Come Back to Me (21 page)

Chloe walked through the front door and down the hallway, peering into the living room on her way to the kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy, and very still. It felt as though the house were holding its breath.

She was unnerved by the quiet. Hearing a small noise behind her, she swung around.

Alex was standing there. ‘We need to talk, Chlo.'

‘Has she gone?' Her voice came out quiet and hoarse, and sinisterly calm.

‘Yes.'

‘For good?'

Alex paused a fraction too long. And Chloe's frayed temper finally snapped.

‘Alex, you'd better start talking, and fast,' she shouted at him.

Alex came towards her and tried to put his hand on her arm. ‘Chloe …'

She shook him off, walked a few paces, turned back and yelled, ‘Just
tell
me, for god's sake – I can't bear all … this.' She threw her hands in the air. ‘If you're having some kind of affair, just bloody well admit it.'

‘No! Chloe, look at me. Look at me, please! I'm not having an affair.
I'm not having an affair
…' He strode across and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her slightly, trying to force the truth into her. She looked in his eyes and saw nothing except an entreaty for her to believe him. She felt a little calmer.

‘So then, what's going on?' she asked.

‘We were together for a couple of years, a long time ago,' Alex answered, not slackening his grip. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her face with each word he spoke. ‘We met at university, and then went travelling. And while we were in Australia she got attacked and raped and nearly killed. And after that, we fell apart.'

‘What?' Chloe couldn't take it in. She watched as Alex spoke; every muscle of his body seemed taut with tension.

‘When we came home, she disappeared. She said she was only going away for a little while, but she never came back. I never saw her again until Thursday night – that's why I was so shocked. That's why this is all so awful and weird.'

Chloe just looked at him, her mind a jumble of incoherent, half-formed thoughts. How could she have ever prepared for this?

In a few days it felt as if her whole world had changed.

‘Chloe?' Alex's voice was alarmed.

She stared at him blankly, then was jolted out of her
stupor on seeing the tears in his eyes. They were still so close, his hands on her arms, his face inches from hers.

‘So you were a couple for how long?'

‘Two years.'

Two years, Chloe thought. She and Alex had been together only a little longer than that.

‘And you loved her?'

Alex sighed and closed his eyes for a moment as he said, ‘Yes, I did.' She watched his face as he looked at her again, his intense dark eyes boring into hers. ‘But it was a long time ago now, Chloe. Way before you and I ever met.'

‘So you don't love her any more?'

Why had she asked that, when she was so close to his face she couldn't fail to gauge his reaction. He looked as though she had struck him.

There wasn't much of a pause before he tried to speak, but it was enough. She let out a cry and pushed him away, running out of the kitchen, down the hallway and up the stairs. She could hear him chasing her.

‘No, Chloe, no, you've got it wrong. Don't do this, please …'

She swung around at the top of the stairs as he took them two at a time to try to reach her. ‘
Me
do this?' she screamed. She turned on her heel before he could touch her and strode into the bedroom, pulling open the closet and beginning to throw random items of clothing onto the bed.

‘Chloe,' Alex cried as he came into the room. ‘What are you doing? Come on, we need to keep talking about this.'

‘I can't, Alex,' she said, as tears began to stream down her face. ‘I just need some space.'

Alex came around the bed fast, and tried to pull her to him. He caught her arm but she wrenched herself away, her free hand groping along the dresser and grabbing things, hurling them onto the bed.

‘Don't go, Chloe,' he said, his voice low and husky with emotion. ‘Please. This thing happened so long ago – and I'm so sorry you've been caught up in it like this. But it doesn't change you and me at all. I love you, Chloe. Don't go.' He stood there watching her sadly, his eyes moist.

‘Alex, I think the only way I can cope with this is if I know that it's over, that you're never going to see her again. Can you do that?'

Alex shook his head. ‘Chloe, please try to understand. I don't want a relationship with her, of course I don't – I'm not in love with her like that any more, I'm in love with
you
. But there's a history, and a long time ago I made promises, to her and to myself –'

‘You made promises?' Chloe interrupted, her voice rising again. ‘What about the promises you made to me, Alex?'

‘Chloe –'

She marched out of the bedroom and along the landing, grabbing a suitcase from a cupboard there. She carried it back to the room and began to throw things into it, not making any attempt to pack them properly.

Alex watched her for a minute, then came forward, and said, ‘Chloe, stop.'

She paused and looked at him. His face was wretched.

‘You don't have to go. I'll go, until we've both calmed down enough to talk,' he said, gently taking her things out of the case and laying them on the bed.

She watched him, but suddenly felt too tired to argue. She didn't have a clue where she would have gone anyway.

‘I'll wait downstairs,' she said, and walked out.

She stood by the table in the kitchen for ten minutes, hardly aware of her surroundings. She heard a noise in the hallway and mechanically walked out to look.

Alex was there with a suitcase next to him. He picked up a bag and turned back to her.

Beyond all reason, she was suddenly desperate for him to stay. But as they looked at one another, in that moment she couldn't find her voice.

And then he was through the doorway, and as he turned back again, before he could say anything she had jumped forward and slammed it behind him.

She slid down the wooden panel of the door into a heap on the floor, crying and crying, as if she would never be rid of the tears that poured from her. She hugged her stomach, half-glad of the secret she still carried and half-imagining d ramatic scenes that might make Alex rush back to her – blood pouring from her traumatised body, an ambulance taking her to hospital, Alex's guilt-ridden face as he sat by the bed and learned of the baby he'd almost had. That would serve him right.

When her tears eventually subsided, she sat still for a while, sniffing and rubbing her eyes. Eventually she turned around and pushed the letterbox open with her fingers, peering through the slit, praying he would still be there; but the rain-soaked path was empty and dark.

Is this it? she wondered. Is this the end of my marriage – sitting here in the hallway with mascara running down my
face? Or is this just the beginning of something else – a difficult period, sure, but perhaps not an ending. She would give anything for someone to explain to her whereabouts down the proverbial line she and Alex were right now.

What had she been thinking of, that secrets could ever be benign? They were nothing of the kind – they were poisonous shards of glass that were trapped just below the skin, twisting and turning with every movement a person made, threatening to break through the surface.

Some dark thing began to rear up in her then, towards the surface of her consciousness. It was her mother, sitting like this against a doorway, and sobbing like she would never stop.

What had happened? It seemed she had pushed the memory down – although now something came to her – a darkened room she didn't want to look into. She forced the image away, fought it off until she was sure it was vanquished, made herself focus on Alex's ugly, buried secrets as she curled up on the floor.

There came a beeping sound from her pocket. She fumbled with the phone as she lifted it out, and looked at the screen. There was a text message.

 

I WILL CALL YOU TOMORROW.

TRUST IN ME. I LOVE YOU.

I WILL COME BACK TO YOU.

For the rest of the week, Chloe's world seemed to revolve around one question:

‘Have you told him yet?'

Mikaela had asked first, when she'd rung Chloe to see how she was and got more than she'd bargained for. Her mother had then outdone herself by ringing at least four times in one day, the same question bursting continuously from her lips. Chloe had almost ranted at her after a while, wanting to shout, ‘How can I tell him about the baby if he isn't even bloody here?' but she didn't. While no one knew Alex had gone, she could still pretend this wasn't real, and avoid the awkward silences and pitying stares.

She'd made an exception for Mikaela. Her cousin had heard the quaver in her voice immediately, and once Chloe had started crying down the phone she couldn't seem to stop, so Mikaela had immediately insisted that Chloe came to
stay. They had been holed up together for the past few days. Chloe brought home bad food for them both after work, and to start with they talked, then progressed to watching sitcom reruns while slating the perfect-looking actresses that swanned on and off the screen. It was an odd throwback to their teenage years, and initially Chloe had found comfort in that; then gradually it had begun to disturb her. She didn't want to go back to being one of the girls, sharing her broken heart and letting others help her to mend it. Her despair was something she couldn't even articulate, let alone allow others to pick over.

Tonight she would be going home. For a few days it had been a relief not to have to face the empty house, now devoid of its loving atmosphere; but Mikaela was away with work from today and Chloe had begun to miss some of her home comforts, not to mention clean clothes.

Alex had been persistently ringing her mobile, but she was still too hurt and confused to talk to him. When he'd tried her at the office, she had hung up as soon as Jana transferred the calls. She needed to clear her head first; she was scared she wouldn't be able to stop her mouth from spitting vile accusations and insults at him right now. He had left voicemails too, but she hadn't replayed them. She didn't want to hear his voice, so she deleted them instead.

This morning she'd already spoken briefly to her mother, who had been most affronted when Chloe had cancelled the next trip to the Lakes. As Chloe spoke she was aware of the irony – this was what Alex had been begging her to do for weeks, and it had taken his leaving to push her to it. Her mother spent the rest of the call making snide comments
about how she hadn't realised she was such a burden to them. In response, Chloe had told her that now she was pregnant it might be more difficult to come quite as often, to which her mother had laughed and said, ‘Don't be so dramatic, Chloe. It's not an illness, you know.'

As she tried to shake off that particular conversation, Chloe walked through the office doors in a daze, still absorbing the fact that she was further on in her pregnancy than she'd known, rubbing her stomach, unable to comprehend that a new life had taken a firm shape of its own in there before she'd even been aware of it, and that her husband still didn't know that he was going to be a dad.

As she walked out of the lift and past reception, she saw David Marchant striding towards her. With no time to avoid him, she turned and attempted a smile.

‘Morning, Chloe.' David made no effort to hide the long look he took at his watch as he approached. ‘Good to see you this morning. Don't forget you have a meeting with Neil at eleven. The Abbott case is looming large for us now. If you see Mark popping in at any stage this morning, be sure to pass the message on to him as well, won't you?'

‘Yes, David.' Chloe sighed as she made her way towards her office. She tried to imagine the look on David's face when she told him she was four months pregnant. Normally it would have terrified her, but right then it made her almost laugh out loud. Great, she was becoming hysterical.

As she walked past the secretaries' pool, Jana noticed the smile on her face and gave her a shy, friendly hello. It took Chloe aback. Jana didn't often talk to her; in fact, Chloe didn't think the secretary liked her much. It hadn't bothered
her overly, as she'd made a rule that her relationship with her secretary would be strictly business after what had happened with Charlotte. Spending a few years working with her former boyfriend's one-night stand hadn't been much fun.

She noticed Mark's office was dark, and the door was shut. She turned back to Jana.

‘Where's Mark this morning?'

Jana shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘Has he got anything on?'

‘Well, his diary's clear,' Jana replied.

‘He hasn't phoned in?'

‘No,' Jana said.

Mark was never later in for work than she was. What the hell was going on with everyone? Chloe wondered with tired exasperation. She usually felt she was a good judge of character, but she didn't seem to know anyone at all at the moment.

In her office she lifted her bag onto her desk and took out the number of the ultrasound unit at the hospital. She rang it and asked for an appointment, having to repeat herself when the lady couldn't hear her whispers. She watched the glass wall of her office closely, waiting to see either David or Neil appear there looking cross, but nothing happened.

They could fit her in tomorrow. Tomorrow she'd see their baby for the very first time. Alone.

As she sat down, she reluctantly looked at the in-trays piling up behind her with legal documents waiting to be drafted and letters needing to be written. The court applications to be made. Half-heartedly, she pulled a case file towards her,
but instead of opening it she tried to re-examine just why she hadn't told Alex about the baby. If she had, surely he wouldn't have left. She thought back to the Lakes, and that fateful conversation when she'd only just found out herself. ‘
We're not ready for that yet
,' he'd said dismissively. If he hadn't said those words, would she have told him by now?

Possibly, as since then she had certainly been worried about how he would react. When the baby had been on the tip of her tongue so many times, one question kept recurring in her mind.

What if it changed
nothing
?

That was the core of it. And so their poor baby had become the trump card in its parents' marital problems before it was even born. She pushed away the thought that they would make terrible parents. But really, what chance did their child have when its mother was being torn apart by worry just as the very cells of its tiny, amorphous body were furiously dividing and multiplying and trying to get the act of creation right?

She tried to distract herself by going to Mark's office. The lights were still off. She frowned: it was past ten o'clock. She didn't think Mark had been late since the time they'd broken up. Her brief affair with Risto flitted through her head. Mark hadn't spoken to her much for quite a while back then, even though that relationship had fizzled out as quickly as it had started when Risto had had an unrefusable offer from a head-hunter.

She went back to her office and tried Mark's mobile. He answered straight away.

‘You do know we've got a meeting about Abbott at
eleven, don't you? I saw David this morning and he didn't look too happy.'

Mark sighed. ‘Fine, I'll try and get in. Jesus, Chloe, I'm hardly ever late like this, and now David is on my case.'

‘Why are you late?'

Mark paused, then said, ‘Look, you worry about your problems, and I'll look after mine. How is Alex, by the way?'

Chloe bristled. God he was infuriating. She took a deep breath. ‘He's fine. I'll see you at eleven, then.' And she hung up before he could reply.