When Alex got back to Amy’s ramshackle flat, he had news for her.
‘There’s a flight this evening, and I’ve reserved us seats,’ he told her.
‘What?’
‘Get packing.’
‘Alex, this is crazy, we can’t just -’
‘Amy, the longer we hang about, the harder it’s going to get. Besides, the court case has been going on for a while. If we don’t go soon it’ll be over.’
‘Alex, will you please call me Julia. And I just don’t know if I can do it.’
He walked over to her. ‘You’re not Julia to me. You’re Amy. And I understand that you’re scared. I do. But you know you want to see these men behind bars. You need to see it. I need to see it, come to that. And this is your chance to have closure. This might set you free.’
He pushed the words at himself as much as her, desperate to believe them.
She looked down at her hands, and just nodded.
They were ready to go by teatime. They rode the tube in silence, steadying their bags against the rocking and jolting carriage, not touching one another. At the airport he tried Chloe’s mobile again but it went through to voicemail. Her voice asking him to leave a message was like a snap of fingers bringing him back to reality.
He hesitated after the beep. ‘Chloe, I’m sorry…’ he began cautiously. He paused again. What could he say? There was so much that needed to be said, he didn’t know where to start. ‘I hope you’re getting my messages. I’d really love to talk to you. I’ll try you again soon.’ He hung up.
Only later did he realise that it would sound fairly obvious from the background noise that he was at an airport. God only knew what she would make of that.
68
Chloe had spent the afternoon at the library, needing to escape the office but wanting to delay heading back to an empty house. As she finished up the day’s paperwork, she knew she wasn’t doing very well. She had started to wander around like a zombie, even simple tasks taking a lifetime, doing everything on automatic pilot. Sometimes, when she’d sat in front of Mikaela’s TV, nibbling on a cracker or sipping tepid tea, she had tried to make herself laugh at the incredulity of the situation.
She would never have suspected that her marriage could be rocked by scandal – it was the kind of thing you read about in the cheap women’s magazines that cluttered the surfaces of waiting rooms: ‘My husband ran off with a stranger’ ‘My husband is a bigamist’ ‘My husband had a secret life’. Pictures of normal-looking, scruffy, smiling men held up by pale, sad-faced women in tracksuit pants. Wedding photos showing people wearing out-of-fashion clothes, and brides with too much makeup, the happy couple separated by a superimposed tear down the middle. Yes, sometimes she could almost laugh about the absurdity of it all, before reality came flooding back.
She had still told no one except Mikaela that Alex had gone. She barely understood herself what had happened, and couldn’t think how to begin to explain it to everyone else. There had just been another message from Alex flashing up on her mobile, and her finger didn’t hesitate on the delete button. She was far too angry and upset to talk to him.
As she gathered up her things ready to go home, her thoughts turned briefly to Mark’s father. No wonder Mark was so ashamed. He didn’t say much when people talked about his dad, but he didn’t have to – she could almost see the hairs on the back of his neck bristle with pride when someone recognised him as Henry Jameson’s son. However, she knew it wasn’t always easy for him – there was a lot to live up to in having the Jameson name, and there seemed to be plenty of disadvantages in going into the same field of work as your parents. Not that Chloe had had any chance of that – her mother was a full-time homemaker, and she hadn’t got a clue what her real father did.
She felt a familial pull towards her brother. She really should call Anthony. He used to be such a large part of her life. They had the same sense of humour and she’d always felt they would be close friends as grown-ups, but since he had moved to America, their relationship had drifted into the territory of polite pleasantries during intermittent phone calls. They’d been to each other’s weddings, but weddings were such huge occasions that you didn’t get time for intimacy unless you were the bride and groom – well, barely even then – and Chloe had felt very strange at Anthony’s, meeting all his Yankee friends and hardly even knowing his bride. Her mother had refused to come, saying she was too ill at the time to travel all that way; but Chloe had thought it was really because she was worried their father might be there. She had wondered the same thing herself, but had stopped looking when Anthony whispered a curt ‘He’s not here’ in her ear as he saw her casting her gaze around. Thank god Alex had been there to hold her hand and make it feel okay.
And so her thoughts were round full circle, back to Alex again.
She stopped off at McDonald’s on the way home. It was her third takeaway in as many days, but cooking for one felt too depressing. As she exited the restaurant, she briefly imagined Alex coming home to find she’d gained a couple of stone and laughed bitterly at the irony. If he took too long she really would have gained that much in baby weight. As she walked, she took a bite of her hamburger and envisioned the baby coming out of her with a spotty face and bad breath. She threw the meal into the next bin she passed.
Once at home, she unpacked the bag she’d taken to Mikaela’s, then put on her tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and headed into the lounge room for a quick blast of mind-numbing TV. On the way she caught sight of a blurry figure stumbling past the hall mirror. She stopped in shock. Edging towards it for a closer look she took in her wild hair and red-rimmed eyes and gasped in surprise. She looked like a ghost, her face so pale that it almost blended into the white wall behind her.
She glanced at the answer phone in the hall. No messages on there today. She didn’t know if that felt better or worse. Then, as she glanced down, she saw Alex’s scrawly handwriting on the memo pad next to the phone and felt herself start. He’d been home? The note said little except that he was looking for her, and he’d signed it with love and kisses. She felt her anger subside a little. She missed him, and wondered where he was.
Perhaps she should take a day off tomorrow, she thought, and phone the hospital to rearrange the ultrasound. She couldn’t face going there alone. She should be going with Alex; it was just too much to contemplate in the glare of his absence. Besides, the Abbott case wouldn’t wait – in fact, she really should fish out the paperwork now and get on with it. She decided the TV viewing would have to come later, and walked into the kitchen to find her briefcase, while idly flicking through the post, just bills and statements, hieroglyphics of numbers marching straight into a black vortex in her brain without even pausing for her to consider them.
All at once she was tired of being cross and miserable. She wanted to break through this impasse with Alex, but she didn’t know how. She thought about the messages he’d left on her mobile and began hunting for her phone in case there was another one.
There was a knock at the door.
It could be Alex, she thought, looking down in dismay at what she was wearing. But then, why would he knock?
All the lights were on, so there was no pretending she wasn’t home. Another knock and she was scurrying down the hall.
When she opened the door she thought at first glance it was Alex, but then the vision coalesced into someone similar but not quite her husband.