Alex met Amy’s eyes. She didn’t need him to do anything further for them both to know that this halcyon period was over.
84
Chloe had woken up with the feeling that something was wrong. Given that everything seemed wrong these days, it felt strange to think that way, but this was different. More nagging. More troubling.
It wasn’t that she was trying to block out the thought of her husband sharing a room – and a bed? – with another woman, because she had been doing that 24/7 for the past few days. Nor was it the email that was sitting patiently in her inbox, full as it was of pleading and excuses and guilt, which she still couldn’t begin to think how to reply to – although that wasn’t exactly helping her in her endless quest for an uninterrupted night’s sleep.
Nevertheless, despite her fresh misgivings, she went to work. The Abbott countdown was now days rather than weeks. The atmosphere in the office was tense. Even the solicitors who had nothing to do with the case knew that the way it played out could have a dramatic impact on the fortunes of them all.
There was now a small scrummage of media to contend with outside the office, wanting the first sound bites, any insider knowledge. When they’d initially appeared, a couple of days earlier, Mark had described being harangued by them as he tried to walk inside; yet they’d left Chloe alone, seeming largely uninterested in her. They probably assumed she was a secretary. If so, it appeared that sexist assumptions weren’t completely dead, she thought, though media savvy possibly was – the secretaries knew far more than anyone else around here.
In the office, she munched her way through a packet of crisps as she read over what seemed like dozens of emails, mostly irrelevant, paying careful attention to all those marked Abbott. Her stomach was aching at the thought of their first trip to court – another time she might have found it exciting, but she wasn’t in the mood.
The morning dragged by. She didn’t stop for lunch as she didn’t have much of an appetite, and she couldn’t wait for the day to be over. Mid-afternoon, she made her way around the desk and headed for the toilets to splash water on her face. Her body felt sluggish, out of sorts, her feet a little unsteady.
In the bathroom she stared at her face in the mirror, eyeing the girl who stared back with the same suspicious eyes. She had just turned the tap on and leaned over when the first spasm rocked her, making her almost double up. She instinctively curled into herself, going to her knees on the hard floor, trying to steady her breathing, failing before the second wave of pain rolled in. She gasped, just as the door to the toilets opened, and there was Jana, her expression moving into shock, staring at Chloe on the floor.
‘Call an ambulance,’ was all Chloe could murmur, before the floor quivered like the shimmer of a heat haze, and she keeled forward.
85
‘You still have a life, you know,’ Alex said. ‘I think you’re just choosing not to live it.’
They were back in Perth, sitting in a bar near their hotel, and they had both had a couple of whisky chasers. That was probably why he felt emboldened to say such a thing, Amy thought.
She had just told him she had nothing. No direction. No purpose. No attachments. Nothing. She had just said she didn’t know what she would do if the verdict was not what they wanted it to be. And it had made him unaccountably angry.
However, his reply riled her.
Alex looked her in the eye and continued, ‘It’s beyond terrible what you’ve gone through. I know that. But…’ he paused, glanced down, then back at Amy, and there was a fierce glow in his eye as he stated firmly, ‘You have a life, Amy. You are choosing not to live it. And every day you do that from now on is another day you let them win.’
Her mouth fell open. The tears gathered in readiness. ‘That’s not fair, Alex. I can’t…’ she said, voice breaking. ‘I don’t know how…’
‘No,’ Alex replied, the lines of his tanned face softening as he reached for her hand. ‘It isn’t fair. And you couldn’t… and you didn’t… But think about why we’re here. Now, Amy, I think you can.’
Maybe he was right, she thought, seeing past her emotion for a second. It was why she had felt compelled to come this far – she needed to see them get what they deserved. She had to see them punished, because if she did, then another small chink of her ethereal life might crack and reveal something solid underneath that she had been missing. Something she could hold on to and tease out until it grew bigger.
86
Chloe braced herself as the doctor walked towards her, notes in hand, and reached her bedside. She’d been groggy ever since the ambulance ride a few hours earlier.
‘Good news, Mrs Markham,’ he said, looking down and flicking through a few sheets of white paper. ‘There’s no sign of any problems on the ultrasound and your bloodwork is as it should be. Your gall bladder looks fine too. However, since we’re not sure what this pain was, I’m recommending at least a good couple of weeks’ rest. We can discharge you when you’re ready, and you should come straight back if you have any more problems.’
Chloe nodded mutely, trying to be thankful that the baby was okay. But she wanted to cling to his coat and cry like a child, tell him how much she missed Alex and how she wished he were here to take her home.
He wasn’t. He still didn’t even know she was pregnant, for god’s sake. And she realised there was only one other person she wanted to phone.
After the doctor had gone, she used her mobile to make a call. She got an answering machine, so dialled Jana instead. The secretary picked up straight away with a practised ‘Lewis and Marchant’. Chloe tried to imagine the everyday happenings in the office going on as normal. It seemed so remote from where she was at present, even though she’d been a part of it a few hours before.
‘Hi, Jana,’ she began.
‘Chloe? Chloe, I’m so sorry, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Can you put me through to Mark?’
‘Mark? Mark’s not here. I haven’t seen him all morning. Isn’t David still with you? He took a taxi and followed the ambulance.’
‘David?’ Chloe looked up in surprise and, sure enough, she could see her boss through a small window, standing outside the door talking to the doctor, his face grim. He glanced at Chloe as they spoke.
‘Yes, sorry, Jana, I’ve just seen him,’ she said.
‘Get well, Chloe,’ Jana replied. ‘Just let me know if you need anything.’
‘Thanks,’ Chloe said, hanging up and leaning back onto her pillow, not wanting to look in David’s direction. How embarrassing. Things were getting weirder by the minute.
David finished his conversation with the doctor, and then opened the door.
‘The doctor says you’re fine to go home, Chloe. I’ll take you there in a cab. Unless there’s someone else -?’
Absurdly, with Alex absent, it was Mark’s face that sprang again into her mind, but she could imagine David’s eyebrows never returning from his hairline if she told him that. So she shook her head and said, ‘Taxi’s fine.’
David disappeared, and Chloe nestled into the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Her womb still ached; the poor baby must be very uncomfortable. What had she done to cause everything that was happening to her? First Alex, and now this.
She thought back to Alex’s email. She wasn’t going to write back; what was there to say, as, while things were like this, the ball had to be in his court. She couldn’t beg – even if she felt like it, which she wasn’t sure she did – because if anything changed as a result, she’d always wonder if it had really been because he wanted it to, or if it were just because she had made him feel guilty.