Come Back to Me (8 page)

‘Mrs Markham to Doctor Chen's office, please.'

Chloe got up and walked quickly to a bright blue door, knocking once and then opening it when she heard the doctor call, ‘Come in'.

Juliet Chen swivelled round in her chair and gave Chloe a smile. Chloe had only seen Dr Chen a couple of times, mostly for repeat prescriptions, but she was instantly put at ease by the other woman's sympathetic bedside manner.

‘Hello, Chloe,' Dr Chen began. ‘What can I do for you today?'

‘Well,' Chloe paused, ‘I think I'm pregnant.'

‘How wonderful!' The doctor's smile broadened, then she noticed the lack of excitement from Chloe and asked, ‘And are you happy about this?'

‘Yes, yes I am.' Chloe tried to animate her face but her
features were like stiff dough. ‘It's just …' She felt tears prickle her eyelids. ‘It's a difficult time.'

‘Okay.' Dr Chen nodded as though she understood everything. ‘Let's start from the beginning. When was your last period?'

‘About six weeks ago, I think.'

‘You think?'

‘I'm never very regular, and it's always pretty light, so I find it hard to keep track.'

‘Well, I'll take a urine sample in a second.' The doctor moved to glance at her notes, then looked back at Chloe. ‘But I'd just like to do an exam. Is that okay?'

Chloe nodded, and wished away the ensuing five minutes as she lay on the bed while the doctor poked and prodded her. Once she was sitting back down, Doctor Chen turned to her and paused, looking at Chloe intently.

‘You certainly are pregnant, Chloe, but I would say you're quite a bit further on than six weeks.'

‘Really?'

‘I'd say more like nearly four months, judging by the size and shape of your uterus.'

Chloe sat up, incredulous. ‘But I can't be. I've had periods.'

Dr Chen smiled. ‘Don't worry, Chloe. As you say, they've been light, and it does happen with some women. I'm going to get you organised for a scan straightaway, to make sure. But I'd prepare for a baby in about five months, not seven, if I were you. Didn't you notice your stomach changing?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose.' She had noticed the roundness to
her stomach recently. ‘But only in the last week or so, since I've known. I just thought that was what happened.'

‘It does, but normally a little further on than six weeks,' Dr Chen said kindly.

‘But I haven't felt sick at all.'

‘That's a good thing.' Dr Chen smiled, then paused again on seeing Chloe's unhappy face. ‘Is something wrong, Chloe?' She sat patiently, hands in her lap. Chloe wondered if the pose had been taught to her at medical school.

‘It's my husband …' Chloe started, but trailed off, unsure how to explain.

The doctor looked briefly at her notes. ‘Is he unhappy about the baby?' she asked.

Chloe shook her head. ‘He doesn't know.'

If the doctor was surprised she didn't show it, but laid a hand on Chloe's arm. ‘Tell him,' she encouraged. ‘He needs to know, and you need to be taken care of right now.'

Chloe nodded. It wasn't as simple as that, but doctors' sessions usually lasted ten minutes, and if Chloe started pouring her heart out she would be here a lot longer than that. So she just took her referral for the ultrasound and left with a quiet ‘thank you'.

When she got outside she suddenly felt nauseous, as though all the morning sickness she had avoided so far had been stacking up inside her to come in one enormous wave at that moment. She got halfway along the surgery path, then had to lean into some bushes and deposit most of her lunch, thankful that there was no one around to see her.

This was no good. She had to tell Alex about the baby. In fact, it now seemed stupid she hadn't done so already.
Whatever his thoughts about Julia, the idea of being a father would distract him so much that this little hiccup would pale in comparison. Wouldn't it?

Before her thoughts could take hold of her she tried Alex's mobile, but there was no answer. That was weird. He normally picked up when he was working at home.

A jolt went through her as she remembered looking at his phone the night before, and before she could question what she was doing, she was dialling Mark.

Mark was walking out of the office when his phone rang. He reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled it out and flipped it open.

‘Mark, did Alex call you at the weekend?'

Mark heard the sharpness in Chloe's tone and was surprised. ‘Er, yes, he did,' he said, then paused, not knowing how to follow it up.

‘Oh, okay. What did he want?'

She asked it as casually as she could, but the pause that followed was packed with tension, as though she were holding herself still in readiness for his answer. A strange wave of emotion came across Mark, and with some surprise he found himself saying, ‘He dialled me by mistake, it was a five-second call. I don't think Alex and I have all that much to talk about.'

‘No, I don't suppose you do,' Chloe answered, but the
suspicion was still clear in her voice. ‘Okay, then. Thanks.' And she was gone.

Mark made his way out, thinking of the restaurant last Thursday: Julia's obvious distress, Chloe's blatant innocence as to what was going on; and Alex's shocked face. Then he remembered the man's haughty voice on the phone at the weekend.

Why should he bloody well get away with it? Anger rose in him, crushing every other thought, and he turned back. He pushed open his office door, pulled out the rumpled piece of paper from his desk drawer, and marched into Chloe's room, flinging the miserable scrap on to the table. He borrowed a biro to annotate it.

‘
I think this was what Alex wanted
,' he wrote, the pen scratching out every word. ‘
I'll leave it up to you whether he gets it or not
.'

Alex was exhausted. As he tussled with each waking minute, a dark-haired wraith-woman paced the corners of his mind, darting out before him then back to the shadows again before he could stop her. In his dreams the night before she had been there too, wearing a vest top and a short skirt with thick ugg boots, her back to him, walking fast. Although he was running, lungs stinging with gasped oxygen, he could not close the gap. He had cried her name, but she gave no sign she had heard him. Then fog descended around them and she disappeared.

By the time he had got up, Chloe was gone, just a note from her on the table telling him she had an early meeting at work and signed with a ‘C' – love and kisses conspicuously absent. He had tried not to read anything into that, but who was he kidding?

He thought about ringing her. At work she was invariably
with clients or colleagues, however, so she would hardly want him to start pouring his heart out. He felt terrible that he hadn't come home until the early hours. He'd ended up finding a panicked Jamie at his local police station, his brother having locked himself out of the house. Not only had they and a helpful constable had to break into Jamie's flat, but then he'd had to stay with his brother until he'd calmed down enough for Alex to be sure he'd be safe on his own. Looking out for Jamie could be a thankless and depressing task at times, but his parents relied heavily on him to do so. It was they who had decided to buy Jamie a flat close to Alex when their younger son had insisted on moving out. Thinking back, Alex couldn't ever remember a conversation where he'd agreed to this responsibility, but it seemed to have been handed to him anyway.

Frustrated, he tried to turn his mind to his work, relieved he didn't have anything urgent today. Making his way through the house, he simultaneously began to effect the mental transition from home to work mode. It was a relief to get down to the cellar, which also functioned as his office and was one of his favourite places. Everything there was set up and streamlined so he could get through the maximum amount of work in a day – working for himself, time really was money. He'd put strip lighting in there, but it rarely went on; instead, spotlights and desk lights illuminated his work space, as well as his top-of-the-range Apple Mac, the machine he spent most of his days in communion with. The walls were peppered with the works of some of his favourite artists – including plenty of Dali and Magritte, a couple of Rousseau's jungle scenes, and a particularly large print of
L'Ange du Foyer
by Max Ernst – the latter always causing him to smile when he remembered Chloe's expression the time he'd suggested putting it up in the lounge. As the house was an old-fashioned one, there was a tiny strip of window at the very front of the room, which allowed a snippet of a view of the front pathway. It was quite grimy on the inside, and Alex had decided that, since cleaning it would involve moving Apple Mac, desk and god knew how many wires to allow access, it would stay that way for quite some time.

As he switched on the computer, the whir of it coming to life was drowned out by the buzz of his fractious mind. He needed to talk to Chloe … and to Julia … He was still fuming from his conversation with Mark yesterday morning, when the arrogant wanker had not only been utterly unhelpful, but had sworn at him and hung up.

Wearily, he turned to his work. There were about half a dozen emails waiting, two of which involved current jobs. When he had quit his in-house job at ArtSpace he had anticipated some time out, and then going back into the fray – never this. It had been Chloe who encouraged him to resign, seeing how unhappy he was with the office politics and backstabbing, which for most people seemed to take up a far larger part of the day than design work. There had been constant frayed nerves and speculation over the next round of redundancies; and an endless succession of ‘bright young things' coming in, impetuous and overconfident in their abilities to transform the company, quickly becoming bitter and twisted as they morphed unwillingly into the status quo.

Then one of his clients from ArtSpace – Jed Morenzo, who he would thank forever – had put Alex in touch with an
associate. Although Jed's company was tied to ArtSpace and they were disappointed that Alex was no longer working on their account, they had loved his designs enough to show them around, and from that one recommendation things had snowballed. Every now and again he put an ad in one of the trade presses, but for the most part his work evolved through word of mouth – the very best form of advertising there was, and, best of all, the only one that was free. He did some posters, bits of marketing material, but enjoyed logo design the most. He loved getting to grips with the essence of a company and trying to sum it up so that their vision shouted out from a small, often abstract motif. One of his proudest moments had been having his work featured in
HOW
magazine – at that point he'd finally begun to think he was getting places.

Now, he replied to those emails he could deal with straight away, and checked his schedule for the week. He had only two meetings with clients, both on Wednesday, so the rest was design time. Yet he had a feeling that the week wasn't going to go very well. As he flicked open his web browser he started typing a name in, hoping against all odds that something would come up.

He spent twenty minutes on this. There was nothing new.

There was only one more thing to try. He picked up his phone and dialled the number, hoping he'd still got the right one.

‘Kelly, it's Alex,' he said when a female voice answered.

‘Alex? Alex! Bloody hell, mate, long time no see!'

He immediately felt guilty that he was ringing her after all this time with a purpose other than one related to their
old friendship. He asked her how she was and they chatted for a while, and he was just wondering how to ask the question when she said, ‘Do you want me to do another search on Amy?'

He felt a surge of warmth for Kelly for making this so easy for him, as well as guilty that he hadn't kept up contact. But it had been too painful, when he had returned from Australia on his own, to talk to joint friends from their carefree uni days about what had happened. Contact had drifted off until it became Christmas cards, if anything.

‘Can you?' he asked.

‘Al, it'll take me one sec. Hang on.' There was a short pause, then, ‘Nothing new, I'm afraid. Still listed as missing. Hold on a sec, there's a note on her file, though. Let me check it.' Another pause, longer. ‘Jeez, Al, it seems there is something new on here, after all.'

He listened to what Kelly had to say, his heart pounding harder with every word she uttered, clenching his fists as the old memories and the anger returned.

‘And Amy doesn't know this?'

‘I wouldn't know, Al, but we don't often get missing persons ringing up asking after themselves.'

‘Of course,' he said, feeling stupid.

‘It's all over the Australian news,' Kelly continued. ‘Just look on the Net.'

‘Yes, but even if she's seen it she might not realise it's possibly connected to her,' Alex said, thinking aloud.

There was a pause on the line. ‘Al, has something happened? You know, if you've heard from her then we need to know. Her family will still be suffering.'

‘I haven't,' he told her quickly, hating himself for lying. ‘I was just reminded of her the other day, and I realised I haven't called for a while, and felt a bit guilty, I guess. I still hope …' He trailed off. He didn't want to weave himself into a growing lie any more than he had to.

‘We all do, Al,' Kelly said gently. ‘We all do.'

As soon as he had hung up, Alex logged on to the web and began flicking through news articles with growing shock, printing out everything he could find. The need to locate Amy and tell her the news became more pressing with every article he read. Eventually his work head and his emotions had a gentleman's handshake that he would concentrate for a couple of hours and get lots done, and then he would think about how to find her. Since it looked like Mark would rather actively hinder him than help, he would have to do it another way.

Having made a short-term decision he began to get into his work. Before he knew it his stomach was growling, and a quick glance at the clock told him it was after eleven.

He was leaning back in his chair, studying the design he was currently manipulating on screen, when he heard a noise outside. Footsteps. He glanced up at the long, thin, rectangular window, and saw a pair of scruffy suede boots, the kind with no heel and a thick woollen lining, pass by.

He didn't recognise the boots, but his heart did a bungee dive inside his ribcage as he understood for certain just who they belonged to.

He jumped up and moved quickly to the window to get the best glimpse he could, even then doubting his own conclusion, wanting to double check. The boots were outside
the front door, and he waited for the sound of the doorbell, but it didn't come.

He was holding his breath, watching this pair of feet, half-joyous, half-terrified that she had found him.

And then the boots moved. Past the window, quickly, as though their owner had had serious second thoughts about where she was. And that movement catapulted him into action.

‘Fuck!' he yelled, and rushed to the stairs, taking them two at a time, fumbling with the catch of the cellar door at the top, rounding the doorpost, down the long hallway, grabbing his keys off the hall table – every movement taking forever – and unlocking the front door. Even though it was still wet outside from the intermittent rain, he raced down the path in his T-shirt and slippers, feeling the water seeping through his flimsy footwear, but not caring. He ran into the road in a panic.

They lived on a street of large terraced houses set back from the wide road, with old horse chestnut trees standing guard at periodic intervals either side. The paving stones were uneven, and most people had some kind of hedgerow built up at the front to discourage intruders or busybodies. Alex took all this in, all those places to hide, all those places she might be. Surely she was close. He looked around wildly for anything that might betray where she was, but it was quiet. He was about to shout her name, when he heard a woman's voice.

‘Are you okay?'

It was Esther, from the house opposite. On her way to collect her son from nursery. Wrapped up for the weather, in
long coat and gloves, and doing a swift appraising top-to-toe of him, her face clouding with worry as she did so.

Alex gulped back the cry in his throat, and ran his fingers through his hair, attempting to intimate some level of composure. But he couldn't. ‘Did you see a woman, just now, in the street?' he jabbered. ‘Wearing boots, suede boots?'

He could see Esther trying not to look disturbed at this strange question. She and Chloe were quite friendly when they saw one another, and she was obviously mentally computing that he wasn't referring to his wife.

‘I didn't, I'm sorry,' she said politely, but with a little more restraint in her voice. She looked unsure of him now. ‘Sorry, Alex,' she said, moving to her car. ‘I've got to dash, Nathan will be waiting.'

‘No problem,' he replied, trying to smile normally but feeling his face crease up oddly. Esther gave him a quick, tight smile back, confirming to him that he was looking more like a lunatic than a friendly neighbour, and got in the car, firing the engine quickly and waving without looking as she drove down the street.

Once she was gone he took a few more glances left and right. Nothing.

‘FOR GOD'S SAKE,' he bellowed, not giving a shit any more if the whole neighbourhood decided to watch. ‘COME OUT IF YOU'RE THERE. PLEASE!'

Silence. The only things moving in the street were flimsy branches on the skeletal trees.

She had been so close for a few moments, and now she was gone again, and for how long he didn't know. Maybe forever.

As he trudged back inside, frustration making his head throb, he heard his phone ringing downstairs. He reached it just in time to see ‘Chloe' on the small screen, and was frozen in indecision until it went silent.