, imploring, begging Win to stay, but it felt as if he were already gone. Had felt like that ever since they came back from the hospital. ‘You know, if you would talk to me about the baby, then we could —’
‘We could what? What is talking about it over and over meant to achieve? Not that there’s anywhere in this house where we can even sit comfortably and have a conversation.’ Win held out his hands to encompass the bare room that like everything else in the house, like her bloody reproductive system, wasn’t fit for the job at hand. ‘Not that it matters. Nothing is right and no amount of talking is going to change that.’
Win had been picking up speed, voice getting louder, packing more frantic, but his flow was interrupted by the sound of something from downstairs hurling itself repeatedly against the door to the living room and a series of grunts that rose in volume and frequency until they became whimpers.
‘The house is fixable,’ Zoe insisted but her shoulders were already slumped in defeat. ‘And we’re fixable too, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’
‘I can’t do it any more,’ Win said as if it were the only decision he was capable of making. ‘I’m sick of being the one in charge all the time. You wanted this house, Zo, and I hope you’ll be very happy together.’
Then Win clicked the locks shut on his suitcase, the sound decisive too. Definite. A full-stop.