Come Back to Me (9 page)

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.