Come Back to Me (2 page)

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.