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Her face must have given her away, because he suddenly frowned, his mouth hardening not with anger, she recognised, but with pain.
‘Zoe, Zoe, when will you learn to trust me? To have a little faith in me? Have you any idea how it makes me feel, knowing that you believed you had to protect me from reality… knowing that you weren’t able to share something as important as this with me?’ He touched her stomach lightly as he spoke. ‘Deep in the psyche of every man there’s a part of him that has an atavistic need to be the archetypal male strong guy with the broad shoulder to lean on. No matter how much of a wimp the rest of the world might think him, deep inside every man is a certain something that tells him that it’s his duty, his responsibility, his role to be leaned on; to be the one who gives support rather than receives it.
‘I may not be Mr Macho… I may not ever want to be, but before God I want you to feel that I’m there for you, and not that I have to be protected and lied to because I don’t have the strength to accept the realities of life.
‘When you first told me about the baby and about concealing the truth from me, I felt hurt and angry because, by believing that deceit was necessary, you made me feel so much less of a man; and then I recognised that it wasn’t you who was making me feel like that. All you were doing was simply reacting to the subconscious message I was giving you. I was the one who was responsible for the fact that you felt you couldn’t trust me… couldn’t rely on me.’
He made a small, helpless gesture as he saw the tears filling her eyes.
‘Zoe, all my life I’ve been used to people leaning on me, all my life. I…’
‘I know… that was why. I didn’t want to be like them, Ben,’ she told him passionately. ‘I wanted us to be equals… to share every thing… Remember how you told me that if Sharon had her baby it would ruin her life? All I could think was that if I had our baby it would ruin yours. I tried so hard to do the right thing, but I couldn’t, and even if it means that I lose you…
‘No, it isn’t that,’ she told him fiercely when she saw the sadness in his eyes. ‘I don’t love it… him or her, more than I do you. Just in a different way. Who does the baby have to love and protect it if it doesn’t have me, Ben?’
‘It’s my baby too,’ he told her gently. ‘Although recently I’ve been wondering if you wished it weren’t, wished it didn’t have a father, but were yours exclusively, you’ve been shutting me out so much.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t realise what was happening, Zoe. I wish I had done… I wish I’d been more sensitive… more aware. I wish I’d never said what I did about Sharon’s baby. The guilt I feel for having said it, for her having lost it, is something I shall have to live with all my life; and if you… I love you,’ he told her thickly. ‘I love both of you. That’s why I’ve always said I don’t want children. Not because I’ve been afraid I won’t love them, but because I know that I will.
‘Look around this flat and then tell me honestly that this is the kind of environment where you want our child… our children to grow up… I grew up in poverty, Zoe. I know just what it means… just what it does.’
‘Ben, I’m so sorry,’ Zoe wept, and she was. Sorry not just about the baby, but for all the ways in which she could now see that she had hurt him, punished him even if only subconsciously by refusing to allow him to share what was happening with her, by refusing almost to allow him to take any responsibility.
When she had told herself that she had been protecting him, she had also, she recognised now, been punishing him a little as well, motivated not by any lack of love for him, but by her own fear and unexpected insecurity.
He looked tired, older, and yet despite his slumped shoulders she suddenly had the impression that they were also broader… stronger…
She opened her mouth to reassure him, to tell him that somehow they would find a way, and then she remembered what he had just said and, instead of telling him anything, she asked him hesitantly, ‘Ben, what are we going to do?’
He smiled at her then, a broad, almost boyish grin of pride and satisfaction.
‘What we are going to do is find ourselves a small, easily manageable and reasonably priced restaurant which I, with my skill and flair, will quickly turn into the place to eat. We’ll be so busy that we’ll be turning people away, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Princess Di herself doesn’t start ringing up and asking us to keep her a special table for lunch. Oh, and yes, I nearly forgot; what we’re also going to do is make sure that this restaurant comes with some good-sized living accommodation and a nice private back garden. Babies need gardens,’ he told her gruffly, ‘and so do kids. Give agrees that it’s a viable proposition and he promised that he’ll back us… I called in at a couple of agents on the way back and collected some stuff. Most of it will be rubbish, of course…’
‘Ben, Ben… why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning? You didn’t just do this on the spur of the moment… not you…’
‘No,’ he agreed, quieter now. ‘No. When you told me about the baby, I knew that he or she was going to need a proper home. I knew that, while you might be happy somewhere like this while it was just us, you’d want more, much more for our child.’ He touched his fingertip to her lips as she started to protest and told her softly, ‘That wasn’t a criticism, Zoe, not a dig at your parents and the way you were brought up. Of course you want the best for our baby… so do I. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.?
?
A feeling, a sensation began to bubble up inside her. It was joy… it was love… it was relief and gratitude, Zoe recognised dizzily, half holding her breath in case it went away again; but most of all it was love. Not just hers for Ben, not just his for her, but theirs for each other and for their child.
‘I know this isn’t what you wanted, Ben,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘It isn’t what we planned, but it is going to be all right, isn’t it?’
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ Ben assured her as he held her and kissed her slowly with lingering pleasure. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
Behind his back his fingers were crossed. He wasn’t sure how yet, but somehow he would make sure that it was. For Zoe’s sake.
And for their child’s? He closed his eyes momentarily.
He wasn’t going to spoil things now by allowing himself to remember the bitterness, the resentment, the jealousy and sense of being shut out and unwanted that he had felt these last few weeks.
He loved Zoe and he would learn to love their child. Somehow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘FERN, my dear, how are you?’
‘Fine,’ Fern responded bracingly, stepping back into the shadow of the shop window awning to allow another shopper to skirt past her and Roberta.
