In the days following their return from the Mexican resort, Zoe Morton found she was incredibly busy at work and equally busy in her mind. She seemed to be deeply processing everything that had happened in one short week; a week that was supposed to be a simple, undemanding, holiday in the sun but had turned out to be entirely different.
In her few leisure moments with Wesley she wanted to ask him if the same process was alive in his mind but he was as busy with work as she was, and by the end of their frantic days they just needed to rest rather than analyze. On the one occasion when she had tried to initiate the conversation, Wesley’s reply was “Darling, I am unable to decide anything more challenging than what I want to eat. Ask me again in a few days.”
This was understandable. A raft of new patients had been waiting for her husband’s attention as soon as he reached his Fleet Street Psychiatry office but it did not stop her own mind from worrying away at things trivial and things far more important than that.
She tried to distract herself by thinking of the words ‘holiday’ and ‘vacation’. Both were comparatively new concepts for a woman who never admitted to needing either one. The first was derived from the medieval practice of allowing the peasantry to cease their labours only on church-designated holy days. The rest of the calendar was all heavy labour with no respite. She liked the idea of a communal but anonymous holiday, and had welcomed Wesley’s suggestion of a postponed honeymoon in the winter sunshine in the midst of a crowd of complete strangers. You might say, she thought, there was something vaguely holy about the events there concerning the poor girl, Portia Beck, who had endured a dreadful breakdown. Wesley was the one most involved in that situation but, latterly, Zoe had also contributed her talents. Lying awake at night looking at the vaulted ceiling of their bedroom in the former old church, holy was not a foreign concept, especially when her last sight of Portia had been such an optimistic one.
This brought her to the North American word ‘vacation’. It seemed to contain a suggestion of vacating, or leaving behind, everything familiar. The Canadian Beck and Anderson families she had met through Wesley had assuredly intended to leave their worries behind when they left home. From what she could understand, all ten of them had brought secrets and problems along with them on the journey.
The same did not apply to herself or Wesley. So, why was she still obsessed with this scenario?
Certainly it was all unexpected. Being caught up in the family dramas was something she would never have chosen. And yet, she had willingly abandoned her privacy to involve herself with not one but two Beck family members. Three if she counted Marian. Add to this, Wesley’s continuing close tie with his former professor, Aylward Beck, and it was probably not surprising that she had the feeling her quiet, secluded home life in Dunstan’s Close had been invaded. The trouble was, she had no one to blame but herself.
The final celebration meal in the private dining room at the resort was engraved on her mind. She and Wesley were observers, not totally comfortable with such an intimate family occasion but unable to refuse Aylward and Marian’s kind invitation. They could not have been prepared for the finale when
the professor announced to his family, their imminent move from Toronto to the Bahamas. It was not just the shock that rippled around the table. It was also the sense of the elderly couple setting the future to rights for their family members before they died. This above all was the recurring concern that gave Zoe sleepless hours; Family and the Future.
She had lost her mother through traumatic circumstances while still a teenager. Her long-lost father, now reconciled, had retired and was sharing a cottage in Scotland with her Aunt Isobel. These three composed her entire side of the Morton family. Wesley’s situation was no different. He was also an only child. His parents had died in a horrific train derailment when he was in his twenties.
Although it had not been mentioned since their return, in Mexico Wesley had asked her to reconsider her decision to remain childless. It must have been the influence of being in the midst of the Beck and Anderson families that had caused her to weaken for a moment and consider the impossible.
The truth was, the very thought of bearing a child terrified her.