Come Back to Me (28 page)

Alex had no idea what to say. Amy looked at his face and could see that he was stunned.

‘Amy,' he breathed eventually, still incredulous about what he had heard.

She had been so calm as she told him all this, but now her voice cracked. ‘I know,' she said. ‘It's awful. There have been so many times I've wanted to go back and ask about her, but I don't dare. I abandoned my baby girl – the only way I can get through it is that in my daydreams she's living a happy and secure life with people who love her. Otherwise …'

‘What did you do after that?' he asked quickly to distract her.

‘I left Thailand. I went to Europe. I pretended it had never happened. It wasn't too hard, in a way – my whole life became surreal very quickly. The baby began to feel like a strange dream. My nomadic existence became normal. And
the years slipped by. I did lots of different things, went to lots of different places – hell, once or twice I was surprised to find I was beginning to enjoy something. Many times I thought about ending it, often just after an unexpected high, when the low that inevitably came next was all the more crushing. But I had made a promise to Mum and it stuck – something in me felt I owed it to her, I guess.'

‘Or maybe you just didn't really want to die,' he added.

Amy looked taken aback. ‘I wanted to die,' she said.

‘Maybe you just wanted the pain to go away,' he continued. ‘And it was the only way out of it you could think of. But it's not the same thing.'

He could see she had never thought of it like that before. ‘Well,' she said, after a pause, ‘now you know just how evil I am.'

Alex moved closer to her, and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Nothing you've told me has been evil,' he told her. ‘Tragic, yes. But that's all.'

‘I abandoned my baby, Alex,' she said.

‘I know.' He kissed her hair. ‘God, Amy, what you've gone through – it's unimaginable. And I let you down, right from the start. I should have kept you close, helped you to –'

‘I don't feel like that,' Amy interrupted. ‘I've been angry at you, sure – when you walked out of the hospital, I felt I hated you for a while. But I've had a lot of thinking time since, and I understand. It wasn't your fault either, we were both caught up by circumstance. If it hadn't been for the baby, I'm sure I would have come back a lot sooner.'

Alex's heart surged with affection for her as he took in her softly spoken words. ‘Well, everything is changing now,'
he told her. ‘It's going to be okay. I already have a plan for what we should do.'

Amy rested her head on his shoulder as he talked, and together they watched the boats bobbing on the river.

Mark hesitated as he checked the screen on his mobile. He hadn't seen his father since Henry had stormed out of the apartment. Yes, it was pricking at his conscience, but he easily put it to the back of his mind because, first of all, he was getting heaps of work done, and secondly, he'd been spending a lot of time with Chloe.

Finally, they were getting on top of the Abbott research. On Friday, Mark had been intrigued to see Chloe, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, walking hastily into her office and had followed her inside, closing the door behind him.

‘What's going on?' he'd asked, gesturing to her unorthodox officewear.

‘Don't ask,' Chloe had said, shaking her head, but then, as he sat in the chair usually reserved for her clients, she proceeded to tell him what her mother had done the day before.

When she finished, by saying ‘Can you believe her?', Mark had shaken his head.

‘What's wrong with our parents?' he'd asked.

‘God knows,' Chloe said, her own head shaking again in echo of his. ‘I'm worried Mum is losing it, and I can't expect June and George to be responsible for her. But I also can't race up there every time her heart skips a beat and she panics and phones an ambulance.'

‘It could be worse,' Mark said. ‘She could be coming into your office wearing your clothes and trying to take over your cases.'

They'd looked at each other for a long moment, and Mark had laughed first. Chloe quickly followed, and for a moment they revelled in the release of it.

‘God,' Chloe said, reaching for a tissue and blowing her nose. ‘I keep trying to think back over what I've done to have attracted such incredibly bad karma.'

‘Don't waste your time,' Mark said, sobering. ‘None of this is your fault. Sometimes life is just shite, I reckon.'

Chloe looked at him and sighed. ‘Yes, I know you're right. To be honest, I'm fed up with going over and over every thing. I just want to forget about it all for a while and get on with this.' She gestured to her paper-strewn desk.

‘Fancy a working weekend?' Mark suggested. ‘I'm thinking we surprise Neil by actually displaying a certain degree of competency about the Abbott case by Monday morning.'

Chloe had smiled, then nodded. ‘Definitely.'

So they had worked on Friday night, over a Thai takeaway; then all yesterday, stopping only for a deli lunch break, and a fish and chip supper. Mark had slept on Chloe's couch,
and they'd resumed again in the morning. They hadn't talked about anything awkward – certainly not the pregnancy, which Mark was doing his best to pretend didn't exist – it was either the case, or irrelevancies like politics, TV or which films they'd seen recently. By lunchtime there had been an efficient pile of notes, and nothing much left for them to do, so Mark had decided to head back to his apartment, but not before telling Chloe he was taking her out for a meal later.

They were growing closer, he could feel it, and he was revelling in it. He'd never expected to have time alone with her like this again, but in the past week they had established a cajoling, easy banter that he didn't even remember them having the first time around. His chest swelled with happiness whenever he made her smile. He was also boosted by the knowledge that each smile was a small victory over her undeserving husband, proving that Chloe might still be happy without him.

But now the phone was ringing, distracting him from these welcome thoughts, and when he saw who the caller was, it was with the greatest reluctance that he decided he had to take the call.

‘Hi, sis,' he said.

‘Mark,' came his sister's no-nonsense voice down the line. ‘I'm calling a family summit.'

Mark rolled his eyes at her words. ‘Okay, Diane. Still the drama queen, I see.'

‘Well,
you
could try and wait for at least sixty seconds before acting like an arse, Mark,' his sister said in reply.

They'd always been this way. Mark was fairly sure there was a mutual affection hidden under the surface somewhere,
but he'd yet to locate it conclusively. He found his sister curt and condescending, and knew without a doubt that she had exactly the same opinion of him.

‘Go on then, let's hear it,' he said.

‘Well, obviously, it's about Dad,' she replied. ‘And since I know he's been staying with you a lot recently, I'm surprised you haven't been in touch.'

Mark tried not to be riled, but it was a losing battle. ‘What for?'

‘What for?! Well, perhaps because it's bloody obvious from where I'm standing that Dad is having some kind of breakdown, and needs our help.'

‘He's not having a breakdown, he's just – he's just having a rough time.'

‘It's more than that, Mark.'

‘I know, Di,' he said, allowing his exasperation to become evident. ‘He's been lying comatose on my couch for a fair amount of time over the past week.'

‘Exactly. And yet, you didn't think this was a problem.'

‘Jeez, Di, don't play the doting daughter with me. It's not you who's had to put up with him.'

‘Er, actually, he's been in my spare room since Thursday. Not to mention the fact that Mum is on the phone all the time, either pouring her heart out or ranting about divorcing him.'

Mark's heart sank. So that's where he'd gone. He felt pretty awful that he hadn't checked – his father could have been lying dead in a gutter for all Mark knew – but he just didn't want to deal with this. He wasn't even sure why, but recently every time he thought of his dad's troubled,
decrepit face, it made him want to find something solid to hide behind.

‘Di, I don't know. Mum and Dad have never exactly been open to us giving our opinion on things …'

‘Well, it's about time they were, then. They're both being daft. They are completely unsentimental, egotistical idiots, but I can't believe they don't care about each other. It's up to us to bang their heads together.'

Mark snorted. ‘Okay. That's a sight I'm curious to see, if nothing else. What's the plan?'

‘Dad's not going anywhere, he's hardly left the spare room since he got here, and I'm doing far too good a job of waiting on him. Can you bring Mum down one night this week?'

Mark sighed. ‘I guess.' The thought of travelling to southern Kent after work didn't enthral him, but at least now he had confidence that he was back on his game as far as Abbott was concerned. ‘I can't do tomorrow or Tuesday, but maybe Wednesday.'

‘Okay. Your job is getting Mum here. Then we'll stage an intervention.'

‘A what?'

‘A family crisis meeting – we'll force them to confront what's going on.'

‘I can't wait.'

‘Just call me back when you know for sure about Wednesday,' Di said, hanging up.

Mark sighed again as he snapped his phone shut.

Amy ran out of the sea, smiling, water cascading off her smooth skin, and pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes, blinking the salt away. As she walked towards Alex, a wave rose up behind her, only just above the height of her knee, but with enough strength to knock her off balance. She staggered forward, arms in front of her, but righted herself before she hit the sand, and as she did she was laughing. Alex was laughing too as she caught his eye. And there she was again.

His Amy. The one he had fallen in love with all those years ago. The one he saw returning a little more each day.

They were only three or so hours' drive from Perth, but it was as if they had been transported to another world. It seemed to Alex this might be one decision he hadn't got wrong. Although, his plan hadn't started so well – the drive down in the hire car, in the fading afternoon light, had been
through deserted bushland most of the way, and Amy had been so pale he had worried he'd have to turn off course at any moment and find her a doctor.

They had arrived late. To a quiet, darkened resort, an empty reception area, then a girl handing them keys for a villa he had prebooked on the internet only hours earlier, which they had to walk down a pitch-black path to get to. By the time they had unlocked the front door and Alex had turned on the lights, Amy had been white-faced, silent, shaking, her chest rising and falling rapidly, and she'd gone and locked herself in the bathroom for over an hour, while Alex contemplated whether he was really up to this new, pro-active approach.

However, the next morning, when they had woken up to the sounds of the sea and the excited squawking of children and gulls, and headed out for breakfast to find themselves in a beautiful, bustling resort, he knew for sure that his idea had been a good one. Waiting it out here would be a completely different proposition to their small, claustrophobic hotel room in the city. In fact, as the days had gone by, they both seemed almost to have forgotten that they were waiting for anything at all. They had swum, and eaten, and read, and taken walks along the beach. Last night, on one such expedition at sunset, Amy grabbed hold of his hand and held it for just a moment, while Alex thought uneasily of his wife.

When they had first got there, he had used the hotel internet and sent a long email to Chloe. He'd tried to be honest about everything, but had realised as he was typing that there were things he would never be able to explain fully. How could he tell her about his confused feelings for Amy
and ask her to understand? Plus, he couldn't tell her about Amy's revelation regarding the baby; that one really wasn't his secret to divulge. So, even as he pressed Send, he'd felt it was a futile gesture; another way of disconnecting them while trying to bring them closer again. The only way he could really begin to make amends, he had come to realise, was to abandon Amy and go home. The thought nagged at him every time he checked his email. It had been five days and she hadn't replied.

He hadn't had any heart-to-hearts with Amy this week – it had been an unspoken agreement between them. They had talked a lot of baloney, really, about current affairs and other guests in the hotel. Of course, a lot of subjects veered towards uncomfortable territory, but they had both become adept at steering the conversation back on course. And they had been laughing, and teasing one another, and sometimes it had felt like they'd never stopped, and that was killing him.

This time together had made Alex realise how much he and Amy had been robbed by circumstance. Whenever he thought about it, his blood heated up with anger and injustice. He thought about his time with Chloe: Chloe laughing, dancing, cooking at home, heading off to work. He thought about Chloe in her wedding dress. Amy should have had that. If not for the twists and turns of fate, then Amy would have had it all – probably with him. How he wished he could make it up to her.

The sun had begun its descent as he watched Amy lean over him in her bikini, reaching for her towel while dripping water onto him. She had just begun rubbing her hair
when Alex's mobile phone began to trill. The noise stilled her hand.

‘You need to come back,' Detective Thompson said, without preamble, when Alex answered the call. ‘The defence has closed. The jury are about to retire. I don't think they'll be out for long.'

Alex met Amy's eyes. She didn't need him to do anything further for them both to know that this halcyon period was over.