Come Back to Me (23 page)

When Amy had first seen the reports, and Alex had explained that the police had linked this case to hers, she had seemed willing to confront the situation. But now, as Alex watched Amy, he began to worry. On one printout there had been a pixellated photo of one of the men, which had left her shaky and withdrawn. Perhaps that was playing on her mind, as Alex could tell she was having major doubts now, and he didn't know how much heed to pay them.

Besides, he was having second thoughts as well. He felt very nervous. He didn't know if he could trust either of them to act predictably or sensibly when they got there. How would Amy cope with seeing the men who had harmed her so terribly? And how would he handle it, come to that? But not going at all: that could be far worse, he knew, and he could not countenance it – that after all this time they would still be mired in the interminable decay of inaction.

Alex had the feeling that he was going to have to be the one to make plans. So once he had assured Amy he would be back later that afternoon, he headed outside.

As soon as he was in the fresh air he tried Chloe again: no answer on either her home phone or mobile. Where the hell was she? Desperate now, he rang the office again, and got Jana.

‘I need to find her straight away,' he said tersely. ‘It's urgent.'

‘I'm sorry, Alex.' Jana sounded embarrassed. ‘She left half an hour ago with a bundle of work and said she'd be working at home this afternoon. Try her mobile.'

‘She never has it bloody switched on,' he snapped, then added a quick ‘Sorry' before they said their goodbyes.

Quickly, he made his way towards the station and home, dialling another number as he did so.

‘Lewis speaking,' a voice cut in after a few rings.

‘Lewis, it's Alex.'

‘Alex, don't tell me you've finished our project already! Do you work at warp-speed?'

Alex laughed, trying not to dwell on the amount of work he had waiting for him.

‘No, Lewis, I'm ringing for a favour, actually; want to pick your legal brains. I'm following a trial that's going on in Australia, and wondering how long it's likely to last. I need to know the procedure for this kind of thing.'

‘Well,' came the reply, ‘it depends on all sorts of things – amount of witnesses and evidence – could be weeks, months … What's it for?'

‘It's a murder case – I'll tell you what, I'll forward you the web link, just give me a sec.'

‘All right, mate,' Lewis replied. They hung up, Alex fired off the message, and his phone rang a few minutes later.

‘Won't run for too much longer, I wouldn't think …' Lewis said without preamble.

Alex felt his sense of urgency increasing. ‘Okay, then; thanks, Lewis. I'll make sure I get some design considerations to you asap.'

‘No problem, Alex, thanks. Although I thought you said your wife was a solicit—'

‘Thanks again, Lewis, much appreciated,' Alex cut in, hanging up and praying he hadn't sounded too discourteous.

The train, as always, took its time in getting him home. As he walked up the street, his heart sank when he saw that Chloe's car wasn't parked outside. His suspicions were confirmed once he opened the front door. The place was dark and empty. Upstairs, her toiletries had gone from the bathroom. She was staying somewhere else.

He left her a brief note saying he was looking for her, then headed out again. His mind was working frantically as he walked back towards the station. Chloe was doing a great job of avoiding him, and he and Amy were running out of time. By the time he reboarded the train he had made a decision.

 

When Alex got back to Amy's ramshackle flat, he had news for her.

‘There's a flight this evening, and I've reserved us seats,' he told her.

‘What?'

‘Get packing.'

‘Alex, this is crazy, we can't just –'

‘Amy, the longer we hang about, the harder it's going to get. Besides, the court case has been going on for a while. If we don't go soon it'll be over.'

‘Alex, will you
please
call me Julia. And I just don't know if I can do it.'

He walked over to her. ‘You're not Julia to me. You're Amy. And I understand that you're scared. I do. But you
know
you want to see these men behind bars. You need to see it.
I
need to see it, come to that. And this is your chance to have closure. This might set you free.'

He pushed the words at himself as much as her, desperate to believe them.

She looked down at her hands, and just nodded.

 

They were ready to go by teatime. They rode the tube in silence, steadying their bags against the rocking and jolting carriage, not touching one another. At the airport he tried Chloe's mobile again but it went through to voicemail. Her voice asking him to leave a message was like a snap of fingers bringing him back to reality.

He hesitated after the beep. ‘Chloe, I'm sorry …' he began cautiously. He paused again. What could he say? There was so much that needed to be said, he didn't know where to start. ‘I hope you're getting my messages. I'd really love to talk to you. I'll try you again soon.' He hung up.

Only later did he realise that it would sound fairly obvious from the background noise that he was at an airport. God only knew what she would make of that.

Chloe had spent the afternoon at the library, needing to escape the office but wanting to delay heading back to an empty house. As she finished up the day's paperwork, she knew she wasn't doing very well. She had started to wander around like a zombie, even simple tasks taking a lifetime, doing everything on automatic pilot. Sometimes, when she'd sat in front of Mikaela's TV, nibbling on a cracker or sipping tepid tea, she had tried to make herself laugh at the incredulity of the situation.

She would never have suspected that her marriage could be rocked by scandal – it was the kind of thing you read about in the cheap women's magazines that cluttered the surfaces of waiting rooms: ‘My husband ran off with a stranger' ‘My husband is a bigamist' ‘My husband had a secret life'. Pictures of normal-looking, scruffy, smiling men held up by pale, sad-faced women in tracksuit pants. Wedding photos
showing people wearing out-of-fashion clothes, and brides with too much makeup, the happy couple separated by a superimposed tear down the middle. Yes, sometimes she could almost laugh about the absurdity of it all, before reality came flooding back.

She had still told no one except Mikaela that Alex had gone. She barely understood herself what had happened, and couldn't think how to begin to explain it to everyone else. There had just been another message from Alex flashing up on her mobile, and her finger didn't hesitate on the delete button. She was far too angry and upset to talk to him.

As she gathered up her things ready to go home, her thoughts turned briefly to Mark's father. No wonder Mark was so ashamed. He didn't say much when people talked about his dad, but he didn't have to – she could almost see the hairs on the back of his neck bristle with pride when someone recognised him as Henry Jameson's son. However, she knew it wasn't always easy for him – there was a lot to live up to in having the Jameson name, and there seemed to be plenty of disadvantages in going into the same field of work as your parents. Not that Chloe had had any chance of that – her mother was a full-time homemaker, and she hadn't got a clue what her real father did.

She felt a familial pull towards her brother. She really should call Anthony. He used to be such a large part of her life. They had the same sense of humour and she'd always felt they would be close friends as grown-ups, but since he had moved to America, their relationship had drifted into the territory of polite pleasantries during intermittent phone calls. They'd been to each other's weddings, but weddings
were such huge occasions that you didn't get time for intimacy unless you were the bride and groom – well, barely even then – and Chloe had felt very strange at Anthony's, meeting all his Yankee friends and hardly even knowing his bride. Her mother had refused to come, saying she was too ill at the time to travel all that way; but Chloe had thought it was really because she was worried their father might be there. She had wondered the same thing herself, but had stopped looking when Anthony whispered a curt ‘He's not here' in her ear as he saw her casting her gaze around. Thank god Alex had been there to hold her hand and make it feel okay.

And so her thoughts were round full circle, back to Alex again.

She stopped off at McDonald's on the way home. It was her third takeaway in as many days, but cooking for one felt too depressing. As she exited the restaurant, she briefly imagined Alex coming home to find she'd gained a couple of stone and laughed bitterly at the irony. If he took too long she really would have gained that much in baby weight. As she walked, she took a bite of her hamburger and envisioned the baby coming out of her with a spotty face and bad breath. She threw the meal into the next bin she passed.

Once at home, she unpacked the bag she'd taken to Mikaela's, then put on her tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and headed into the lounge room for a quick blast of mind-numbing TV. On the way she caught sight of a blurry figure stumbling past the hall mirror. She stopped in shock. Edging towards it for a closer look she took in her wild hair and red-rimmed eyes and gasped in surprise. She looked like a
ghost, her face so pale that it almost blended into the white wall behind her.

She glanced at the answer phone in the hall. No messages on there today. She didn't know if that felt better or worse. Then, as she glanced down, she saw Alex's scrawly handwriting on the memo pad next to the phone and felt herself start. He'd been home? The note said little except that he was looking for her, and he'd signed it with love and kisses. She felt her anger subside a little. She missed him, and wondered where he was.

Perhaps she should take a day off tomorrow, she thought, and phone the hospital to rearrange the ultrasound. She couldn't face going there alone. She should be going with Alex; it was just too much to contemplate in the glare of his absence. Besides, the Abbott case wouldn't wait – in fact, she really should fish out the paperwork now and get on with it. She decided the TV viewing would have to come later, and walked into the kitchen to find her briefcase, while idly flicking through the post, just bills and statements, hieroglyphics of numbers marching straight into a black vortex in her brain without even pausing for her to consider them.

All at once she was tired of being cross and miserable. She wanted to break through this impasse with Alex, but she didn't know how. She thought about the messages he'd left on her mobile and began hunting for her phone in case there was another one.

There was a knock at the door.

It could be Alex, she thought, looking down in dismay at what she was wearing. But then, why would he knock?

All the lights were on, so there was no pretending she
wasn't home. Another knock and she was scurrying down the hall.

When she opened the door she thought at first glance it
was
Alex, but then the vision coalesced into someone similar but not quite her husband.

‘Jamie? What are you doing here?'

Jamie came in without waiting to be invited. ‘I've been trying to ring Alex all weekend. He's not answering,' he said, injecting his strange flat speech with a touch of indignation. ‘Where is he?'

‘He's out,' Chloe replied, heart sinking. Jamie wasn't easy to talk to at the best of times. In theory she felt sympathetic towards Jamie and his problems, but when actually confronted with this bewildered, erratic man, she usually felt more awkward than anything else.

‘When's he back?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You must know.'

‘I don't, I'm sorry.'

Jamie looked at her as though trying to figure out if she were teasing him. ‘So where is he?' he repeated.

‘Jamie,' she said, exasperated now, ‘I
really
don't know.' She walked back through to the kitchen with Jamie following her. ‘Do you want a drink?' she asked politely.

Jamie was looking round the room as though Alex might leap out from a hiding place at any moment saying, ‘Boo' and grinning. ‘Just water,' he said, going over to the tap and pouring himself a glass.

‘So,' he turned around and leaned against the sink while sipping his drink, ‘how come you don't know where he is?'

Chloe closed her eyes, steadied her thoughts, and sighed.

‘He's gone to help a friend,' she said.

‘Which friend?'

‘Julia.'

‘Julia? I don't know any Julia.'

I'm sure you don't know
all
Alex's friends, Chloe felt like saying.

And then she realised. Jamie might actually be a source of information here.

‘Old girlfriend, dark hair, turned up out of the blue. Seems to be having some problems.'

‘Old girlfriend? Well, that's got to be Amy – he's only really had two of you that lasted beyond a month!' Jamie grinned.

‘Amy?'

‘Yeah, Amy Duvalis, they went out at university and afterwards went on a long holiday together, but then she disappeared. Something happened to her.'

‘What? What happened?' She was eager to see if Jamie's version of events matched Alex's.

‘I think she got attacked.'

‘Oh,' Chloe said, her mind whirring. ‘I see.'

‘Yeah,' Jamie said, pouring himself another glass of water. ‘Alex was a mess. He was gutted.'

‘Oh,' she said again, unable to think of anything else. It was the same story Alex had told her. But why the hell did the woman have two names? And how could Chloe compete with tragedy? And was it awful that it was this thought playing on her mind rather than any sympathy for the woman?

There was another knock at the door.

‘I'll get it, maybe it's Alex,' Jamie said, completely incurious as to why Alex might knock at his own front door.

Chloe closed her eyes. She didn't want anyone else here. When she heard Mark's voice, her heart sank.

And then the phone rang.

She rushed to pick it up. The line was faintly crackling, but she could hear Alex's voice saying hello.

‘Alex, where are you?'

‘Chloe, don't freak out, okay. Did you get any of my messages?'

‘I haven't had a chance to check,' she lied, not wanting to admit that she'd deleted them. ‘What did you say?'

‘Oh god; well, listen to them, please. It's just – look, I'm on a plane. I'm going with Amy to –'

‘Amy? So it is Amy? Hang on – a PLANE?'

‘Yes, it's Amy. And yes, a plane. I can't talk much now, but, Chloe, please, you have to –'

And then the phone was snatched out of her hand. ‘Alex, where the hell are you?' Jamie blurted down the phone. ‘You promised me a trip to the pub last night, I waited for you.'

Chloe had the urge to grab the phone back off him and hit him over the head with it. But she was far too polite for that – which was something that, seconds later, she would regret immensely.

‘I came to find out where you were,' Jamie replied in answer to the questions Alex was obviously asking. ‘Yeah, she's fine. Why? Thingy's here. You know, the lawyer bloke,' he said, lowering his voice a notch or two even though Mark was by now only a few feet away.

There was a pause while Jamie listened. Then he held out the phone to Chloe. ‘He wants to speak to you again,' he said, looking cross.

‘Alex,' Chloe began, hating herself for feeling guilty.

‘Why is Mark there?'

‘I don't even know myself yet,' she said, trying to keep her tone light. ‘He's only just got here.'

Even though it was the truth, she felt like she was telling a lie. She looked at Mark, who rolled his eyes and lifted his briefcase pointedly. ‘Work,' she added. ‘Remember that case, the Abbott one? It came to a head this morning, so we're panicking a bit.'

‘I see.' Alex's voice had a new, cold edge to it. Chloe felt completely on the back foot, and desperate, as though she were the one entirely in the wrong.

‘Look, I've got to go, Chloe,' Alex said, as Jamie leaned forward next to her and said, ‘When's he coming back?' Alex seemed to have heard him. ‘Tell Jamie I'll ring him at home.'

‘Al, at least tell me where you're going?' Chloe asked.

But he'd already gone.

Chloe felt tears welling again but the company she was in kept them at bay.

Jamie looked warily at Mark. ‘Chloe, I'm going to go, okay?' he said.

‘Okay,' she nodded, and followed him along the hall.

At the door, Jamie turned around. ‘I don't think Alex likes him being here,' he said, nodding his head towards the kitchen.

‘It's okay, Jamie,' Chloe told him, knowing without a doubt that he was right, ‘he won't be here long.'

‘Right,' Jamie replied, and then disappeared into the darkness of the evening without another word.

Chloe turned and headed back to the kitchen, where Mark was waiting with an annoyingly condescending look on his face.

‘What are you doing here?' she asked, more aggressively than she intended.

Mark held his hands up, which, along with his briefcase, contained two bottles of wine in a plastic bag. ‘I need a partner to drown my sorrows with.'

‘Oh, Mark, I …' Chloe's hand rubbed her stomach as she thought of all the excuses she could use as to why she wasn't drinking. ‘I've got a full day at work tomorrow, I don't know if I …'

‘You can have a couple of glasses, Chlo, you're not a complete lightweight,' Mark said presumptuously. His eyes flickered over the items around the room – including a big picture showing a smiling Alex and Chloe peering out from a shiny wedding car and holding champagne flutes.

‘Everything okay?' he asked.

‘Fine,' she said. She felt slightly appalled at how easily the untruth tripped off her tongue, and Mark, lightning-quick predator of lies in the courtroom, merely nodded as his eyes lingered on the picture for a second, before he grabbed a bottle out of the bag he was holding and unscrewed the cap. There was a determined, slightly manic glint to his eye that made Chloe feel uncomfortable.

‘How's your dad?'

‘Awful. Let's not talk about it,' he said, brandishing the open bottle as he turned towards the kitchen cabinets.
‘Now, where do you keep your glasses?' He began searching through cupboards, energetically pulling doors open and letting them swing shut with a bang.

‘Are you okay, Mark?' she asked nervously.

‘Of course,' he said dismissively, then exclaimed, ‘A-ha!' as he found what he was looking for and pulled two glasses from the shelf. He brought them over to the table, and Chloe sat down hesitantly, unsure of what to say.

He poured their wine, pausing to lift his glass to hers, looking directly into her eyes and saying, ‘Cheers.'

His piercing gaze was disconcerting. ‘Cheers,' she replied uncomfortably, clinking glasses and watching as Mark raised his to his lips.