The House of Secrets by Sarra Manning (43)

 

For much of the year, the days had stretched before her without purpose, now her days had more purpose than she knew what to do with. One hundred and twelve illustrations to draw and colour before the twentieth of December and contrary to what many people thought, including Win, who really should have known better, she couldn’t just ‘bang out’ ten drawings in a day.

Zoe was up at seven as Win and Florence set off for their morning run and was still working when Win came home nearly twelve hours later. In the meantime, she would have sketched and coloured her family of robins sledging and building snowmen, wrapping presents, opening presents and other assorted festive, family-friendly activities. Zoe’s only respite was to take Florence across to Highgate Woods for an afternoon walk and while Florence stalked squirrels, Zoe was on high alert for any robins who happened to be cavorting about in the vicinity.

It was where Zoe was one Friday afternoon in late October, sitting on what she thought of as their bench down a path they’d nicknamed Squirrel Alley. The light was fading as Zoe sketched the clearing in front of her. The trees were sparse but still green, even though the leaves that carpeted the ground were on the turn; a glorious melange of acid yellow to the palest gold. The clocks would go back that weekend and at nearly six the light was fading fast – Zoe was already listening out for the warning bell that signalled fifteen minutes before the gates were locked. One time, she’d had to tuck Florence under her arm to outrun the wood-keepers in their little buggy.

‘Hello, stranger,’ Win said, startling Zoe as he sat down next to her. ‘You look a lot like my wife who disappeared about two weeks ago.’

‘You look a lot like my husband, except he doesn’t usually finish work this early.’ It was warm enough that Win wasn’t wearing a coat over his suit but the tips of his ears and his nose were pink. In the woods the air was thicker now, the smell of leaf mould pervading the atmosphere, the benches slightly damp when you first sat on them. ‘Time off for good behaviour?’

‘Something like that,’ Win agreed and he settled back to watch Zoe work; her pencil making lightning quick strokes across her pad, scribbling notes to herself about the colours she’d use later to create a winter woodland scene.

Zoe finished her sketch and turned to Win as he pulled out a bottle of champagne and two plastic cups from his work bag.

‘Happy anniversary,’ he said a little smugly because he thought she’d forgotten.

‘Happy anniversary,’ Zoe replied, leaning over to kiss his cheek. ‘I wouldn’t open that just yet. The bell’s about to go. We can have it after we get home tonight.’

Florence had been deep in the undergrowth but now she emerged, ears cocked. She caught sight of Win and stilled apart from her tail, which wagged with a force that looked painful. ‘Hey, pretty lady,’ he called to the dog as she bounded over. ‘Who’s my bestest girl?’ There was no competition. ‘Where are we going tonight?’

‘I booked a table for eight thirty at Andrew Edmunds but maybe you’d prefer to take Florence, your bestest girl,’ Zoe said drily. ‘Although I’m not sure she’ll want to come when she could be having a sleepover with Darcy and Bingley.’

Darcy and Bingley were two sandy-coloured puggles besotted with Florence, who loved them both equally and loved the squeaky tennis balls that their owner Jack bought even more.

‘I thought you wouldn’t notice the date, what with the robins and everything.’ Win pushed Florence away as she tried to jump up with muddy paws.

‘It’s our anniversary. Thirteen years and we’ve managed not to kill each other,’ Zoe said, because they always celebrated the anniversary of their first meeting. ‘I think that deserves a night off.’

‘It does, but Andrew Edmunds? Can we afford it?’ Win cringed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the mood before the mood even had a fighting chance.’

‘You haven’t ruined anything and I had an unexpected Brazilian royalty payment.’ Zoe raised her eyes to the heavens. Her attention suddenly focused on a group of trees; their branches drooping gracefully if forlornly. ‘Thank God for the children’s-book-buying public of Brazil. Hang on! Just need to take some pictures.’

She pulled out her phone as Win asked Florence how her squirrel stalking was going. ‘What was that?’ He looked behind the bench. ‘Is that a pesky squirrel?’

‘One day she’ll catch one and we’ll have to deal with the bloody aftermath. Not to mention the fact that Florence will become a stone-cold killer.’

‘I don’t think we have to worry. She’s the very opposite of stealthy,’ Win observed as Florence thundered through a gap in the bushes. ‘Oh, you’re doing another sketch? Won’t they be ringing the bell soon?’

‘Yeah, but see the way those branches are starting to droop? If they were heavy with snow, you could imagine two mischievous little robins skiing down them, couldn’t you?’

Win made a noncommittal noise but said nothing until Zoe was done. ‘You’re so observant, Zo. You always see the little details that other people miss. I suppose that’s why you’re an artist.’

Zoe felt herself swell with pride – just a little bit, not enough to bloat her. ‘Well, I like to think that I’ve honed my visual senses over the years.’

‘Yeah, exactly, so how come you’ve never noticed this before?’ Win gestured at the worn brass-coloured inscription on the bench that Zoe was certain she’d read a hundred times before. On her first forays into the woods, she’d made a point of reading all the bench inscriptions. There was even a bench that she always avoided because its plaque was in memory of a child who hadn’t even made it to its first birthday. So, of course, she’d noticed this one before.

She huffed a little at Win who pressed his lips together like he was trying hard not to laugh, then she leaned across to peer at the faded engraving.

It was the same jolt as seeing the face of a loved one suddenly materialise in a crowd. Zoe traced each word with the tip of her finger.

‘It’s Libby and Hugo,’ she said, looking imploringly at Win. ‘It can’t be anyone else, can it?’

‘It absolutely can’t. It has to be them. Wow. I can’t quite get my head around the idea that they walked along this path eighty years ago.’ Win rubbed his eyes as if the ghosts of Libby and Hugo had suddenly emerged through the trees. ‘That they might have sat here and looked out onto this view, like we’ve done countless times. I’m a little spooked, like someone just walked over my grave.’

It was Zoe’s turn to shiver. ‘I often see Libby so clearly walking through the woods or around Soho. Like there’s a film of her playing in my head.’

‘You’re an artist, you can imagine things like that, I need a bit more to go on.’ Win smiled ruefully.

Zoe traced the first line of the inscription again. ‘“In memory of my darling Libby”. So she did die then.’

‘It was eighty years ago,’ Win pointed out. ‘She had to have died at some point.’

‘Yes, but…’

The bell rang then. Of course it did.

‘We’ll come back tomorrow,’ Win said firmly as if he knew that Zoe wanted to run to the little office by the café and badger the staff to start looking through their records. ‘If you still need answers, we’ll come back tomorrow.’

 

It felt odd to get all gussied up.

Zoe wore the APC dress she’d splurged on a couple of years ago when they’d had money to splurge; a long-sleeved charcoal-grey crêpe with a graphic floral pattern in two different shades of pink. She put heels on for a wobbly walk from front door to Highgate Tube then hobbled from Leicester Square station through Soho. She’d even done something with her hair that was more than scraping it up into a ponytail and her lashes were weighted down with mascara, lips sticky with a soft matte pink. It felt a little like playing dress-up when she’d spent the best part of the year in a motley and ragged assortment of jeans, yoga pants and jumpers that all had holes in the cuffs from where she had worked her thumbs through.

She was back in her own skin, skin that had been denuded of extraneous hair, exfoliated and moisturised. So different from the long months when she had left her legs, eyebrows and underarms to become Hobbit-like and had done nothing more with her face than splash it with cold water; this from the woman who used to have a five-step skincare regime. Some of it was due to their primitive bathroom facilities and some of it was that Zoe had stopped caring. She didn’t know when it was that she’d started caring again but she was glad that she had.

‘I tell you what, Zo, you scrub up all right,’ Win said as they sat in Andrew Edmunds, the small Soho restaurant where they celebrated all their significant moments, from anniversaries and birthdays to promotions and publishing deals. It was cosy and intimate, a wood-panelled room with windows misted up so Zoe couldn’t see the world outside. All she could see was Win, his face soft and glowing in the light of the candle placed in a wax-encrusted wine bottle, their knees bumping underneath the table.

‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ she said, raising her glass in a toast. ‘It’s been thirteen years and I still like you lots and lots.’

‘I like you even more than I did then.’ Win cocked his head. ‘You’ve improved with age.’

Zoe didn’t think the last thirteen years had been that kind. ‘I miss my nineteen-year-old body. It was much bendier, less achey. Though I don’t miss my nineteen-year-old sense of fashion. I’m so grateful selfies weren’t a thing then.’

‘I did used to wonder why your foundation was four shades too pale for your complexion,’ Win dared to say and was rewarded by Zoe kicking him under the table. ‘Ow! It was a bit Kabuki, is all I’m saying.’

‘Not four shades,’ Zoe said, with her hands covering her inevitably rosy red cheeks. ‘Two at the most. And you can hardly talk when you used to put so much product in your hair that it was crunchy to the touch.’

They reminisced fondly over past fashion disasters: Zoe’s big mohair green jumper that had left a trail of fuzz like lichen everywhere she went. And Win’s shoes with square toes so long and narrow that they’d eventually curled up at the end.

‘Just as well we found each other,’ Zoe said, as she wiped away a stray happy tear before it wrecked her mascara. ‘Nobody else would have had us.’

By now they’d made serious inroads into a bottle of the cheapest sparkling wine on the menu, dinner plates were waiting to be cleared away and they were holding hands across the table.

It was perfect, for tonight at least.

Win raised Zoe’s left hand to his mouth and kissed her ring finger just above her wedding band and Zoe was all ready to melt when he fixed her with his cool blue stare.

‘I hate to kill the mood, Zo, but do you really think that if something bad happened to Libby, to her baby, that it means the same thing will happen to you?’

It did rather kill the soft-focus good cheer but if Win had asked her the same thing when she wasn’t a little tipsy, a little nostalgic for good times past, then Zoe knew she’d bristle and get defensive. She was still learning how to think about the possibility of having a baby without bursting into tears. Now she considered the question carefully. And when Win put it like that… ‘I know we’re not the same. You didn’t get shot during the Spanish Civil War, for one thing.’

‘And you haven’t had an affair with a car salesman, as far as I know,’ Win offered and Zoe smiled before her expression grew serious.

‘Eighty years ago, they didn’t have a fraction of the technology or medical knowledge that we have,’ she said. ‘They didn’t have ultrasound. God, they didn’t even have penicillin. It’s amazing the infant mortality rate wasn’t higher…’ She had to swallow hard, blink back that warning prickle of tears and she wondered if there would ever be a time that she could think about that failed pregnancy and be at peace with it. Win kissed her hand again, but he didn’t interrupt, just nodded his head as if he understood and that need, the hunger, rose up again. ‘You have to tell me once and for all – do you want children, Win?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Why does that feel like a trick question?’

‘It’s not and I know you need time but please, you have to put me out of my misery. Are you still ambivalent or have you made up your mind?’ It was hard to breathe because this need felt as if it would eventually override everything. If Win didn’t want a family, then their love might not be enough to compensate for the loss of what they could have had, of what they could have been.

‘I don’t want a child,’ Win said baldly and his face grew blurry and indistinct as Zoe willed back the tears that had already begun to marshal. ‘But we’re talking about our child. Our children. Having a family with you.’

‘I want to have a family with you.’ Zoe felt as if she might dissolve where she sat.

‘Would you, Zoe?’ Win looked doubtful. ‘Would you really? I know that you think about the baby we lost all the time, I do know that, but I don’t because still all I can think about is how you nearly died. Not an exaggeration, Zo. If I hadn’t come in when I did, if the ambulance had been delayed, if the doctor on call hadn’t known exactly what was wrong…’

‘If… when I get pregnant again, I will be the most annoying, most paranoid, most Type A pregnant woman the NHS has ever dealt with. I’ll be insisting on scans and blood tests every time I so much as sneeze.’ Zoe took a shaky breath. ‘So, you’ve reached a definitive conclusion about any babies that we might have together?’

They stared at each other. Zoe wondered which one of them would blink first then Win smiled. ‘Yes, I do want to have a baby with you. And yes, sooner rather than later. No more five-year plans, I promise.’

Zoe let out a very slow, very shaky breath. Her first reaction was, unexpectedly, panic so she had to clutch hold of the edge of the table to keep herself seated, anchored, and not blurt out, ‘Oh God, but I’m not ready yet.’

She took another deep breath. And then, it was as if the devil that she’d carried on her back had finally been banished. She wriggled her shoulders, felt instantly lighter without the burden. ‘Between you and me, I’ve never been a big fan of the five-year plan,’ she said with a watery smile. ‘But I’m a big fan, huge fan, of sooner rather than later.’

Win smiled back. ‘It’s been strongly intimated that I’ll make partner next year, which means we’ll have a bit more money coming in. I think our new year resolution should be to make a baby. Much more fun than the year when my resolution was to run a sub-four-hour marathon,’ he added, which wasn’t exactly the ringing endorsement.

And it didn’t do any harm to ask for clarification. Maybe even written confirmation. ‘You definitely want to have a baby? Babies. Plural. Because one baby would be great to start with but I don’t want to stop at one.’ Zoe glanced down at her stomach almost as if she expected to see her belly distended and round, a life growing inside her; a little person with its own distinct personality and likes and dislikes.

‘Babies. Plural. Why not? Just think, you might even be pregnant for our fourteenth anniversary,’ Win said and in that moment Zoe swore that she felt something in her body, something atavistic and embedded deep within her, clench as if to say ‘gimme gimme gimme’.

‘If we get the bill now, throw caution to the wind and order an Uber, we could be home in thirty minutes,’ she told Win and she wanted him to look at her like he had when she’d come down the stairs earlier as he waited in the hall and had seen her all dressed up for the first time in ages. He’d licked his lips and given her a slow once-over, not even realising that he was doing it and it was, always had been, sexy as hell. A few more of those lingering looks, maybe a little fondling under the table because there was a spot just below her knee that was extraordinarily sensitive, would have Zoe raring to go on their new project.

She wasn’t even averse to snogging like horny teenagers in the back of the car on the way home. On the contrary, she was completely up for that.

Then Win pulled out his phone. ‘No, I think it’s best to wait until January. There’s a lot of prep work to do first. Although I’ve already downloaded an app. It combines an ovulation calendar with a fertility tracker so we’ll have some baseline readings before we get down to it. I’ll put it on your phone too.’ He smiled kindly at her. ‘I haven’t just been researching our Mrs Morton these long nights while I’ve come poor second to a family of robins. It gave me time to seriously think about this and explore what our various options were. I didn’t want to get your hopes up and greenlight starting a family if it was only going to lead to more disappointment. Anyway, it turns out there are lots of things we can do to optimise our chances of conceiving naturally. They have these kits; the best one combines a touch screen monitor with urine tests, so we know which days every month you’re at your most fertile. Of course, there are other ways to gauge it. Changes in your cervical mucus, for instance, right?’

‘Urine tests? Cervical mucus? My God, I have never wanted you more,’ Zoe said flatly and Win’s face closed off.

They weren’t holding hands any more.

‘Too much?’ he asked.

‘Much too much.’ Zoe tried to smile. ‘You are literally trying to micromanage my vagina.’

He pulled a face. ‘There have been times when you’ve enjoyed me micromanaging your vagina,’ he pointed out, which was true but they were so long ago, Zoe could hardly remember them.

She rested her elbows on the table so she could gaze at Win. She still loved him. Even at their worst, their most estranged, that love had still been there, holding them together when nothing else could. But they were different people to who they’d been thirteen years ago. Different people to how they were a year ago even. They loved each other, but they still hadn’t fallen in love with the new people they’d become.

They didn’t even look the same. Zoe had her scar, her badge of courage, and a faint furrow between her eyes that was there to stay. Win had the shuttered, closed for business set to his face far too often for Zoe’s liking, streaks of grey running through his hair.

It had been one hell of a year and they’d both tried to deal with it, make sense of it in their own way. Zoe had found solace in her imagination, in telling stories. It was probably why she’d become so obsessed with Libby. The pages of her diary were another story to get lost in, why she was so desperate for Libby to have a happy ever after.

But while Zoe made stories out of what she didn’t understand, Win had his spreadsheets and schedules and apps so he could corral the present and try to contain the future. Break them down into a series of small tasks that he could action, then put a line through them.

Both of them were just muddling through as best as they could because they were never that great on their own. When they were a team, working together, complementing each other, they were golden. Solid.

They needed to learn how to be a couple again, before they could become three.

‘I don’t think we should start trying for a baby,’ Zoe said, her head speaking and not her heart, which felt as if it were slowly collapsing. ‘Not if you’re going to plan it like a military operation. Leaving nothing to chance. That’s not how I want our child to be conceived.’

‘So, now you’re saying that you don’t want to try for a baby?’ Win looked up the heavens. ‘What do you want then? Do you still want me?’

‘Of course I want you but the consultant said that trying for a baby should be fun, that we should be at it like bloody rabbits. Do you know how many times we’ve made love this year?’ Zoe hated to end on a cliffhanger but their waiter had arrived to moot the possibility of pudding.

Win waved him away with a vague promise of coffee in ten minutes. ‘Once,’ he sighed after he’d done the maths. ‘Well, technically not even once! How can that be possible?’

‘Most couples who buy a house make it their mission to have sex in every room,’ Zoe said. ‘Just like we did when we moved into our old flat. We even did it in the shared cellar.’

‘And the little lean-to by the back door.’ Win smiled, his nose wrinkling, as if, like Zoe, he was remembering how they’d had to be very quiet as he bent her over the rainwater butt because two of the girls who lived next door were standing outside to have a cigarette and a bitch. Zoe had bit her lip for all she was worth until Win suddenly let out a startled cry and thrust deep when a spider landed in his hair. Then the girls next door had screamed, ‘Who’s there?’ and Zoe had got the giggles, which finished Win off far too soon.

It hadn’t been the best sex they’d ever had, but at least they’d been having sex.

‘You. Me. Sex. In every room,’ Zoe decided. ‘Even the pantry. You can make a schedule.’

‘I don’t have to schedule everything. You make it sound like I’m the worst kind of control freak. That I alphabetise and colour code everything we own. I’m not that bad,’ Win said a little huffily, though there had been a time earlier this year when he had so many different coloured stickers on his renovation wall planner, even he’d forgotten what the colours represented. ‘I thought the idea of having more sex was to loosen me up, get us back to our happy place.’

‘It is, it was.’ It had never used to be like this between them – being so quick to take offence, to nurse grievances. ‘I just thought a schedule would be…’

‘Let it go, Zoe.’

‘… fun. With rewards every time we unlocked a new level,’ she said.

Win raised his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t the sex be reward enough?’ he asked archly. Even more arousing than the spot just below the crease of her knee was when Win raised his eyebrows and said things in an arch way. ‘I suppose we could have stickers though. Maybe even gold stars.’

‘And whoever gets the most gold stars wins a prize,’ Zoe decided.

‘Are we going to call in an independent adjudicator to award these gold stars?’

‘I was thinking a simple points-based system.’ Zoe had been thinking no such thing, until that very moment. ‘Contingent on, I don’t know, position, difficulty of position…’

‘Frequency and duration of orgasm?’ Win suggested and under the table his fingers found that spot just below the crease of her knee that made Zoe wriggle and forget her own name. ‘Do you think we should skip the pudding, get that Uber you were talking about earlier and go straight home so we can discuss this further? Agree the small print, any additional clauses?’

‘I think that can be arranged.’ Zoe raised her hand so she could wave frantically to get their waiter’s attention. ‘I’ll get the bill, if you order the car.’

Win reached for his phone then paused. ‘Just to be clear, we are going home to have lots of sex, aren’t we?’

‘We are,’ Zoe stated firmly then it was her turn to pause. ‘Are you in?’

Win’s smile was equal parts anticipation and promise. ‘Oh, Zo, I’m all in.’