by Sara Foster
Julia was simply one of them.
Isn’t it fair enough that he never told me about her if he had not foreseen her intruding into our lives?
Perhaps, she said to herself. But the point was that now she had, and for that reason Chloe felt she deserved an explanation.
She thought of all the things they’d shared. Alex’s frustrations with his parents and brother. Chloe’s confusion about her own early life – her mother always changed the subject when she asked about her real father, saying the divorce was messy and he’d cut off contact with the children soon afterwards. When her brother had moved to America, Chloe knew he had hopes of finding their dad, but so far she’d heard nothing, and now Anthony seemed to avoid the subject as well. She didn’t want to live like that, tiptoeing through life as though it were a minefield of secrets.
I’ll talk to Alex when I get home, she decided. Once we’ve had a chance to get showered and changed and we’re sitting down for the evening. Then we can have a nice long talk, and I can try to get to the bottom of what’s bothering him before I tell him about the baby. After all, she reassured herself, delaying that announcement for a day or so was of little consequence if it meant the difference between it bringing them closer together or pushing them further apart.
For the rest of the journey Chloe struggled to sleep with the radio blaring. Alex’s eyes never wavered from the road. When their house finally came into view, she breathed heavily with relief. Not long now, and it would all come out. She wasn’t letting him put her off any more.
She rushed to get changed when they came in. She turned the shower taps on and stood inert as warmth poured onto her, restoring some desperately needed vitality. She pressed her hands against her stomach, trying to picture a microscopic baby in there. Trying to imagine herself standing there in seven or eight months’ time, hands over the same skin, vastly distended by a growing baby. It was impossible to believe she would be a mother soon. What kind of mother was she going to make? Would her child grow up as she did, feeling mainly sadness when it thought of its family, or feeling duty-bound to drive 500 miles over a weekend to see a parent it couldn’t really relate to in any way, shape or form?
Could she raise a happy child?
Would she raise it with Alex, or was that doomed too, just like her own parents’ relationship? Perhaps her mother had once stood in the shower, drowning in her own fears while the water poured over.
Doubts began to flood over Chloe. Briefly, she thought of abortion. Then Alex would never need to know. Possibilities streamed through her brain, but she knew that, regardless of what happened with Alex, she wanted this baby. It’s just this wasn’t how she’d imagined feeling on finding out her first child was on its way.
It was no good. She needed to talk to Alex now, and put this thing behind them before her fears gained too firm a grip on her.
As Chloe grabbed a towel, she heard the telephone ring and Alex pick up. His voice downstairs was muffled, and she thought there was an edge to it.
She had dried herself and was beginning to towel her hair when he walked into the bedroom. She looked up and caught his eye, then he turned and grabbed his keys from the dresser.
‘I’m really sorry, Chlo, it was Mum – I need to go and check on Jamie, he’s not answering his phone and she’s worried.’
‘Now?’ she asked. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but her heart sank at the timing. She knew that Jamie’s parents were pleased their two sons were living close to one another, so that Alex could keep an eye on his taciturn and solitary younger brother, but it meant Alex often had to deal with the fallout from Jamie’s unpredictability.
Alex’s face was dark with what looked like anger. He sighed. ‘I know, it’s not ideal, but what can I do?’
It was Chloe’s turn to sigh. She looked at her feet and nodded. After a weekend spent indulging her mother she had little right to complain if Alex’s family needed him.
He made for the door, and shouted from beyond it, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
The front door banged shut behind him seconds later. Chloe was left frozen, one hand holding the hairbrush, the other tightly gripping a soggy towel. Now he had gone she struggled to stay rational. What if that had been an excuse? What if he were avoiding her? Avoiding any extra time with her when she might ask him questions he didn’t want to answer? Perhaps he was really going to see Julia…
She dashed to the phone and called Jamie’s mobile. No answer. Then his home number. Nothing. She slowly straightened, making sure she didn’t catch her own eye in the bedroom mirror, and picked out her comfy tracksuit bottoms and a fleecy top, throwing them on rapidly and running downstairs. She then chopped a mountain of vegetables and threw them one by one into a hissing and spitting wok, stirring the mixture and making sure that the sizzling noise was the only thing she let past the perimeters of her thoughts. Once she had a bowl of steaming food, she turned the telly on, volume high, and munched and stared, munched and stared. Every now and again she let her gaze wander to the clock on the wall, and small calculations would flutter through her head.
She remained rooted to the spot for the rest of the evening, not daring to move lest the protective spell she’d woven around herself be broken.
15
Mark had spent all Sunday trying to concentrate on work, reading through notes so he’d be ready for court tomorrow. His mind kept wandering to the inordinate number of people who had annoyed him lately. He was fed up with the lot of them.
However, as the evening went on he’d felt his anger towards his mother softening, and he’d picked up the phone.
‘No,’ she had sniped upon hearing his query, ‘there’s no word, Mark. I’ll tell him to call you if he returns any time this century. He’ll be needing a good divorce lawyer.’
‘I don’t do family litigation,’ Mark snapped back.
‘I was thinking of Chloe, not you,’ his mother retorted.
‘Look, Mum, I know you’re angry -’
‘Oh, you do, do you, Mark? Well, as your father always says, you are extremely intelligent, since you take after him. And perhaps you’re even a little bit psychic too, if you know just how I’m feeling right now.’
‘Mum, for god’s sake, I’m just trying to help.’
‘Just leave me alone then,’ Emily Jameson had shrieked, and the line had gone dead, leaving Mark bristling with pent-up fury.
He gave up on reading his case notes and went out to buy something to eat, musing over another case coming up this week, where he had mixed feelings about the middle-aged policeman they were representing. Returning to his apartment block, he cursed the maintenance man who had stuck an orange cone in front of the ground-level lift. It was getting late and he just about had time to eat the take away he’d bought before he’d need to get to bed in order to be on top form for work tomorrow.
When he reached his front door he fumbled around for his key, dropping it twice before he made it inside. He flung the takeaway box onto the kitchen top then decided to have a quick shower before eating. He marched through his bedroom into the ensuite bathroom and turned on the taps.
It was amazing how a spell in his high-pressure shower with the taps turned up as hot as he could stand could lift his mood and reinvigorate him. He emerged back into his bedroom from within a cloud of steam, towel wrapped around his waist, and went to the kitchen to re-heat his Thai meal. His mind was clearing, beginning to focus on what he needed to get ready for tomorrow. For starters, he had to talk to Chloe about the Abbott case before Neil got to them both, as he was completely out of touch and was praying that Chloe had got around to doing more than he had so far. Neil had warned them that the media would be all over them when the time came, and Mark had not had the experience of fending off a whole tribe of journalists during a case – the odd court reporter didn’t quite compare with what was threatening to develop here.
Perhaps he should read the papers in his bag now, he thought, as the microwave announc
ed with a ping that dinner was ready. He collected his meal and, still clad only in a towel, got his papers out of his briefcase and began to read.
He was at the bottom of the first page when the doorbell rang. He cursed loudly – it was the last thing he needed, and who the hell was it anyway at this time? – then stalked across and flung the door open, to find the concierge had let a sodding tramp upstairs. ‘Jesus,’ he said to the sight that greeted him, eyeing the unbrushed, unwashed grey hair, the patchy stubble of silver beard, the untucked, half-open shirt, dirty trousers and only socks where shoes should be. And it wasn’t just his vision getting assaulted – his nostrils were on high alert as well.
Then he looked at the face again, closer. His disdain turned to horror as he found himself staring at a twilight-world version of his esteemed father, Henry Jameson.
Mark would have liked longer to gather himself, as his head was spinning, but after a few seconds’ delay his dad lurched to the door and over the threshold, falling towards him. Mark instinctively put out his arms to help him upright, but instead found himself unexpectedly required to support most of the weight of a sixteen-stone man and, unable to do so, staggered back inside the apartment where they fell in a heavy, painful heap to the floor. Mark felt his wrist jar awkwardly as he hit the ground with it trapped underneath his father’s chest.
They both lay there in silence, until the ting of the now functioning lift alerted Mark to the fact they were in full view of the corridor. As fast as he could he pushed his dad off him and was at the front door, slamming it shut. He looked down and saw he was naked; his towel still half-trapped under his father.
Mark had never been required to reverse roles with Henry before. Surveying the crashed-out heap of parenthood at his feet, he found himself thinking of cases he’d come across where children would come home to find parents passed out from some kind of excess. He suddenly understood as never before the burden of responsibility such children were forced into. Some of them were still babies themselves, and he’d read about them dutifully providing comfort to a needful father or mother. Now here he was, in his thirties, faced with the same predicament, and he had absolutely no idea what to do.
After a few moments, with his father out cold on the hallway floor but quite obviously breathing, Mark stepped over him, threw on some clothes, and then went back to his cooling microwave meal while he tried to figure out what to do next.
16
Four a.m., and Chloe was wide awake.
Alex had got home an hour ago and slipped into bed silently beside her. Neither of them had tried to talk or even to touch one another. Now a soft yellow glow from the streetlight filtered in through the curtains, making his sleeping face just visible to her. She could still remember lying in bed awake like this before, newly married, enthralled by the sleeping person by her side who she could now call ‘husband’. She’d traced the contours of his face with her eyes: his soft skin; the dark stubble that appeared almost immediately after he shaved. It drove him mad, but she loved the tousled look he took on with the shadow of a beard forming. It was the informality of it – the contrast to the men she met at work with fresh red nicks on their faces daily, and ties strangling their bulging Adam’s apples. Alex never did up the top button of a shirt unless he absolutely had to.
Now, as she looked at his face, she had the urge to slap him. It seemed that all the solidity they had built; the foundations of their relationship, their marriage, which they had painstakingly erected and climbed up together, could be brought down in an instant by nothing more than a short, sharp pull from a third party.
Chloe’s mind was hastily replaying scenes from the past, re-evaluating them in the light of the last few days and hating what she saw there afresh.
They’d met on the underground during that strange time during Christmas and New Year when everyone seemed to move in a dream, suspended in the twilight of the year, waiting for the turn of the calendar. She had come back from the Lake District early, thankful for the excuse that she had to go into work to finish some case notes, and had perched on one of the uncomfortable metal seats at Holborn to read while she waited, the platform thronged with red-nosed people, wool scarves wound tightly around necks, everyone desperate to jump on a train and make their way home. Chloe had gone past the point of jostling with other people and standing staring at sweaty foreheads, struggling to find a hand-hold to steady herself. She preferred to wait until there was a comfortable amount of space, and always walked to the ends of platforms, knowing the carriages were emptier there. Then, that day, Alex had come up to her.
‘Excuse me?’
She’d looked up to see an attractive man with wavy brown hair and a slight frown watching her.
He paused for a moment, seeming to release a frosty breath, looking at her curiously, then asked, ‘May I sit down?’
‘Of course.’ She moved slightly, not that it was necessary as there was plenty of space. She wondered where he was from – not London if he felt the need to ask to sit; when you travelled the tube every day such politeness disappeared quickly.
He sat down, and she tried to resume her book, though she was still aware of him next to her. She felt like she should say something, but didn’t know what, then he’d got there before her.
‘Good, isn’t it,’ he’d said to her. ‘I could hardly put it down.’
She’d looked up from her book. She was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, and every time she took the book from her bag she grimaced at the irony of the title. She was so busy with caseloads she barely went out any more. Startled, she said, ‘Yes, it’s a beautiful book.’ She looked down at the cover, then at the packed platform, just as someone trod on her toes in their effort to find a pocket of space in which to wait. She winced, and added, ‘Sometimes one hundred years of seclusion sounds quite tempting.’
He’d laughed. ‘Indeed. Well, don’t let me stop you!’ He’d gestured to the open pages.
So Chloe had turned back to the book, but had failed to read another sentence, now acutely aware of him perched next to her. Although she was no longer looking at his face, it had imprinted itself on her mind – his laughing brown eyes, and the kind smile.
Each time a train came they’d both leapt up. Each time they were at the back of a queue of people, who all pushed and fought their way on. Each time the doors closed before they could make it on themselves she had felt relief that they were both still there.
The first few times they didn’t acknowledge one another. But as they sat back down for the fourth time, they finally caught each other’s eyes, and laughed.
‘I hate fighting my way on when it’s packed,’ Alex said. ‘Do you fancy getting a coffee while it thins out a bit?’
He’d asked it in a leisurely manner – too leisurely really; Chloe could hear the nervousness in his voice. The last thing she’d wanted at the time was a man in her life: not only was she always manically busy at work, but she was having a lot of fun with her girlfriends and enjoying the freedom of it all. Yet Alex had a smile that drew you to him, and she found herself saying yes, and not only going to a coffee house but to a restaurant and then a wine bar, before finally heading home as the first wisps of midnight snow floated around her, with a smile on her face and the faint impression of a first kiss still hovering on her lips.
He had phoned her often from that point – not too much or too little, but enough to make sure she knew he was keen. And she responded in kind, loving the laughter that seemed to come easily when they were together; their enjoyment of simple things, such as a walk in the park; feeling that she didn’t need to be something other than herself to make an impression on him – that he saw past suits and makeup and job titles and salary, straight into the core of her.
As Chloe lay awake, she wondered whether she had ever seen into the core of him, or if she had been so wrapped up in being appreciated herself that she had forgotten to look properly at Alex, to see if she could penetrate his own outer shell and glimpse his hea
rt. She thought she had, but now…
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and crept quietly downstairs. In the kitchen the table was covered with newspapers, coins, a Blockbuster card… and Alex’s mobile phone.
She snuck over to it, feeling like a criminal. They had never felt the need to check each other’s texts or emails, or open each other’s post. They voluntarily shared all the details of their lives without the other having to go over them beforehand.
However, all that had changed in the past few days, Chloe thought grimly. And it had not been of her doing.
She pressed the tiny buttons and the screen lit up. As she went to text messages and scrolled through, she breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing in there apart from various short messages from friends – mostly about football. There were no hidden love-notes or secret expressions of rediscovered longing.
Yet she still couldn’t stop. She went into the phone book stored on the SIM and scrolled through the numbers. There was nothing in J except for ‘Jamie’ – Alex’s brother.
Her mind was already beginning to succumb to tiredness, soothed by the knowledge that her fears were unfounded. The buttons bleeped quietly under her fingers as she tried to get back to the screensaver picture of her and Alex. She found herself looking at his call log, and quickly scanned the numbers. Apart from calls to her, most were to clients, and there were a couple to Jamie. But there was one number that stood out. It was not converted from digits to a name, therefore obviously not a regular contact. He’d called it less than twenty-four hours ago.
Chloe’s heart fluttered as she stared at it. There was something familiar about it. She checked her own phone, and moments later, knew who it was.