Mark moved into the hallway in a daze. He walked calmly upstairs, finished getting dressed, and grabbed the rest of his things. He heard his mother’s brisk movements in the kitchen, and various crashes of china, pots and pans. Suddenly he was infuriated. He felt his heart harden, and he marched downstairs, banging the front door shut loudly without looking back.
As he walked down the drive he used his mobile to phone a taxi. Ten minutes, the man said. Mark leaned against the gate, trying to shut out his parents’ troubles. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d waited here – probably not since the school bus collected him en route to the high school, when he’d hope that Stuart Gaskell and David Tamworth were in a good mood and might give him a day off the constant goading and ear flicking and skin pinching that was their forte. Now, at the memory of them, he almost smiled. He hadn’t thought about them for such a long time – yet their pettiness had once been the sum of his concerns.
His mobile phone began to trill. Mark looked at the phone but didn’t recognise the number.
‘Mark Jameson,’ he announced as he answered it.
‘Mark, it’s Alex,’ came the voice. ‘Sorry to ring you on a Sunday…’
Mark felt irritation well up in him at the same time as disappointment crushed against his chest. He hadn’t realised how much he’d hoped it would be his dad, calling to explain what the hell was going on.
‘… I just wondered if you have a number for… Julia,’ Alex was saying as Mark tried to refocus on the voice in his ear. ‘… I need… I would like to contact her.’
I just bet you would, Mark thought. Alex’s tone might have been polite, but it came across as condescension marked with disdain. The smug bastard already had Chloe, and now he was muscling in on the one woman whose recent presence had pierced through Mark’s general lethargy towards the opposite sex.
‘Alex…’ he cut in.
‘Yes?’
‘Go to hell,’ Mark growled as he snapped the phone shut.
14
‘Why were you so upset last night, Chlo?’
That’s what Chloe had been waiting to hear – in the car on the way home from June and George’s; in her mother’s guest bedroom surrounded by primrose wall paper; at breakfast the next morning when her mother left the room. She was still waiting, and they were in the car only half an hour from home. If he could only have asked the question she would have blurted out exactly why. She was desperate to talk, but as Alex commented on petrol prices, roadworks, her mother’s back garden (‘very overgrown, considering she’s in the gardening club – it could be so nice’) her growing anger began to form knots in her stomach. She put a protective hand on her abdomen.
She winced every time she remembered Alex’s dismissive comments last night. How could she tell him about the baby now, knowing that he would be disappointed and upset – so far from the overjoyed reaction she had previously pictured. Okay, so it wasn’t planned, as such, but they had talked about children and always agreed they would love to have them someday.
The Alex that Chloe had seen in the past few days was becoming less and less recognisable. She could have sworn she knew her husband inside out, but now doubts had begun to plague her. How many secrets does he have? Do I know him at all? She tried to think about the skeletons in her closet – not that there were many – the things she’d deliberately never told Alex. Like the time Mark had tried to kiss her after a work evening out a few months before her wedding. She hadn’t told Alex as she thought it would just cause trouble, and she’d handled it. And Mark had been steaming drunk. Besides, all people have such secrets, she consoled herself. And Alex must have them too.
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.