But, now and then, there was also Alex’s kind face, peering down at her.
Before.
10
Chloe was already exasperated after a few hours with her mother. After Margaret had woken her at what felt like dawn, they had raced into town and spent twenty minutes driving around the multi-storey searching for the perfect spot, before Margaret phoned Alex in a panic to remind him to lock the house up when he went out. They made it into the shopping centre, only for Chloe’s mother to realise she’d left a voucher for Marks & Spencer in the car’s glove box, so they trudged all the way back again to find the voucher wasn’t in there at all – she had in fact carefully added it to the zip pocket of her shopping bag. Once they were inside M &S, Margaret headed straight for the accessories section, and spent half an hour wondering about a scarf there, before deciding she needed to come back when she was wearing her other coat to see if they matched properly.
And so it went on. All the time, Margaret wittered away, Chloe hardly getting a word in. Her mother hadn’t always been like this, she thought. She could recall a much more confident and self-contained woman, although it was only through the fog of childhood memory. But then something had happened, their grandmother had looked after Chloe and Anthony for a while, and it was after that that her mother had changed. But after what? The shadows of a memory began to float into the edges of her mind, and she felt her heart begin to race and pushed it back quickly. However, now its presence had been felt she couldn’t wipe it completely.
As they sat down for elevenses, Chloe’s mother took a good look at her.
‘You look a bit peaky, dear. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ Chloe set down their tray of steaming coffees and muffins.
‘Working too hard again? You must be careful. You know what they say – “all work and no play…”.’ Margaret chuckled to herself as she placed her plastic bags carefully on the seat next to her, and then fussed over which one lay on the bottom.
I’d have a damn sight more time to play if I weren’t driving up to the Lake District on a regular basis, Chloe thought. But she smiled back benignly.
They sat in silence for a few moments, before Chloe took a deep breath and announced without preamble, ‘I’m pregnant’, startling herself with her own bluntness. She hadn’t realised the secret had been crouched on her tongue, waiting to jump. As she immediately picked up her muffin and took a bite, she wished she could put her words on top and gobble them back up.
Her mother’s jaw had dropped.
I’ve done it, Chloe thought. I have finally shut her up.
No sooner had she thought this than Margaret rallied with a torrent of exclamations. ‘Oh my darling, I’m so thrilled… I’m so delighted. I can’t believe I’m going to be a grandmother… this is fantastic, wait till I tell June tonight -’
Chloe cut her off abruptly. ‘You can’t tell them yet…’ She paused and took a deep breath as she watched the confusion on her mother’s face, before adding, ‘Alex doesn’t know.’
‘Alex doesn’t…?’ Her mother tapered off and once again seemed lost for words.
Unbelievable, Chloe thought. Now she’d silenced her mother twice in five minutes. Alex would love this.
Immediately she felt miserable.
11
The rain didn’t seem to have stopped since Thursday, and it matched Alex’s mood perfectly. Wrapped up warmly, he was on his way to the village pub, a trip he’d taken regularly with Charlie on previous visits to the Lake District. It still felt strange to be heading there alone. Today he had intended to drown his sorrows while watching the football scores come up, but when he opened the door and the warmth of lights, laughter and air all hit him at once, he knew straight away he couldn’t stomach it. He let the door swing shut again, leaving him on the outside hunched against the cold as a couple of people stepped around him to get in. As a wave of noise and heat assaulted him for the second time, he strode quickly away, not really sure where he was going. He just knew he needed to try to clear his head, and the ice-cold air would help him more than the fug of the bar.
It wasn’t difficult to find a walking trail. A couple of minutes later he had hopped over a dilapidated wooden stile set into a fence, and was following a small stony path around the bottom of a hill. The rain splattered his face persistently, but it was welcome – cool and cleansing. His trainers were quickly soaked; he could already feel water creeping between his toes. He was breathing hard with the exertion of keeping pace with his feet, which seemed to have independently decided upon a brisk trot.
There was so much to think about that he didn’t know where to start. His mind was running around wildly in circles leaving chaotic footprints everywhere that he had no hope of following.
He’d thought he had it all figured out, but when it came down to it he had just been living on circumstance. He was angry and upset – with himself most of all, but little sparks flew off towards others. How could she just turn up after almost ten years without a word? And what wicked circumstance had allowed Chloe to lead him innocently into that restaurant, both of them unwitting victims of the hand of fate?
And Mark – in his wildest thoughts since Thursday, a lot of Alex’s anger had been directed towards him. They had never liked one another. He imagined Mark somehow finding out about what had happened back then, and bringing his new girlfriend, Julia, along just to spite him – but how the hell could he know?
The general consensus about the path of life was that it usually took time – days, months, maybe years – to effect change. Yet the twists and turns Alex’s world had taken boiled down to a few short moments. A missed underground train one afternoon. The police knocking on his family’s door in Leicester with news of his brother. Letting go of a hand just a fraction too soon. In fact, letting go at all.
He thought about his family: how much Jamie’s sudden illness had straitened the atmosphere of his home. His mother, Catherine, had become increasingly hesitant and nervous, while his father’s emotions were held carefully in check, but, like a leaky vessel, seeped out at odd moments. Geoff Markham had lost both parents while Alex was in his teens, then his sister had died of cancer a few years later, and he had remained sadly stoic but dry-faced throughout, yet Alex had once seen his dad cry in exasperation after he tried some DIY car repair and managed to damage the wheel’s axle. Once, when Alex’s frustration with his dad’s reticence had become apparent, his mother had told him that it was just the way he was made, and that it was what she loved the most about him – that it was refreshing when so many people were full of pandering, self-serving platitudes. This had made Alex take a look at his dad afresh, and for a while his lack of communication hadn’t mattered so much – until Jamie was found wandering along a motorway in his underwear on a cool summer’s night when he’d been missing for two days, and was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. Because, at the time, Alex had responded in exactly the same way as his father: comforting his mother but unable to share the depths of his emotions with anyone.
Now, as he strode along the muddy path, he wondered if this thing the male Markhams had got – this inability to express themselves outwardly at appropriate moments – was some kind of curse. Perhaps it was a worse condition than his brother Jamie’s, as there was nothing they could take for it.
He began to pound the track so furiously that he could hear the quicktime thump of his heart. He was soaked – raindrops were everywhere, dripping off his nose, cascading over his eyelids, breaching flimsy barriers of hems and lining. But he didn’t care. He was thinking that the only time he had taken charge of his direction in life was with Chloe. But even that meeting had not been the chance accident she imagined it was.