and she’d handled it. And Mark had been steaming drunk. Besides, all people have such secrets, she consoled herself. And Alex must have them too.
Julia was simply one of them.
Perhaps, she said to herself. But the point was that now she had, and for that reason Chloe felt she deserved an explanation.
She thought of all the things they’d shared. Alex’s frustrations with his parents and brother. Chloe’s confusion about her own early life – her mother always changed the subject when she asked about her real father, saying the divorce was messy and he’d cut off contact with the children soon afterwards. When her brother had moved to America, Chloe knew he had hopes of finding their dad, but so far she’d heard nothing, and now Anthony seemed to avoid the subject as well. She didn’t want to live like that, tiptoeing through life as though it were a minefield of secrets.
I’ll talk to Alex when I get home, she decided. Once we’ve had a chance to get showered and changed and we’re sitting down for the evening. Then we can have a nice long talk, and I can try to get to the bottom of what’s bothering him before I tell him about the baby. After all, she reassured herself, delaying that announcement for a day or so was of little consequence if it meant the difference between it bringing them closer together or pushing them further apart.
For the rest of the journey Chloe struggled to sleep with the radio blaring. Alex’s eyes never wavered from the road. When their house finally came into view, she breathed heavily with relief. Not long now, and it would all come out. She wasn’t letting him put her off any more.
She rushed to get changed when they came in. She turned the shower taps on and stood inert as warmth poured onto her, restoring some desperately needed vitality. She pressed her hands against her stomach, trying to picture a microscopic baby in there. Trying to imagine herself standing there in seven or eight months’ time, hands over the same skin, vastly distended by a growing baby. It was impossible to believe she would be a mother soon. What kind of mother was she going to make? Would her child grow up as she did, feeling mainly sadness when it thought of its family, or feeling duty-bound to drive 500 miles over a weekend to see a parent it couldn’t really relate to in any way, shape or form?
Could she raise a happy child?
Would she raise it with Alex, or was that doomed too, just like her own parents’ relationship? Perhaps her mother had once stood in the shower, drowning in her own fears while the water poured over.
Doubts began to flood over Chloe. Briefly, she thought of abortion. Then Alex would never need to know. Possibilities streamed through her brain, but she knew that, regardless of what happened with Alex, she wanted this baby. It’s just this wasn’t how she’d imagined feeling on finding out her first child was on its way.
It was no good. She needed to talk to Alex now, and put this thing behind them before her fears gained too firm a grip on her.
As Chloe grabbed a towel, she heard the telephone ring and Alex pick up. His voice downstairs was muffled, and she thought there was an edge to it.
She had dried herself and was beginning to towel her hair when he walked into the bedroom. She looked up and caught his eye, then he turned and grabbed his keys from the dresser.
‘I’m really sorry, Chlo, it was Mum – I need to go and check on Jamie, he’s not answering his phone and she’s worried.’
‘Now?’ she asked. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but her heart sank at the timing. She knew that Jamie’s parents were pleased their two sons were living close to one another, so that Alex could keep an eye on his taciturn and solitary younger brother, but it meant Alex often had to deal with the fallout from Jamie’s unpredictability.
Alex’s face was dark with what looked like anger. He sighed. ‘I know, it’s not ideal, but what can I do?’
It was Chloe’s turn to sigh. She looked at her feet and nodded. After a weekend spent indulging her mother she had little right to complain if Alex’s family needed him.
He made for the door, and shouted from beyond it, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
The front door banged shut behind him seconds later. Chloe was left frozen, one hand holding the hairbrush, the other tightly gripping a soggy towel. Now he had gone she struggled to stay rational. What if that had been an excuse? What if he were avoiding her? Avoiding any extra time with her when she might ask him questions he didn’t want to answer? Perhaps he was really going to see Julia…
She dashed to the phone and called Jamie’s mobile. No answer. Then his home number. Nothing. She slowly straightened, making sure she didn’t catch her own eye in the bedroom mirror, and picked out her comfy tracksuit bottoms and a fleecy top, throwing them on rapidly and running downstairs. She then chopped a mountain of vegetables and threw them one by one into a hissing and spitting wok, stirring the mixture and making sure that the sizzling noise was the only thing she let past the perimeters of her thoughts. Once she had a bowl of steaming food, she turned the telly on, volume high, and munched and stared, munched and stared. Every now and again she let her gaze wander to the clock on the wall, and small calculations would flutter through her head.
She remained rooted to the spot for the rest of the evening, not daring to move lest the protective spell she’d woven around herself be broken.
15
Mark had spent all Sunday trying to concentrate on work, reading through notes so he’d be ready for court tomorrow. His mind kept wandering to the inordinate number of people who had annoyed him lately. He was fed up with the lot of them.
However, as the evening went on he’d felt his anger towards his mother softening, and he’d picked up the phone.
‘No,’ she had sniped upon hearing his query, ‘there’s no word, Mark. I’ll tell him to call you if he returns any time this century. He’ll be needing a good divorce lawyer.’
‘I don’t do family litigation,’ Mark snapped back.
‘I was thinking of Chloe, not you,’ his mother retorted.
‘Look, Mum, I know you’re angry -’
‘Oh, you do, do you, Mark? Well, as your father always says, you are extremely intelligent, since you take after him. And perhaps you’re even a little bit psychic too, if you know just how I’m feeling right now.’
‘Mum, for god’s sake, I’m just trying to help.’
‘Just leave me alone then,’ Emily Jameson had shrieked, and the line had gone dead, leaving Mark bristling with pent-up fury.
He gave up on reading his case notes and went out to buy something to eat, musing over another case coming up this week, where he had mixed feelings about the middle-aged policeman they were representing. Returning to his apartment block, he cursed the maintenance man who had stuck an orange cone in front of the ground-level lift. It was getting late and he just about had time to eat the take away he’d bought before he’d need to get to bed in order to be on top form for work tomorrow.
When he reached his front door he fumbled around for his key, dropping it twice before he made it inside. He flung the takeaway box onto the kitchen top then decided to have a quick shower before eating. He marched through his bedroom into the ensuite bathroom and turned on the taps.
It was amazing how a spell in his high-pressure shower with the taps turned up as hot as he could stand could lift his mood and reinvigorate him. He emerged back into his bedroom from within a cloud of steam, towel wrapped around his waist, and went to the kitchen to re-heat his Thai meal. His mind was clearing, beginning to focus on what he needed to get ready for tomorrow. For starters, he had to talk to Chloe about the Abbott case before Neil got to them both, as he was completely out of touch and was praying that Chloe had got around to doing more than he had so far. Neil had warned them that the media would be all over them when the time came, and Mark had not had the experience of fending off a whole tribe of journalists during a case – the odd court reporter didn’t quite compare with what was threatening to develop here.
