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.
And why did she want
‘Chloe?’ A nurse’s head popped around the door. ‘The taxi your dad ordered is here.’
‘What?’ Chloe was taken aback. ‘He’s not my dad.’
The nurse shrugged, uninterested. ‘Well, whoever he is, he’s come to collect you. You ready to go?’
Chloe nodded. The nurse came in with a wheelchair, then helped Chloe off the bed and into it. ‘Remember, straight into bed when you get home, okay?’ she said. ‘Now, here are your ultrasound pictures.’
Chloe took the proffered envelope as though it might explode in her hand. Then, gingerly, she pulled out the contents, and stared at the black and white outlines of her baby. She could make out a nose, a spine, even fingers. She laughed in wonder as her eyes moistened. It was the first time she had felt anything like happiness in weeks. ‘Hello, little one,’ she said, stroking her tummy while staring at the irrefutable evidence that there was another life inside her to think about now.
She pushed the pictures back into the envelope as David came in and spoke to the nurses, then was given her belongings. He looked smaller somehow in the hospital, and his crisp pinstriped suit stood out incongruously against the white jackets. It was as if he’d lost the ability to frighten her here, like she suddenly saw through the whole charade of power that was behind labels such as ‘boss’ and ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ and ‘doctor’. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen her mother in this way, stripped of the thin facade of parenthood that maintained the proper distance between mother and daughter, realising she was fallible after all. The image was disconcertingly incomplete, and Chloe shrugged it away quickly.
David took the handles of her chair, and she let him wheel her to the entranceway, feeling mortified, the silence between them not helping. At the taxi’s door she got up, swayed slightly, and he put a steady hand underneath her elbow to help her rebalance. She was aware of the hand and held that side of her body stiff, wanting to pull away but keen not to appear rude.
The silence continued on the journey, until they drew up at the house. All Chloe wanted was to exit the car as quickly as possible and run inside, locking the world out. But as she made to get out, so did David.
He followed her wordlessly up to the front door. Her hands trembled as she twisted the key, and she left the door open, aware of his presence behind her as she made her way up the hall.
Once in the kitchen, she tried to appear normal. ‘Tea?’ she enquired breezily.
‘Sit,’ David commanded, pointing to a chair. ‘I’ll do it. You’re meant to go to bed.’
He moved deftly to the sink and filled the pot. Chloe watched him, marvelling at his ease in an unfamiliar kitchen. She always felt awkward when in someone else’s territory, never sure of the correct mix of etiquette between unobtrusive and helpful.
‘I’m sorry, David,’ she said. ‘This is a terrible time for you to be out of the office.’
He held up a hand, turning to face her. ‘Here’s what I know. We are expecting great things from you and Mark Jameson, and over the past ten years you have never let us down…’
Chloe thought back to the law ball dance floor and the look on David’s face as he’d chastised them in his office afterwards, but didn’t remind him.
‘… and yet in the past few weeks you have both become creatures of scarcity, shall we say. You each have a look in your eyes akin to battery-farm chickens trapped in cages waiting for the electric current to reach them, and now I pick you up from hospital, where your husband is conspicuously absent, and I am told that the baby you are carrying is absolutely fine!’
He paused and shook his head in incredulity as Chloe stared at him. ‘Chloe, they said you are over four months pregnant – when were you going to tell us?’ Despite the admonition, David’s tone was surprisingly gentle.
He paused, taking a breath as if what was coming next would be the crux of it all. ‘Chloe, is this Mark’s child?’
Chloe stared aghast at David, remembering Mikaela asking the very same question, then Mark’s lips on hers, then Alex’s tight, distant expression. Her husband was in another country with a woman she’d only set eyes on twice; and she remembered again the looks on their faces when they’d first seen one another.
Her mind swam. It was all too much.
She burst into unstoppable, uncontrollable tears. She bent double, her arms wrapped around her stomach, frightened that this outburst would be the last straw for the fragile being trying to cling on inside her, but unable to control the great well of emotion that suddenly breached the walls she had been building and fortifying for the past few weeks. She was so tired of being angry. So tired of feeling out of control. So tired of spending each day on the
