Zoe was furious with Win. Absolutely bloody furious.
But this time it was the fury that any reasonable woman would have when her husband took two weeks off work to help decorate then turned out to be so spectacularly bad at decorating that she was close to begging him to go back to work.
‘If you show me how do it, then I’ll do it,’ he’d say and Zoe would show him how to tape over the skirting boards so he didn’t get paint on them and yet Win still managed to get paint on them. Hanging wallpaper for the first time together was not a watershed moment in their relationship but something that would haunt Zoe until her dying day.
‘Yes! For God’s sake, they match up! How many more times?’ Win had had the audacity to snap at Zoe when she’d asked if the two strips of very expensive wallpaper she’d just pasted and hung were perfectly aligned. Of course they weren’t. They were a good centimetre out as any fool, except Win, could have told Zoe. As it was, Win would never know how close Zoe had come to upending the bucket of wallpaper paste over his head.
It was two weeks of decorating or rowing about the decorating, with only the occasional trip to B&Q providing a brief respite. And when they weren’t embroiled in their interminable home improvements, they still weren’t having sex. For all Win’s hurt that Zoe had shied away from his touch when she’d been grieving, now it was Win giving Zoe the widest of berths. Even in bed, especially in bed, he acted as if he’d much rather be in the spare room on the airbed. It was as if he didn’t trust Zoe not to force herself on him or pierce holes in the condoms, which she’d bought and presented to Win with great ceremony. Not that Zoe felt much like having sex herself; your husband acting like a skittish virgin was hardly an aphrodisiac.
They were brewing for another fight and they ended up having it in the middle of IKEA in the soft furnishing department, Win shouting, ‘This is not about the curtains for the guest bedroom and my supposed lack of design aesthetic, this is about you wanting to have a baby and I have already told you that I am not having a conversation about that until after we’ve seen the consultant.’
All eyes were upon them as he’d stalked off, leaving Zoe to manoeuvre that unwieldiest of beasts, the IKEA trolley, all by herself. Win did catch up with her at the till but only so they could have another row in the food shop over a packet of frozen cinnamon buns.
None of this was what Zoe wanted. Not when they’d been through so much already. And not when they should have been celebrating that the builders were finished, bar the snagging. It had taken eight months, tens of thousands of pounds and Win threatening to charge Gavin rent.
The day after an obviously relieved Win went back to work, Gavin finally left the premises. ‘From now on, I’m only coming through your front door as an invited guest and not a paid contractor,’ he told Zoe as they did a grand tour of the house to retrieve all his stray tools, including the tiny Philips screwdriver which had been sitting in their toothbrush holder for weeks.
‘Unless we start getting electric shocks every time we turn on a light or the ceiling suddenly collapses,’ Zoe said. ‘Then once you’ve fixed those problems, you’ll never be allowed to darken our doorstep ever again.’
Gavin pretended to cry and as Zoe hugged him, she thought how much she’d miss his little nuggets of well-meaning advice, perfectly brewed cups of tea and strong, steady presence in the face of disaster. What she wouldn’t miss was Gavin eating marrowfat peas with his lunch, then telling Zoe ‘best to give it fifteen minutes’ when he came out of the new downstairs loo with a copy of the Daily Mirror tucked under his arm.
Once Gavin had driven off in his van, giving a triumphant toot on the horn as he rounded the corner, Zoe took the Tube to Warren Street. She’d dutifully peed in a bottle clearly not designed for the task, now double-Ziplocked in her handbag, which she handed to the nurse when she arrived for her blood tests and scans at University College Hospital.
‘Not squeamish about the sight of blood, are you?’ the nurse asked her as she skilfully inserted a needle into the vein in the crook of Zoe’s right elbow.
Zoe remembered throwing up at the sight of the blood pouring out of the gash in Win’s leg, but now she watched intently as the crimson drops became a steady stream that flowed into a test tube. She imagined each drop as a harbinger of hope. That it would be tested and the results would be perfect. One hundred per cent. A-starred.
A week later, when she and Win were shown into the consultant’s office, Zoe felt as if she were about to sit an exam. They were still doing DIY on the evenings and weekends, which involved a lot of eye rolling and passive-aggressive sniping at each other, so the atmosphere between them was strained. But this morning, Zoe clutched tight hold of Win’s hand until he had to adjust her grip so her wedding and engagement rings didn’t gouge holes into his skin. Her other hand was in her pocket, fingers worrying at the cherry button, which she’d plucked from the side pocket of her handbag that morning, though for the life of her, Zoe still couldn’t decide if it were a good luck charm or a curse.
‘There’s nothing to be scared about,’ Win whispered as the consultant came in. Dr Shetty was a middle-aged Asian woman, with a calm, serene manner that didn’t even begin to dispel Zoe’s fears.
She glanced through Zoe’s notes and asked about the doomed pregnancy. Had Zoe had periods after getting her contraceptive implant? Had she still had periods when she’d been pregnant? Had she had any other symptoms of pregnancy? Nausea? Just the pain? Could she describe the pain?
‘I didn’t even know I was pregnant. That’s the thing,’ Zoe said in an exasperated voice. ‘I’ve already explained this a million times.’
‘Steady on,’ Win murmured and he stroked his thumb across the back of her white-knuckled fist. Zoe realised that she hadn’t explained this a million times. She’d been rushed to hospital in an ambulance, siren blaring, lights flashing, but she’d been oblivious to it all. Unconscious, pumped full of drugs, and she’d only woken up when it was all over.
She might have relived it in her head over and over again. To wonder if something might have been done if only she’d realised what was happening. If the baby could have been saved, because she’d read in the paper only a few weeks ago about a woman who’d brought her ectopic pregnancy to term. But these had been conversations that had never gone anywhere, but doubled back on themselves because they’d been one-sided and Zoe didn’t have any of the answers.
‘Usually there are reasons for an ectopic pregnancy,’ Dr Shetty said and Zoe knew this too. Knew that in her case it was none of the above. She hadn’t had endometriosis or PID. Hadn’t had previous abdominal surgery or a coil fitted. Had never smoked, had never taken the morning-after pill, it was just… ‘In this instance, there are no factors to indicate why the foetus didn’t develop in utero.’
It wasn’t at all comforting. That there was nothing Zoe could have done, or do in the future, to ensure that…
‘There has to be a reason,’ Win said tightly. ‘I’ve run the numbers. There’s a one in a hundred chance of getting pregnant with a contraceptive implant fitted. One in ninety pregnancies develop into an ectopic pregnancy. Only one in four of those results in the fallopian tube rupturing. And you say there were no indicators? There has to be, because do you know what the odds are of those different calamities happening together? Because I worked that out too and —’
‘I understand why you want facts and figures, but I’m afraid that sometimes it’s a series of unhappy coincidences.’ Dr Shetty stared impassively but kindly back at them, as if she’d sat in front of countless other couples and they’d all merged into one anxious-faced, shrill-voiced whole. ‘You’re obviously a man who sets store by numbers, so let me give you a good number. Sixty-five per cent of women are healthily pregnant eighteen months after an ectopic pregnancy. There is research that suggests that figure could be as much as eighty-five per cent after two years. Those are good odds, aren’t they?’
‘What about the thirty-five per cent of women who aren’t healthily pregnant?’ Win asked.
Zoe nudged him. ‘But two out of three women are. I’d bet on those odds.’ Hope, sharp and bright, flared to life then dimmed. ‘Except how many of those sixty-five per cent only have one fallopian tube?’
‘I’ve treated women who’ve lost both fallopian tubes but have still conceived with IVF,’ the doctor said and hope gave another rallying cry. ‘Not that we need to discuss options like IVF right away,’ she added quickly. ‘You’ve had one fallopian tube removed but there is a fifteen to twenty per cent chance that an egg produced on that side can still travel down what’s left of your tube. So, it’s not as if your fertility has been halved. I’d say, at a conservative estimate, that you have a seventy per cent chance of conception. That is, if you did want to start thinking about another baby…’
‘I do,’ Zoe said because she had already thought about another baby. And she hadn’t let herself want any more than that. To think about its sex, whether it would take after her or Win, what colour eyes it might have. ‘Please say we do, Win.’
Win made a noise that was neither yes nor no, but kept hold of her hand as Dr Shetty asked lots of questions about Zoe’s menstrual cycle, talked briefly about ovulation, then handed her an array of leaflets.
‘Let’s give it a year,’ she said, which made Zoe’s heart sink, because she couldn’t wait another year. ‘Let nature take its course and if it needs a helping hand, we can talk about next steps then. Until then, the most effective method of getting pregnant is by having lots of sex.’ Dr Shetty smiled as she rose from behind her desk to show them to the door. ‘Sometimes we get so caught up in percentages that we forget that making babies should be a lot of fun too. Go home and have some fun.’