69
Amy had begun to doze while Alex was in the toilet, but when he came back he woke her up, flinging himself into his seat.
‘What?’ she said, surprised.
His eyes were two bullets of frustration as he looked at her.
‘Nothing,’ he answered crossly.
‘Al.’ She put a hand on his leg and he brought his own hand across as though to move hers off, but then paused and patted it instead. He leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long sigh.
‘I have no fucking idea what I’m doing,’ he said loudly.
The woman across the aisle from him, a toddler on her lap, turned to glare at them for a moment.
Under her breath, Amy said, ‘Great, thanks,’ feeling tearful.
Alex was still staring at the ceiling of the plane. ‘Oh, for god’s sake, don’t jump to conclusions about what I mean.’
Her tearfulness turned to anger. ‘Well, if you don’t want to be here…’ she hissed.
Alex turned to her, looking irritated. ‘What? What, Amy? What should I do? Just parachute out of the plane, and set my course back to England? I think I’m pretty well committed to being here, don’t you?’
Now the woman in the aisle was openly staring at them, alarmed. Amy turned away and leaned against the window. ‘Just get some sleep, Alex,’ she said over her shoulder.
He looked at her sadly but didn’t reply.
70
‘Mark, are you sure you don’t want to talk about your dad?’
Mark’s lips formed a sudden dam against the wine that sloshed back into his glass. ‘No, he’s fine,’ he said irritably, putting his glass down, rocking back on the chair and looking at Chloe, sensing there was more to come.
‘He didn’t look very good earlier on,’ she said tentatively. ‘Do you think you should have left him?’
‘Chloe, this afternoon it’s been one long marriage-guidance session at my place. My parents are just pathetic. Their relationship is more like that of business partners than a married couple – I realised on the way here that they don’t communicate, they transact. Neither of them will talk properly to the other, they’re just locking horns like a pair of fighting stags. Mum left in a huff an hour or so before I did, then I watched Dad count out four sleeping tablets and wash them down with whisky, which he had to go and buy himself since I’ve hidden the small stash of my booze he hasn’t got through already. I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere for a while, and I fancied chatting with someone who’s a bit more than semi-conscious tonight.’
Chloe looked riled at his supercilious tone. ‘Charming – I’m so glad you picked me,’ she said as sarcastically as she could muster.
‘You’re welcome,’ he replied, lifting his glass to his mouth and tipping his head back while he took an enormous slug of wine.
‘So, what’s going on with Alex?’ he asked, eyeing her carefully. ‘When’s he coming back?’
‘Soon,’ she said. But she had paused a fraction too long before answering.
‘Soon?’ He raised a prosecutorial eyebrow. Like a fox at a rabbit hole, he was scenting just how close he was to trapping her.
‘Mark, don’t,’ she began, her voice cracking slightly as she said it.
Various sarcastic comments ran through Mark’s mind, but then he leaned forward, took her hand, and said, ‘What’s going on, Chlo?’
She looked startled by the sudden intimacy of his gesture. His hand held hers, steadily, and he waited. Her mouth twitched a few times before she eventually answered with a bleak, ‘I don’t know.’
‘I presume it’s all to do with Julia?’ he asked, leaning in to her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Have you seen her?’ Mark could hear the begging note in her voice, the desperation for any information he might impart.
‘Not since I saw her here last week,’ he said grimly.
Chloe cracked. ‘Well, it appears her real name might be Amy. Jamie just told me. What the hell is all that about? Apparently, she was attacked while they were together.’ Chloe had been toying with the stem of her wineglass, but now picked it up quickly and took a large gulp. ‘I just don’t know what to think,’ she said. ‘It was only a week ago, that awful night at the restaurant. Just a week. Some beautiful ex-girlfriend turns up out of the blue and my husband is immediately doing her bidding.’
‘I don’t think you’ve got that quite right, Chloe,’ Mark said, wondering why the hell he was allowing Alex any leeway.
‘Go on then,’ she demanded. ‘How does it appear to you?’
‘Like there’s a lot we don’t know,’ he suggested. ‘But any fool can see Alex loves you.’
‘Really?’ Chloe asked pathetically.
Mark tried to hide his grimace. ‘Really.’
‘God, but why couldn’t she be twenty-five stone and covered in boils? Why did she have to be so stunning?’
‘You’re stunning.’ The words were out before Mark thought about them. He tensed. But Chloe didn’t take it quite the way he thought she might. She laughed.
‘Yeah, right.’
Mark didn’t want to repeat himself but nor did he want to let it drop. So he said, ‘Of course you are. In fact, I was just looking at that photo,’ he gestured to their wedding picture, ‘and thinking that you look quite a lot like Julia there… when your hair was longer…’ He trailed off.
Chloe’s face had blanched.
‘What?’ Mark asked warily. ‘What did I say?’
71
Chloe stared at Mark, dumbfounded. She was remembering all too clearly.
He thought I was her. At the station. When we first met.
She could picture his face quite clearly: tentative, hopeful recognition quickly replaced with politeness.
He thought I was her.
Oh my god. What was she, really, to Alex? Just a second-string replacement in the absence of his one true love?
Mark had rushed round to her chair. ‘Chloe, what is it?’
She pushed him away blindly. ‘Nothing.’
‘Jesus, I thought you were going to faint. Here -’ He ran over to the tap and got her a glass of water, came back and placed it in front of her. Meanwhile, Chloe stared at the wedding photograph on the shelf, her favourite photo becoming an image of the two of them smiling like imbeciles while stupidly clinking glasses.
Was he thinking of her on our wedding day? When I walked down the aisle, did he pretend it was her until I came into sharp focus?
Was nothing real?
‘Chloe, please talk to me,’ Mark was saying, squatting down beside her chair. ‘You’re freaking me out.’
‘I think I just need to have some more wine,’ Chloe said, pouring herself a generous top-up, putting the baby right to the back of her mind.
This obviously signalled to Mark that she was coming out of her reverie, and he went and sat down again on the chair opposite.
‘I’m sure Alex will get whatever it is out of his system pretty quickly,’ he continued, oblivious to her thoughts. ‘There is something really wrong with that woman. She’s gorgeous, but… complicated… a bit, well, weird.’
Out of his system? Who did Mark think he was talking about Alex to?
Chloe clenched her fists under the table. She had no idea why she had ever dated Mark when he was like this. Now was one of those moments when she could see clearly what Alex saw – a smug, condescending, arrogant man. She sifted through her memories, recalling how he had made her laugh, how he had seemed confident yet, at times, uncertain when they’d first met. Every now and then he would show his vulnerability, and because of those times she had hung in there, but finding it was like hunting through heavy law books for the one small paragraph that might turn a case – both exasperating and exhausting.
‘How can you be so… so cold about it?’ Chloe asked sharply, ignoring the twinge of conscience she felt thinking of law books and the fact that they should both be going through the Abbott case notes right now. How could Mark dismiss someone he’d sounded so excited about just a week or so ago in a couple of swift sentences? ‘Doesn’t anyone ever get under your skin?’