Come Back to Me

imagine his father rushing into a panic in the same situation – in fact, Henry would just have been enraged at the inconsideration – and his resolve stiffened. He would go to bed, sleep on it, and if they weren’t home by morning he would be sure something was up. He’d grown up with a father promising to be places and turning up hours late, if at all, due to some kind of emergency court session/meeting/law function. Perhaps his mother had been dragged into some such thing and they’d forgotten he was coming – they’d arranged it a couple of weeks ago, after all.

He pulled at his loose tie, brought it over his head and folded it into a small neat oblong. Then he made his way wearily up the stairs, grateful now for the sandwich he’d grabbed on the train, which at the time he’d thought of as a stale appetiser for the decent meal he would be getting at home.

He had just crawled beneath the sheets when he heard the front door open, and footsteps echo through the hallway then up the stairs. They paused on the landing outside his door, but Mark froze, annoyed at his parents now for being so tardy. Not long after they moved on, he was asleep.

When Mark woke up, light was marauding through the gap between the curtains. He knew something was wrong. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t known it the night before. A quick check of his mobile told him it was ten past eight, and he pulled on some clothes before rushing downstairs.

His mother sat at the kitchen table, one hand pressed to her forehead as she brooded over a cup of tea.

‘Where were you last night?’ he asked tersely.

‘I needed to go out.’

‘Well, that’s nice. You invite me over for dinner then neither of you can be bothered to turn up. Thanks a lot.’

‘Oh, Mark,’ his mother turned on him with a glare. ‘Stop being such a pouty little boy. That’s the last thing I need right now, seeing as your father’s run off in a sulk.’

‘What? What do you mean? Why didn’t you wake me?’ Mark replied, more angrily than he intended.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ his mother said, not looking up.

‘Why… what…?’ Mark asked, uncomprehending. ‘Where’s Dad gone?’

Finally, his mother looked at him. Her face had lost some of its usual composure. Her cheeks sagged, her eyes were red.

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘He just left.’

‘Left?’ Mark was mystified. ‘What? What do you mean left?’

‘He packed a bag, and left.’ His mother shrugged her shoulders. ‘He didn’t tell me where he was going. When I asked him, he told me to fuck off.’

Mark couldn’t help it, the laugh was out before he could stop it. ‘Don’t be silly,’ was all he said. At which point his mother rose slowly and imperiously from her seat. She put her hands on the table, leaned forward, and, with such vehemence that Mark took a step back, hissed, ‘Don’t you ever say that to me. Ever.’ She waved a finger at him then paused, eyeing him mirthlessly, before she sighed and said coldly, ‘Stop trying to make yourself into an identical version of your father.’ She gave a rasping laugh, warped and humourless. ‘That is not such a great thing to be, Mark. I’d aim a bit higher, if I were you.’

Mark held up his hands in surrender, though anger began to course through him at her words. ‘Well then, Mum, why don’t you explain this to me properly, and then I might have more chance of understanding exactly what’s going on.’

Emily Jameson turned her empty eyes towards him. ‘He’s been in one hell of a mood for a while, then he came home yesterday, wouldn’t say two words to me, packed a bag and told me he was leaving. When I’d ranted enough he grabbed me by the shoulders and told me it was for my own good! Hah!’ She turned around abruptly so he couldn’t see her face, and stared out of the kitchen window. ‘I always knew he was a condescending, supercilious bastard – I knew there’d be a few floosies somewhere, a few tarts lurking on the side – but I never thought he’d actually leave.’ Her voice broke on the ‘never’.

Mark was rendered speechless by this outburst. Floosies? Tarts? Eventually, to break the awkward deadlock, he moved forward and clumsily put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Mum…’

She shook off his arm. ‘Don’t patronise me. I know how much you idolise that man – just leave me alone.’

Mark remained where he was, still staggered by what he was hearing.

‘GO!’ she shouted, her hands pushing against his chest in a surge of strength before she seemed to succumb to an intense tiredness, collapsing back on to her chair, whispering, ‘Please, just leave me alone.’

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,