London
November 2009
It was already dark outside, the wind working itself up into a frenzy against the bedroom window. Chloe sat at her dresser, staring at the mirror while absently fingering the latest gift from her husband – a dainty row of black beads dotted with brilliant red stones that shimmered in the lamplight. Distantly she could hear Alex getting ready in the adjacent bathroom – the sound of the shower turning on and off, water running in the basin, electric toothbrush whirring, then feet shuffling, getting louder as he re-entered their bedroom and walked over to her.
In the mirror, her eyes met his reflected ones, and she smiled.
‘You look distracted?’ he commented, his voice rising with the question.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured, fingering the beads. She wanted so much to tell him. To share the news that she herself had only just discovered. But now was not the time.
She lifted the beads. ‘Would you?’
He came close behind her as she pulled her shoulder-length bobbed hair out of the way, and she felt his fingers softly brush her neck as he clumsily manoeuvred the clasp. She watched in the mirror and saw a frown flicker across his face as he fumbled for a moment with the delicate links. As he let go, she whirled around and kissed him.
Alex stood back and looked at her, shaking his head. ‘Damn, you look gorgeous, Chloe. That dress is stunning on you.’
Chloe smiled as she ran her hands down the simple black wraparound dress she was wearing, as Alex added, ‘Although, what I’d really love would be to push you back on that bed and ravish you – and get you all messed up again!’ They grinned at one another, then Alex sighed. ‘However, I guess it wouldn’t be good to keep Mark waiting. I’m sure he’d happily get the evening off to a bad start given half a chance.’
Chloe smiled sympathetically. She knew Alex hated these get-togethers with her colleague Mark, not that there had been many of them. She went out of her way to avoid them too if possible, having realised that being with the two men together was akin to refereeing a verbal bout of boxing. Alex could probably just about have put up with the pompous, pontificating lawyer-Mark, but as he was also Chloe’s ex-boyfriend this steered them into even more uncomfortable territory. And in front of Alex, rather than being unnerved by the situation, Mark seemed to revel in it, and would preface as many comments as he could with, ‘When Chloe and I were together…’
She hoped that tonight would be different. Mark was bringing along a new girlfriend, and Chloe was optimistic that this dinner date might mark a fresh beginning for all of them; especially since Neil, one of the senior partners at work, had recently involved Chloe and Mark in one of the biggest cases the firm had ever had. It meant they would be working together quite a bit in the coming months.
Without thinking, she opened her mouth to tell Alex her news, despite her earlier good intentions, but as she did so he turned away, and something in the tense set of his back made her stop herself and suck in a breath instead. What if he didn’t like what she had to say? Could she be sure his reaction would be the one she wanted? She stood there for a second, faltering, unaccountably nervous.
Alex sensed her watching and turned back around, grinning at her as his fingers flew deftly upwards fastening buttons. And there, as always, his eyes, with their utter familiarity and lack of guile, reached through her inexplicable nerves like a caress, shooing away all irrational thought.
She shook her head at herself as she slipped on her shoes. She would wait until later to tell him, when they weren’t in such a rush, but she was sure it would be okay. Why, when life was on the up, was she worrying that it might slide away from her?
They ran along the pavement for the short distance between their parked car and the warm, welcoming lights of the restaurant, holding their jackets over their heads to try to shelter themselves from the sudden downpour. Chloe saw Mark as soon as they got inside Casa Bella. He was sitting in the corner opposite a brunette with her back to them, who appeared to be studying the menu intently while Mark gazed at her. The lighting around them was perfectly pitched to create romantic ambience, and something about the semi-darkness meant that everyone was talking in hushed and reverent tones. Mark looked like he had come straight from work – he was wearing the same suit Chloe had seen him in earlier, and she felt a moment of panic at the hours he put in compared to her. She imagined the senior partners’ expressions as they walked past her dark, empty office at 5.05 p.m.
Mark looked towards the door and Chloe raised a hand in greeting. He didn’t appear to see her, but ran his fingers through his short, thick brown hair, patting it to check it was in place before his gaze returned to the woman in front of him – who, Chloe assumed, must be Julia. From the entranceway she could make out long, dark, slightly wavy hair with a small flower pinned behind one ear. The hair shone with health, and the shape of her head, neck and shoulders made Chloe instantly sure that Mark hadn’t been lying when he’d said Julia was beautiful. She wished she’d done something more with her own hair, which had just been tucked neatly behind her ears and was now plastered messily against her head by the rain, but she seemed to have become more practical about her appearance of late and dressing up had begun to feel unnatural to her. Now she felt instantly plain and underdressed, aware of the slight protrusion of her stomach and the oblique width of her thighs.
Chloe and Alex made their way over to their seats, directed by a waiter. ‘There you are!’ Chloe said brightly as they neared.
‘Hi, Chloe.’ Mark reluctantly turned his gaze from Julia and kissed Chloe’s cheek formally as she sat down next to him. ‘This is Julia.’ He smiled proudly.
Julia half-turned in her seat and the two women exchanged handshakes and hellos. Chloe’s impression had been right – Julia had high-set cheekbones and enormous dark eyes. She smiled and said, ‘And this is my husband… Alex…’
Her voice trailed off.
She watched Alex’s eyes widen as he went to shake Julia’s hand. He took a tiny sharp breath and swayed slightly, then he quickly put his free hand on the back of his chair to steady himself, whilst the other one, although still held out, drooped like a flower in sudden wilt.
‘Nice to meet you… Julia?’ he said, in a broken, tremulous voice unlike anything Chloe had heard come from him before.
Mark looked up from his menu and he echoed Chloe’s startled expression as they glanced from Alex to Julia. They both saw Julia’s face – stricken and raw with pain for just a moment, still ashen as she reached out her hand.
‘Alex.’
She said his name gently, and soft intonations of unknown meanings reverberated around the table like an aftershock.
Chloe had never experienced the notion of time standing still until now. For long, sludgy seconds they were all transfixed within a silent, painful tableau. No one moved.
Then Alex recovered himself, straightening his back, and he and Julia shook hands. Chloe thought that the shake had looked more like a hold… that they’d held hands for a second.
As she watched, Alex folded himself into his seat, picked up his menu and hid his head behind it, but Julia’s back remained rigid. ‘Could you excuse me for a minute?’ she said, turning to look at Chloe and twisting her mouth into a smile. Her eyes were vacant and glassy, her skin pale. She looked entirely different from the composed woman who’d shaken Chloe’s hand a few moments earlier. She scraped her chair back jerkily, and the ugly noise echoed on the tiles. ‘I just need to go to the bathroom.’
‘Of course.’
They watched her go. Alex remained hidden behind his menu, pulling it as close to his face as he could. His shoulders rose and fell jerkily, as though he were breathing heavily, working on a ragged edge of self-control. Chloe and Mark made small-talk, mostly about work, and Mark regaled her with his frustrating meeting that evening, where his client seemed to be trying to put some kind of metaphorical arm-lock on him before they went to court.
After forty-five minutes they all finally admitted to themselves that Julia wouldn’t be coming back.
Alex navigated the route home on automatic pilot, painfully aware of Chloe watching him. He was grateful that she hadn’t asked any questions other than an ‘Are you okay?’, to which he’d nodded mutely with his eyes averted from hers. But he would need to explain, he knew that. Where the hell would he start?
Once home, they got ready for bed in silence, the ambience of their bedroom just a few hours before now replaced by an atmosphere tight-packed with tension. It felt like the room was holding its breath, ready for Alex to start talking.
He got into bed and felt the mattress give as Chloe got in beside him. He took a deep breath and turned to face her. ‘Chloe… I…’
Their eyes locked for a moment, and then the phone rang.
He thought maybe, just this once, she would leave it. But no – she sighed, turned away and pulled herself out of bed, padding into the hallway where he heard her resigned response, ‘Hello? Mum, are you okay?’
Alex sighed. They could always rely on Margaret to pick the most inopportune moment to call. He knew Chloe had been growing increasingly worried about her mother since her stepfather, Charlie, had died, but that was over a year ago now and the endless phone calls and regular trips up north were beginning to take their toll. If only Chloe’s brother, Anthony, hadn’t fallen out with the family and moved to America. It meant that Chloe was all Margaret had left.
Alex waited for a while, listening to his wife’s soothing murmurs, presumably during those times that his mother-in-law couldn’t help but pause for breath. Eventually he turned off the bedside light.
As he tried fruitlessly to summon sleep, he berated himself for not telling Chloe more from the beginning. There had been plenty of chances, and he had avoided them all with a determination to leave history behind him. But Chloe would have understood… wouldn’t she?
Of course she would; she would have told him there was no need to be ashamed, to blame himself. And that was exactly why he had kept quiet: because he still didn’t entirely believe he deserved to hear those words. Because if he could go back and have his chance again, then of course he would do it all differently.
Except, would he? At the start he had thought so, but now he had Chloe, and that meant everything had changed. He wanted to protect her from the miseries of the past. He had learned to live with it and come to accept that there was nothing he could do any more; never believing there would be a time when the whole nightmare would come full circle to fling itself at him again.
Eventually the bedroom door creaked open, and the mattress jolted as Chloe lay down. She kept her back to him, preventing him from touching her, from scooping her into the welcoming curve of his body, as he did most other nights.
As the hours dissolved, his mind began to race faster, the full realisation of what had happened hammering into him with every quickening beat of his pulse. My god, she was there, in the restaurant; she is alive. He kept replaying their brief hello until it became like listening to vinyl on half-speed, their voices chewed-up baritones. His thoughts churned over and over, more tumbled and chaotic each time, until he gave up on sleep and made his way downstairs. In the kitchen, he poured himself the first drink that came to hand – from a half-finished bottle of merlot – then went through to the lounge. He sat on the sofa in the darkness and slugged the wine back in two mouthfuls, feeling the bite of the liquid weaving its way down his throat.
The more he tried not to remember, the more his mind replayed the same scenes. The white van rounding the corner. The chaos at the roadside as their worlds, cut-glass prisms of possibilities, had shattered in the sunshine. His last view of her: just a shadow behind a window. Until the restaurant, that was.
How the hell was he going to live his life from this point forward, knowing that the woman who had meant the world to him, who he’d thought might be dead, was in fact alive and living somewhere nearby? That tonight, for a brief moment, he had held her hand and then let it go again – just as he had the last time.
Right then, surrounded by transfiguring darkness, he knew he desperately wanted to see her again. He needed to talk to her; to explain; to understand. And he had a thousand questions to ask, not least of all why she was calling herself Julia when that was not her real name.
Kara Abbott: fifteen years old; blonde; beautiful.
Dead.
Mark tried to focus on Kara as he walked towards the lifts, still in shorts and T-shirt from his early-morning squash game, but her blonde hair kept morphing into darker, more exotic locks, and her slightly chubby face kept thinning out to the beautiful, haunted one that seemed to be shadowing his thoughts.
He had been so mortified last night when Julia hadn’t come back. When Alex had turned to greet them, Mark had had the strange sensation of all his optimism fleeing his body with each deflating exhalation of breath. Worse still had been watching Chloe ramble on for half an hour trying to ignore the empty chair next to her. Tiny particles of her pity had floated across the table with every word she’d uttered and he’d breathed it in until he felt he might choke. And Alex, fucking Alex, who had so obviously upset Julia – who so obviously knew Julia, probably intimately – had said nothing. The least the man could have done was provide an explanation. Mark felt the muscles in his back constrict as he thought about it.
When they’d decided to call it a night – after one round of wine and no food, much to the chagrin of the waiter – Chloe had looked like she wanted to offer more crumbs of comfort, but by that time Mark had been so livid that he was having trouble keeping his voice down and staying civil. ‘I’ll get the bill,’ he’d rasped at her. ‘You two just go.’
She’d guided Alex quickly away and Mark had an absurd longing to head for the ladies’ toilets to see if Julia was still hiding in there. But he wasn’t going to be reduced to a laughing stock for any bloody woman.
Yesterday, as they’d walked into the restaurant he’d felt great, the best in a long time. He’d taken stock of his work, his recent promotion, his finances, and his impending date, and felt he was slowly building himself a concrete plinth. Every day he climbed a little higher. One day he would perch on top of it, looking down in contentment at all he had achieved. Now he felt as though he were halfway up that god-awful Jenga game his young nephews loved playing, and with one false move the whole thing could come tumbling down at any moment.
He had to stop thinking about her; if nothing else she didn’t deserve his attention after she had humiliated him last night. He needed to get through some of the notes in his briefcase pronto, or he’d never get on top of the Kara Abbott case.
‘Get a grip,’ he muttered to himself as he strode along, causing the receptionist to look up in surprise, unused to any sign of a greeting from Mr Jameson.
He loved playing squash, but this morning had been less fun than usual because he was a lot better than Neil so had to hold back, while still playing well and casually enough to make his efforts look natural. It was a load of bull that events on the court wouldn’t impact on working relationships, especially with someone like his boss, who was fiercely competitive and used to winning. Problem was, Mark was just the same, so he had left the court distinctly frustrated.
Neil had made reference to the Abbott case a few times, and each time Mark had felt a small jolt in his stomach at how much he still had to do. Neil was friends with Kip Abbott, Kara’s father, but to Mark’s way of thinking, friendship and business should be kept firmly separate at all times. Neil would never have got away with this if Mark’s father had still been one of the helmsmen of the company. Now retired, Henry had got a whiff of the case on one of his frequent visits to Lewis & Marchant and had said nothing, but Mark could tell by his expression, eyebrows slightly up, jaw tight, that he thought it was a big mistake.
Kara Abbott was the sad end to the kind of bullying story Mark had heard umpteen times. It had started as cruel jibes about her supposed puppy fat. It escalated into pushes, trips, Chinese burns, on one occasion a pencil jabbed into her hand when she moved one of her tormentors’ bags out of her way. There were threats and jeers, which went on and on. When she’d died, Kara had bruises and penknife cuts to her inner thighs, which three perpetrators had enacted on her at the bottom of the long school field, in front of more than half a dozen onlookers. The diary that had been Kara’s only confidante, now tagged Exhibit D, was a slurry of scrawls about her desperation, her loathing of the girls in question, and her incomprehension at what she could have done to have brought all this on herself.
Kip Abbott had been the one to find her, when she wouldn’t come out of the bath. She was fully dressed, blood pooling beneath the cuffs of the shirt of her school uniform. She’d used Kip’s spare razor blades. She was just unconscious then, but by the time they got her to the hospital it was too late. The coroner thought it might have been a cry for help, but Kara didn’t know how to calculate the difference in millimetres of severed skin that would turn her plea into a successful suicide attempt.
Kip had gone to the school the next day, and resigned from his position as the deputy head. Even the kids in classrooms far from the headmaster’s office could hear his shouting from where they sat, taking mock Maths exams. The police had been called.
Kip and his wife, Sally, had initially decided to try to get the girls responsible on some kind of charge. But the school had closed ranks, and the case was deemed impossible to win. So now they were going after the school instead – Kip’s former employers and one of the most sought-after private girls’ schools in the country. And, just to make Lewis & Marchant that extra bit nervous, two of the girls involved in the bullying were children of well-known parents – a politician and his wife, and a TV newsreader and her husband. The media were going to be on them like hungry jackals.
Their chances of winning this high-profile case were deemed, in the legal world, not good, particularly as the inquest into Kara’s death had absolved the school of wrong-doing; in fact, praising it for the steps it had taken to try to help the troubled girl. However, not only had Neil agreed to be subjected to this public mauling, but he’d involved almost everyone in the office in one way or another. Perhaps determined he wouldn’t go down alone, Mark thought ruefully. While Mark specialised in litigation, Chloe had been drafted in to help because she was more used to dealing with passionate and emotive cases in her daily family law work, and they were both down to attend court with Neil when the trial began next month.
Mark was looking forward to working with Chloe, although when she gave that coy little smirk as she talked about Alex, he always wished he could dig up something – anything – to turn that smile into more of a grimace. And now, he realised, it looked like he’d stumbled on something that could do exactly that. In fact, maybe last night hadn’t been a complete write-off, he consoled himself. He checked his watch. Yes, if he were quick, he had time. He headed past his office, and strode along to the one next door.
‘What the hell was all that about last night?’
Chloe had just arrived at work and was doing her best to concentrate on her own notes for the day when the door opened. Having spent a sleepless night listening to the rain pounding against the roof while wondering exactly the same thing herself, she was in no mood to listen to a rant.
‘Nice, Mark,’ she began wearily as she saw a couple of colleagues in the corridor turn and look at them. ‘What a great way to bring personal shit into the office.’ She was surprised at the vehemence in her voice – she usually trod cautiously where Mark was concerned.
Mark opened his mouth to continue, then stopped abruptly. He obviously wanted a row, but didn’t know how to get there if she wouldn’t play along. He came into the office, shut the door, and threw himself into a chair that had hosted a whole array of wretched spouses and at least three bigamists.
‘What did Alex say?’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her.
‘Nothing.’
‘So what the hell do you think was going on last night? They obviously know each other.’
Mark’s words were forcing Chloe to think about the exact issue she was trying to avoid dwelling on. Yes, they obviously knew each other. Which led on to How? When? Where?
‘I don’t know. And I really don’t want to discuss it right now – not with you.’
‘So do you think they’re having an affair?’
Behind the desk, Chloe clenched her fists. ‘No, I don’t, but trust you to think that,’ she said firmly, feeling shaken. She glared at Mark but he ignored her.
‘Well, has Alex ever mentioned Julia before?’
Another question Chloe had been pondering hard. And there was only one answer she could come up with. ‘No.’ She’d asked Alex the basic questions one asked when the moment came for them to share the details of their lives before each other, but she hadn’t pushed for information. Besides, she was sure he’d told her his old girlfriends’ names, and she didn’t remember a Julia.
That didn’t matter. Alex’s reaction last night wasn’t one of being reunited with an old, casual fling, and she knew it. And, obviously, so did Mark.
Mark was still watching her, but then gave a frustrated sigh and stood up. ‘Okay, I suppose I’d better get on, I’m due in court in an hour. Just let me know if you shed any light on this.’
Chloe bit back her irritation: he sounded like he was discussing missing paperwork. She had no intention of making this a joint problem.
‘Mmm,’ was the best she could do as he made for the door. She could see Jana, the secretary they were temporarily sharing, trying to peer through the gaps in the inner wall where the frosted glass became momentarily clear. Nosy cow, she thought, irritated.
Her fingers hovered over the phone. Normally if Mark was driving her crazy – as he had a tendency to at times with his infuriating way of speaking to her and his frequent incursions into her office – she’d call Alex, just to hear the sound of his mellow, calm voice on the other end of the line. She often pictured him at home, working meticulously on one of his design projects. However, today the only image she could conjure up as her fingers hesitated on the handset was the look on his face as he’d met Julia’s gaze last night. She quickly moved her hand away from the phone, and bent to her work.
‘So, Doctor Fielding, you’re telling us you are certain that on two occasions, at five o’clock on the afternoon of the 29th January, and at one o’clock on the 31st January, Doctor Hazeltoft was with you in the Water’s Edge restaurant?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Mark sighed as he listened to the barrister questioning this idiotic witness and resisted the urge to check his watch. It wasn’t long until lunch and he hoped that this blithering liar would be dealt with before then. He had no problem with the Old Boys’ Network, but when they covered up major fraud it was going a bit far. Mark watched the barrister work the room like he was in the Crown Court of the Old Bailey. Every time Mark took a trip to court he wondered if he really should have gone to the bar instead of opting for private practice.
The witness, dressed in a dapper suit and yellow silk tie, a matching pocket handkerchief peeking from his breast pocket, stared back at the barrister.
‘Are you completely sure about that, Doctor Fielding?’
‘I am,’ the old gentleman nodded, but his hand strayed up towards his breast pocket as though about to take the handkerchief out of there and mop his brow.
In the silence that ensued, Mark looked at his notes on the table, knowing exactly what was coming next. He never lost the satisfaction of watching a barrister seizing just the right moment to execute a perfect ballestra, usually leaving their naïve opponent fatally exposed.
‘Well, although your own practice records show no mention of any surgeries, Doctor Fielding, when we finally located the operating theatre records at the hospital they have you performing an emergency heart surgery from eleven o’clock on the 31st January. Here you are -’ the barrister strode across the room and placed a document before the witness – ‘So I put it to you now, is it likely that you have your dates muddled?’
The witness hesitated, then glanced at his friend, who stared intently back at him.
Mark quelled the smile that threatened to rise as he watched this apparent capitulation. Just as the witness seemed to be drawing breath to speak, the barrister nodded smartly at the judge and said, ‘No further questions, Your Honour.’ His eyes moved with Mark’s to the defence, who looked ready to object on the grounds their client had had no chance to answer. Mark watched as David Lockhart, opposing counsel, studied the downturned head of the witness, and then the bewigged man bent his own head back to his notes. He had obviously decided to cut his losses for now.
Mark waited, praying the judge was about to call lunch, and flicked a covert glance at the seats behind him while fiddling with the papers in his briefcase. He saw no faces he recognised, but the habit of looking had become a nervous tic that he couldn’t control. Early on in his career, he had cast his eyes behind him and happened to notice a figure sitting there quietly. While his heart had begun to race, his father showed no outward sign of acknowledgement, but the message was as clear as if Henry Jameson had stood up and yelled it at him. Even though Mark was now qualified in the law, and a lifetime of diligent work had realised Henry’s ultimate dream of a son following him into the profession, it seemed that the highly respected retired solicitor had no intention of loosening the reins on his protégé. Mark’s career was to be closely monitored.
Mark knew, just as Henry would know, that this one appearance had the desired effect. Mark never got lazy, never slackened, as there could always be someone watching, the one person whose praise and respect it was almost impossible to earn.
So it disturbed him that he felt so uninterested today. Maybe he did need his father watching over him like a hawk, because although Henry Jameson liked to drop in to his old firm regularly to keep up with the latest cases, he had been noticeably absent for the past week or so, coinciding nicely with Mark’s apathy.
The judge had indeed called the lunch recess. Mark gave a sigh of relief, closed his briefcase and made his way from the room and along the hallway, nodding as Sheree, the legal assistant, reminded him of the order of the afternoon. He strode out of the front doors into a blustering breeze, heading back to the office a couple of streets away where he could look over his notes undisturbed. But it was no good, because now he could vividly picture Julia sitting opposite him, on the night she’d walked into his life out of the blue.
It had been late on Monday evening. Most people had gone home – he’d seen Chloe race out just after ‘official hours’ ended – her cheeks glowing, her face full of anticipation at seeing her boring hippy of a husband. The secretaries had begun chattering inanely about whatever pathetic reality TV programme they would be gawping at over their TV dinners, while they logged off their computers and collected their belongings. David and Neil had done their nightly prowl of the corridors on their way out an hour or so later – both of them raising a hand in greeting beyond the glass partition that separated the solicitors’ offices from the corridors and central open-plan area, but not interrupting Mark, whose desk was littered with papers and case files.
Mark loved working in the office when everyone else had gone. He felt more at home in the empty surroundings – evidence of people was to him a more comforting thing than negotiating their presence. He sometimes had a disconcerting feeling that people in the office were laughing at him. The secretaries were the worst. They worked for him, yet only the temps seemed intimidated by him. Even if he raised his voice with displeasure when an important document was handed to him with incorrect details, or a crucial legal date was missed, they just stood in his doorway looking mildly irritated or faintly bored, waited patiently until his diatribe was over and then sorted out the muddle, usually relatively efficiently. It was infuriating.
So there was solace in bending over case files with only the hum of the heating unit invading his hearing, his desk light illuminating the papers in an otherwise shadowy room. That night he had been searching for a precedent for a case that was worrying him, when he’d glanced up and seen a gloomy face peering at his through the glass divide. His heart had ricocheted wildly in his chest. For one insane moment he thought it was a ghost, and his stomach contracted as the figure immediately disappeared. Then the door handle turned and the door creaked slowly open.
The head that appeared first was substantially beautiful, and while he quickly dismissed all notions of visiting spirits, there was still something ethereal about her face. She was almost as pale as alabaster, but with perfectly proportioned, delicate features, large, mournful dark eyes, and beautiful silky brown hair. She wore jeans on her thin frame, along with a crumpled lightweight jacket and a pink scarf, and a satchel across one shoulder.
Mark was momentarily lost for words.
‘Are you a lawyer?’ she asked, in a hesitant, husky hot-chocolate voice.
‘Yes,’ he spluttered. ‘Can I help you? It’s after hours…’
‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I took a chance. I saw the light, and I’m a bit desperate. I need some papers signed. Your receptionist is still here and she said you might help.’
‘Oh, did she,’ Mark replied, inwardly cursing the new receptionist and making a mental note to have a word. His voice was tainted with disappointment at the mundanity of her request. ‘Well, it’s not something I’d…’
‘Please?’ she interrupted softly. ‘I just need a witness for my tenancy agreement. I really need it tonight or I won’t get the place.’
Exasperated now, Mark raised his hand impatiently and gestured for her to hand him the papers. He took a quick glance at the tenancy agreement – a pretty standard affair from what he could see – flicked to the back, picked up his fountain pen and impatiently scrawled his signature. ‘You know, anyone can sign this,’ he told her rudely. ‘It doesn’t have to be a lawyer.’
‘Oh,’ she said softly, her voice so bereft that it made him look up at her. God, she really was beautiful. He had an urge to wrap his arms around her protectively, which surprised him – it wasn’t the first urge he usually had in the company of attractive females.
‘Sit down,’ he commanded, and pointed to the chair opposite him.
She looked worried, but reluctantly perched on the edge of the chair he had motioned to. ‘May I?’ She gestured at the papers still sitting in front of him. ‘How… how much do I owe you?’
Mark studied her as she watched him. His signature was worth an insane amount of money really. What had it taken him – a few seconds?
‘Nothing,’ he said, watching her face relax a moment before it instantly switched to high alert as he said impulsively, ‘Just come on a date with me.’
He had shocked her. She paused for a moment. ‘I don’t date,’ she replied flatly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not that kind of date,’ he said quickly, not sure himself where he was heading but mortified at being rejected so out of hand. ‘I just need a companion for a dinner – there’ll be others there. It’s just making up the numbers.’ He smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring to her. ‘You’d be doing me a real favour… in just the same way as this…’ He gestured at the papers between them.
She still looked guarded. ‘When?’
Mark’s mind was racing as to how he could organise this quickly. ‘Hang on.’ He got up and hurried through the door of his office into Chloe’s adjacent room, almost running, worried that she’d make a dash for it while he was gone. He grabbed Chloe’s diary and brought it back with him.
‘Next Thursday,’ he said, watching her.
‘I’ll try,’ she replied noncommittally, staring at him as though trying to determine something.
‘What’s your mobile number?’ He moved to his desk and picked up a pen.
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Really?’ He was intrigued. ‘Wow, I thought everyone had a mobile. How do you cope?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not that hard.’ She made to get up. ‘I should go.’
‘What about a home phone?’ he asked, watching her lithe movements as she turned away from him.
‘The rental’s not connected.’ She was nearly at the door now.
‘Meet me at Covent Garden Station – the Long Acre entrance – at six thirty on Thursday,’ he said desperately, aware she hadn’t given him any commitment, and wanting to prolong her stay. He picked up the papers in front of him as she held out her hand. ‘Flat 2, Delaware Court,’ he announced, then scribbled it down on his legal pad. ‘At least I know where to find you.’
In response she looked so frightened that Mark laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I just meant in case I need to change the arrangements.’
She nodded mutely. For a moment Mark thought she was on the verge of tears.
Alarmed, he added, ‘I’ll let my friends know, they’ll be pleased you’re coming.’ He began to regret the offer, and nearly took it back, on the verge of saying, ‘Never mind, forget it,’ but some obscure notion of courtesy meant he felt that was simply too rude.
She grabbed the papers, and said ‘Thanks’ as their hands briefly touched. Then she turned and almost bolted for the door.
‘Hang on,’ he said, half-laughing at the absurdity of it all.
She turned around.
‘I’m Mark,’ he told her, lifting his hand in a mock-wave and smiling in what he hoped was a placating and friendly manner. He was intrigued, he realised. Intensely so.
‘Julia,’ she replied, not meeting his eyes, but replicating his smile with a smaller, pinched version of her own. Then she turned on her heel, and was gone.
The reverberations from the previous evening almost made Chloe forget the tremendously important task she had planned for that day. However, at lunchtime she went and bought another test.
Might as well be absolutely sure, she thought, returning from the pharmacy with her small paper bag. Yesterday she’d leaned against the wall of the toilet cubicle, stick in hand, hardly able to contain her delight as the blue plus symbol appeared. The instructions told her she’d know after a minute. She’d waited ten, checking her watch, just in case it disappeared again.
She tried to shake the excess water off her umbrella as she took it down, and then walked quickly through the communal corridors of the offices – wondering why she felt so shifty when no one had ever stopped her before and asked to see the contents of the brown paper bag she grasped. She went straight into the toilets, relieved to see the grey cubicles empty, and took out the test.
Today the blue symbol appeared again, and remained resolutely present.
Yesterday she had felt ready. It was perfect. The perfect time in her career, now she felt well-established in the practice. The perfect time in her marriage, with everything happy and settled, but probably not averse to an exciting shake-up.
However, today the thought of being pregnant scared the hell out of her.
It would be a shake-up all right. Chloe had never had any illusions about the challenges of motherhood, and that was before she had found out that her husband was keeping secrets from her.
Thinking of this while still sitting on the toilet, holding the white stick in her unsteady hand, Chloe wondered if there were other things she should have paid attention to of the tidbits she’d been fed from Alex’s mother. Catherine Markham was a thoughtful and reserved lady with solemn, soulful eyes, who didn’t automatically volunteer advice and information – which had been a blessed relief for Chloe, given her own mother’s habit of dropping wildly indiscreet or inappropriate remarks into general conversation. When Chloe visited Alex’s family home she loved spending time with his mother as she cooked a big meal in the kitchen. As they peeled sprouts and grated carrots they would sometimes chat, and at other times remained silent. Although sometimes she thought the peace was hemmed with sadness, still, Chloe had had an insight into a different kind of upbringing – one without the manic edge that her mother seemed to bring to any situation along with her inability to shut up, even for a few seconds.
Now, as she stared at the thin white plastic stick that foretold the biggest life-change she could imagine, she realised that she’d never thought that Catherine Markham might be privy to secrets about Alex that she, his own wife, didn’t know. She wondered if she should ring Catherine up and ask her directly what she knew about Julia, but then, if Alex were in the middle of a steamy affair he would hardly confide in his mother.
Chloe had always thought of affairs as the worst kind of betrayal, but now she felt that if she discovered Alex and Julia were just having a fling, she might almost be relieved – at least for a few moments before the anger arrived. Whatever that look had been between them, it had seemed much more potent than acknowledgement of an affair, and that frightened her.
She didn’t know what to think about last night. The whole scenario had been so unreal, and so unlike anything she’d ever encountered with Alex, that now she could hardly believe it had occurred. And Julia was Mark’s girlfriend. How awkward would that make things in the future, if secrets weren’t laid out in the open. She imagined them all at the dinners and law balls and charity events and Christmas parties that would have to be faced together, and once again she saw Alex and Julia’s faces freezing as they looked at one another, and her stomach twisted.
She stayed seated on the toilet, staring at the stick. Five minutes passed, then ten, and that positive blue symbol wouldn’t go away.
Yep, she was pregnant all right. But the joy of yesterday had entirely disappeared.
After Chloe had wrapped up all the evidence and pushed it to the bottom of the toilet bin underneath a variety of detritus, she called the local surgery and made an appointment for Monday morning. She needed to hear she was pregnant from a doctor, not just a little white stick. Then she tried to concentrate on her work for a while, but it was pointless. Eventually, she took a deep breath and went to talk to Mark.
At his open door she saw he was reading while eating a sandwich. Small pieces of lettuce were scattered over his papers, and as she watched he brushed them absently onto the floor.
She knocked. ‘Mark?’
‘I’m busy, Chloe.’
God, you can be a self-important prick at times, Mark, she thought to herself. But she bit her lip and said instead, ‘I just need a second.’
He sighed and looked up. ‘What is it?’
‘About Julia…’ She had so many questions she didn’t know where to start.
Mark was alert at once when he realised she was ready to talk. ‘What did Alex say to you?’
‘Nothing as yet,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Nothing? Didn’t you ask him?’
‘Not really. He was upset, then my mother called, with her usual impeccable timing…’
‘I couldn’t care less how upset he is. What I want to know is What Did He Do to Julia?’
‘Why do you think he did something to her?’ Chloe defended, alarmed now. The thought had never crossed her mind. Alex wouldn’t, couldn’t harm anyone or anything, surely. ‘What if she did something to him?’
‘I somehow doubt it.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Chloe’s patience was suddenly worn paper-thin. ‘Why don’t you just ask her? I certainly don’t intend to interrogate Alex for you. I trust him, Mark – not that I expect you to know about that, of course.’ She couldn’t help the bitterness creeping in and she was infuriated with herself.
‘I can’t ask her, Chloe!’ Mark’s voice was oddly pitched. ‘I’ve only got a bloody address, and after last night I hardly feel welcome to pop round. So I expect I’ll never see her again, thanks to your fucking husband. Now, can I eat my lunch in peace?’
Silently, Chloe headed for the door. She passed Jana on the way back to her office, which was next door to Mark’s, divided only by a small stationery cupboard. The partition walls were useless – you could hear any noise above normal speaking tone, and she knew that the gaggle of secretaries that formed the centre pool in the nucleus of surrounding offices had probably heard that last line, as she was un ceremoniously thrown out. Her cheeks burned, and she avoided looking at them. When she’d closed her own office door, she sat down and took deep breaths.
Despite the confrontation, Mark’s last words had comforted her. What a fool she was. Why hadn’t she realised that Julia and Mark weren’t necessarily in the kind of relationship he’d made it out to be? If he only had an address and had never been there, things with Julia obviously hadn’t progressed very far. Just because he’d prattled on about her in the few days before their dinner date didn’t mean anything.
Julia had certainly raced off like a frightened rabbit last night. Maybe she’d taken off completely. If she would just vanish, then maybe they could pretend that last night had never happened.
Perhaps this should have been a comfort to her, but it wasn’t.
When Julia opened her eyes it was to cold white light streaming in through the uncurtained window. She’d slept fitfully through the night and for most of the morning, but even in her semi-conscious slumber she couldn’t forget what had happened last night. She could barely remember the journey home. When she had run out of the restaurant and looked at the faces of those around her, she was surprised no one was staring. It was unbelievable that she was convincing amongst them, these strangers – just one of them – so ordinary that they hardly noticed her.
She kept trying to replay the time she had seen him from start to finish, breaking the few seconds down into milliseconds so she could savour each micro-moment. His head turning to look at her; his expression opening in recognition, then closing a moment later before he lost control and let something out of himself that wasn’t meant to be revealed. His hand automatically reaching towards hers. The warmth of his touch against her fingers, his grip lingering, testing out this new reality, involuntarily preserving the link between them for a short, extended fraction of time. Even before he had released the grip she had wanted him to hold on – it was real to her in a way she had forgotten a touch could be. But he had broken the small tie their fingers had forged, and watching him turn away had been more than she could bear. She was surprised that she managed to excuse herself; that she hadn’t just evaporated next to the others. Her heart had pounded so hard she’d been sure it was about to break through her chest cavity. It had felt like she was shrinking suddenly, tunnelling down a hole that only she could see, away from everyone and everything.
It was so unbearably ironic. She hadn’t been back to England for more than a few months in the past ten years, and she and Alex were both from the Midlands, so why he was living here in London she didn’t know.
Except there was one big reason, wasn’t there.
His wife. Alex was married.
She had always imagined that seeing Alex again would be more painful than anything else she could experience. But she had been wrong, because stupidly, stupidly, she had never added Alex’s wife into that equation. It had never occurred to her that Alex could have, would have married. Because Alex already had a soul mate, and he had lost her.
The thought of him having such incredible intimacy with another woman made it difficult to breathe.
Chloe. She tried to think back to what Mark had briefly told her about Chloe and Alex before they arrived for dinner. Not much. He had mentioned Chloe’s husband by name, she recalled, but she had never dreamed that it could be her Alex.
Except it wasn’t ‘her Alex’ any more.
She grabbed her coat and headed for the door, making her way down the tiny narrow stairway that led from the cramped flat. The carpet was worn and rucked in places, there was no banister and she had already nearly tripped once or twice, so now she rested her hand on the wall as she went. At the bottom she pushed open the half-rotten door of peeling white paint, which opened into a small courtyard, and hurried through, not glancing at the doors to the left and right, which, she’d concluded, from the amount of loud music, shopping trolleys and the smell of pot around the place, must be largely inhabited by students. The little alleyway was a dark oasis of calm, despite its sinister shadows, before she suddenly merged onto a busy street, a teeming multicolour of bicycles, people, umbrellas, buses and taxis all heading in their own directions.
Head down against the crowds and the rain and the cold, she walked briskly along the road until she saw the orange strip of an internet café. She went in, exchanged coins for a ticket, and took her place at a computer.
Once logged on she wasted no time in finding a search engine and typing in ‘Alex Markham’.
The very first page that came up was his website. Her damp cheeks were still stinging from the sudden transition from the cool air outside to the warmth indoors, as she held her breath and went straight to it, looking through the pages, fascinated by the designs she found in front of her. It was like reading a storybook and suddenly skipping forward one hundred pages in an instant. At the last juncture she had known about, Alex had been one of a promising mass of recently graduated graphic artists, but now she suddenly zipped forward so many years to see that he had fulfilled his talent, or at least had begun to. He was doing what he had always wanted to do.
Anger rose up in her. She had had a passion for journalism a long time ago. She had wanted to do a post-grad course and then throw herself headlong into the profession, making a name for herself on a paper or magazine. Instead, she had spent the past ten years drifting round the world doing odd jobs, not wanting or daring to go home, sending off the occasional travel log from somewhere remote and beautiful, and even more occasionally being contacted by an editor – once or twice even being paid, only to find that most of her articles were simply kept on file and never actually appeared.
And here was Alex, living his life as though he had never veered from the straight path he intended for himself.
She clicked on the Biography page.
Alex lives with his wife in South London. When not designing he likes to indulge himself in travelling, modern-art galleries and fine wine.
She read the blurb a few times, trying to take it in. The Alex of old did indeed like travelling and art galleries, but she couldn’t remember seeing him drink wine at all.
And then there was ‘his wife’. She thought back to the pretty-featured girl at the restaurant with her light brown hair tucked casually behind her ears. Chloe had immediately made her feel stiff and formal, with her wide, welcoming smile and easy manner. Not that her relaxed posture had lasted long, once Alex had appeared.
There was an address on the website and she scribbled it on the back of her internet ticket. Then she clicked back to the search page and typed in ‘Chloe Markham’. There were a few links that were obviously irrelevant, but then one came up under lewisandmarchant.com. Going to that, she found a page containing a picture of the girl she had just conjured up in her memory. Yet in this portrait Chloe’s smile wasn’t the natural one she’d had at the restaurant, and she wore a suit jacket with a white shirt underneath as she sat straight-backed and gazed into the camera lens.
Julia read the blurb next to the photo:
Chloe Markham, solicitor, is one of Lewis & Marchant’s rising stars. Qualified for eight years, her specialty is family law, alongside general litigation.
This wasn’t the kind of information she wanted to know about Chloe. She wanted to find something that could tell her what it was about Chloe that made Alex smile. How they’d met. Where their wedding had taken place. And a million other things.
Why did he love her?
She pressed the ‘back’ button, stupidly surprised to see Mark’s face appearing before her. She clicked on his name and idly read the details set out there, noticing that he looked disdainfully handsome in his photo, but not really taking the words in.
Back at the search page, she typed in ‘Chloe and Alex Markham’ again, just in case, but there was nothing new. She flicked through pages impatiently, wanting more. On the third page that came up there were a couple of quotes from Chloe about legal cases, but nothing interesting.
While she was there, she plucked up her courage and typed in another name. She held her breath. But, as always, there was nothing.
She picked up her bag and the ticket she had scribbled on, and marched towards the door of the café, eyeing the address, trying to decide what to do. She passed a phone box and took a lingering look at it, just as she always did. Her father might be dead because of her, but she knew exactly where her mother was. She tempted herself with the uncertain promise of resolution, of redemption even, though the last time they had spoken her mother had been hysterical, threatening to disown her if she didn’t come home. She reminded herself that now her mother might have answers she couldn’t bear to know. Yet each day the desire to pick up the phone increased a little more, in proportion with the conviction that she didn’t want to be found.
So why, then, had she written down that address on Alex’s website? Was she finally admitting to herself that she needed someone who knew her Before to be in her life – a tenuous link both to who she had been and who she might have become? Or was it simply because she still loved him, despite what had happened in the end?
She had no idea. She turned away from the phone box, shook her head and moved on. She couldn’t make the call.
Back at her flat, before she was fully aware of what she was doing, she was kneeling by her rucksack – the only bag she’d arrived with a few weeks ago. She unclipped the top of it and pushed it back, to reveal a zipper hidden on the inside. She unzipped it quickly and pushed her hand into the secret compartment, groping around, pulling out one item at a time until they were all laid pitifully before her on the bedcovers.
Here were the only three things that really mattered to her.
The first was a charm on a necklace chain, like those you’d usually find on a bracelet. It was a tiny wishing well, the detail on it astounding: the gabled canopy; the tiny spindle; the coiled rope. A lot of wishes had been cast fruitlessly into the small hollow, far too many for its tiny size.
The second was a fluorescent patchwork lizard-gecko hybrid about the size of her palm, with splayed fingers and big googly eyes. Sometimes Julia would sit it on her pillow, and each protruding iris seemed to follow her round the room, until she would have to put the duvet over its head for a while just to escape the sense of being watched.
Lastly, there was a small silver box containing a cutting of short brown hair.
Although, she realised, there was a fourth item back there too. Something she hadn’t looked at for a long time. Her hand delved into the pocket again, and pulled out a crumpled piece of white paper. There were a few black smudges on there now, where the ink had run since getting wet, but most of it was still legible. She looked over it quickly – was it really ten years since she had first read these words? In the light of the past twenty-four hours it was too painful to dwell on them for long.
She placed the piece of paper next to the other items and cast her eye over them all as they lay forlornly on the bed. Each one was a reminder of who she had been, which was why there was always an inevitable pang of pain and longing whenever she looked at them. It hadn’t been as difficult as she’d thought to discard the bloodied entrails of her old life – but she didn’t seem to be able to let go of these last things. They seemed so little, but they stood for so much.
Or perhaps it was that they wouldn’t let go of her, she thought now, fingering each item tenderly, willing with everything she had for the tears to come, to show her that she could still feel something. In fact, surely seeing Alex again like that, out of the blue, had to be a sign.
That even made her smile slightly. She hadn’t realised she still believed in signs. As she looked down at her nail-bitten fingers, a thought struck her with such velocity that she heard herself gasp.
What if there had been signs all along, and she had just missed them?
The car in which Chloe and Alex sat in silence formed one tiny scale of the huge glittering snake that coiled around the M25 and slithered ever so slowly forwards.
They hadn’t spoken since Alex picked Chloe up from the station after work. Chloe was regretting that they had promised the weekend to her mother. On a non-travelling Friday evening they would meet at the station and spend a couple of hours in the local pub, indulging in idle chitchat with friends and neighbours they encountered there, and then head home for either a takeaway or an easy meal – pasta and salad, or something similar. They’d crack open a bottle of wine, sit companionably on the sofa, shuffling positions every now and again, limbs draped comfortably over each other’s bodies. She would perhaps put her hand up his shirt and rub the flat circle of hair on his stomach, and he would slide his hand up her blouse and cup her breasts and stroke her nipples. They’d stay that way until one of them couldn’t take it any more and made a definite move…
Had they really done that only last Friday? Just one week ago everything was normal. Just one night ago she’d sat at her dresser and stared at herself in the mirror, feeling so wonderfully thrilled with the way things were going. Twenty-four small hours later and here they were, wrapped within a leaden silence punctuated only by honking horns.
She looked across at Alex. He was grim-faced, one hand over the top of the steering wheel, the other resting on the gear stick. She had practised the first sentence – ‘Alex, about last night…’ – but she was still unsure how to follow it up.
Did she want to know? Yes, of course, but she was praying that the price she would pay for knowing wouldn’t be too dear. She was disconcerted to find she wasn’t sure she wanted her marriage shattered for one tiny item of knowledge. Men and women came into her office all the time to begin divorce proceedings, and the misery etched plain on their faces often brought her to the conclusion that secrets only became malignant when they stopped being secrets. A secret in itself was just a silent benign fact – unless it was released upon some unsuspecting person… wasn’t it? More likely she was just being a coward, she decided grimly.
She wished Alex would come out with an explanation himself. The fact that he hadn’t, and that he was so obviously affected by seeing Julia – still, a day later! – was terrifying her more than anything, more even than those horribly uncomfortable moments at the restaurant last night, which made her cringe when she relived them.
But even if they never saw Julia again, she had to ask. Otherwise, if Alex didn’t say anything, then this incident would rip the tiniest corner off their happy marriage, and she’d vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let little cuts become big holes. She saw the result of that every day at work – the smallest nuances in her clients’ voices, even the way they took a breath before beginning to talk, betraying all their anger and desperation and sadness.
‘Alex…’ she began, at the same moment as he leaned across and flicked up the volume dial on the radio.
He turned it down again when he heard Chloe’s voice.
‘Sorry. Yep?’
‘About last night…’ she began.
Alex stared straight ahead and said nothing.
‘Are you having an affair?’ she asked. She held her breath while waiting for the answer to come.
‘Bloody hell, Chloe,’ Alex spluttered, turning sharply to look at her, then swivelling back to the road when the cars started to slow. His knuckles clenched, blanched, against the steering wheel. A muscle twitched near his jaw-line. ‘No, of course not.’ His voice softened to become earnest and his face was pained.
‘Then how do you know Julia?’
‘Chlo, I really want to talk to you, but not like this… it’s a long story… She… Julia… I never thought that I’d see her again.’ Alex’s jaw was set tense and firm and his mouth was a thin line.
Chloe digested this, but persisted, ‘So were you in a relationship with her?’
Alex hesitated. He looked across at Chloe, then back at the road. ‘Yes, we were.’ He paused before adding, ‘But it seems like another lifetime now.’
Neither of them spoke. The cars in front of them sped up and Alex put his foot down hard on the accelerator. They raced forward, gaining momentum quickly, before realising the same cars were stopping again. Chloe thrust a hand out to steady herself for possible impact while Alex cursed and slammed his foot onto the brake.
The car lurched to a stop.
Chloe bit her lip and rubbed her stomach protectively under the coarse strip of seatbelt.
‘Chloe…’ Alex’s voice was gentle and he moved his hand across to caress the nape of her neck. It made her shiver and she looked up at him. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s nothing for you to worry about, but I want to talk about this properly, not in the sodding car, or in front of your mother. It gave me one hell of a shock, seeing her like that. Can we just wait till we’re alone?’ He waved his hand angrily at the traffic.
His words were something of a balm to her nerves. She looked at his face and saw his expression, guileless and caring, but still, she was wary.
‘I want to know everything,’ she told him. ‘I don’t see why you need to be so cloak and dagger about it.’
‘Because,’ Alex said slowly, his eyes fixed on the road, ‘what happened to her was beyond terrible.’ His voice cracked on the final words. He cleared his throat but the raw emotion was still present as he added, ‘I can hardly…’ He trailed off.
Chloe cursed herself for making them come up to her mother’s. They should have stayed at home where they could have talked. She almost told Alex to turn around, but as she thought of her mother’s sorrow-filled face the traffic began to speed up and Alex indicated for the next exit.
‘Okay,’ she said when he was no more forthcoming, alarmed at how quickly he’d got upset. ‘You can tell me later.’
‘Thank you,’ Alex replied, and Chloe heard the heartfelt timbre of his voice and leaned back against her chair, suddenly very, very tired.
The memories came in droves in the night.
Screaming – her own.
Shouting – everybody else.
As Julia half-dozed fitfully her remembrances held her down and whispered cruel things into her ears.
She saw her father’s face in the hospital, the light gone from his eyes. She saw him before that, at home when she had been a child, his strong, solid arms, a face full of lines that deepened into great crags when he laughed, his hands shaking slightly as he went about day-to-day tasks, his craftsman’s fingers thick and gnarled. Tinkering away in his shed, while her mother cooked for them all. The miniature garden in the wicker basket that he had made for her so that fairies might visit them, which had been a constant feature of her childhood, and which they had both continued to tend long after she stopped believing in magical creatures at the bottom of the garden. That miniature bucolic idyll had come to represent all the fundamental feelings that lay between them, shared without words.
She sat bolt upright with a pounding heart and tried to recover her breathing. Blearily, she wondered if the basket was still there in the garden; hoped fervently that it was. If it had gone, then, irrevocably, so had one more small part of her. But there was no way to find out without making that dreaded call home.
Gradually, she succumbed to a half-sleep again, until she was gliding through a Turkish beach resort, accosted by an old lady who spoke bad English but had kind eyes, who grabbed her hand, saying, ‘Wait, lady. I see man, he walk with you. Wait! Lady, wait!’ When she turned around the woman was frowning as though some invisible being were whispering something in her ear that was hard to understand. ‘He say you are lost soul.’ The woman turned big, heavily pencilled mournful eyes towards her, as if a hundred things suddenly made sense. Julia wanted to run from that knowing gaze, but it seemed the message wasn’t finished, and her legs were unaccountably heavy. ‘He say you lost somebody, but they will come back to you. So it okay,’ the woman smiled, tears in her eyes, bouncing Julia’s hand up and down in her own cold, gnarled grip. ‘They will come back to you.’
She came to again with a start, her whole body trembling. Was this a memory or a dream? She wasn’t sure – and that in itself frightened her. If it was more than a dream, then who was the message from? Her father? Who else would it be? And who did it refer to? Was it Alex, who had just come back to her in such an unforeseen and painful fashion?
She pictured her father’s face. Maybe he had forgiven her, now he could see everything up in heaven, and was paying the puppetmaster who dangled everyone’s lives beneath him so ruthlessly to do him this one big favour, to make the fates turn just once in the right direction. That way his daughter might become a truly earthbound person again, instead of just a wandering lost soul.
But then perhaps it was only a dream, came a cloudy thought, as her head grew heavier once more against the pillow.
Later on, in the hazy time between sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking, more things came back to her; things she had pushed away for years. She had separated her life into two halves – Before and After – although she knew the line was really a lot more blurred than that.
One image replayed itself over and over: of Alex’s twisted face as he walked away from her. That had been After.
But, now and then, there was also Alex’s kind face, peering down at her.
Before.
Chloe was already exasperated after a few hours with her mother. After Margaret had woken her at what felt like dawn, they had raced into town and spent twenty minutes driving around the multi-storey searching for the perfect spot, before Margaret phoned Alex in a panic to remind him to lock the house up when he went out. They made it into the shopping centre, only for Chloe’s mother to realise she’d left a voucher for Marks & Spencer in the car’s glove box, so they trudged all the way back again to find the voucher wasn’t in there at all – she had in fact carefully added it to the zip pocket of her shopping bag. Once they were inside M &S, Margaret headed straight for the accessories section, and spent half an hour wondering about a scarf there, before deciding she needed to come back when she was wearing her other coat to see if they matched properly.
And so it went on. All the time, Margaret wittered away, Chloe hardly getting a word in. Her mother hadn’t always been like this, she thought. She could recall a much more confident and self-contained woman, although it was only through the fog of childhood memory. But then something had happened, their grandmother had looked after Chloe and Anthony for a while, and it was after that that her mother had changed. But after what? The shadows of a memory began to float into the edges of her mind, and she felt her heart begin to race and pushed it back quickly. However, now its presence had been felt she couldn’t wipe it completely.
As they sat down for elevenses, Chloe’s mother took a good look at her.
‘You look a bit peaky, dear. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ Chloe set down their tray of steaming coffees and muffins.
‘Working too hard again? You must be careful. You know what they say – “all work and no play…”.’ Margaret chuckled to herself as she placed her plastic bags carefully on the seat next to her, and then fussed over which one lay on the bottom.
I’d have a damn sight more time to play if I weren’t driving up to the Lake District on a regular basis, Chloe thought. But she smiled back benignly.
They sat in silence for a few moments, before Chloe took a deep breath and announced without preamble, ‘I’m pregnant’, startling herself with her own bluntness. She hadn’t realised the secret had been crouched on her tongue, waiting to jump. As she immediately picked up her muffin and took a bite, she wished she could put her words on top and gobble them back up.
Her mother’s jaw had dropped.
I’ve done it, Chloe thought. I have finally shut her up.
No sooner had she thought this than Margaret rallied with a torrent of exclamations. ‘Oh my darling, I’m so thrilled… I’m so delighted. I can’t believe I’m going to be a grandmother… this is fantastic, wait till I tell June tonight -’
Chloe cut her off abruptly. ‘You can’t tell them yet…’ She paused and took a deep breath as she watched the confusion on her mother’s face, before adding, ‘Alex doesn’t know.’
‘Alex doesn’t…?’ Her mother tapered off and once again seemed lost for words.
Unbelievable, Chloe thought. Now she’d silenced her mother twice in five minutes. Alex would love this.
Immediately she felt miserable.
The rain didn’t seem to have stopped since Thursday, and it matched Alex’s mood perfectly. Wrapped up warmly, he was on his way to the village pub, a trip he’d taken regularly with Charlie on previous visits to the Lake District. It still felt strange to be heading there alone. Today he had intended to drown his sorrows while watching the football scores come up, but when he opened the door and the warmth of lights, laughter and air all hit him at once, he knew straight away he couldn’t stomach it. He let the door swing shut again, leaving him on the outside hunched against the cold as a couple of people stepped around him to get in. As a wave of noise and heat assaulted him for the second time, he strode quickly away, not really sure where he was going. He just knew he needed to try to clear his head, and the ice-cold air would help him more than the fug of the bar.
It wasn’t difficult to find a walking trail. A couple of minutes later he had hopped over a dilapidated wooden stile set into a fence, and was following a small stony path around the bottom of a hill. The rain splattered his face persistently, but it was welcome – cool and cleansing. His trainers were quickly soaked; he could already feel water creeping between his toes. He was breathing hard with the exertion of keeping pace with his feet, which seemed to have independently decided upon a brisk trot.
There was so much to think about that he didn’t know where to start. His mind was running around wildly in circles leaving chaotic footprints everywhere that he had no hope of following.
He’d thought he had it all figured out, but when it came down to it he had just been living on circumstance. He was angry and upset – with himself most of all, but little sparks flew off towards others. How could she just turn up after almost ten years without a word? And what wicked circumstance had allowed Chloe to lead him innocently into that restaurant, both of them unwitting victims of the hand of fate?
And Mark – in his wildest thoughts since Thursday, a lot of Alex’s anger had been directed towards him. They had never liked one another. He imagined Mark somehow finding out about what had happened back then, and bringing his new girlfriend, Julia, along just to spite him – but how the hell could he know?
The general consensus about the path of life was that it usually took time – days, months, maybe years – to effect change. Yet the twists and turns Alex’s world had taken boiled down to a few short moments. A missed underground train one afternoon. The police knocking on his family’s door in Leicester with news of his brother. Letting go of a hand just a fraction too soon. In fact, letting go at all.
He thought about his family: how much Jamie’s sudden illness had straitened the atmosphere of his home. His mother, Catherine, had become increasingly hesitant and nervous, while his father’s emotions were held carefully in check, but, like a leaky vessel, seeped out at odd moments. Geoff Markham had lost both parents while Alex was in his teens, then his sister had died of cancer a few years later, and he had remained sadly stoic but dry-faced throughout, yet Alex had once seen his dad cry in exasperation after he tried some DIY car repair and managed to damage the wheel’s axle. Once, when Alex’s frustration with his dad’s reticence had become apparent, his mother had told him that it was just the way he was made, and that it was what she loved the most about him – that it was refreshing when so many people were full of pandering, self-serving platitudes. This had made Alex take a look at his dad afresh, and for a while his lack of communication hadn’t mattered so much – until Jamie was found wandering along a motorway in his underwear on a cool summer’s night when he’d been missing for two days, and was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. Because, at the time, Alex had responded in exactly the same way as his father: comforting his mother but unable to share the depths of his emotions with anyone.
Now, as he strode along the muddy path, he wondered if this thing the male Markhams had got – this inability to express themselves outwardly at appropriate moments – was some kind of curse. Perhaps it was a worse condition than his brother Jamie’s, as there was nothing they could take for it.
He began to pound the track so furiously that he could hear the quicktime thump of his heart. He was soaked – raindrops were everywhere, dripping off his nose, cascading over his eyelids, breaching flimsy barriers of hems and lining. But he didn’t care. He was thinking that the only time he had taken charge of his direction in life was with Chloe. But even that meeting had not been the chance accident she imagined it was.
He thought of Chloe, of her lovely selfless nature and her funny self-conscious habits – how his life had changed once he met her, from its endless dullish hues into a release of fresh colour. It had no longer seemed as if his soul mate had disappeared years ago, but rather that she had been waiting patiently all this time for him to relinquish the past and catch up to her. And until now, he thought he had moved on.
But in the past forty-eight hours everything had changed. It seemed you couldn’t just shrug off your past. It was attached to you like a shadow – travelling with you everywhere, catching up with you whenever you faltered. The only real option was to turn and face it; deal with it; be rid of it in such a way that you could be certain it wouldn’t reappear.
And that was why he had to find Julia. To talk to her. To understand. And to tell her just how utterly, utterly sorry he was. Yet he had an unshakeable feeling in the pit of his being that, whatever he did now, someone was going to get hurt. More than anything he wanted to protect Chloe, but he had made a promise, hadn’t he, and now that Julia was back in his life, he couldn’t just forget about that.
No matter which way he turned, he couldn’t see the right way forward.
It was only when he reached the end of the track, with densely packed trees blocking his progress in every direction, that he realised he must have strayed off course without even noticing. At the same time it dawned on him that to have any chance of finding Julia he was going to have to talk to one of the few people he disliked intensely. He only hoped Mark didn’t feel as strongly about him, or he was already in trouble and he hadn’t even started yet.
With a heavy heart he stopped walking and turned around to retrace his steps, hoping it wouldn’t take him too long to find the pathway again.
The sun was low in the sky as they drove the few miles to June and George’s. Chloe grimaced as it bored brightly into her eyes, and tried to keep her concentration on the road.
Alex was sitting beside her, silent, smartly groomed in a white shirt with a light blue check and dark blue jeans. Chloe’s mother was behind them in the back seat, chattering away inconsequentially. Alex and Chloe had stopped replying to her a good ten minutes ago and she didn’t seem to have noticed. It was like supermarket muzak – they tuned in now and again and the rest of the time it washed over them subliminally. The sweet stink of her mother’s perfume – had she bathed in the stuff? – had overwhelmed Chloe when they’d first got in the car. She wondered if it was the pregnancy – she didn’t normally get queasy from her mother’s Elizabeth Arden.
After Chloe had made her verbal slip that morning, her mother had continually tried to talk to her about the pregnancy as they progressed through town, until Chloe had had to say quite rudely, ‘Can we just stop,’ at which point Margaret had taken umbrage and stopped talking about anything at all, which meant the rest of the shopping trip had passed in a rather blissful silence. They hadn’t got back until late afternoon, and so it had seemed a rush to turn around and get ready for their trip out this evening. Chloe just prayed that her mother would be able to keep quiet. Why had she entrusted her with something so important?
June and George’s house suddenly rose to greet them as they topped a hill, and Chloe slowed and pulled into the driveway. The huge farmhouse door was open within milliseconds – June must have been watching for them through the letterbox, Chloe mused, as she got out of the car, waving and smiling.
June and Margaret greeted each other as though they were two old Dames reunited at the BAFTAs, and everyone watched and waited from the wings till the performance had finished. Then Chloe spotted George in the doorway and walked over to him.
‘How are you, Chloe?’ he greeted her warmly, kissing her cheek. ‘And Alex.’ He extended his hand and they shook firmly. George looked across at his wife and rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t think those two saw each other every Wednesday at the gardening club. Come on in.’
George led the way and they followed, Alex gently placing a hand on the small of Chloe’s back as she moved forward. She was immediately aware of his touch and turned to him. He was watching her, an odd intense look on his face, but as she smiled so did he.
This is unbearable, Chloe thought as she turned away. Why am I trying to read his every expression? This is my husband: we’re best friends, soul mates – we instinctively know the other. How on earth has this suddenly become so hard?
Two hours later, after a feast of roast lamb and veggies and conversation dominated by gardening-club gossip from June and Margaret, they had all retired to the lounge. The men were swirling whisky around their glasses, listening as the older women held court. Chloe was exhausted. She kept watching Alex to see if he exhibited signs of tiredness, but he appeared fine. Mind you, she thought grumpily, he’d had a lie in, while it felt like she’d been up shopping since dawn. She’d managed to abstain from alcohol over dinner by saying she was driving. Normally she would still have had a glass, but she’d said she was tired so didn’t dare indulge, and everyone had accepted that.
‘So, Chloe -’ Chloe snapped out of her daydreaming as she heard her name – ‘getting clucky yet?’
Damn you, June, Chloe thought, noticing that her mother was watching intently. She glared at her, wondering if Margaret had been unable to keep her mouth shut for even half a day, but the woman gave an almost imperceptibly small shake of her head in reply.
‘A little…’ she said hesitantly.
Alex came to life immediately. ‘Are you?’ He leaned forward, leather chair creaking as he did so. ‘That’s news to me.’
‘Happens to us all, Alex, sooner or later,’ Margaret chipped in breezily.
‘Well, maybe, but we’re not ready for that yet, are we, Chloe?’
‘Aren’t we?’ Chloe, stunned, looked at Alex.
‘Well, no. I need to establish my business more – and you’ve got stuff you want to do in the practice – there’s no need to rush it.’
‘I suppose -’
Margaret cut in. ‘But there’s never a perfect time, Alex. Remember that.’
‘I know.’ Alex sounded irritated. ‘But Chlo and I need to feel solid and secure in our lives before we complicate everything with a kid. I’m just not interested at the moment.’
Margaret, her jaw slack, looked at Chloe. And Chloe, horrifyingly, felt tears spring to her eyes. She stared down at her tepid mug of tea. ‘Well, then,’ she said, fighting her tears and the hot blush she could feel staining her cheeks.
When she glanced up, Alex was watching her in surprise, and she was sure he’d guessed. There had been an awkward silence for a number of excruciating seconds now, and he opened his mouth to fill it just as June said, ‘Well, poor Jeanna can’t have any children. It breaks my heart that our son won’t ever be a father.’
‘June!’ George scolded crossly. ‘It’s actually none of our business, and besides, our girls have produced enough between them to keep a primary school from going under.’
Alex’s attention was still on Chloe, but he didn’t seem shocked now so much as intrigued. Maybe he hadn’t guessed at all.
Chloe avoided meeting his gaze, then sat back and closed her eyes. June was still talking about how Jeanna and Michael were planning to travel for six months next year, now that they’d come to terms with the news. Lucky old Jeanna, Chloe thought to herself, then immediately rubbed her tummy superstitiously and said silently, I didn’t mean it, baby. I didn’t mean it.
Mark arrived at the house in a foul mood. An hour’s journey on a winter’s night had taken him more than twice as long as it should have done. Had he not felt so tired, he would have been furious and vowing to write to somebody important over this disgrace of a transport system. Leaves on the line, snow on the line – even bloody bodies on the line, according to one whispered remark behind him. There was something utterly repulsive about the mindset of a commuter, that now, every time he heard of a body on the line his only thought was, ‘Well, get it off the bloody line, then, and let’s be on our way.’
In actual fact a train had broken down ahead of the one Mark was on, so he had to get off and board a bus between Orpington and Sevenoaks. At that point he’d tried to call his parents to collect him rather than suffer the indignity of bus travel with a plague of hyperactive adolescents, the boys’ low-slung waistbands beginning on roughly the same portion of their bodies as the girls’ tiny skirts ended. However, the house phone at The Willows rang out without even the answering machine clicking on, so Mark endured the bumpy, windy bus ride with his head stuck determinedly behind his paper, not reading a word, but checking his watch every two seconds until the bus pulled up outside Sevenoaks Station.
Thank god there was a cab there. He pushed his way through the throngs on the platform and raced along the walkway with his arm outstretched and a silent plea that no one would claim it first. The cabbie nodded as he got in and said, ‘Barnfield Drive, please’, then they were off. Mercifully, the driver was a silent let’s-get-you-there type rather than one of the let’s-get-it-all-off-my-chest-on-the-way cabbies Mark dreaded. Cab time was vital court-prepping time, and you didn’t need someone asking your advice about importing their underage Thai girlfriend.
When he finally arrived he was somewhat disconcerted to find the house in total darkness. It wasn’t a major problem, he had a key, but still – as they had invited him over, they should at least be home.
He let himself in and switched on a few lights. The answering machine on the Edwardian rosewood table in the hallway showed a resolute 0 messages. The curtains to the front rooms were still open, so he went around closing them, wondering where on earth his parents could be. The house seemed so quiet now, since the dog had died a few years before.
He peeked into his father’s study, feeling like a trespassing child, hearing his father saying to his ten-year-old self, ‘The law is the foundation upon which society stands, and also upon which it falls. Ergo, to uphold the law is the most important job that one can do,’ as Mark was allowed to handle legal books reverently as though they were lost covenants. But the room was absolutely still.
He went back to the lounge, poured himself some Glenmorangie and sat down on one of the leather armchairs, idly picking up a nearby National Geographic and flicking through it with no real interest in the content. His mind kept drifting towards shiny dark hair and mesmerising brown eyes. Bloody hell, why on earth couldn’t he just let it go; even thinking about her made him feel like an idiot.
Two hours and a few more glasses of whisky later, he was exhausted. He had tried both parents’ mobiles, but they were off. He briefly thought about ringing hospitals or checking the news for car accidents, but he couldn’t imagine his father rushing into a panic in the same situation – in fact, Henry would just have been enraged at the inconsideration – and his resolve stiffened. He would go to bed, sleep on it, and if they weren’t home by morning he would be sure something was up. He’d grown up with a father promising to be places and turning up hours late, if at all, due to some kind of emergency court session/meeting/law function. Perhaps his mother had been dragged into some such thing and they’d forgotten he was coming – they’d arranged it a couple of weeks ago, after all.
He pulled at his loose tie, brought it over his head and folded it into a small neat oblong. Then he made his way wearily up the stairs, grateful now for the sandwich he’d grabbed on the train, which at the time he’d thought of as a stale appetiser for the decent meal he would be getting at home.
He had just crawled beneath the sheets when he heard the front door open, and footsteps echo through the hallway then up the stairs. They paused on the landing outside his door, but Mark froze, annoyed at his parents now for being so tardy. Not long after they moved on, he was asleep.
When Mark woke up, light was marauding through the gap between the curtains. He knew something was wrong. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t known it the night before. A quick check of his mobile told him it was ten past eight, and he pulled on some clothes before rushing downstairs.
His mother sat at the kitchen table, one hand pressed to her forehead as she brooded over a cup of tea.
‘Where were you last night?’ he asked tersely.
‘I needed to go out.’
‘Well, that’s nice. You invite me over for dinner then neither of you can be bothered to turn up. Thanks a lot.’
‘Oh, Mark,’ his mother turned on him with a glare. ‘Stop being such a pouty little boy. That’s the last thing I need right now, seeing as your father’s run off in a sulk.’
‘What? What do you mean? Why didn’t you wake me?’ Mark replied, more angrily than he intended.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ his mother said, not looking up.
‘Why… what…?’ Mark asked, uncomprehending. ‘Where’s Dad gone?’
Finally, his mother looked at him. Her face had lost some of its usual composure. Her cheeks sagged, her eyes were red.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘He just left.’
‘Left?’ Mark was mystified. ‘What? What do you mean left?’
‘He packed a bag, and left.’ His mother shrugged her shoulders. ‘He didn’t tell me where he was going. When I asked him, he told me to fuck off.’
Mark couldn’t help it, the laugh was out before he could stop it. ‘Don’t be silly,’ was all he said. At which point his mother rose slowly and imperiously from her seat. She put her hands on the table, leaned forward, and, with such vehemence that Mark took a step back, hissed, ‘Don’t you ever say that to me. Ever.’ She waved a finger at him then paused, eyeing him mirthlessly, before she sighed and said coldly, ‘Stop trying to make yourself into an identical version of your father.’ She gave a rasping laugh, warped and humourless. ‘That is not such a great thing to be, Mark. I’d aim a bit higher, if I were you.’
Mark held up his hands in surrender, though anger began to course through him at her words. ‘Well then, Mum, why don’t you explain this to me properly, and then I might have more chance of understanding exactly what’s going on.’
Emily Jameson turned her empty eyes towards him. ‘He’s been in one hell of a mood for a while, then he came home yesterday, wouldn’t say two words to me, packed a bag and told me he was leaving. When I’d ranted enough he grabbed me by the shoulders and told me it was for my own good! Hah!’ She turned around abruptly so he couldn’t see her face, and stared out of the kitchen window. ‘I always knew he was a condescending, supercilious bastard – I knew there’d be a few floosies somewhere, a few tarts lurking on the side – but I never thought he’d actually leave.’ Her voice broke on the ‘never’.
Mark was rendered speechless by this outburst. Floosies? Tarts? Eventually, to break the awkward deadlock, he moved forward and clumsily put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Mum…’
She shook off his arm. ‘Don’t patronise me. I know how much you idolise that man – just leave me alone.’
Mark remained where he was, still staggered by what he was hearing.
‘GO!’ she shouted, her hands pushing against his chest in a surge of strength before she seemed to succumb to an intense tiredness, collapsing back on to her chair, whispering, ‘Please, just leave me alone.’
Mark moved into the hallway in a daze. He walked calmly upstairs, finished getting dressed, and grabbed the rest of his things. He heard his mother’s brisk movements in the kitchen, and various crashes of china, pots and pans. Suddenly he was infuriated. He felt his heart harden, and he marched downstairs, banging the front door shut loudly without looking back.
As he walked down the drive he used his mobile to phone a taxi. Ten minutes, the man said. Mark leaned against the gate, trying to shut out his parents’ troubles. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d waited here – probably not since the school bus collected him en route to the high school, when he’d hope that Stuart Gaskell and David Tamworth were in a good mood and might give him a day off the constant goading and ear flicking and skin pinching that was their forte. Now, at the memory of them, he almost smiled. He hadn’t thought about them for such a long time – yet their pettiness had once been the sum of his concerns.
His mobile phone began to trill. Mark looked at the phone but didn’t recognise the number.
‘Mark Jameson,’ he announced as he answered it.
‘Mark, it’s Alex,’ came the voice. ‘Sorry to ring you on a Sunday…’
Mark felt irritation well up in him at the same time as disappointment crushed against his chest. He hadn’t realised how much he’d hoped it would be his dad, calling to explain what the hell was going on.
‘… I just wondered if you have a number for… Julia,’ Alex was saying as Mark tried to refocus on the voice in his ear. ‘… I need… I would like to contact her.’
I just bet you would, Mark thought. Alex’s tone might have been polite, but it came across as condescension marked with disdain. The smug bastard already had Chloe, and now he was muscling in on the one woman whose recent presence had pierced through Mark’s general lethargy towards the opposite sex.
‘Alex…’ he cut in.
‘Yes?’
‘Go to hell,’ Mark growled as he snapped the phone shut.
‘Why were you so upset last night, Chlo?’
That’s what Chloe had been waiting to hear – in the car on the way home from June and George’s; in her mother’s guest bedroom surrounded by primrose wall paper; at breakfast the next morning when her mother left the room. She was still waiting, and they were in the car only half an hour from home. If he could only have asked the question she would have blurted out exactly why. She was desperate to talk, but as Alex commented on petrol prices, roadworks, her mother’s back garden (‘very overgrown, considering she’s in the gardening club – it could be so nice’) her growing anger began to form knots in her stomach. She put a protective hand on her abdomen.
She winced every time she remembered Alex’s dismissive comments last night. How could she tell him about the baby now, knowing that he would be disappointed and upset – so far from the overjoyed reaction she had previously pictured. Okay, so it wasn’t planned, as such, but they had talked about children and always agreed they would love to have them someday.
The Alex that Chloe had seen in the past few days was becoming less and less recognisable. She could have sworn she knew her husband inside out, but now doubts had begun to plague her. How many secrets does he have? Do I know him at all? She tried to think about the skeletons in her closet – not that there were many – the things she’d deliberately never told Alex. Like the time Mark had tried to kiss her after a work evening out a few months before her wedding. She hadn’t told Alex as she thought it would just cause trouble, and she’d handled it. And Mark had been steaming drunk. Besides, all people have such secrets, she consoled herself. And Alex must have them too.
Julia was simply one of them.
Isn’t it fair enough that he never told me about her if he had not foreseen her intruding into our lives?
Perhaps, she said to herself. But the point was that now she had, and for that reason Chloe felt she deserved an explanation.
She thought of all the things they’d shared. Alex’s frustrations with his parents and brother. Chloe’s confusion about her own early life – her mother always changed the subject when she asked about her real father, saying the divorce was messy and he’d cut off contact with the children soon afterwards. When her brother had moved to America, Chloe knew he had hopes of finding their dad, but so far she’d heard nothing, and now Anthony seemed to avoid the subject as well. She didn’t want to live like that, tiptoeing through life as though it were a minefield of secrets.
I’ll talk to Alex when I get home, she decided. Once we’ve had a chance to get showered and changed and we’re sitting down for the evening. Then we can have a nice long talk, and I can try to get to the bottom of what’s bothering him before I tell him about the baby. After all, she reassured herself, delaying that announcement for a day or so was of little consequence if it meant the difference between it bringing them closer together or pushing them further apart.
For the rest of the journey Chloe struggled to sleep with the radio blaring. Alex’s eyes never wavered from the road. When their house finally came into view, she breathed heavily with relief. Not long now, and it would all come out. She wasn’t letting him put her off any more.
She rushed to get changed when they came in. She turned the shower taps on and stood inert as warmth poured onto her, restoring some desperately needed vitality. She pressed her hands against her stomach, trying to picture a microscopic baby in there. Trying to imagine herself standing there in seven or eight months’ time, hands over the same skin, vastly distended by a growing baby. It was impossible to believe she would be a mother soon. What kind of mother was she going to make? Would her child grow up as she did, feeling mainly sadness when it thought of its family, or feeling duty-bound to drive 500 miles over a weekend to see a parent it couldn’t really relate to in any way, shape or form?
Could she raise a happy child?
Would she raise it with Alex, or was that doomed too, just like her own parents’ relationship? Perhaps her mother had once stood in the shower, drowning in her own fears while the water poured over.
Doubts began to flood over Chloe. Briefly, she thought of abortion. Then Alex would never need to know. Possibilities streamed through her brain, but she knew that, regardless of what happened with Alex, she wanted this baby. It’s just this wasn’t how she’d imagined feeling on finding out her first child was on its way.
It was no good. She needed to talk to Alex now, and put this thing behind them before her fears gained too firm a grip on her.
As Chloe grabbed a towel, she heard the telephone ring and Alex pick up. His voice downstairs was muffled, and she thought there was an edge to it.
She had dried herself and was beginning to towel her hair when he walked into the bedroom. She looked up and caught his eye, then he turned and grabbed his keys from the dresser.
‘I’m really sorry, Chlo, it was Mum – I need to go and check on Jamie, he’s not answering his phone and she’s worried.’
‘Now?’ she asked. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but her heart sank at the timing. She knew that Jamie’s parents were pleased their two sons were living close to one another, so that Alex could keep an eye on his taciturn and solitary younger brother, but it meant Alex often had to deal with the fallout from Jamie’s unpredictability.
Alex’s face was dark with what looked like anger. He sighed. ‘I know, it’s not ideal, but what can I do?’
It was Chloe’s turn to sigh. She looked at her feet and nodded. After a weekend spent indulging her mother she had little right to complain if Alex’s family needed him.
He made for the door, and shouted from beyond it, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
The front door banged shut behind him seconds later. Chloe was left frozen, one hand holding the hairbrush, the other tightly gripping a soggy towel. Now he had gone she struggled to stay rational. What if that had been an excuse? What if he were avoiding her? Avoiding any extra time with her when she might ask him questions he didn’t want to answer? Perhaps he was really going to see Julia…
She dashed to the phone and called Jamie’s mobile. No answer. Then his home number. Nothing. She slowly straightened, making sure she didn’t catch her own eye in the bedroom mirror, and picked out her comfy tracksuit bottoms and a fleecy top, throwing them on rapidly and running downstairs. She then chopped a mountain of vegetables and threw them one by one into a hissing and spitting wok, stirring the mixture and making sure that the sizzling noise was the only thing she let past the perimeters of her thoughts. Once she had a bowl of steaming food, she turned the telly on, volume high, and munched and stared, munched and stared. Every now and again she let her gaze wander to the clock on the wall, and small calculations would flutter through her head.
She remained rooted to the spot for the rest of the evening, not daring to move lest the protective spell she’d woven around herself be broken.
Mark had spent all Sunday trying to concentrate on work, reading through notes so he’d be ready for court tomorrow. His mind kept wandering to the inordinate number of people who had annoyed him lately. He was fed up with the lot of them.
However, as the evening went on he’d felt his anger towards his mother softening, and he’d picked up the phone.
‘No,’ she had sniped upon hearing his query, ‘there’s no word, Mark. I’ll tell him to call you if he returns any time this century. He’ll be needing a good divorce lawyer.’
‘I don’t do family litigation,’ Mark snapped back.
‘I was thinking of Chloe, not you,’ his mother retorted.
‘Look, Mum, I know you’re angry -’
‘Oh, you do, do you, Mark? Well, as your father always says, you are extremely intelligent, since you take after him. And perhaps you’re even a little bit psychic too, if you know just how I’m feeling right now.’
‘Mum, for god’s sake, I’m just trying to help.’
‘Just leave me alone then,’ Emily Jameson had shrieked, and the line had gone dead, leaving Mark bristling with pent-up fury.
He gave up on reading his case notes and went out to buy something to eat, musing over another case coming up this week, where he had mixed feelings about the middle-aged policeman they were representing. Returning to his apartment block, he cursed the maintenance man who had stuck an orange cone in front of the ground-level lift. It was getting late and he just about had time to eat the take away he’d bought before he’d need to get to bed in order to be on top form for work tomorrow.
When he reached his front door he fumbled around for his key, dropping it twice before he made it inside. He flung the takeaway box onto the kitchen top then decided to have a quick shower before eating. He marched through his bedroom into the ensuite bathroom and turned on the taps.
It was amazing how a spell in his high-pressure shower with the taps turned up as hot as he could stand could lift his mood and reinvigorate him. He emerged back into his bedroom from within a cloud of steam, towel wrapped around his waist, and went to the kitchen to re-heat his Thai meal. His mind was clearing, beginning to focus on what he needed to get ready for tomorrow. For starters, he had to talk to Chloe about the Abbott case before Neil got to them both, as he was completely out of touch and was praying that Chloe had got around to doing more than he had so far. Neil had warned them that the media would be all over them when the time came, and Mark had not had the experience of fending off a whole tribe of journalists during a case – the odd court reporter didn’t quite compare with what was threatening to develop here.
Perhaps he should read the papers in his bag now, he thought, as the microwave announced with a ping that dinner was ready. He collected his meal and, still clad only in a towel, got his papers out of his briefcase and began to read.
He was at the bottom of the first page when the doorbell rang. He cursed loudly – it was the last thing he needed, and who the hell was it anyway at this time? – then stalked across and flung the door open, to find the concierge had let a sodding tramp upstairs. ‘Jesus,’ he said to the sight that greeted him, eyeing the unbrushed, unwashed grey hair, the patchy stubble of silver beard, the untucked, half-open shirt, dirty trousers and only socks where shoes should be. And it wasn’t just his vision getting assaulted – his nostrils were on high alert as well.
Then he looked at the face again, closer. His disdain turned to horror as he found himself staring at a twilight-world version of his esteemed father, Henry Jameson.
Mark would have liked longer to gather himself, as his head was spinning, but after a few seconds’ delay his dad lurched to the door and over the threshold, falling towards him. Mark instinctively put out his arms to help him upright, but instead found himself unexpectedly required to support most of the weight of a sixteen-stone man and, unable to do so, staggered back inside the apartment where they fell in a heavy, painful heap to the floor. Mark felt his wrist jar awkwardly as he hit the ground with it trapped underneath his father’s chest.
They both lay there in silence, until the ting of the now functioning lift alerted Mark to the fact they were in full view of the corridor. As fast as he could he pushed his dad off him and was at the front door, slamming it shut. He looked down and saw he was naked; his towel still half-trapped under his father.
Mark had never been required to reverse roles with Henry before. Surveying the crashed-out heap of parenthood at his feet, he found himself thinking of cases he’d come across where children would come home to find parents passed out from some kind of excess. He suddenly understood as never before the burden of responsibility such children were forced into. Some of them were still babies themselves, and he’d read about them dutifully providing comfort to a needful father or mother. Now here he was, in his thirties, faced with the same predicament, and he had absolutely no idea what to do.
After a few moments, with his father out cold on the hallway floor but quite obviously breathing, Mark stepped over him, threw on some clothes, and then went back to his cooling microwave meal while he tried to figure out what to do next.
Four a.m., and Chloe was wide awake.
Alex had got home an hour ago and slipped into bed silently beside her. Neither of them had tried to talk or even to touch one another. Now a soft yellow glow from the streetlight filtered in through the curtains, making his sleeping face just visible to her. She could still remember lying in bed awake like this before, newly married, enthralled by the sleeping person by her side who she could now call ‘husband’. She’d traced the contours of his face with her eyes: his soft skin; the dark stubble that appeared almost immediately after he shaved. It drove him mad, but she loved the tousled look he took on with the shadow of a beard forming. It was the informality of it – the contrast to the men she met at work with fresh red nicks on their faces daily, and ties strangling their bulging Adam’s apples. Alex never did up the top button of a shirt unless he absolutely had to.
Now, as she looked at his face, she had the urge to slap him. It seemed that all the solidity they had built; the foundations of their relationship, their marriage, which they had painstakingly erected and climbed up together, could be brought down in an instant by nothing more than a short, sharp pull from a third party.
Chloe’s mind was hastily replaying scenes from the past, re-evaluating them in the light of the last few days and hating what she saw there afresh.
They’d met on the underground during that strange time during Christmas and New Year when everyone seemed to move in a dream, suspended in the twilight of the year, waiting for the turn of the calendar. She had come back from the Lake District early, thankful for the excuse that she had to go into work to finish some case notes, and had perched on one of the uncomfortable metal seats at Holborn to read while she waited, the platform thronged with red-nosed people, wool scarves wound tightly around necks, everyone desperate to jump on a train and make their way home. Chloe had gone past the point of jostling with other people and standing staring at sweaty foreheads, struggling to find a hand-hold to steady herself. She preferred to wait until there was a comfortable amount of space, and always walked to the ends of platforms, knowing the carriages were emptier there. Then, that day, Alex had come up to her.
‘Excuse me?’
She’d looked up to see an attractive man with wavy brown hair and a slight frown watching her.
He paused for a moment, seeming to release a frosty breath, looking at her curiously, then asked, ‘May I sit down?’
‘Of course.’ She moved slightly, not that it was necessary as there was plenty of space. She wondered where he was from – not London if he felt the need to ask to sit; when you travelled the tube every day such politeness disappeared quickly.
He sat down, and she tried to resume her book, though she was still aware of him next to her. She felt like she should say something, but didn’t know what, then he’d got there before her.
‘Good, isn’t it,’ he’d said to her. ‘I could hardly put it down.’
She’d looked up from her book. She was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, and every time she took the book from her bag she grimaced at the irony of the title. She was so busy with caseloads she barely went out any more. Startled, she said, ‘Yes, it’s a beautiful book.’ She looked down at the cover, then at the packed platform, just as someone trod on her toes in their effort to find a pocket of space in which to wait. She winced, and added, ‘Sometimes one hundred years of seclusion sounds quite tempting.’
He’d laughed. ‘Indeed. Well, don’t let me stop you!’ He’d gestured to the open pages.
So Chloe had turned back to the book, but had failed to read another sentence, now acutely aware of him perched next to her. Although she was no longer looking at his face, it had imprinted itself on her mind – his laughing brown eyes, and the kind smile.
Each time a train came they’d both leapt up. Each time they were at the back of a queue of people, who all pushed and fought their way on. Each time the doors closed before they could make it on themselves she had felt relief that they were both still there.
The first few times they didn’t acknowledge one another. But as they sat back down for the fourth time, they finally caught each other’s eyes, and laughed.
‘I hate fighting my way on when it’s packed,’ Alex said. ‘Do you fancy getting a coffee while it thins out a bit?’
He’d asked it in a leisurely manner – too leisurely really; Chloe could hear the nervousness in his voice. The last thing she’d wanted at the time was a man in her life: not only was she always manically busy at work, but she was having a lot of fun with her girlfriends and enjoying the freedom of it all. Yet Alex had a smile that drew you to him, and she found herself saying yes, and not only going to a coffee house but to a restaurant and then a wine bar, before finally heading home as the first wisps of midnight snow floated around her, with a smile on her face and the faint impression of a first kiss still hovering on her lips.
He had phoned her often from that point – not too much or too little, but enough to make sure she knew he was keen. And she responded in kind, loving the laughter that seemed to come easily when they were together; their enjoyment of simple things, such as a walk in the park; feeling that she didn’t need to be something other than herself to make an impression on him – that he saw past suits and makeup and job titles and salary, straight into the core of her.
As Chloe lay awake, she wondered whether she had ever seen into the core of him, or if she had been so wrapped up in being appreciated herself that she had forgotten to look properly at Alex, to see if she could penetrate his own outer shell and glimpse his heart. She thought she had, but now…
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and crept quietly downstairs. In the kitchen the table was covered with newspapers, coins, a Blockbuster card… and Alex’s mobile phone.
She snuck over to it, feeling like a criminal. They had never felt the need to check each other’s texts or emails, or open each other’s post. They voluntarily shared all the details of their lives without the other having to go over them beforehand.
However, all that had changed in the past few days, Chloe thought grimly. And it had not been of her doing.
She pressed the tiny buttons and the screen lit up. As she went to text messages and scrolled through, she breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing in there apart from various short messages from friends – mostly about football. There were no hidden love-notes or secret expressions of rediscovered longing.
Yet she still couldn’t stop. She went into the phone book stored on the SIM and scrolled through the numbers. There was nothing in J except for ‘Jamie’ – Alex’s brother.
Her mind was already beginning to succumb to tiredness, soothed by the knowledge that her fears were unfounded. The buttons bleeped quietly under her fingers as she tried to get back to the screensaver picture of her and Alex. She found herself looking at his call log, and quickly scanned the numbers. Apart from calls to her, most were to clients, and there were a couple to Jamie. But there was one number that stood out. It was not converted from digits to a name, therefore obviously not a regular contact. He’d called it less than twenty-four hours ago.
Chloe’s heart fluttered as she stared at it. There was something familiar about it. She checked her own phone, and moments later, knew who it was.
Mark.
Why on earth was Alex calling Mark?
She flung the phone back onto the table, hating it for reaffirming her fears, and crept up to bed, rubbing her stomach gently. She opened the bedroom door as quietly as she could. It gave a tiny wail as it was pushed aside, then another one as she held the handle firmly and re-latched it.
Chloe tiptoed towards the bed, guided by the light of the streetlamp outside, and looked at Alex’s still form, then his face, to check she wasn’t disturbing him. She found his eyes – coal-dark in the dim light, but wide open, staring at her. She jumped slightly and took a quick breath, blinked and refocused. Now his eyes were shut and his breathing seemed even. She shook her head, wondering if she’d imagined it after all. But her heart was racing.
Mark was in the office early, keen to get a headstart on work this week, but his thoughts kept returning to his dad. He wondered if his father were still snoring his unshaven head off in Mark’s bed. By the time Mark had finished his dinner last night, Henry had shown no sign of moving. Mark had watched him for a while from his chair, and the longer he stared at the inert form, the more irritated he felt. Eventually he’d got up and given Henry a sharp poke in the ribs, which seemed to have no effect on his consciousness, but did cause him to curl up into a foetal ball.
At the movement, Mark had decided he’d had enough. He’d yanked hard on Henry’s arm, bending at the knees, his muscles straining as he pulled with all his strength to get his dad’s arm around his shoulder and heave him up into a sitting position. ‘Come on, Dad,’ he yelled. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
Henry had responded with a load of mumbled slurs, which Mark could make nothing intelligible of, but he seemed to have got through, as his father moved obligingly, and Mark managed to get him to his feet and propel him towards the bedroom. Once Mark had Henry sitting on the bed, he had let go of him, and his dad had immediately fallen smack back against the mattress like a dead weight. If Mark hadn’t been so cross and out of breath he would have laughed at the sight. It was too surreal. Henry’s mouth had opened upon impact and he began to inhale in gurgling snores.
Mark had taken his pillows from the bed and a spare blanket from the walk-in wardrobe, and dumped them in the lounge. He’d returned with a pint glass of water and the washing-up bowl – in case his dad felt like throwing up. To make sure Henry would see it, Mark left it on his father’s stomach, the bowl moving up and down gently with Henry’s breathing like a boat bobbing in the breeze.
Then he’d gone into the lounge, turned the TV up higher than was necessary, and nestled under the blanket, half-watching the screen while he flicked through his papers until he fell asleep.
When he’d woken up he’d had to go into his bedroom for clothes. Henry had moved in the night. The bowl was on the floor, unused, and the water glass was only a quarter full now. Henry was on his side, back to the room, breathing evenly, but Mark had the feeling his dad was awake. He was grateful for the pretence. He couldn’t even begin to frame a suitable conversation with his father since they had been thrust into such uncharted territory.
As he doodled on a legal pad, he wondered whether to phone his mother and tell her that her wayward husband had made an appearance, but he had no particular desire to talk to her either, since she seemed somehow to be holding Mark accountable for Henry’s actions.
He hadn’t got much done by the time everyone started arriving around nine. Half an hour later he got a phone call telling him one of his clients had decided to settle, which meant he didn’t have to go to court that afternoon, but also that quite a lot of the work he had been doing for the past week, not to mention that morning, had been a waste of time. Mark secretly loathed parties who chose last-minute settlements – they lacked the gumption to call proceedings to a halt early and save themselves money and their legal team time; and they also lacked the integrity to follow through on their cause. He was especially curt to the opposing party’s solicitor on the phone, and she ended the call having barely got out her final sentence.
A few hours later, he had just sent the temp running out of the office near to tears after he’d berated her for bringing the wrong case file, when David Marchant stuck his head round the door, glanced briefly at the secretary’s hunched, departing back, and said, ‘Everything okay, Mark?’
‘Fine, fine,’ Mark replied, leaning back in his chair nonchalantly, hoping he could replicate a confident, relaxed manner, which was in reality eluding him right now. ‘And you?’
‘All good.’ David came in and sank onto the chair opposite Mark’s desk. ‘I heard Dawson and Hamish settled.’
‘Yes,’ Mark said, smiling. ‘Eleventh hour.’
‘Oh well.’ David leaned forward. ‘At least you can shift that one along now, it seems to have been dragging on for an eternity.’
Mark had the feeling David was making small talk, and was intrigued. It wasn’t characteristic of his boss. He smiled and waited.
‘So,’ David continued, settling back into his chair again after a pause. ‘How’s Henry? We haven’t seen him round here lately.’
A-ha. Mark felt his shoulders stiffen and froze in an attempt to appear relaxed, then realised that was a dead giveaway. He began to shift a little in his seat. Neil and David seemed to accept his father’s frequent office visits, although Mark had managed to glean a few signs of irritation over the years when Henry overstepped the mark in company matters that really no longer concerned him. He usually dropped in to the offices once a week, and did the rounds, meeting and greeting people whose doors were open, offering advice where he felt it needed to be dispensed. When Mark heard his father talking to Neil and David, he was usually bragging about the heaven of retirement – long lunches after rounds of golf, afternoons at his club, where he dined and supped with former judges and barristers. It was obvious to Mark and, he presumed, others too, that his dad was struggling with an excess of spare time and a recess of status far more than he was admitting.
‘He’s fine,’ Mark smiled pleasantly, thinking of his father’s inert form in his bed a few hours earlier. ‘Just… busy, I think.’
One of David’s eyebrows twitched slightly. ‘Well, give him our regards, won’t you,’ he said, getting up.
Mark sighed impatiently once David had gone. His desk was cluttered with case files, but now he had nothing urgent he didn’t have any desire to look at them.
He thought of Alex’s phone call yesterday morning, and the piece of paper stuffed in his top right-hand drawer. He needed a distraction.
He looked at his watch. It was one o’clock. Her flat wasn’t all that far away. And he could drop off the Blythe documents to the barrister en route.
Don’t be an idiot, he berated himself. You’re not a love-sick teenager with bad acne any more. It was bad enough last time. You’ll just look like a stalker now.
Yet as he got up, his legs didn’t seem to be following his brain’s commands.
‘Mrs Markham to Doctor Chen’s office, please.’
Chloe got up and walked quickly to a bright blue door, knocking once and then opening it when she heard the doctor call, ‘Come in’.
Juliet Chen swivelled round in her chair and gave Chloe a smile. Chloe had only seen Dr Chen a couple of times, mostly for repeat prescriptions, but she was instantly put at ease by the other woman’s sympathetic bedside manner.
‘Hello, Chloe,’ Dr Chen began. ‘What can I do for you today?’
‘Well,’ Chloe paused, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’
‘How wonderful!’ The doctor’s smile broadened, then she noticed the lack of excitement from Chloe and asked, ‘And are you happy about this?’
‘Yes, yes I am.’ Chloe tried to animate her face but her features were like stiff dough. ‘It’s just…’ She felt tears prickle her eyelids. ‘It’s a difficult time.’
‘Okay.’ Dr Chen nodded as though she understood everything. ‘Let’s start from the beginning. When was your last period?’
‘About six weeks ago, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘I’m never very regular, and it’s always pretty light, so I find it hard to keep track.’
‘Well, I’ll take a urine sample in a second.’ The doctor moved to glance at her notes, then looked back at Chloe. ‘But I’d just like to do an exam. Is that okay?’
Chloe nodded, and wished away the ensuing five minutes as she lay on the bed while the doctor poked and prodded her. Once she was sitting back down, Doctor Chen turned to her and paused, looking at Chloe intently.
‘You certainly are pregnant, Chloe, but I would say you’re quite a bit further on than six weeks.’
‘Really?’
‘I’d say more like nearly four months, judging by the size and shape of your uterus.’
Chloe sat up, incredulous. ‘But I can’t be. I’ve had periods.’
Dr Chen smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Chloe. As you say, they’ve been light, and it does happen with some women. I’m going to get you organised for a scan straightaway, to make sure. But I’d prepare for a baby in about five months, not seven, if I were you. Didn’t you notice your stomach changing?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose.’ She had noticed the roundness to her stomach recently. ‘But only in the last week or so, since I’ve known. I just thought that was what happened.’
‘It does, but normally a little further on than six weeks,’ Dr Chen said kindly.
‘But I haven’t felt sick at all.’
‘That’s a good thing.’ Dr Chen smiled, then paused again on seeing Chloe’s unhappy face. ‘Is something wrong, Chloe?’ She sat patiently, hands in her lap. Chloe wondered if the pose had been taught to her at medical school.
‘It’s my husband…’ Chloe started, but trailed off, unsure how to explain.
The doctor looked briefly at her notes. ‘Is he unhappy about the baby?’ she asked.
Chloe shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know.’
If the doctor was surprised she didn’t show it, but laid a hand on Chloe’s arm. ‘Tell him,’ she encouraged. ‘He needs to know, and you need to be taken care of right now.’
Chloe nodded. It wasn’t as simple as that, but doctors’ sessions usually lasted ten minutes, and if Chloe started pouring her heart out she would be here a lot longer than that. So she just took her referral for the ultrasound and left with a quiet ‘thank you’.
When she got outside she suddenly felt nauseous, as though all the morning sickness she had avoided so far had been stacking up inside her to come in one enormous wave at that moment. She got halfway along the surgery path, then had to lean into some bushes and deposit most of her lunch, thankful that there was no one around to see her.
This was no good. She had to tell Alex about the baby. In fact, it now seemed stupid she hadn’t done so already. Whatever his thoughts about Julia, the idea of being a father would distract him so much that this little hiccup would pale in comparison. Wouldn’t it?
Before her thoughts could take hold of her she tried Alex’s mobile, but there was no answer. That was weird. He normally picked up when he was working at home.
A jolt went through her as she remembered looking at his phone the night before, and before she could question what she was doing, she was dialling Mark.
Mark was walking out of the office when his phone rang. He reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled it out and flipped it open.
‘Mark, did Alex call you at the weekend?’
Mark heard the sharpness in Chloe’s tone and was surprised. ‘Er, yes, he did,’ he said, then paused, not knowing how to follow it up.
‘Oh, okay. What did he want?’
She asked it as casually as she could, but the pause that followed was packed with tension, as though she were holding herself still in readiness for his answer. A strange wave of emotion came across Mark, and with some surprise he found himself saying, ‘He dialled me by mistake, it was a five-second call. I don’t think Alex and I have all that much to talk about.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ Chloe answered, but the suspicion was still clear in her voice. ‘Okay, then. Thanks.’ And she was gone.
Mark made his way out, thinking of the restaurant last Thursday: Julia’s obvious distress, Chloe’s blatant innocence as to what was going on; and Alex’s shocked face. Then he remembered the man’s haughty voice on the phone at the weekend.
Why should he bloody well get away with it? Anger rose in him, crushing every other thought, and he turned back. He pushed open his office door, pulled out the rumpled piece of paper from his desk drawer, and marched into Chloe’s room, flinging the miserable scrap on to the table. He borrowed a biro to annotate it.
‘I think this was what Alex wanted,’ he wrote, the pen scratching out every word. ‘I’ll leave it up to you whether he gets it or not.’
Alex was exhausted. As he tussled with each waking minute, a dark-haired wraith-woman paced the corners of his mind, darting out before him then back to the shadows again before he could stop her. In his dreams the night before she had been there too, wearing a vest top and a short skirt with thick ugg boots, her back to him, walking fast. Although he was running, lungs stinging with gasped oxygen, he could not close the gap. He had cried her name, but she gave no sign she had heard him. Then fog descended around them and she disappeared.
By the time he had got up, Chloe was gone, just a note from her on the table telling him she had an early meeting at work and signed with a ‘C’ – love and kisses conspicuously absent. He had tried not to read anything into that, but who was he kidding?
He thought about ringing her. At work she was invariably with clients or colleagues, however, so she would hardly want him to start pouring his heart out. He felt terrible that he hadn’t come home until the early hours. He’d ended up finding a panicked Jamie at his local police station, his brother having locked himself out of the house. Not only had they and a helpful constable had to break into Jamie’s flat, but then he’d had to stay with his brother until he’d calmed down enough for Alex to be sure he’d be safe on his own. Looking out for Jamie could be a thankless and depressing task at times, but his parents relied heavily on him to do so. It was they who had decided to buy Jamie a flat close to Alex when their younger son had insisted on moving out. Thinking back, Alex couldn’t ever remember a conversation where he’d agreed to this responsibility, but it seemed to have been handed to him anyway.
Frustrated, he tried to turn his mind to his work, relieved he didn’t have anything urgent today. Making his way through the house, he simultaneously began to effect the mental transition from home to work mode. It was a relief to get down to the cellar, which also functioned as his office and was one of his favourite places. Everything there was set up and streamlined so he could get through the maximum amount of work in a day – working for himself, time really was money. He’d put strip lighting in there, but it rarely went on; instead, spotlights and desk lights illuminated his work space, as well as his top-of-the-range Apple Mac, the machine he spent most of his days in communion with. The walls were peppered with the works of some of his favourite artists – including plenty of Dali and Magritte, a couple of Rousseau’s jungle scenes, and a particularly large print of L’Ange du Foyer by Max Ernst – the latter always causing him to smile when he remembered Chloe’s expression the time he’d suggested putting it up in the lounge. As the house was an old-fashioned one, there was a tiny strip of window at the very front of the room, which allowed a snippet of a view of the front pathway. It was quite grimy on the inside, and Alex had decided that, since cleaning it would involve moving Apple Mac, desk and god knew how many wires to allow access, it would stay that way for quite some time.
As he switched on the computer, the whir of it coming to life was drowned out by the buzz of his fractious mind. He needed to talk to Chloe… and to Julia… He was still fuming from his conversation with Mark yesterday morning, when the arrogant wanker had not only been utterly unhelpful, but had sworn at him and hung up.
Wearily, he turned to his work. There were about half a dozen emails waiting, two of which involved current jobs. When he had quit his in-house job at ArtSpace he had anticipated some time out, and then going back into the fray – never this. It had been Chloe who encouraged him to resign, seeing how unhappy he was with the office politics and backstabbing, which for most people seemed to take up a far larger part of the day than design work. There had been constant frayed nerves and speculation over the next round of redundancies; and an endless succession of ‘bright young things’ coming in, impetuous and overconfident in their abilities to transform the company, quickly becoming bitter and twisted as they morphed unwillingly into the status quo.
Then one of his clients from ArtSpace – Jed Morenzo, who he would thank forever – had put Alex in touch with an associate. Although Jed’s company was tied to ArtSpace and they were disappointed that Alex was no longer working on their account, they had loved his designs enough to show them around, and from that one recommendation things had snowballed. Every now and again he put an ad in one of the trade presses, but for the most part his work evolved through word of mouth – the very best form of advertising there was, and, best of all, the only one that was free. He did some posters, bits of marketing material, but enjoyed logo design the most. He loved getting to grips with the essence of a company and trying to sum it up so that their vision shouted out from a small, often abstract motif. One of his proudest moments had been having his work featured in HOW magazine – at that point he’d finally begun to think he was getting places.
Now, he replied to those emails he could deal with straight away, and checked his schedule for the week. He had only two meetings with clients, both on Wednesday, so the rest was design time. Yet he had a feeling that the week wasn’t going to go very well. As he flicked open his web browser he started typing a name in, hoping against all odds that something would come up.
He spent twenty minutes on this. There was nothing new.
There was only one more thing to try. He picked up his phone and dialled the number, hoping he’d still got the right one.
‘Kelly, it’s Alex,’ he said when a female voice answered.
‘Alex? Alex! Bloody hell, mate, long time no see!’
He immediately felt guilty that he was ringing her after all this time with a purpose other than one related to their old friendship. He asked her how she was and they chatted for a while, and he was just wondering how to ask the question when she said, ‘Do you want me to do another search on Amy?’
He felt a surge of warmth for Kelly for making this so easy for him, as well as guilty that he hadn’t kept up contact. But it had been too painful, when he had returned from Australia on his own, to talk to joint friends from their carefree uni days about what had happened. Contact had drifted off until it became Christmas cards, if anything.
‘Can you?’ he asked.
‘Al, it’ll take me one sec. Hang on.’ There was a short pause, then, ‘Nothing new, I’m afraid. Still listed as missing. Hold on a sec, there’s a note on her file, though. Let me check it.’ Another pause, longer. ‘Jeez, Al, it seems there is something new on here, after all.’
He listened to what Kelly had to say, his heart pounding harder with every word she uttered, clenching his fists as the old memories and the anger returned.
‘And Amy doesn’t know this?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Al, but we don’t often get missing persons ringing up asking after themselves.’
‘Of course,’ he said, feeling stupid.
‘It’s all over the Australian news,’ Kelly continued. ‘Just look on the Net.’
‘Yes, but even if she’s seen it she might not realise it’s possibly connected to her,’ Alex said, thinking aloud.
There was a pause on the line. ‘Al, has something happened? You know, if you’ve heard from her then we need to know. Her family will still be suffering.’
‘I haven’t,’ he told her quickly, hating himself for lying. ‘I was just reminded of her the other day, and I realised I haven’t called for a while, and felt a bit guilty, I guess. I still hope…’ He trailed off. He didn’t want to weave himself into a growing lie any more than he had to.
‘We all do, Al,’ Kelly said gently. ‘We all do.’
As soon as he had hung up, Alex logged on to the web and began flicking through news articles with growing shock, printing out everything he could find. The need to locate Amy and tell her the news became more pressing with every article he read. Eventually his work head and his emotions had a gentleman’s handshake that he would concentrate for a couple of hours and get lots done, and then he would think about how to find her. Since it looked like Mark would rather actively hinder him than help, he would have to do it another way.
Having made a short-term decision he began to get into his work. Before he knew it his stomach was growling, and a quick glance at the clock told him it was after eleven.
He was leaning back in his chair, studying the design he was currently manipulating on screen, when he heard a noise outside. Footsteps. He glanced up at the long, thin, rectangular window, and saw a pair of scruffy suede boots, the kind with no heel and a thick woollen lining, pass by.
He didn’t recognise the boots, but his heart did a bungee dive inside his ribcage as he understood for certain just who they belonged to.
He jumped up and moved quickly to the window to get the best glimpse he could, even then doubting his own conclusion, wanting to double check. The boots were outside the front door, and he waited for the sound of the doorbell, but it didn’t come.
He was holding his breath, watching this pair of feet, half-joyous, half-terrified that she had found him.
And then the boots moved. Past the window, quickly, as though their owner had had serious second thoughts about where she was. And that movement catapulted him into action.
‘Fuck!’ he yelled, and rushed to the stairs, taking them two at a time, fumbling with the catch of the cellar door at the top, rounding the doorpost, down the long hallway, grabbing his keys off the hall table – every movement taking forever – and unlocking the front door. Even though it was still wet outside from the intermittent rain, he raced down the path in his T-shirt and slippers, feeling the water seeping through his flimsy footwear, but not caring. He ran into the road in a panic.
They lived on a street of large terraced houses set back from the wide road, with old horse chestnut trees standing guard at periodic intervals either side. The paving stones were uneven, and most people had some kind of hedgerow built up at the front to discourage intruders or busybodies. Alex took all this in, all those places to hide, all those places she might be. Surely she was close. He looked around wildly for anything that might betray where she was, but it was quiet. He was about to shout her name, when he heard a woman’s voice.
‘Are you okay?’
It was Esther, from the house opposite. On her way to collect her son from nursery. Wrapped up for the weather, in long coat and gloves, and doing a swift appraising top-to-toe of him, her face clouding with worry as she did so.
Alex gulped back the cry in his throat, and ran his fingers through his hair, attempting to intimate some level of composure. But he couldn’t. ‘Did you see a woman, just now, in the street?’ he jabbered. ‘Wearing boots, suede boots?’
He could see Esther trying not to look disturbed at this strange question. She and Chloe were quite friendly when they saw one another, and she was obviously mentally computing that he wasn’t referring to his wife.
‘I didn’t, I’m sorry,’ she said politely, but with a little more restraint in her voice. She looked unsure of him now. ‘Sorry, Alex,’ she said, moving to her car. ‘I’ve got to dash, Nathan will be waiting.’
‘No problem,’ he replied, trying to smile normally but feeling his face crease up oddly. Esther gave him a quick, tight smile back, confirming to him that he was looking more like a lunatic than a friendly neighbour, and got in the car, firing the engine quickly and waving without looking as she drove down the street.
Once she was gone he took a few more glances left and right. Nothing.
‘FOR GOD’S SAKE,’ he bellowed, not giving a shit any more if the whole neighbourhood decided to watch. ‘COME OUT IF YOU’RE THERE. PLEASE!’
Silence. The only things moving in the street were flimsy branches on the skeletal trees.
She had been so close for a few moments, and now she was gone again, and for how long he didn’t know. Maybe forever.
As he trudged back inside, frustration making his head throb, he heard his phone ringing downstairs. He reached it just in time to see ‘Chloe’ on the small screen, and was frozen in indecision until it went silent.
Chloe made her way hurriedly to Bar 38, thanking god that she was meeting her cousin for lunch. In her opinion Mikaela was capable of lightening the foulest mood, though not many of her relatives would have said the same. It was well known that, in the family, Mikaela could be found under any of the more downbeat euphemisms – she was everything from the problem middle child to the black sheep of the family to the skeleton in the closet – although they all had great trouble actually keeping her in the proverbial closet as Mikaela tended to spring out over and over again like a demented jack-in-the-box.
At the doorway to the pub, her mobile rang. It was her mother, who barked, ‘Have you told him yet?’ and was outraged when Chloe said no. Chloe was sure this meant that Margaret had either phoned the entire gardening club already and was now waiting for her daughter to get her act together so Margaret wouldn’t look bad, or that she was suffering great pains in keeping the confidence. She was fervently wishing she hadn’t let her mother in on such a precious secret.
When she had finished the call, she walked through the door and spotted Mikaela as her cousin rose with an excited wave and gestured to two goblet-sized wines already waiting on the table. They made small talk for a while. Chloe was enjoying the ease of female company: seeing her friends seemed to have become a frustratingly rare thing since her mother had begun competing with her job for her spare time.
‘Okay, spill the beans,’ Mikaela said suddenly, startling Chloe from her reverie.
‘What? There are no beans.’
‘Of course there are. You look like you’ve got something you’re dying to tell me.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The way you’re acting, like, all quiet and brooding. I know you of old, Chlo. Spit it out.’
‘Well,’ she hesitated for just a second, then to her chagrin found herself blurting, ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘What?’ Mikaela looked gobsmacked. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Chloe attempted a feeble smile. It didn’t quite work.
‘So, you’ve got a great job, you’re happily married, and you’re having a baby. Is that why you’re looking so miserable?’ Mikaela put a hand on Chloe’s arm and stroked it softly. ‘C’mon, Chloe, aren’t you pleased?’
Chloe was taken aback by the way her life had just been described to her, as though it were some textbook example of how to move steadily through adulthood. ‘Of course I am,’ she said, somewhat defensively, ‘it’s just… oh, god, it’s just I can’t believe I’m telling you before I’ve even told the father.’
Mikaela’s grip tightened on her arm and she leaned forward. ‘Why? Who’s the father?’
‘What? Mikaela! It’s Alex, of course.’
‘Oh.’ Mikaela looked a bit disappointed. ‘Okay, why haven’t you told Alex?’
‘It’s… complicated.’ Chloe began to fill Mikaela in on the scene in the restaurant the week before, Julia there looking gorgeous, and Alex’s strange behaviour since.
When she paused, Mikaela sat back looking thoughtful. ‘Hmmm. Well, it’s always the quiet ones.’
Chloe was rapidly wishing she’d never started this. Mikaela was anything but reassuring. ‘What’s always the quiet ones?’ She sighed. ‘He isn’t having an affair, Mik. It’s just made me feel a bit weird, that’s all, and I wanted it to be… happy, when I told him about the baby, not strained. Besides, Alex isn’t quiet.’
‘What? Of course he is, Chloe. He’s not silent-quiet, but you couldn’t get much more reserved and brooding – in that mysterious, sexy way he’s got. Like, like… Mr Darcy!’
Chloe was stunned. She’d never seen Alex as approaching anything Mr-Darcyish by nature. He wasn’t a chatterbox, but…
How many people thought like this? She felt giddy, and put down her wineglass. How many people had an entirely different perspective of her own husband? And – most importantly – who the hell was right?
‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked.
‘You’re asking me…!’ Mikaela began. ‘Haven’t you noticed I never get past the third date?’
‘Well, perhaps you should wait longer before putting out,’ Chloe retorted, before biting her lip, but Mikaela just laughed. Then, seeing her cousin sitting there looking crestfallen, Mikaela rubbed her finger against her chin while she thought.
Finally, she leaned in and said, ‘Don’t take it from him, hon. Demand to know what’s going on. And, for god’s sake, tell him you’re pregnant. Then he’ll have to treat you right – nothing like a bun in the oven to be able to add in some emotional blackmail.’
‘I don’t want to have to “blackmail” him to get him to do the right thing, Mik,’ Chloe snapped, then added, ‘but you’re right, we need to have it out.’ She sighed. ‘I just want things to get back to normal.’
‘I know you do, babe.’
Chloe had had enough of this discussion; it was making everything seem worse. Her mind searched for a new topic to cause a diversion, and came up trumps. ‘Have you spoken to your mum yet?’ Mikaela and her family had been on difficult terms since Mikaela had discussed some of the wilder aspects of her sex life on a late-night television show.
‘Nope.’ Mikaela knocked back the last of her wine. ‘Waiting for her now.’
‘Mik, she doesn’t even know where you are.’
‘I know, I know. But I’ll leave it a while longer, I think.’
‘Mik -’
Mikaela held up her hand. The devilish glint in her eyes was extinguished for a moment, and Chloe realised that her cousin looked tired.
‘Things can’t always go back, Chlo. However much you want them to. You have to work with where you are right now, and go forward. Wishing things could be what they once were just sends you dotty, believe you me.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t done it?’ They both knew Chloe was referring to Mikaela’s five minutes of television fame.
‘Of course not!’ Mikaela lifted the carafe and poured herself some more wine. Then she looked up and raised her glass, and the mischievous glint was back in her eyes. ‘I just wish that it hadn’t been broadcast to the nation on a rare night that my family stayed up past ten!’
Chloe couldn’t help but smile.
Chloe made her way back to the office feeling much brighter after an hour with Mikaela. The freezing wind swirled around her, nipping her legs and biting her cheeks as she pulled her coat close. It was time to get out hats and gloves, something she put off as long as possible, knowing that it always seemed such a long time before she could put them away again. She hated the frozen winter months of slippery pavements and dirty splashes down her tights.
As she walked through the office corridors, David Marchant approached her. One half of the two senior partners in the practice, David was usually the bad cop to Neil Lewis’s good cop as far as their employees were concerned, and Chloe immediately stiffened.
‘Neil and I would like a status meeting with you, please, Chloe,’ David said to her as he neared, looking at her from under bushy grey eyebrows. ‘We’re feeling out of touch with your caseloads, particularly your progress with the Abbott case. Get Jana to set something up with Marie.’
‘No problem, David,’ Chloe replied, hoping that was it. But David followed her towards her office.
‘Do you know where Mark Jameson is, Chloe?’ There was only one Mark in the office, yet David nearly always referred to him by his full name.
‘No.’ Chloe looked startled. ‘Why?’
David grimaced and she swallowed a frustrated sigh at the ill-conceived insinuation that her relationship with Mark still went beyond office hours. Their involvement had been treated as an infidelity towards the firm. It had never been quite forgiven. Even though they had ended it long ago, and Chloe had since married, David Marchant regularly treated them both to looks of suspicion and distaste.
‘Well, he seems to have disappeared.’
‘Has he?’ Chloe had almost reached her own door as, surprised, she looked over to Mark’s office, which stood empty as if in silent agreement. She wondered, uncomfortably, how often the partners noticed these things.
David Marchant raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice to a discreet hum. ‘Neil played squash with him last night and said he seemed quite out of sorts – apparently, for the past week he’s been letting Neil win far more easily than he usually does.’ Chloe thought she saw the briefest trace of a smile cross David’s lips, before he cleared his throat and added, ‘Chloe, if anything is going on that we should know about, then – this time – tell us, won’t you, and avoid another embarrassing episode.’
He gave Chloe a curt nod, before striding off like a military general – casting glances left and right along the corridor as though checking his troops were all in order.
Chloe watched him go. Then she turned to look back at Mark’s office. She thought over David’s words, grimacing at the ‘embarrassing episode’ comment. She thought he was referring to the Christmas law ball, but that was nearly ten bloody years ago, for god’s sake.
She walked round to her desk, and sat down. It took her a moment to register the note waiting for her, and another moment to read it. Then she gave a strangled cry, jumped up, grabbed her coat and bag and rushed out again, no longer caring whether David saw her go or not.
Mark was frustrated as he got out of the taxi. The barrister’s clerk on the Blythe case had been in his office and only too happy to witter on about next week’s court appearance.
It took him a while to find the passageway, and once he was through it, he looked around, startled. It wasn’t what he had expected. He’d been thinking quaint, but these were grimy tenements arranged around a squalid, overgrown courtyard, with graffiti tags scrawled on the walls of the passage that led to them. He checked the crumpled paper in his hand, trying to ignore his befuddled brain, which was still puzzling over why he’d left work during the middle of the day to come here. There was a scruffy door, red paint flaking badly, with numbers 2 and 3 in brass on the front.
He couldn’t find a doorbell, so he pushed gingerly against the smooth brass plate to one side, and felt the door swing open.
There was a narrow staircase, and a door leading off to the right with number 3 on it. An empty McDonald’s wrapper and a discarded cigarette packet lay next to a shabby footmat. He debated for the thousandth time just what exactly he thought he was doing, then looked up the stairs, took a deep breath, and began to climb.
At the top a doorway was positioned on the uppermost step. Before he could change his mind, Mark knocked.
He heard a flurry of activity behind, which then fell silent. Anger and embarrassment suffused him. He shouldn’t have come. Nevertheless, he rapped smartly again, and waited.
‘Who is it?’ an unsteady voice called.
‘Mark,’ he shouted back.
‘Mark?’ There was more movement from inside. A bolt drawn back. A key turned. Then she was there, in front of him, like everything and nothing he’d imagined. Her hair was loose and tucked casually behind her ears, and she had a long black coat on, as though she were about to go out. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. She looked worried.
He paused. The truth was, he didn’t know.
If he had been told this story by a third party and asked for his reaction, he would have said run! Get away from her, she sounds like big trouble. But in actual fact it wasn’t having that effect on him at all. There was something about these bleak surroundings and her lovely pale face that was bringing out the chevalier in him, making him stand up straighter, self-conscious of every movement, wanting to find the right juxtaposition of limbs and expression that would reach out to her.
The only thing that threatened this feeling was that Julia didn’t seem too keen on fulfilling the required role of distressed but willing damsel. She was fidgeting with the key in the lock behind the door now, and she hadn’t invited him in.
He looked straight at her and said, ‘I wanted to make sure you were okay, after… last week.’
She sighed. Her face relaxed slightly as she said, ‘That is very kind of you. I’m afraid I owe you a big apology.’
Mark waved his hand automatically. ‘No, don’t worry. It’s just… well, it was obviously…’ Why was he finding it so hard to pick the right words when in his job he was put on the spot all the time, and could always come up with a snappy retort? ‘… You obviously had a shock – seeing Alex like that.’
She looked distinctly uncomfortable now. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was a surprise.’
She wouldn’t be drawn out so easily, he realised. Undeterred, he pressed on, guessing his way. ‘An amazing coincidence, wasn’t it, you two meeting again like that.’
Julia lifted her head and looked at him intently. Mark held her gaze, searching her eyes, her face, for small cracks he might plunder for information. She looked nervous and weary and confused, but there was still enough composure about her to make him feel that to ask her anything outright would be judged as impertinent, and he didn’t want to watch her lovely face close against him.
Then she surprised him by seizing an initiative of her own. ‘There’s a coffee shop around the corner,’ she announced. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Great,’ Mark replied, taken aback.
‘Okay then.’ Without looking at him she removed her keys from the interior lock. ‘Let’s go.’
It had begun to rain heavily in the few minutes since Mark had arrived, so they ran, Julia with her hands in her pockets, pulling her coat close to her; Mark following, having nothing to shield himself with, praying that this place was close.
A few doors down from the alleyway, Julia yanked open a door in undignified haste. Mark rushed in behind her and collided with her when she came to a sudden stop by the cashier’s desk as she scanned the interior for a table.
‘Sorry,’ he said, as he automatically put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself. He felt her quickly pull away, but when she turned to look at him he was surprised to see she was laughing. Her face was alive with merriment for just a few precious seconds, before her expression faded into sombre composure once more.
‘It’s stupid,’ she said, with a small smile. ‘Getting caught in the rain always makes me feel so alive.’
Then she turned and made her way to an empty table at one side of the room; and Mark, entranced, followed.
They sat opposite one another, Julia watching the window behind Mark, where runnels of rain cascaded down the glass. She knew he was smiling at her, but a small tic in his cheek beat crazily, undermining his forced expression.
She had been at Alex’s door only an hour or so ago. She had been so close to him… but it had been too much, that street full of beautiful redbrick two-storey Georgian-style houses with parapets and sash windows, like something out of a BBC drama. She had thought that if she moved quickly enough she would go through with knocking on the door, but her brain caught up with her as she stood there with her hand raised, and her mind had been flooded with all the parasitical doubts and fears that had hitchhiked everywhere with her for ten long years.
She had realised as she stood at the door that his office address was also his home, which meant that Chloe lived there too.
She had run for two streets, then hidden behind a huge tree trunk, looking up at the sky, her blood rushing noisily through her ears, her heart smacking hard in her chest cavity, breathing quickly while feeling as if she were not getting any oxygen at all. She was terrified he would suddenly appear from around the tree, close up and angry, and that had sent her fleeing all the way to the tube station.
Now, Mark looked like he was waiting for her to speak.
‘I’m so sorry…’ She paused, pretending to scan the laminated menu while she mentally rehearsed her speech. ‘I knew Alex a long time ago, but we parted on difficult terms. My fault as much as his, but I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting next to him for the entire duration of a meal, and I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of you all either. So I asked the waiter to tell you I had to leave urgently, and to pass on my apologies.’
The last part was a lie, but it worked. Mark rolled his eyes. ‘Well, I never got the message. Charming. Won’t be going back there again in a hurry, that’s for sure.’
His face relaxed. She hadn’t run out on him – she’d left word. It made a difference.
He leaned forward, open curiosity now dominating his face. ‘So what happened with Alex?’
Julia had been expecting that one too. ‘Oh, you know, uni students always doing everything to excess, drinking and partying – you shouldn’t expect to try and maintain a relationship with all that merry abandon going on around you – you’re doomed from the start.’
In fact, neither of them had ever been ones for the more reckless excesses of university, although they had enjoyed their share of carefree fun. When she thought back to those times it was like remembering disjointed scenes of a movie she once watched. She barely recognised the characters portrayed there.
‘But,’ she continued quickly, before Mark could interrupt with more questions, trying hard to keep her tone neutral and measured, ‘despite the shock of seeing him, it’s nice to know he’s happy and settled now.’
‘Well, yeah.’ Mark gazed up into the distance for a moment. ‘Bit of a surprise, Chloe and Alex – bit of a whirlwind. When she announced they were getting married, everyone in the office thought she must be pregnant. Chloe’s so – so strait-laced, normally, that to jump into marriage without a second thought was so unlike her – far too daring…’
‘So how long have they been together then?’ She felt certain Mark would notice the high pitch of her voice, so hard was she trying to appear normal, casual.
‘Oh, they must have been married a couple of years now,’ Mark replied. ‘And they were together for a few months before that. So two and a half years, maybe three, I guess.’ He looked down at the table.
‘And are they… happy?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
Mark looked up, his vision clouding for a second before he replied. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
She was glad he couldn’t see the stab of pain that ripped through her chest. ‘Well, that’s good then.’
They fell silent. Mark kept his head down, and she suddenly realised that he wasn’t paying attention to her reactions at all. He seemed lost in contemplation, his finger absently rubbing a mark on the tablecloth and spreading the stain further into the weave of the cotton.
‘Are you okay?’ she ventured.
He looked up, surprised. ‘Of course,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s lovely to see you again.’ His gaze softened, then his eyes dropped to her breasts for just a fraction of a second.
She felt her mouth fall open in surprise and quickly snapped it shut again. She had a sudden desire to get up and throw his water over him and then to kick him as hard as she could. She wanted to get out of there. In the sprawling metropolis of London she doubted she’d see him again once they went their separate ways.
Although he knew where she lived.
She felt a shudder ripple through her. She would have to play this out carefully, and tactfully. So she smiled and they ordered coffee, and she asked Mark as much as she could about his work, his life, his interests. She was ready to deflect any questions about herself, but Mark seemed to enjoy answering her enquiries so much that he didn’t make many of his own.
When they finally paid and got up to leave, she let Mark open the door for her and stepped outside.
It felt like she had been sleepwalking for years, and seeing Alex had finally woken her up. Even in the dusky light, everything seemed brighter: colours were so vivid it hurt her eyes to look at them; people talked so loudly she wanted to clamp her hands to her ears; everyone and everything seemed to move so fast that she had to stand still and look at her feet just to stop feeling dizzy… Yet she had been drifting through such places for years, preferring big cities to small towns, as it was easier to get lost amongst the people. She felt more claustrophobic in open spaces than pressed against sour-smelling bodies on a bus, train or pavement, yet enjoyed neither. She would have stayed home as much as possible, but that required a certain stillness she could only manage in short bursts. She had to keep moving. If she stopped, if she gave herself too much time alone with her thoughts, she began to feel that something terrible would happen.
‘It was nice to see you again,’ she said politely to Mark as he stood next to her, watching her expression.
‘You too,’ he said, ‘I -’
‘- and I’m so sorry about the other night,’ she continued quickly, knowing she wouldn’t like what he planned to say next. ‘I’m very embarrassed. It was nice to meet you, though.’ She held out her hand.
Mark looked at her outstretched arm with a blank expression, then extended his own and completed the handshake, his grip firm and assertive. She refused to meet his eyes and turned to go, then her heart sank as he immediately said, ‘Julia.’
She turned around slowly, reluctantly.
His hand was inside his jacket, then he pulled out a card. ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘If I can do anything for you at all, just give me a call.’ He paused. ‘And I would love to buy you a proper dinner, if you ever fancy it,’ he added, his armour of controlled charm deserting him for a moment and leaving just a frustrated, eager, wishful man in its stead. It was the first time she had felt a real surge of warmth towards him, perhaps because she knew he was letting her go.
‘Thank you,’ she said graciously, taking the card. Again, she turned to leave.
‘Alex called me,’ he blurted to her back.
It was as though a huge serpent had just uncoiled and reared in front of her on the wet, grey London pavement. She was deadly still, listening. Waiting.
‘He wanted to contact you… But I haven’t told him anything, as I wasn’t sure… Do you want me to, if he asks again?’
‘Yes,’ she called out, not trusting herself to turn around. Hoping he could catch her voice above the rumble of traffic and people. Feeling desperate, frustration and longing breaking over her in waves, she capitulated and turned. ‘Yes please.’
She glanced quickly at his surprised face, added ‘Thank you’ and swung around again, walking briskly away.
She was so choked up she could hardly breathe. Her head filled with white noise. She hurried along the path, keeping close to the grimy cement facades of buildings, her eyes blurring with tears as they watched the grey pavements flash by. She bumped into a few people and ignored the tutting or cursing that followed.
Alex wanted to talk to her. But for good or ill, she had no way of knowing.
At the passageway to her flat, she paused, then moved on towards the station.
Mark saw Julia stop at the passageway to her courtyard, then watched as she hurried on. She was heading away from her home, and he was drawn to follow, to find out something about her everyday life. He didn’t know whether he would have kept tailing her had she gone grocery shopping, but she didn’t. Instead she headed for the station, and so did Mark.
He began to enjoy this impromptu sleuthing, an activity that was definitely not on his list of priorities for today. He got into the carriage one along from hers, but could still see her through the small window of the train as it rocked its way along in the usual stop-start fashion of the underground.
The first time Julia looked over her shoulder was when they had both just alighted from the train, and Mark swung round and bent down to fiddle with his shoelace, cheeks reddening. When he dared look back she had gone, but he jogged to the exit and could see her walking away up the street. He was pretty sure of where she was going. But still he followed. Knowing the way, he could keep a bit more distance now, but he made sure he was watching from behind a wall as she went up to the door. His face was grim. He could well imagine what he was going to see next.
This time it felt different, because now he was looking for her too, and so she was standing at his door, her feet together, her head down, and her impetuous hand in a world of its own, lifting, lifting, and then knocking.
She waited. Behind her, the last of the autumn leaves on the dead-looking trees held fixed, tense positions, determined not to take their final plunge to earth until it was beyond their control.
As she heard footfalls coming closer, their rapid pace suddenly in time with her heartbeat, there was no space for thought or memory. Her head was filled to the brim with these few stretched seconds. She dared not even breathe. She had longed for this, yet was immeasurably frightened as well. Not of seeing him, as much as of what this confrontation might do to her. It could remould her, but it could just as easily be her final undoing.
The sound reached the door and it opened in front of her.
She raised her head.
He stood in the doorway.
She stared at him for just a moment, before he strode forward and wrapped his arms around her.
She almost collapsed within them, letting him take the sagging weight of her as he buried his head against her neck, her thick wavy hair falling around his face.
He was breathing hard, and crying too. Every now and again a noisy sob or intake of breath shocked her from her own stupor. She had never seen him like this, not even when things had gone so dreadfully wrong for them back then. He whispered ‘Amy, Amy’ as though he were pleading for something.
Eventually, coming to, she realised that they were still by the open front door. There was no one within sight, but she could hear voices, not far away.
At that moment Alex gently pulled her inside and pushed the door closed.
He guided her along a hallway and into a lounge room. The first things she saw were photos of Alex on the shelves, with his arms around his wife. She averted her eyes.
They were silent for what seemed an eternity, not looking at one another. Julia didn’t want to be the one to break it. She felt they were wrapped within a small gift of suspended time within which they had found one another, and once they unwrapped it, everything would move forward again, and she couldn’t be certain they would ever recapture it.
Then Alex began to speak. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, over and over. Reaching out to stroke her face. Lifting her chin. ‘You look just the same,’ he added, although she could see he was lying, for she still startled herself when she stared into the mirror and a pair of small, dark, deadened eyes peered back. Alex immediately looked down, as though knowing she could read him.
‘So do you,’ she said. And meant it. ‘Apart from the hair, of course.’ His once long surfer’s hair was now cropped short at the back and sides, and showed the first signs of receding. ‘You have a grown-up’s haircut now.’
He smiled. ‘I suppose I do,’ he murmured, running a hand over his head. Then he said, ‘Amy, what’s this “Julia”?’
‘I am Julia,’ she said harshly. ‘Amy hasn’t been around for a long time.’
They were silent, and in that time it appeared the spell was broken. Awkwardness surged over them like a rushing wave. They had gone from long-lost soul mates to strangers in just a few seconds.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Alex asked with stiff formality.
They exchanged small smiles at this politeness, which released a torrent of questions from Alex. ‘Where have you been? How long have you been in London? I keep thinking I’ve been walking around the streets just missing you or passing you and not even recognising you… It makes me feel terrible…’ He trailed off.
‘I haven’t been here long,’ she assured him. ‘About a month.’
‘How on earth did you get together with Mark?’ She sensed from his tone that he wasn’t Mark’s biggest fan.
‘I went into the solicitors’ office late one evening to ask about getting some documents witnessed… He said he’d sign the papers for free if I went to dinner with him…’
Alex’s lips pursed. ‘That sounds like Mark.’
‘Not your favourite person?’ she asked.
‘Nope.’ His face clouded, then he changed the subject. ‘My god, Amy, where have you been? Does your mother know where you are? Why didn’t you come back for the funeral?’
Their eyes met. She looked away first.
‘I’ve travelled,’ she told him, gaze down. ‘I’ve been getting work here and there. Paying my way. Teaching scuba diving. Doing short articles for magazines. Coming back to England once or twice to sort out visas and other bits and pieces.’ She looked up defiantly, although she knew he would see right through her. ‘I’ve seen so many places, so many wonderful things, like I always wanted to.’
‘It sounds great,’ he said, playing along with her, nodding, smiling.
There was a pause. ‘Look, I’m so…’ Alex began.
‘Don’t,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t, Al.’
Alex stared at his shoes. ‘I’ll get you that drink,’ he muttered.
A few minutes later he returned with a cup of milky tea. She debated whether to tell him she drank it black nowadays, but decided against it. In the minutes they had been apart they seemed to have become ever more shy around each other, so they sat subduedly and made showy displays of drinking their tea.
‘Anyway,’ Julia said eventually. ‘What about you? So you’re married?’
Alex looked up, pain etched on his face. ‘Yes. I am.’
‘And what’s she like?’ She concentrated on maintaining a forced jollity.
‘Chloe?’ Alex spoke in a rush. ‘She’s…’ His face took on a faraway aspect for a moment and she didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. ‘Look, I didn’t, I mean I can’t…’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘Why didn’t you come back?’ he said suddenly, sharply. ‘I know you needed space – but it’s been ten years, Amy… What the hell -’
‘Any children?’ she interrupted relentlessly, looking around as though small people might jump out from behind the stiff leather sofas, even though she knew the answer. A hard edge crept into her voice that she hadn’t meant to plant there.
Alex looked at her. ‘No,’ he said.
‘I see.’
Alex put his mug on the table and looked down between his knees, banging the flat of his hands softly against his forehead. She recognised the frustrated gesture of old and her body moved before her mind could slingshot questions at it. She reached out to pat his knee. ‘I know what the score is, Alex… I just can’t believe you’re really sitting here.’
Alex lifted his face to hers. His gaze was pained, full of guilt and uncertainty and torment. She held it steadily, letting all else wash away from her except the fact that he was there.
In response she watched his eyes change as they deepened with emotion. He reached up with both hands and stroked her face, looking into her eyes all the time. An incredible current passed between them at his touch – as if all the feelings they had once shared and then buried were being reignited by his hands on her skin.
Without breaking eye contact, he moved his fingers to pull loose the thin scarf tied around her neck, uncoiling the soft material slowly and steadily. He laid it aside, and then, as though in a trance, he leaned forward towards the hollow between her collarbones, and touched the long, narrow scar there.
‘Amy,’ he said, ‘there’s something I need to tell you.’
Just then they heard the front door open, and both turned sharply towards the sound.
As Chloe had raced home, cold rage had begun to course through her, first a trickle, then a stream, then a torrent so fierce that her whole body seemed to be caught within the swelling, rolling gathering of it. She was glad she had opted for the privacy of the taxi as she tried to calm her breathing, to still her swirling thoughts, to steady herself so she didn’t explode before she got through the door.
Once home, she didn’t get two paces along the hallway before she saw Alex. He was closing the living-room door.
‘Hey.’ He gave her a strained smile. ‘What are you doing home so early?’ He began to walk towards her, saw her stricken face, and stopped. ‘Chlo, what’s wrong?’
‘I’ve had enough, Al, that’s what.’ She pushed past him and went into the kitchen, put her bags and coat on the countertop and ran herself a glass of water, draining it in one go. She turned round to find Alex watching her from a distance, a strange expression on his face. ‘Mark told me you called him. I want you to tell me what’s going on…’
Her voice trailed off as she realised Alex was hovering by the closed living-room door. A jumble of thoughts tumbled over her, none of them good.
‘… Right now,’ she finished, slowly.
‘Okay,’ Alex answered, his lips still drawn back in that spooked half-smile. ‘Let’s just go out for a walk, shall we?’ He moved towards her, picked up her coat and held it out to her.
And she knew.
She looked Alex in the eye for a long, drawn-out moment, then took a deep breath, walked down the corridor, towards the living-room door, and stopped. She turned back to Alex, who had followed, and took another long look at him, drinking in the sight of the man she loved, wondering how she would look at him after this.
Then she said, ‘I think I left my scarf in here, I’ll just get it,’ and had the briefest impression of Alex’s shoulders slumping as she pushed open the door.
Chloe was smaller than Julia remembered, her face paler and more pinched. She stood holding the door handle, looking at Julia with pure contempt. Julia didn’t know what to say, but still tried to speak, in a quavering voice.
‘Hello.’
Chloe just continued to stare in silence. They were frozen until Alex came up behind Chloe.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.
Julia stood there uncomfortably as Chloe whirled around to him. ‘What are you, Alex? A walking cliché? In fact, who the hell are you? You’re certainly not the man I thought you were. How – how dare you!’
Then Julia watched in horror as Chloe slapped his cheek and started banging her fists on his chest as she shrieked at him. Alex was trying to grab her wrists while dodging blows, telling her to calm down.
The explosion didn’t last long but it seemed to have consumed Chloe. She stepped back from Alex, took one last look at Julia, her face crumpled with pain, then stormed out through the doorway.
Alex was motionless for a second. When the front door banged shut, he jumped, but it seemed to start him into action. He turned around without a glance back and raced after his wife, leaving Julia standing there in shock, wondering what on earth she should do now.
Mark had waited. He’d seen the embrace between Julia and Alex from a distance before they closed the door. Then, as he’d been about to head towards the station, he’d seen the taxi turn into the opposite end of the street and watched in horror as Chloe alighted from it. What an absolute bastard he was for leaving that note on her desk, he berated himself.
Before his train of thought was even completed she was coming out the door again, and he could see how stricken she was. She stopped for a second on the steps to the house, clutching at the railing, her body heaving, and he was heading towards her before he’d even thought about it, calling her name.
She looked up, startled and angry. He could see the snail-trails of tear tracks on her cheeks. As he reached her, she just had time to say, ‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here,’ before the front door banged open and Alex was there.
Mark saw straight away the storm brewing on Alex’s face, but it was too late to do anything. Alex didn’t even seem to see Chloe, as he marched past her, pulled his arm back, and sent the force of his fist crashing towards Mark’s nose.
As Mark instinctively turned, the fist caught his cheek instead, which instantly began to throb.
‘That’s assault,’ he spat at Alex as he righted himself, touching his cheek gingerly.
Alex still towered over him, hands on hips, taking short breaths through his nostrils, looking as if he’d like to do the same thing again. ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you in court then,’ he retorted, glaring.
The two men stared at each other for a moment, jaws tensed, the atmosphere a lit fuse burning slowly towards explosion.
Chloe’s petite form suddenly appeared between them. She pushed Alex away, her small hands against his heaving chest. ‘What the hell are you doing, Alex?’
Alex looked startled. He took a step back. ‘Chloe, I -’
‘Just go away,’ she screamed at him. ‘Isn’t there someone waiting for you in there – in our house,’ she added, her hand gesturing towards their front door.
Alex looked from Chloe to their front door, then again, as though trying to make an impossible decision. ‘Fuck!’, he growled, and charged back up the steps to the house, slamming the front door behind him.
Mark and Chloe were glued to the spot.
‘Chloe, I’m sorry…’ Mark began feebly.
‘I hope it hurt,’ she replied, and strode off down the road.
Mark hurried after her, still wincing as he touched his cheek. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked as he caught up with her.
She whirled round. ‘I don’t know, Mark, okay?’
‘Let me buy you a drink.’
The bitter laugh caught in her throat. ‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘Chloe, it feels like minus twenty out here, plus you need to calm down, and I want to apologise. Come on.’ He gave her a push towards the pub, half-expecting her to turn on her heel, but she went grudgingly with him.
Once inside they found a booth tucked away in a corner, and Chloe slid into it, aware that her hands were trembling, while Mark went to get drinks. Only when he came back with two gin and tonics did she remember that she wasn’t meant to be drinking. One won’t hurt, she said to herself; however, after the first sip she felt sick and pushed it away.
Mark was watching her but she couldn’t think of anything to say, so she let him, and swirled the liquid in her glass, staring at it.
Eventually he said, ‘It might not be what you think.’
She looked up at Mark and rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not that dumb, Mark. And since when did you give a shit about my marriage?’
‘Okay, sorry. Just trying to help.’
Chloe gave a brief snort. ‘Yes, that poisonous note on my desk was very helpful.’
Mark hung his head for a moment then looked up at her again. ‘I was a complete shit for doing that, I’m sorry.’
‘So what did Alex say to you on the phone?’ As she waited she could feel the tension within her rising to boiling point.
Mark shrugged. ‘He just asked for Julia’s number.’
‘How did he sound?’
‘Honestly? Pretty stressed out.’
‘Stressed out with all the lying, I’d imagine.’ Chloe thought of all the duped wives she’d seen traipsing through her office. She couldn’t believe she was one of them now. ‘I’d never in a million years have believed that Alex could do this to me.’
Mark sighed. ‘Chloe, you know I can’t stand the guy, and that was before he punched me, so I don’t know why I’m saying this – but what exactly has Alex done to you? Because if he needed to phone me to get Julia’s number, I doubt he’s having an affair with her.’
‘It could have been an old affair,’ she replied, but his comment had penetrated the fug of her thoughts.
‘True,’ Mark agreed. ‘But at the end of the day, you won’t know until you ask him, will you?’
When Alex stormed back into the lounge again, his expression was thunderous.
‘I’m sorry…’ Julia began, unsure of what else to say.
He tried a smile. It didn’t come off. ‘Not your fault.’
‘You really love her,’ she said quietly, feeling a fresh pang of pain, as though she hadn’t quite believed this could be true.
‘Yes.’ He moved across to her, holding her shoulders, watching her until she looked back up at him. She thought he was going to shake her, but instead he just said, ‘Oh, Amy, why the hell didn’t you come back?’
She swung away from him so he couldn’t see her expression. ‘It was complicated,’ she said. ‘After Dad died.’
He ignored her, his voice becoming strident. ‘I saw your mum, Amy – at the funeral. She was a wreck. She had no one.’ She felt herself flinch but if he noticed he didn’t care, his anger was leading the way now. ‘She said she thought you blamed yourself – that was why you stayed away – but how could you -’
Julia swung around, her voice rising to a shout. ‘You think it was easy for me, staying away? Do you think I was sitting someplace sipping a cocktail, painting my nails; that I couldn’t be bothered to go home? It broke me, Alex. I thought I’d been broken before that, but no – it changed every thing… So don’t you dare insinuate that you know what it was like for me…’
‘And do you know what it was like for me, Amy?’ He barked every word at her. ‘I made a promise to you. I kept it for years. I heard nothing. Your mother didn’t want to talk to me after the funeral. I was in limbo. I tried everything. I even thought you were dead. It took years, Amy, before I moved on, and it was a slow and painful decision… and now you walk back into my life, and I’m the one who has to feel guilty as all hell that I broke that promise – but where were you, Amy? Tell me that.’
His words had drained the fight from her. She sat down on his sofa and put her head in her hands. Then took them away in surprise. They were wet. She was crying.
Alex seemed drained too, and slumped next to her. He put his hand on her shoulder, and rubbed it as she sobbed.
Eventually, she whispered into the silence, ‘So, what do we do now?’
She heard Alex take a deep breath. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But before anything else, there’s something I really have to tell you.’
She looked at the printouts he’d got from the internet. As he talked to her, he took hold of her hands, stroking them. In response her memories slowly began to unlock themselves. Long-buried images poured out like unstoppable sand, filling her head with fresh pain. His voice became distant.
She was in the darkness again, with voices overhead. She could hear them plainly, as if it were still happening. She could see them looking down at her; blurry faces with blackened eyes. Noxious breath as they leaned in, staring. She was disorientated at the suddenness of it all, but as the panic kicked in and hands came towards her she had to get away…
She suddenly jolted. She had to move, right now. She pushed the hands away, all her focus on the door.
‘AMY! AMY!’
The hands were still there. She flailed and kicked desperately until she realised she was just fighting the air.
She blinked, trying to focus.
Alex was watching her, horrified. She was so embarrassed that now her tears came in a torrent of release, and she heaved herself over to a chair and folded into it, sucking in oxygen.
She felt a glass pushed into her hand, and took sips of cool water, beginning to feel calmer.
‘Amy, Jesus…’ Alex was saying.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘It’s okay.’ He crouched near her but he didn’t touch her again.
She thought back to what he’d told her. ‘You mean it’s happening now?’
‘Yes, I’ve checked it all out. It’s almost over, I think. It’s quite high profile over there.’
And then she realised what had to be done.
‘I have to go back,’ she told him, shocked at herself as she heard her own words.
Alex turned his face away from her, towards the door, saying nothing. For some reason his silence only strengthened her resolve. ‘I have to, Al. I need to. Confronting this could be a way for me to get a grip on my life again,’ she told him fiercely. ‘It might be the only way.’
Still Alex was silent. Still he kept his face turned away.
She paused, bit her lip, then murmured, ‘I don’t know if I can do it alone.’
She kept watching the back of his head, and saw it beginning to shake. ‘This is crazy,’ he murmured, and then swung around towards her, so she could clearly see his pain and confusion. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t just -’
‘Okay.’ She got up quickly. ‘I understand.’ She shoved the water back at him and he grabbed it as it sloshed over onto his hand. ‘You’ve done enough.’
She ran into the passageway and pulled open his front door, then moved as fast as she could away from him. But she could hear him behind her, keeping pace, and he was saying her name – her real name – again and again, until it was a chant keeping time with her footsteps. Each time she heard ‘Amy’ it was as though another piece of her re-emerged, twisting and writhing.
Eventually, she couldn’t run any more. She sank down onto the road, spent.
A second later, Alex crouched down in front of her. He took a deep breath.
‘Amy, this is important to me too. So if you really want to do this…’ He paused and took a long look at the sky, drawing in a deep breath that she echoed, holding on to the air in her lungs, feeling it swelling, burning, eager to be gone.
‘… I will find a way to come with you,’ he said eventually, looking back down at her.
And he put his hand over hers.
It was as though she had been drowning for ten years, and at last there was a hand outstretched within sight.