‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Win said before they’d even made their way outside, as if Zoe was intent on dragging him into the first empty room they found so she could get on with the babymaking there and then. She must have had a mutinous glint in her eye as she muttered, ‘fine’ because Win held up his hands in protest. ‘Really, Zo, I promise we’ll talk about it but not right now.’
They’d already agreed that after their appointment they’d treat themselves to a tapas lunch at a fancy gastropub near Regent’s Park. They couldn’t afford it but Zoe had said, and Win had readily agreed for once, that they’d need a bit of cheering up. Now, however, as they walked along in silence, there really wasn’t any need for a glass of wine and some marinated chicken skewers as a consolation prize.
The news was good, better than Zoe had dared hope. Yet Win was pinch-faced, taking long strides so she had to scurry to keep up with him. The buses and lorries thundering past as they shot out of the underpass on Euston Road meant that Zoe had to shout to make herself heard.
‘Do you want children, Win? Yes or no?’
For a moment Zoe thought that her words had got caught up in the traffic’s slipstream. Then Win glanced across at her and she’d never seen him look that way, as if he wanted to hurl himself headfirst in front of a juggernaut to not have this conversation.
‘I said not now.’ Win strode on. Zoe let him go on ahead and by the time she got to the pub he’d found a table; even better there was a bottle of wine and two glasses. He didn’t look up as Zoe slid into the chair opposite, but poured her a glass of Malbec. ‘You hate me a little bit right now.’
He didn’t even pose it as a question, but a statement of fact, though it didn’t come close to being true, even if Zoe had spent the last few weeks raging at him. In the early days when she was just getting to know him, Zoe had thought Win’s taciturn ways were enigmatic and mysterious, but she was older, though not that much wiser, and no longer found his quietness intimidating, or sexy.
Now, his quietness was infuriating and frustrating. Win wielded it like a weapon. He always shut down when Zoe wanted to have things out. And there were things that absolutely had to be said so he could just sit there, silent as a bloody grave, while Zoe said them.
‘This isn’t an argument for one of us to win,’ she began. ‘We’re not going to be able to reach a compromise like when I want a Chinese and you want curry. If I want children and you don’t, then we’re at a complete impasse. Aren’t we?’
Win took a sip of his wine, eyes down. Zoe knew he was playing for time. ‘You didn’t even know, an hour ago, if we could have children and now you’re trying to railroad me into making a decision that has serious repercussions.’
‘We’re talking about a baby, not investing in some high-risk bonds!’ Zoe’s voice was so perilously high that something pinged in the back of her throat and when she glanced down, though it hardly needed confirming, her chest above the neckline of her T-shirt was mottled red. ‘I know that you were ambivalent about having kids but you’re going to have to be more specific than that.’
‘We were happy before. Are you saying that you wouldn’t be happy if we can’t have children… or decide we don’t want to?’
Sometimes Zoe thought that they hadn’t been truly happy since that weekend in Yorkshire when they’d last made love, maybe made a baby, and their lives had been sun-dappled and golden. At least then they’d been bumbling along in the same direction. Tragedy hadn’t come between them.
‘I want children,’ Zoe said as simply and plainly as she could when everything in her wanted to scream the words in Win’s face. ‘Something would always be missing without them. I wouldn’t feel complete. I’d never be really happy.’
‘You wouldn’t be happy with me?’ The question tore a hole in Zoe, made something inside her wither a little, but Win saved her from having to answer by shaking his head. ‘A sixty-five per cent chance of a healthy pregnancy…’
‘She said seventy per cent…’
‘Basically a one in three chance that something would go wrong,’ Win said. ‘One in three.’
‘Not that something would go wrong,’ Zoe argued. ‘A one in three chance that I wouldn’t get pregnant.’
‘I won’t go through that again.’ Win was speaking so quietly that Zoe had to lean across the table to catch his words. ‘To walk into the bathroom and find you like that and have to pull you back…’
‘Win, darling,’ Zoe said softly, because he still was her darling. She wanted to take his hands, to touch him, but suddenly she was scared to. There was something lost in his eyes, his face tightening, as if he were about to tip his head back and howl.
‘You very nearly died. You almost didn’t make it. I know I said that you wouldn’t let me touch you, but actually I was scared to touch you too. For a long time afterwards when I looked at you, all I could see was you on the bathroom floor. All that blood, Zo. And I can’t let that happen to you again. Not if it means losing you. You can’t expect me to. Nobody could.’ Zoe could see the damp trickle of tears rolling down his cheeks until he scrubbed at them furiously.
Every day Zoe gave a silent prayer of thanks that Win had found her when he did. Had kicked the bathroom door off its hinges. If it weren’t for Win, she would have died. It wasn’t a dramatic retelling of the events. It was right there in her medical notes.
‘You know something? I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for saving my life.’ Zoe got up, scraped her chair back so she could come round the table and kneel in front of Win who refused to look at her, but stared up at the ceiling. ‘I’m so sorry for putting you through all that but it turned out all right. Or, you know, seventy per cent all right. See, I can even joke about it.’
Win shook his head. ‘I can’t. It will never be funny.’
Zoe took Win’s hands. They were cold to the touch and she clasped them tightly as if she could breathe life back into them. ‘I did nearly die but I didn’t. And it isn’t a good enough reason to never try again.’
It was odd how Win’s hands went limp in Zoe’s grasp as if they’d suddenly become boneless. She felt him tense up before he snatched himself away from her touch, folded his arms. ‘What if you lost another baby?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘What then? What if I come home to find you collapsed and bleeding and this time I’m too late? I won’t risk it.’
Because he loved her, even after all they’d been through. The coldness, the distance, the arguments, the rough patch that had lasted months now. Win still loved her but he’d always been risk-averse whereas now Zoe was ready to risk their relationship. Or at least test its new boundaries. Push Win into the same direction that her heart wanted to go in.
Zoe took his hand and raised it to her lips, kissed it. ‘I love you,’ she said, because it was the only thing she could say. It was the truth and she hoped that it was the talisman which would keep them safe along these rocky paths they were continually navigating. Here be dragons. ‘I want us to have a baby and I cannot give you any more time. I do not have time. Do you know the perfect age for a woman to have a baby, biologically speaking?’
‘I don’t,’ Win said rather unwillingly, because it was very obviously a rhetorical question and Zoe’s blood was up. All of her was red, not just her neck, and Win knew her well enough to know that she was seconds away from ranting, even though she’d wanted to present a calm and measured argument.
But how could Zoe be calm and measured when every time she looked at a paper or turned on the radio, she was being screamed at on all sides?
‘Twenty-five!’ she exclaimed. ‘At twenty-five, everything – ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus – all in splendid, tip-top condition. At twenty-five, you’re young and healthy and strong enough to sail through a pregnancy and labour and deal with all those sleepless nights and —’
‘I think you have a rather rosy view of what being twenty-five was like.’ Win put his hands out in front of him pleadingly. ‘When you were twenty-five, your career was just taking off, mine too. We were still renting because instead of saving for a deposit we liked to go out, a lot, and you were even worse getting up in the morning than you are now.’
‘It’s still meant to be the best age to have a baby,’ Zoe insisted doggedly, because she knew, without having Win to point it out for her, that in her mid twenties she’d barely been able to look after herself, without having a tiny human relying on her to keep them alive too. ‘I’m thirty-two now. Seven years older. In three years’ time I’ll be thirty-five and do you know what doctors call expectant mothers who are thirty-five and older?’
Win shook his head again. ‘I don’t,’ he said flatly.
‘“Elderly primigravida” or “Geriatric mother”. Take your pick.’ The unfairness of it struck Zoe anew. She’d been waiting to have a baby so that it would grow up in a stable, financially secure household. And yes, she wasn’t quite ready to give up big nights out and lovely holidays abroad, even though the longer she left it, the more chance there was of birth defects and all manner of other developmental problems. Anyway, this wasn’t just all on her. ‘You are thirty-five and that means your fertility has taken a huge nosedive too,’ she informed Win, who was still listening intently but with a very beleaguered air.
‘I’m not entirely sure that that’s true,’ he said.
‘Well, it is. Don’t be fooled by all those ageing rockers having babies well into their seventies. At thirty-five, you’re half as fertile as men under twenty-five. There was a study done recently. It was in the papers. The Guardian!’ Zoe added defensively when Win raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth as if he were about to challenge that claim.
‘Zo, I don’t really think this is helpful —’
‘It might not be helpful but it’s the truth,’ she said. It seemed to Zoe as if there was just a five-minute window in a woman’s life when it was the best time to have a baby. Just five minutes. Zoe was sure that she’d passed it long ago and along with her one fallopian tube, with every day that went by her oestrogen levels were dwindling and her ovaries were packing up shop. ‘We do not have the luxury of time. The longer I wait for you to make up your mind, the more our chances of having a baby decrease and don’t think that IVF is going to be the answer because —’
‘That’s enough, Zoe!’ Win said. ‘I hear you.’
It wasn’t enough. Not any more. ‘I want a baby,’ Zoe said, because that was what all these facts and figures and fear came down to. ‘A fat, gurgling baby.’
She was still on her knees in front of Win. He pulled her up and onto his lap so he could kiss her; the simplest press of his lips at the corner of her mouth. All the love Zoe had for him, the overwhelming, complicated feelings that often felt too large to be contained, welled up in her, even though she knew what was coming.
‘I need more time,’ Win said. ‘I’m still not over what happened last year when you lost the baby, when I nearly lost you. And it just feels that right now, we’ve lost us too. How we were. Who we used to be.’
It was what she’d felt herself now, so how could Zoe deny it? ‘But how much time do you need?’ she asked.
‘Not that long,’ Win said, brushing his thumb across Zoe’s cheekbone to catch the first tear. ‘Before we make this decision, jointly, we need to get back to being a couple. We live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, most of the time anyway, eat at the same table, but we’re not together.’
‘I know,’ Zoe admitted and she wished that she could do this, have one serious conversation without crying. She’d never used to cry this much. She sniffed and tried to pull herself back from the brink. ‘How do we get back to being together?’
Win smoothed the hair back from Zoe’s face. ‘I don’t know. Maybe a joint project, something we can do as a couple.’
‘But something fun that absolutely doesn’t involve DIY or IKEA trips,’ Zoe said slowly. Maybe this was the answer. Exactly what they needed. A few weeks to get back to the Win and Zoe they used to be. ‘Did you have anything in mind?’
‘Now, don’t dismiss this out of hand,’ Win said, which immediately had Zoe on edge. Her fears turned out to be well founded. ‘How would you feel about training to do another ten k race or maybe, and I’m just putting this out there, a half marathon? I’m still out of condition after my injury and if I promised to match your pace, we could make it fun and chart our progress —’
‘Have you completely lost your mind? You call that fun? I’d rather assemble flatpack furniture every day for the rest of my life,’ Zoe said aghast, not even caring if she was hurting Win’s feelings, which was a relief in itself. ‘Pick something else. Something that actually could be described as fun.’
They sat there in silence for an uncomfortable few moments though it really shouldn’t have taken any time at all to come up with at least five fun activities to get them back to their happy place.
Zoe looked around the pub for inspiration. In the corner, gathered around a large table, were a group of people having lunch, discarded tissue paper and cards next to a middle-aged woman who was unwrapping her last present.
This year they’d let their birthdays pass almost unnoticed and had hardly seen any of their friends so it was actually pretty obvious what their joint fun project should be.
‘Party?’ Zoe suggested at the same time that Win said, ‘Housewarming?’ He smiled. ‘See? We’re not that far out of sync, are we?’
‘We’re not. Thank God.’ Zoe held up her glass. ‘So, we’re in agreement, then? Housewarming party?’
‘Or as I like to call it, Project Fun,’ Win said, as he clinked his glass against Zoe’s.