Come Back to Me

hardly want him to start pouring his heart out. He felt terrible that he hadn’t come home until the early hours. He’d ended up finding a panicked Jamie at his local police station, his brother having locked himself out of the house. Not only had they and a helpful constable had to break into Jamie’s flat, but then he’d had to stay with his brother until he’d calmed down enough for Alex to be sure he’d be safe on his own. Looking out for Jamie could be a thankless and depressing task at times, but his parents relied heavily on him to do so. It was they who had decided to buy Jamie a flat close to Alex when their younger son had insisted on moving out. Thinking back, Alex couldn’t ever remember a conversation where he’d agreed to this responsibility, but it seemed to have been handed to him anyway.

Frustrated, he tried to turn his mind to his work, relieved he didn’t have anything urgent today. Making his way through the house, he simultaneously began to effect the mental transition from home to work mode. It was a relief to get down to the cellar, which also functioned as his office and was one of his favourite places. Everything there was set up and streamlined so he could get through the maximum amount of work in a day – working for himself, time really was money. He’d put strip lighting in there, but it rarely went on; instead, spotlights and desk lights illuminated his work space, as well as his top-of-the-range Apple Mac, the machine he spent most of his days in communion with. The walls were peppered with the works of some of his favourite artists – including plenty of Dali and Magritte, a couple of Rousseau’s jungle scenes, and a particularly large print of L’Ange du Foyer by Max Ernst – the latter always causing him to smile when he remembered Chloe’s expression the time he’d suggested putting it up in the lounge. As the house was an old-fashioned one, there was a tiny strip of window at the very front of the room, which allowed a snippet of a view of the front pathway. It was quite grimy on the inside, and Alex had decided that, since cleaning it would involve moving Apple Mac, desk and god knew how many wires to allow access, it would stay that way for quite some time.

As he switched on the computer, the whir of it coming to life was drowned out by the buzz of his fractious mind. He needed to talk to Chloe… and to Julia… He was still fuming from his conversation with Mark yesterday morning, when the arrogant wanker had not only been utterly unhelpful, but had sworn at him and hung up.

Wearily, he turned to his work. There were about half a dozen emails waiting, two of which involved current jobs. When he had quit his in-house job at ArtSpace he had anticipated some time out, and then going back into the fray – never this. It had been Chloe who encouraged him to resign, seeing how unhappy he was with the office politics and backstabbing, which for most people seemed to take up a far larger part of the day than design work. There had been constant frayed nerves and speculation over the next round of redundancies; and an endless succession of ‘bright young things’ coming in, impetuous and overconfident in their abilities to transform the company, quickly becoming bitter and twisted as they morphed unwillingly into the status quo.

Then one of his clients from ArtSpace – Jed Morenzo, who he would thank forever – had put Alex in touch with an associate. Although Jed’s company was tied to ArtSpace and they were disappointed that Alex was no longer working on their account, they had loved his designs enough to show them around, and from that one recommendation things had snowballed. Every now and again he put an ad in one of the trade presses, but for the most part his work evolved through word of mouth – the very best form of advertising there was, and, best of all, the only one that was free. He did some posters, bits of marketing material, but enjoyed logo design the most. He loved getting to grips with the essence of a company and trying to sum it up so that their vision shouted out from a small, often abstract motif. One of his proudest moments had been having his work featured in HOW magazine – at that point he’d finally begun to think he was getting places.

Now, he replied to those emails he could deal with straight away, and checked his schedule for the week. He had only two meetings with clients, both on Wednesday, so the rest was design time. Yet he had a feeling that the week wasn’t going to go very well. As he flicked open his web browser he started typing a name in, hoping against all odds that something would come up.

He spent twenty minutes on this. There was nothing new.

There was only one more thing to try. He picked up his phone and dialled the number, hoping he’d still got the right one.

‘Kelly, it’s Alex,’ he said when a female voice answered.

‘Alex? Alex! Bloody hell, mate, long time no see!’

He immediately felt guilty that he was ringing her after all this time with a purpose other than one related to their old friendship. He asked her how she was and they chatted for a while, and he was just wondering how to ask the question when she said, ‘Do you want me to do another search on Amy?’

He felt a surge of warmth for Kelly for making this so easy for him, as well as guilty that he hadn’t kept up contact. But it had been too painful, when he had returned from Australia on his own, to talk to joint friends from their carefree uni days about what had happened. Contact had drifted off until it became Christmas cards, if anything.

‘Can you?’ he asked.

‘Al, it’ll take me one sec. Hang on.’ There was a short pause, then, ‘Nothing new, I’m afraid. Still listed as missing. Hold on a sec, there’s a note on her file, though. Let me check it.’ Another pause, longer. ‘Jeez, Al, it seems there is something new on here, after all.’

He listened to what Kelly had to say, his heart pounding harder with every word she uttered, clenching his fists as the old memories and the anger returned.

‘And Amy doesn’t know this?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Al, but we don’t often get missing persons ringing up asking after themselves.’

‘Of course,’ he said, feeling stupid.

‘It’s all over the Australian news,’ Kelly continued. ‘Just look on the Net.’

‘Yes, but even if she’s seen it she might not realise it’s possibly connected to her,’ Alex said, thinking aloud.

There was a pause on the line. ‘Al, has something happened? You know, if you’ve heard from her then we need to know. Her family will still be suffering.’

‘I haven’t,’ he told her quickly, hating himself for lying. ‘I was just reminded of her the other day, and I realised I haven’t called for a while, and felt a bit guilty, I guess. I still hope…’ He trailed off. He didn’t want to weave himself into a growing lie any more than he had to.

‘We all do, Al,’ Kelly said gently. ‘We all do.’

As soon as he had hung up, Alex logged on to the web and began flicking through news articles with growing shock, printing out everything he could find. The need to locate Amy and tell her the news became more pressing with every article he read. Eventually his work head and his emotions had a gentleman’s handshake that he would concentrate for a couple of hours and get lots done, and then he would think about how to find her. Since it looked like Mark would rather actively hinder him than help, he would have to do it another way.

Having made a short-term decision he began to get into his work. Before he knew it his stomach was growling, and a quick glance at the clock told him it was after eleven.

He was leaning back in his chair, studying the design he was currently manipulating on screen, when he heard a noise outside. Footsteps. He glanced up at the long, thin, rectangular window, and saw a pair of scruffy suede boots, the kind with no heel and a thick woollen lining, pass by.

He didn’t recognise the boots, but his heart did a bungee dive inside his ribcage as he understood for certain just who they belonged to.

He jumped up and moved quickly to the window to get the best glimpse he could, even then doubting his own conclusion, wanting to double check. The boots were outside the front door, and he waited for the sound of the doorbell, but it didn’t come.

He was holding his breath, watching this pair of feet, half-joyous, half-terrified that she had found him.

And then the boots moved. Past the window, quickly, as though their owner had had serious second thoughts about where she was. And that movement catapulted him into action.

‘Fuck!’ he yelled, and rushed to the stairs, taking them two at a time, fumbling with the catch of the cellar door at the top, rounding the doorpost, down the long hallway, grabbing his keys off the hall table – every movement taking forever – and unlocking the front door. Even though it was still wet outside from the intermittent rain, he raced down the path in his T-shirt and slippers, feeling the water seeping through his flimsy footwear, but not caring. He ran into the road in a panic.

They lived on a street of large terraced houses set back from the wide road, with old horse chestnut trees