The Trouble with Henry and Zoe Read Free Page A

and fishes out the strip
of contraceptive pills. She pops one into the palm of her hand and swallows it dry.
    When she wakes again Zoe needs to pee. The house is cold and she has lost the afterglow of the unexpected fumble. The bathroom tiles will feel like the surface of a frozen lake
on her bare feet, and she pulls the duvet close to preserve any residual warmth. Christmas is only two months away, and she thinks maybe she and Alex should buy each other slippers – cheap,
practical and . . .
    ‘Good God almighty,’ she says out loud, ‘I’m turning into my mother.’
    Still, slippers would be nice.
    If she concentrates on something besides her bladder, Zoe thinks, maybe she can get ten more minutes in bed. Five at least. The boiler has obviously decided to go on strike again. It needs
replacing, but there is little cash and less flow; so they’ll just have to cross their cold blue fingers that it has one more winter in its pipes before dying quietly or exploding.
    Bad word choice
, Zoe thinks, feeling a twinge in her bladder. She looks at the clock – 10.15 – and wonders how long she has been dozing. Ten minutes? An hour? She listens to
the house and it is silent – no sounds of cooking, no boiling kettle. She calls Alex but he doesn’t answer, leading Zoe to believe she can’t have been sleeping for long. She
throws back the duvet and tiptoes to the loo.
    Looking at her dancing feet as she relieves herself, Zoe notices a constellation of dried splash marks on the tiles. Why is it, she wonders, men seem incapable of weeing
inside
the bowl?
Or is she generalizing? Alex is the first man she’s lived with, so she has nothing to compare him to. Well, except for her father, but her parents have their own en suite and a cleaner who
comes twice a week. Maybe Alex is just a splasher. It’s not as if the bowl isn’t big enough; surely an elephant could manage to pee in that thing without getting it all over the rim and
on the tiles. She smiles at the image of an elephant taking a pee in her bathroom and thinks it might make a good premise for a kids’ picture book. Maybe she’ll tell her boss on Monday,
see if one of their authors can do something with it. Or maybe she’ll do it herself – after all, how hard can it be to write eight hundred words about the bathroom antics of animals?
She’ll call it
The Loo at the Zoo
; maybe spend an hour or two kicking it about this weekend.
    Zoe wipes the splash marks with some damp tissue, which she drops into the bowl before flushing. When she sees her reflection in the bathroom mirror (toothpaste spatters like freeze-framed snow)
she catches herself scowling, her brow pulled into ugly furrows that might become permanent if she isn’t careful.
    ‘So what’s it to be?’ she says to her reflection.
    She has three choices: clean the bathroom mirror, get in the shower, or go back to bed.
    Zoe’s reflection pulls a face that says,
Are you mad?
    ‘Well, I’m talking to you, aren’t I?’
    Get back into bed and let the boy make your breakfast. God knows he’s not going to help you clean the house.
    ‘Fair point,’ says Zoe.
    Her reflection nods:
I know
.
    Walking back to the bedroom Zoe steps on the creaky floorboard in the hallway and experiences a twang of annoyance. Two weeks ago, she had stepped on a proud nail, ripping a hole in a new pair
of twelve-quid tights. It was the second time this had happened, so Zoe had attempted to pry the nail out of the floorboard with a pair of scissors, which she knew was the wrong tool for the job,
but the right tool was somewhere in their small and cluttered shed and it was raining. But instead of laughing at Zoe for her endearing, feminine ways, Alex had barked at her for breaking the
scissors and told her to ask him if something needed fixing. He had apologized quickly enough, but she was nettled by this flash of temper. And despite it all, he still hasn’t got around to
fixing the fucking thing. And it’s not