Sara Foster - Come Back to Me

And so her thoughts were round full circle, back to Alex again.

She stopped off at McDonald’s on the way home. It was her third takeaway in as many days, but cooking for one felt too depressing. As she exited the restaurant, she briefly imagined Alex coming home to find she’d gained a couple of stone and laughed bitterly at the irony. If he took too long she really would have gained that much in baby weight. As she walked, she took a bite of her hamburger and envisioned the baby coming out of her with a spotty face and bad breath. She threw the meal into the next bin she passed.

Once at home, she unpacked the bag she’d taken to Mikaela’s, then put on her tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and headed into the lounge room for a quick blast of mind-numbing TV. On the way she caught sight of a blurry figure stumbling past the hall mirror. She stopped in shock. Edging towards it for a closer look she took in her wild hair and red-rimmed eyes and gasped in surprise. She looked like a ghost, her face so pale that it almost blended into the white wall behind her.

She glanced at the answer phone in the hall. No messages on there today. She didn’t know if that felt better or worse. Then, as she glanced down, she saw Alex’s scrawly handwriting on the memo pad next to the phone and felt herself start. He’d been home? The note said little except that he was looking for her, and he’d signed it with love and kisses. She felt her anger subside a little. She missed him, and wondered where he was.

Perhaps she should take a day off tomorrow, she thought, and phone the hospital to rearrange the ultrasound. She couldn’t face going there alone. She should be going with Alex; it was just too much to contemplate in the glare of his absence. Besides, the Abbott case wouldn’t wait – in fact, she really should fish out the paperwork now and get on with it. She decided the TV viewing would have to come later, and walked into the kitchen to find her briefcase, while idly flicking through the post, just bills and statements, hieroglyphics of numbers marching straight into a black vortex in her brain without even pausing for her to consider them.

All at once she was tired of being cross and miserable. She wanted to break through this impasse with Alex, but she didn’t know how. She thought about the messages he’d left on her mobile and began hunting for her phone in case there was another one.

There was a knock at the door.

It could be Alex, she thought, looking down in dismay at what she was wearing. But then, why would he knock?

All the lights were on, so there was no pretending she wasn’t home. Another knock and she was scurrying down the hall.

When she opened the door she thought at first glance it was Alex, but then the vision coalesced into someone similar but not quite her husband.

‘Jamie? What are you doing here?’

Jamie came in without waiting to be invited. ‘I’ve been trying to ring Alex all weekend. He’s not answering,’ he said, injecting his strange flat speech with a touch of indignation. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s out,’ Chloe replied, heart sinking. Jamie wasn’t easy to talk to at the best of times. In theory she felt sympathetic towards Jamie and his problems, but when actually confronted with this bewildered, erratic man, she usually felt more awkward than anything else.

‘When’s he back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know.’

‘I don’t, I’m sorry.’

Jamie looked at her as though trying to figure out if she were teasing him. ‘So where is he?’ he repeated.

‘Jamie,’ she said, exasperated now, ‘I really don’t know.’ She walked back through to the kitchen with Jamie following her. ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked politely.

Jamie was looking round the room as though Alex might leap out from a hiding place at any moment saying, ‘Boo’ and grinning. ‘Just water,’ he said, going over to the tap and pouring himself a glass.

‘So,’ he turned around and leaned against the sink while sipping his drink, ‘how come you don’t know where he is?’

Chloe closed her eyes, steadied her thoughts, and sighed.

‘He’s gone to help a friend,’ she said.

‘Which friend?’

‘Julia.’

‘Julia? I don’t know any Julia.’

I’m sure you don’t know all Alex’s friends, Chloe felt like saying.

And then she realised. Jamie might actually be a source of information here.

‘Old girlfriend, dark hair, turned up out of the blue. Seems to be having some problems.’

‘Old girlfriend? Well, that’s got to be Amy – he’s only really had two of you that lasted beyond a month!’ Jamie grinned.

‘Amy?’

‘Yeah, Amy Duvalis, they went out at university and afterwards went on a long holiday together, but then she disappeared. Something happened to her.’

‘What? What happened?’ She was eager to see if Jamie’s version of events matched Alex’s.

‘I think she got attacked.’

‘Oh,’ Chloe said, her mind whirring. ‘I see.’

‘Yeah,’ Jamie said, pouring himself another glass of water. ‘Alex was a mess. He was gutted.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, unable to think of anything else. It was the same story Alex had told her. But why the hell did the woman have two names? And how could Chloe compete with tragedy? And was it awful that it was this thought playing on her mind rather than any sympathy for the woman?

There was another knock at the door.

‘I’ll get it, maybe it’s Alex,’ Jamie said, completely incurious as to why Alex might knock at his own front door.

Chloe closed her eyes. She didn’t want anyone else here. When she heard Mark’s voice, her heart sank.

And then the phone rang.

She rushed to pick it up. The line was faintly crackling, but she could hear Alex’s voice saying hello.

‘Alex, where are you?’

‘Chloe, don’t freak out, okay. Did you get any of my messages?’

‘I haven’t had a chance to check,’ she lied, not wanting to admit that she’d deleted them. ‘What did you say?’

‘Oh god; well, listen to them, please. It’s just – look, I’m on a plane. I’m going with Amy to -’

‘Amy? So it is Amy? Hang on – a PLANE?’

‘Yes, it’s Amy. And yes, a plane. I can’t talk much now, but, Chloe, please, you have to -’

And then the phone was snatched out of her hand. ‘Alex, where the hell are you?’ Jamie blurted down the phone. ‘You promised me a trip to the pub last night, I waited for you.’

Chloe had the urge to grab the phone back off him and hit him over the head with it. But she was far too polite for that – which was something that, seconds later, she would regret immensely.

‘I came to find out where you were,’ Jamie replied in answer to the questions Alex was obviously asking. ‘Yeah, she’s fine. Why? Thingy’s here. You know, the lawyer bloke,’ he said, lowering his voice a notch or two even though Mark was by now only a few feet away.

There was a pause while Jamie listened. Then he held out the phone to Chloe. ‘He wants to speak to you again,’ he said, looking cross.

‘Alex,’ Chloe began, hating herself for feeling guilty.

‘Why is Mark there?’

‘I don’t even know myself yet,’ she said, trying to keep her tone light. ‘He’s only just got here.’

Even though it was the truth, she felt like she was telling a lie. She looked at Mark, who rolled his eyes and lifted his briefcase pointedly. ‘Work,’ she added. ‘Remember that case, the Abbott one? It came to a head this morning, so we’re panicking a bit.’

‘I see.’ Alex’s voice had a new, cold edge to it. Chloe felt completely on the back foot, and desperate, as though she were the one entirely in the wrong.