The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

‘You OK?’ she asks after a minute or so. ‘You’re as rigid as a plank and your breath’s all funny.’

  I clear my throat. ‘Um, weirdly stressed this morning. Panicky. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jessica says, momentarily relaxing her grip on me. ‘Poor you.’

  She seems to consider her options for a moment before sliding her hand down my chest. She takes my limp dick in her hand. ‘Does this help?’ she asks, giving it a squeeze. ‘Or does that make things worse?’

  I’m not going to be able to, I think, even though with Jess that has never happened yet. For an instant my fear of being unable to perform does make things worse.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her, eventually. ‘But I don’t think that thing in your hand is in working order this morning.’ And yet, less than a minute later, my body starts to react to her touch.

  ‘Something seems to be happening,’ Jessica sniggers in my ear.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Good,’ she says, and then a minute later, I’m hard and she’s rolling me on to my back and climbing on top of me. ‘Perhaps we’ve discovered the antidote.’ She reaches down and pulls me inside her, and I gasp. I’m breathing freely again – breathing heavily, even.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Maybe we have.’

  When I step out of the shower, Jess, who’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa, ironing her hair while watching breakfast TV, calls out, ‘Your phone rang when you were in the bathroom.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I say, tying the towel more tightly around my waist as I enter the living area. ‘Did you see who it was?’

  Jess vaguely shakes her head. She seems pretty engrossed in whatever’s on the TV.

  I pick up my phone and dial voicemail, then grab a prospectus for Bristol Zoo on which to note down the address, before listening to the message a second time.

  ‘So, it seems that Zoe . . .’ I start. But Jess raises a finger and shushes me. ‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘This is interesting. Annoying, but interesting.’

  Feeling vaguely peeved that she’s more interested in Brexit than in my sister, I head through to the bedroom to dress. As a result of Jessica’s remarks yesterday, I choose jeans and a jumper. I’ll be warmer this way anyway, I reckon.

  When I return to the lounge, the TV set is off. ‘You didn’t have to turn that off for me,’ I tell her.

  ‘Oh, it just makes me too angry,’ Jess says. ‘I can’t stand it.’

  ‘Brexit again?’

  She nods. ‘I mean, when you visit places like this, you can understand why people voted that way, but . . .’

  ‘You can?’ I interrupt. Jess has railed so many times about her inability to understand why anyone would have voted for Brexit that I’m surprised.

  ‘Well, if you live in Filwood, you’re going to vote for anything that’s likely to shake the system up, aren’t you? You’re going to think that things can’t possibly get any worse, no matter what changes. So you’re going to vote for anything rather than what you’ve got now. I mean, I wouldn’t mind so much if it was going to fix anything. But it’s not like places like this are going to suddenly get an explosion of investment after Brexit, are they?’

  I shrug. ‘Maybe they will,’ I say. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘But the whole country’s going to be poorer,’ Jess says. ‘Just about every economist says so. So how does that help? My bet is that places like Filwood will get even worse.’

  ‘Unless it takes people over the edge,’ I suggest. ‘Maybe the proletariat will finally get fed up enough to riot, or vote for comrade Corbyn. Maybe he’ll tax the hell out of Google and Facebook and spend all the money in Filwood.’

  Jess smiles at me lopsidedly. ‘Actually, that’s quite clever. Maybe that’s what he’s counting on. I always find it hard to imagine that he doesn’t have some kind of strategy, so maybe that’s it. An actual meltdown of society, caused by a Tory Brexit.’

  ‘Who knows?’ I tell her again. ‘I’m just saying that no one knows exactly how things will pan out. The ricochets of events can be pretty complex. Sometimes the right decision leads to the wrong outcome. And vice versa.’

  Jess nods thoughtfully. ‘I love it when you’re being clever,’ she says.

  I go to fiddle proudly with my tie, Stan Laurel-style, but then realise that, for once, I’m not wearing one. I make the gesture anyway. ‘I’m always being clever, sweetheart.’

  ‘So, who was on the phone?’ Jess asks. ‘Nice jumper, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, the woman from the chippy!’ I say. ‘You know, I didn’t even get her name. Anyway, she’s given me an address for Zoe. Apparently, she sent the P45 here.’ I hand the prospectus to Jess, who frowns and says, ‘Why would she send it to Bristol Zoo?’

  ‘No!’ I laugh, taking the sheet from her grasp and flipping it over so she can see the address I’ve noted down.

  ‘Morecambe,’ Jess says. ‘I don’t even know where that is.’

  ‘It’s up north,’ I explain. ‘Above Liverpool. Near Blackpool and Lancaster, if that helps? It’s weird she chose Morecambe, though.’

  ‘Why?’ Jessica asks.

  I shrug. I don’t feel like telling her that particular story right now. ‘It’s just a long way,’ I say. ‘She’s been zipping up and down the country like crazy.’

  ‘Sure, but Blackpool!’ Jess says, flashing the whites of her eyes at me, clearly channelling her inner child. ‘That’s the seaside! Can we go? Can we?’

  ‘Really?’ I ask. ‘What about Cornwall and your uncle’s place and all that?’

  ‘Oh, who cares!’ Jess says, waving the prospectus at me. ‘This is your sister’s address, Jude.’

  ‘Well, it was her address, two years ago. There’s no guarantee that—’

  ‘We still have to try, though, don’t we?’ Jess interrupts. ‘Did she give you her phone number or anything?’

  I shake my head. ‘She said she tried the number she had for her, but it’s been disconnected.’

  ‘The pay-as-you-go generation,’ Jess says. ‘We come up against that at work all the time. No one ever keeps the same number any more.’

  ‘Umh?’ I say. I’ve been momentarily lost in my phone. ‘Sorry, I was checking the phone book,’ I explain. ‘She hasn’t got a landline number either.’

  ‘Who has, these days?’

  ‘I know,’ I say, glumly.

  ‘So we’re going to Blackpool!’ Jess says.

  ‘Morecambe,’ I correct her. ‘But are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to Cornwall? We don’t have to do this right now.’

  ‘No, I’m excited about going to Blackpool.’

  ‘Morecambe!’ I correct her, again.

  ‘But you said it’s nearby. We could still stay in Blackpool, right? We could go to the funfair and everything, couldn’t we?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I tell her. ‘It’ll be closed for the winter.’

  Jess tuts. ‘Oh, what a bummer,’ she says. ‘Funfairs are fab. But can we stay there? I love those seedy seaside towns. I bet they have amusement arcades and candyfloss and everything. I went to Margate last summer and I loved it. I can look now and find a place to stay, if you want.’

  ‘I’d still rather stay in Morecambe,’ I say, as I return to the kitchen area to finish making tea. ‘I mean, that’s where Zoe was last. Plus, I seem to remember Blackpool was pretty seedy. Morecambe’s not exactly hipsterville either, but it’s a bit less full-on than Blackpool. You’re less likely to actually get mugged.’

  ‘Lunch, then?’ Jess says. ‘Can we do lunch there? How long does it take to get there, anyway?’

  ‘Sure, lunch works,’ I say. ‘Just about. It’s on the way. If we leave by nine, we could be there about one, I suppose. But are you totally sure you wouldn’t rather go to Cornwall?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Jess says. ‘You can buy me lunch.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can run to fish and chips on Blackpool seafront,’ I tell her.

  ‘You can buy me a vegan lunch,’ Jess says.
r />   ‘Oh, I think I can run to a portion of chips on Blackpool seafront,’ I say, sotto voce.

  ‘And you’re not feeling weird any more?’ Jess asks, her concerned tone of voice returning.

  I take a deep breath and take stock of my body. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I appear to be fine. That particular crisis seems to have passed.’

  ‘God, imagine if that was the answer,’ Jess says.

  ‘If what was the answer?’

  ‘Sex!’ she says. ‘Imagine if we just had to shag, like, hourly, just to keep you from having panic attacks.’

  ‘That would be truly awful,’ I mug.

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘It would be horrific. I’d be exhausted. But in a good way.’

  Five

  Mandy

  As summer arrived, Scott’s jealousy, efficiently leveraged by Zoe, became more and more problematic.

  Ian, who apparently had met someone else (I never even knew the name of this one), started coming around less and less, and that suited everyone except Zoe. Not only did it limit her ability to wind Scott up about it, but I think she genuinely missed us all spending time together.

  She started starving herself about then – began, quite literally, to eat nothing at certain meals. Her weight fell from forty-two kilos to forty and then to thirty-eight. She was looking pretty gaunt, but when I took her to see our GP he prescribed counselling, which Zoe refused point-blank.

  Her schoolwork began to suffer as well. I think she must have been too hungry half the time to concentrate. Where her averages had once been top-of-the-class, by that summer they were bad enough for the school to start calling me in for meetings.

  Don’t imagine for an instant that I just let all of this happen without intervening. I didn’t. I tried forcing her to eat. I tried forcing her to work. I tried bribes and punishments; I tried pleading and crying. Nothing ever worked.

  Eventually the school sent me an appointment for Zoe to see their in-house shrink, Dr Stevens. I felt grateful that someone external had decided to intervene. For a while, I thought everything might now get sorted out, and that was a huge relief.

  It took three missed appointments before we got Zoe to attend, but when she finally did, she sat in glum silence throughout. She may have grunted and shrugged a couple of times, but that was as far as her involvement would go.

  Afterwards, Dr Stevens said that as Zoe was fifteen, he’d like to carry on seeing her alone. But as this required her actually going to appointments, and because Zoe was the most determined, recalcitrant teenager ever, it was never really going to happen. The first time, she simply didn’t turn up. I didn’t even find out that she had lied to me about that until two days later, when the school phoned.

  The second time, I took an afternoon off work to pick her up from her final class and chaperone her to the meeting. But she gave me the slip by climbing out of the window of the girls’ toilets, leaving me standing, like an idiot, in the hall. I was so angry about it that when she did deign to come home that evening I, to my shame, slapped her cheek. It was only the second time I had ever slapped her, the first having been a quick slap to the legs when she was about five and had run out into the road. Unexpectedly, she seemed quite thrilled by this new development, almost as if it was what she’d wanted all along. She raised one hand to her cheek and looked me in the eye. ‘Do you see what you’re like?’ she asked. ‘And then you wonder why I hate you?’

  I cried about that on Scott’s shoulder, later that evening. Being told I was hated by my own flesh and blood had really cut me to the core.

  We booked three more appointments and Zoe vanished every time, sometimes just before the appointment, on other occasions for days either side of it.

  In the end, even Dr Stevens gave in. Until Zoe had reached rock bottom and actually wanted to talk, he wasn’t going to be able to help her, he said. When I asked him what rock bottom implied, he shrugged, and when I asked him what my options were, he suggested, surprisingly casually, that I might want to consider sectioning her under the Mental Health Act.

  I met up with Ian in Costa so that we could discuss this new, terrifying development.

  ‘She hates Scott,’ he told me. ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘She can’t be not eating because she hates my boyfriend,’ I said. ‘It can’t be that simple.’

  ‘But what if it is that simple?’ Ian asked.

  ‘I’m not leaving my partner because my daughter doesn’t like him,’ I informed him.

  ‘Well, no,’ Ian agreed. ‘I’m just saying . . . Actually, she wants to move out, you know? She wants to live with me.’

  ‘Then let’s try that,’ I said, immediately.

  That will sound terrible, I suppose. As a mother, you’re supposed to love your children unconditionally. You’re supposed to care about them through thick and thin.

  And I did care, that’s the thing. It was just that, despite all my caring, I was failing. I was failing as a mother. I was failing my daughter, and that was really starting to hurt. Zoe had got so skinny by then – you could actually see her ribs – that I’d begun to envisage her dying at some point in the future if something didn’t change. Yet I imagined that if I sectioned her, she’d end up hating me for ever more. I felt it was the sort of thing that we’d simply never get over.

  I’d spent a year by then trying to get her to psychologists, and almost two reading articles about anorexia. Zoe’s illness had come to dominate almost every waking moment of my day. I’d even begun to have nightmares about her, so I suppose she was impinging on my sleeping hours as well. It was exhausting. I felt exhausted.

  The only rare moments of harmony in the house were when Zoe was elsewhere. Scott, Jude and I would spend a family evening in front of the television and I would just about get to relax. And then I’d suddenly remember that Zoe would be home soon, and I’d tense up all over again.

  So yes, if Zoe wanted to live with Ian, let her live with him, I thought. Maybe she’d be happier there. Maybe she’d escape the feeding tube. Maybe she’d avoid having to be sectioned.

  Ian, rather creepily, took my hand then, and grimaced. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I can’t have her.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ I asked, pulling my hand away. ‘She’s your daughter, too. I think it’s your turn to see if you can help. Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m moving,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m moving in with Linda.’

  ‘Linda?’ I repeated, frowning. ‘I thought there was a new one, from Manchester or something.’

  ‘No, we split up,’ he said. ‘I’m back with Linda now, and, well, it’s serious.’

  ‘And this absolves you from responsibility for your daughter how, precisely?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s not that, love,’ Ian said. ‘It’s just that Linda’s already got three kids. And they already share two bedrooms. We simply don’t have room for Zoe right now.’

  ‘Then buy somewhere bigger,’ I told him. ‘You’ve just inherited a shedload of money, haven’t you? Move!’

  ‘I suppose I could,’ Ian said, thoughtfully, doubtfully. ‘It’s just not what Linda and I have decided to do.’

  ‘Have you told her?’ I asked then. ‘Have you actually told poor Zoe that you don’t want her?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want her,’ Ian said. ‘It’s that I can’t. And no, I haven’t told her yet. I thought you might want to.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said, angrily. ‘No, no, no! You can own that one, Ian. And if she ends up in some psych ward, well, you can own that one as well.’

  At this, Ian shook his head sadly and stood. ‘You’re quite revolting when you want to be,’ he said, nastily. ‘I’m not surprised she wants to move out.’ And then he turned and walked out of the coffee shop.

  Ian did tell Zoe she couldn’t live with him. I know this because about a week later she came home and, waiting until Scott was there for maximum destructive capability, she asked why I’d had a ‘secret lunch with Dad’.

  �
��It wasn’t secret, and it wasn’t lunch,’ I said. ‘I had to meet him to discuss what to do about you. Because we’re worried. We’re all worried. And the options are getting—’

  ‘It wasn’t secret? Well, you certainly didn’t tell me. Did you tell the gardener?’ she asked, nodding towards Scott. That was her latest thing, referring to him as the gardener.

  ‘I forbid you to call Scott the gardener!’ I told her.

  ‘Forbid away!’ Zoe said. ‘It’s the only thing you’re any good at.’ And then, before I could even get out of my chair, she was gone, slamming the front door behind her.

  It took mere minutes for that to become a fresh argument between Scott and me. ‘It wasn’t lunch,’ I told him. ‘It was a cup of coffee in Costa. And I only met him there because it annoys you when he comes here. And if you must know, all we did was argue about Zoe.’

  But Scott wasn’t having any of it. It was his nature to be unreasonably jealous, but beyond that, I suspect he was getting sick of the stress levels in our household. He was starting, I think, to look for get-out clauses. And who could blame him for that?

  He stayed away for two weeks that time, and I feared I had lost him definitively.

  That two-week break made me notice just how in love with him I was. It made me realise how dependent I was on him for my own well-being, too. Because other than his weakness for being wound up by Zoe about Ian, Scott was perfect. He was generous and multitalented around the house. He was funny and sexy and cute and was amazing in bed.

  Without him, the house felt no less stressful, because even then, Zoe didn’t calm down. But it did feel incredibly lonely. It felt far sadder, too.

  So, when Scott returned – oh miracle! – I told him I’d decided to stop seeing Ian completely. He’d proven himself to be utterly useless anyway, I said, and that was basically true.

  Avoiding Ian turned out to be easier than I’d expected. He pretty much vanished from our lives about then. Though I’m sure he’d deny it, the truth was that he’d simply lost interest in us.

  Zoe was at her worst, and frankly, nobody needs that kind of stress in their lives.