Come Back to Me

by Sara Foster

  She tried to shake the excess water off her umbrella as she took it down, and then walked quickly through the communal corridors of the offices – wondering why she felt so shifty when no one had ever stopped her before and asked to see the contents of the brown paper bag she grasped. She went straight into the toilets, relieved to see the grey cubicles empty, and took out the test.

  Today the blue symbol appeared again, and remained resolutely present.

  Yesterday she had felt ready. It was perfect. The perfect time in her career, now she felt well-established in the practice. The perfect time in her marriage, with everything happy and settled, but probably not averse to an exciting shake-up.

  However, today the thought of being pregnant scared the hell out of her.

  It would be a shake-up all right. Chloe had never had any illusions about the challenges of motherhood, and that was before she had found out that her husband was keeping secrets from her.

  Thinking of this while still sitting on the toilet, holding the white stick in her unsteady hand, Chloe wondered if there were other things she should have paid attention to of the tidbits she’d been fed from Alex’s mother. Catherine Markham was a thoughtful and reserved lady with solemn, soulful eyes, who didn’t automatically volunteer advice and information – which had been a blessed relief for Chloe, given her own mother’s habit of dropping wildly indiscreet or inappropriate remarks into general conversation. When Chloe visited Alex’s family home she loved spending time with his mother as she cooked a big meal in the kitchen. As they peeled sprouts and grated carrots they would sometimes chat, and at other times remained silent. Although sometimes she thought the peace was hemmed with sadness, still, Chloe had had an insight into a different kind of upbringing – one without the manic edge that her mother seemed to bring to any situation along with her inability to shut up, even for a few seconds.

  Now, as she stared at the thin white plastic stick that foretold the biggest life-change she could imagine, she realised that she’d never thought that Catherine Markham might be privy to secrets about Alex that she, his own wife, didn’t know. She wondered if she should ring Catherine up and ask her directly what she knew about Julia, but then, if Alex were in the middle of a steamy affair he would hardly confide in his mother.

  Chloe had always thought of affairs as the worst kind of betrayal, but now she felt that if she discovered Alex and Julia were just having a fling, she might almost be relieved – at least for a few moments before the anger arrived. Whatever that look had been between them, it had seemed much more potent than acknowledgement of an affair, and that frightened her.

  She didn’t know what to think about last night. The whole scenario had been so unreal, and so unlike anything she’d ever encountered with Alex, that now she could hardly believe it had occurred. And Julia was Mark’s girlfriend. How awkward would that make things in the future, if secrets weren’t laid out in the open. She imagined them all at the dinners and law balls and charity events and Christmas parties that would have to be faced together, and once again she saw Alex and Julia’s faces freezing as they looked at one another, and her stomach twisted.

  She stayed seated on the toilet, staring at the stick. Five minutes passed, then ten, and that positive blue symbol wouldn’t go away.

  Yep, she was pregnant all right. But the joy of yesterday had entirely disappeared.

  After Chloe had wrapped up all the evidence and pushed it to the bottom of the toilet bin underneath a variety of detritus, she called the local surgery and made an appointment for Monday morning. She needed to hear she was pregnant from a doctor, not just a little white stick. Then she tried to concentrate on her work for a while, but it was pointless. Eventually, she took a deep breath and went to talk to Mark.

  At his open door she saw he was reading while eating a sandwich. Small pieces of lettuce were scattered over his papers, and as she watched he brushed them absently onto the floor.

  She knocked. ‘Mark?’

  ‘I’m busy, Chloe.’

  God, you can be a self-important prick at times, Mark, she thought to herself. But she bit her lip and said instead, ‘I just need a second.’

  He sighed and looked up. ‘What is it?’

  ‘About Julia…’ She had so many questions she didn’t know where to start.

  Mark was alert at once when he realised she was ready to talk. ‘What did Alex say to you?’

  ‘Nothing as yet,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Nothing? Didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘Not really. He was upset, then my mother called, with her usual impeccable timing…’

  ‘I couldn’t care less how upset he is. What I want to know is What Did He Do to Julia?’

  ‘Why do you think he did something to her?’ Chloe defended, alarmed now. The thought had never crossed her mind. Alex wouldn’t, couldn’t harm anyone or anything, surely. ‘What if she did something to him?’

  ‘I somehow doubt it.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’ Chloe’s patience was suddenly worn paper-thin. ‘Why don’t you just ask her? I certainly don’t intend to interrogate Alex for you. I trust him, Mark – not that I expect you to know about that, of course.’ She couldn’t help the bitterness creeping in and she was infuriated with herself.

  ‘I can’t ask her, Chloe!’ Mark’s voice was oddly pitched. ‘I’ve only got a bloody address, and after last night I hardly feel welcome to pop round. So I expect I’ll never see her again, thanks to your fucking husband. Now, can I eat my lunch in peace?’

  Silently, Chloe headed for the door. She passed Jana on the way back to her office, which was next door to Mark’s, divided only by a small stationery cupboard. The partition walls were useless – you could hear any noise above normal speaking tone, and she knew that the gaggle of secretaries that formed the centre pool in the nucleus of surrounding offices had probably heard that last line, as she was un ceremoniously thrown out. Her cheeks burned, and she avoided looking at them. When she’d closed her own office door, she sat down and took deep breaths.

  Despite the confrontation, Mark’s last words had comforted her. What a fool she was. Why hadn’t she realised that Julia and Mark weren’t necessarily in the kind of relationship he’d made it out to be? If he only had an address and had never been there, things with Julia obviously hadn’t progressed very far. Just because he’d prattled on about her in the few days before their dinner date didn’t mean anything.

  Julia had certainly raced off like a frightened rabbit last night. Maybe she’d taken off completely. If she would just vanish, then maybe they could pretend that last night had never happened.

  Perhaps this should have been a comfort to her, but it wasn’t.

  7

  When Julia opened her eyes it was to cold white light streaming in through the uncurtained window. She’d slept fitfully through the night and for most of the morning, but even in her semi-conscious slumber she couldn’t forget what had happened last night. She could barely remember the journey home. When she had run out of the restaurant and looked at the faces of those around her, she was surprised no one was staring. It was unbelievable that she was convincing amongst them, these strangers – just one of them – so ordinary that they hardly noticed her.

  She kept trying to replay the time she had seen him from start to finish, breaking the few seconds down into milliseconds so she could savour each micro-moment. His head turning to look at her; his expression opening in recognition, then closing a moment later before he lost control and let something out of himself that wasn’t meant to be revealed. His hand automatically reaching towards hers. The warmth of his touch against her fingers, his grip lingering, testing out this new reality, involuntarily preserving the link between them for a short, extended fraction of time. Even before he had released the grip she had wanted him to hold on – it was real to her in a way she had forgotten a touch could be. But he had broken the small tie their fingers had forged, and watching him turn away had been more than she cou
ld bear. She was surprised that she managed to excuse herself; that she hadn’t just evaporated next to the others. Her heart had pounded so hard she’d been sure it was about to break through her chest cavity. It had felt like she was shrinking suddenly, tunnelling down a hole that only she could see, away from everyone and everything.

  It was so unbearably ironic. She hadn’t been back to England for more than a few months in the past ten years, and she and Alex were both from the Midlands, so why he was living here in London she didn’t know.

  Except there was one big reason, wasn’t there.

  His wife. Alex was married.

  She had always imagined that seeing Alex again would be more painful than anything else she could experience. But she had been wrong, because stupidly, stupidly, she had never added Alex’s wife into that equation. It had never occurred to her that Alex could have, would have married. Because Alex already had a soul mate, and he had lost her.

  The thought of him having such incredible intimacy with another woman made it difficult to breathe.

  Chloe. She tried to think back to what Mark had briefly told her about Chloe and Alex before they arrived for dinner. Not much. He had mentioned Chloe’s husband by name, she recalled, but she had never dreamed that it could be her Alex.

  Except it wasn’t ‘her Alex’ any more.

  She grabbed her coat and headed for the door, making her way down the tiny narrow stairway that led from the cramped flat. The carpet was worn and rucked in places, there was no banister and she had already nearly tripped once or twice, so now she rested her hand on the wall as she went. At the bottom she pushed open the half-rotten door of peeling white paint, which opened into a small courtyard, and hurried through, not glancing at the doors to the left and right, which, she’d concluded, from the amount of loud music, shopping trolleys and the smell of pot around the place, must be largely inhabited by students. The little alleyway was a dark oasis of calm, despite its sinister shadows, before she suddenly merged onto a busy street, a teeming multicolour of bicycles, people, umbrellas, buses and taxis all heading in their own directions.

  Head down against the crowds and the rain and the cold, she walked briskly along the road until she saw the orange strip of an internet café. She went in, exchanged coins for a ticket, and took her place at a computer.

  Once logged on she wasted no time in finding a search engine and typing in ‘Alex Markham’.

  The very first page that came up was his website. Her damp cheeks were still stinging from the sudden transition from the cool air outside to the warmth indoors, as she held her breath and went straight to it, looking through the pages, fascinated by the designs she found in front of her. It was like reading a storybook and suddenly skipping forward one hundred pages in an instant. At the last juncture she had known about, Alex had been one of a promising mass of recently graduated graphic artists, but now she suddenly zipped forward so many years to see that he had fulfilled his talent, or at least had begun to. He was doing what he had always wanted to do.

  Anger rose up in her. She had had a passion for journalism a long time ago. She had wanted to do a post-grad course and then throw herself headlong into the profession, making a name for herself on a paper or magazine. Instead, she had spent the past ten years drifting round the world doing odd jobs, not wanting or daring to go home, sending off the occasional travel log from somewhere remote and beautiful, and even more occasionally being contacted by an editor – once or twice even being paid, only to find that most of her articles were simply kept on file and never actually appeared.

  And here was Alex, living his life as though he had never veered from the straight path he intended for himself.

  She clicked on the Biography page.

  Alex lives with his wife in South London. When not designing he likes to indulge himself in travelling, modern-art galleries and fine wine.

  She read the blurb a few times, trying to take it in. The Alex of old did indeed like travelling and art galleries, but she couldn’t remember seeing him drink wine at all.

  And then there was ‘his wife’. She thought back to the pretty-featured girl at the restaurant with her light brown hair tucked casually behind her ears. Chloe had immediately made her feel stiff and formal, with her wide, welcoming smile and easy manner. Not that her relaxed posture had lasted long, once Alex had appeared.

  There was an address on the website and she scribbled it on the back of her internet ticket. Then she clicked back to the search page and typed in ‘Chloe Markham’. There were a few links that were obviously irrelevant, but then one came up under lewisandmarchant.com. Going to that, she found a page containing a picture of the girl she had just conjured up in her memory. Yet in this portrait Chloe’s smile wasn’t the natural one she’d had at the restaurant, and she wore a suit jacket with a white shirt underneath as she sat straight-backed and gazed into the camera lens.

  Julia read the blurb next to the photo:

  Chloe Markham, solicitor, is one of Lewis & Marchant’s rising stars. Qualified for eight years, her specialty is family law, alongside general litigation.

  This wasn’t the kind of information she wanted to know about Chloe. She wanted to find something that could tell her what it was about Chloe that made Alex smile. How they’d met. Where their wedding had taken place. And a million other things.

  Why did he love her?

  She pressed the ‘back’ button, stupidly surprised to see Mark’s face appearing before her. She clicked on his name and idly read the details set out there, noticing that he looked disdainfully handsome in his photo, but not really taking the words in.

  Back at the search page, she typed in ‘Chloe and Alex Markham’ again, just in case, but there was nothing new. She flicked through pages impatiently, wanting more. On the third page that came up there were a couple of quotes from Chloe about legal cases, but nothing interesting.

  While she was there, she plucked up her courage and typed in another name. She held her breath. But, as always, there was nothing.

  She picked up her bag and the ticket she had scribbled on, and marched towards the door of the café, eyeing the address, trying to decide what to do. She passed a phone box and took a lingering look at it, just as she always did. Her father might be dead because of her, but she knew exactly where her mother was. She tempted herself with the uncertain promise of resolution, of redemption even, though the last time they had spoken her mother had been hysterical, threatening to disown her if she didn’t come home. She reminded herself that now her mother might have answers she couldn’t bear to know. Yet each day the desire to pick up the phone increased a little more, in proportion with the conviction that she didn’t want to be found.

  So why, then, had she written down that address on Alex’s website? Was she finally admitting to herself that she needed someone who knew her Before to be in her life – a tenuous link both to who she had been and who she might have become? Or was it simply because she still loved him, despite what had happened in the end?

  She had no idea. She turned away from the phone box, shook her head and moved on. She couldn’t make the call.

  Back at her flat, before she was fully aware of what she was doing, she was kneeling by her rucksack – the only bag she’d arrived with a few weeks ago. She unclipped the top of it and pushed it back, to reveal a zipper hidden on the inside. She unzipped it quickly and pushed her hand into the secret compartment, groping around, pulling out one item at a time until they were all laid pitifully before her on the bedcovers.

  Here were the only three things that really mattered to her.

  The first was a charm on a necklace chain, like those you’d usually find on a bracelet. It was a tiny wishing well, the detail on it astounding: the gabled canopy; the tiny spindle; the coiled rope. A lot of wishes had been cast fruitlessly into the small hollow, far too many for its tiny size.

  The second was a fluorescent patchwork lizard-gecko hybrid about the size of her palm, with splayed fingers a
nd big googly eyes. Sometimes Julia would sit it on her pillow, and each protruding iris seemed to follow her round the room, until she would have to put the duvet over its head for a while just to escape the sense of being watched.

  Lastly, there was a small silver box containing a cutting of short brown hair.

  Although, she realised, there was a fourth item back there too. Something she hadn’t looked at for a long time. Her hand delved into the pocket again, and pulled out a crumpled piece of white paper. There were a few black smudges on there now, where the ink had run since getting wet, but most of it was still legible. She looked over it quickly – was it really ten years since she had first read these words? In the light of the past twenty-four hours it was too painful to dwell on them for long.

  She placed the piece of paper next to the other items and cast her eye over them all as they lay forlornly on the bed. Each one was a reminder of who she had been, which was why there was always an inevitable pang of pain and longing whenever she looked at them. It hadn’t been as difficult as she’d thought to discard the bloodied entrails of her old life – but she didn’t seem to be able to let go of these last things. They seemed so little, but they stood for so much.

  Or perhaps it was that they wouldn’t let go of her, she thought now, fingering each item tenderly, willing with everything she had for the tears to come, to show her that she could still feel something. In fact, surely seeing Alex again like that, out of the blue, had to be a sign.

  That even made her smile slightly. She hadn’t realised she still believed in signs. As she looked down at her nail-bitten fingers, a thought struck her with such velocity that she heard herself gasp.

  What if there had been signs all along, and she had just missed them?