He shook his head and walked on.
Zoe pushed open the door to the pharmacy. The lights were on, as they always had been. She knew where to go to get the eye-drops because she’d picked them up on that first day. But that wasn’t what she’d come for. There was something else.
‘I’m not dead,’ she said, as she moved between the aisles of the pharmacy. ‘I’m not dead.’
‘What do you want to eat tonight?’ Jake said when she came into the hotel room. ‘What do dead people eat?’
‘Don’t.’
‘Well, we have to eat something.’
‘Do we? Do you actually feel hungry? Have you actually felt hunger these last few days? Or are we just eating because it’s what we do?’
Jake opened his mouth to speak but then closed it. He had to think about it. She pushed past him to get into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
She opened the small carton and unwrapped the plastic stick from its foil packet. She dropped her trousers and pants, holding the stick under her as she tried to piss on the half-centimetre by three-centimetre absorbent stick without pissing on her hand. At first she couldn’t seem to pee at all. It was as if she’d forgotten how. Then she didn’t seem to want to stop. In any event, she’d covered the stick for more than the required five seconds. She replaced the cap on the stick, sat on the toilet and waited.
After about a minute Jake thumped on the door.
‘Can’t I use the toilet in peace, Jake!’
She heard some muttering
‘For God’s sake, there’s a corridor full of rooms, each with its own toilet. Go and find your own.’
She heard more muttering, and the outer door opened and closed.
When she examined the stick, there were two clear blue lines. There was no question that she was still pregnant.
Jake knew nothing of this. It was the sixty-four-million-dollar question she’d been waiting to ask him and she’d been looking for a suitable moment. The moment when the stars aligned.
For all of the time they had been together neither of them had been much interested in having children. Then her feelings started to change. The thing was, she wanted Jake’s feelings to change along with hers, to mesh, to cog; and she suspected that was going to be unlikely. They had discussed it once or twice, and the question had evaporated. There wasn’t a no. But there wasn’t a yes in the air, either.
They had watched with rotating envy, suspicion and horror as friends of theirs became parents. They had seen lives changed, both for better and for worse. In some cases the advent of parenthood had been a thrilling and giddy elevation of life into the upper air; in others it had been a chaotic nosedive into disaster and divorce. For some, becoming a mother or a father channelled a blissed-out source of energy and joy; others were exhausted drones, depressed and zoned out by the experience. There seemed to be no rules for how the thing played itself out in people’s lives.
But when she had fallen pregnant just before their skiing holiday, Zoe knew she wanted it. She was just not the sort of woman to drag a man kicking and screaming into fatherhood. Her plan had been to await the magical moment, perhaps at the top of a mountain or during a walk through the perfect snow of early evening, and with dusk settling to sound him out; and if the auguries were positive, she would reveal her sensational news.
But then the avalanche.
And now, although every sinew and nerve inside her resisted the premise, she was dead.
Pregnant and dead.
The new question of course concerned the nature of her pregnancy. Was it the kind of pregnancy that gestated and changed with the passing of the sun across the sky; or one that remained in a state of stasis, a frozen embryo suspended inside her, like the candle flame that never progressed down the wax? If it were the former would she tell Jake? And would she if it were the latter? Perhaps if they were trapped here for eternity, she would be eternally pregnant, without ever arriving at full term.
She heard the outer door open and close as Jake came back into the room. She hoiked up her trousers, flushed the toilet and carefully hid the tester stick at the bottom of the bathroom bin. When she emerged Jake was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, looking at her strangely.
‘When did you last have a dump?’
‘What?’
‘When? Because I didn’t have a dump since the avalanche until just now. And the urge only came on me when you mentioned being hungry. I thought about that and felt hungry. That made me remember that I hadn’t had a dump. And remembering not having a dump before made me suddenly have to go for a dump.’
‘Jake, do you think we’re trapped here? Or have we been released here?’
‘You think about it hard enough and you’ll want a dump too.’
‘Can you shut up about dumping?’
‘Just sayin’, okay?’
‘It’s an important question—if we’re trapped, or if we’ve been freed to be here. It will change the way we are when we’re here, won’t it?’
‘We’re at cross-purposes, aren’t we? Talking on different levels.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Dumping is a very important question.’
‘Hell! I suppose I haven’t since the avalanche. It’s probably the trauma. You know? A reaction. Now I’ve started thinking about, I have to go.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ he said.
She turned and went back into the bathroom, shutting the door on him.
‘It’s always good,’ Jake shouted through the closed door, ‘to take a happy dump.’
‘Shut up!’
Jake moved away from the door. ‘Always good to take a happy dump,’ he said quietly.
In the night she was awoken by a bright white disc hovering in the air close to her face. A voice clearly whispered her name:
‘Zoe! Zoe! Approach the light! Come into the light.’
Zoe sat up in bed, squinting between her splayed fingers at the source of the light. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘Even as a dead person you can be such an arsehole.’
Jake switched off the lamp he was holding a few centimetres away from Zoe’s face and put it back on the bedside table. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about our situation.’
A crack of light leaked through the curtains. Zoe got up and drew back the curtains and the room was washed by thrilling moonlight. Outside it reflected brilliantly on the snow. It was enough to see by. ‘Pour us both a cognac. Let’s talk.’
Jake splashed the amber liquid into a pair of tumblers, handing one of them to Zoe. He took a drink and sniffed.
‘I want to ask you something,’ she said. ‘It was something I asked you yesterday, but I want you to think hard about it before answering.’
‘Fire away.’ He took another sip. ‘You know what? This cognac doesn’t taste of cognac.’
‘I asked you if you thought we’re trapped here, or if we’ve been freed here.’
‘Depends which way you choose to see it.’
‘Exactly. There isn’t a right answer, is there? It depends on how we choose to see it. If we choose to see it as if we’re trapped here, then our situation is tragic. If we choose to see that we’ve been liberated here, then it’s the opposite.’
‘Comic?’
‘Comic isn’t the opposite of tragic.’
‘No.’
‘I mean to say, if we choose to see it the right way, we could have the most magical time here. You and me. Together and alone. We have warmth, shelter, food, the best wine, skiing on wonderful slopes together. It’s paradise: if we choose to accept it. If we choose to call it that.’
‘I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘Well, yes. You could be right.’
She heard the shadow on his words. ‘But. There’s a but, isn’t there? There’s always a but.’