Come Back to Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

onto a busy street, a teeming multicolour of bicycles, people, umbrellas, buses and taxis all heading in their own directions.
    Head down against the crowds and the rain and the cold, she walked briskly along the road until she saw the orange strip of an internet café. She went in, exchanged coins for a ticket, and took her place at a computer.
    Once logged on she wasted no time in finding a search engine and typing in ‘Alex Markham’.
    The very first page that came up was his website. Her damp cheeks were still stinging from the sudden transition from the cool air outside to the warmth indoors, as she held her breath and went straight to it, looking through the pages, fascinated by the designs she found in front of her. It was like reading a storybook and suddenly skipping forwardone hundred pages in an instant. At the last juncture she had known about, Alex had been one of a promising mass of recently graduated graphic artists, but now she suddenly zipped forward so many years to see that he had fulfilled his talent, or at least had begun to. He was doing what he had always wanted to do.
    Anger rose up in her. She had had a passion for journalism a long time ago. She had wanted to do a post-grad course and then throw herself headlong into the profession, making a name for herself on a paper or magazine. Instead, she had spent the past ten years drifting round the world doing odd jobs, not wanting or daring to go home, sending off the occasional travel log from somewhere remote and beautiful, and even more occasionally being contacted by an editor – once or twice even being paid, only to find that most of her articles were simply kept on file and never actually appeared.
    And here was Alex, living his life as though he had never veered from the straight path he intended for himself.
    She clicked on the Biography page.
    Alex lives with his wife in South London. When not designing he likes to indulge himself in travelling, modern-art galleries and fine wine.
    She read the blurb a few times, trying to take it in. The Alex of old did indeed like travelling and art galleries, but she couldn’t remember seeing him drink wine at all.
    And then there was ‘his wife’. She thought back to the pretty-featured girl at the restaurant with her light brown hair tucked casually behind her ears. Chloe had immediatelymade her feel stiff and formal, with her wide, welcoming smile and easy manner. Not that her relaxed posture had lasted long, once Alex had appeared.
    There was an address on the website and she scribbled it on the back of her internet ticket. Then she clicked back to the search page and typed in ‘Chloe Markham’. There were a few links that were obviously irrelevant, but then one came up under lewisandmarchant.com. Going to that, she found a page containing a picture of the girl she had just conjured up in her memory. Yet in this portrait Chloe’s smile wasn’t the natural one she’d had at the restaurant, and she wore a suit jacket with a white shirt underneath as she sat straight-backed and gazed into the camera lens.
    Julia read the blurb next to the photo:
    Chloe Markham, solicitor, is one of Lewis & Marchant’s rising stars. Qualified for eight years, her specialty is family law, alongside general litigation.
    This wasn’t the kind of information she wanted to know about Chloe. She wanted to find something that could tell her what it was about Chloe that made Alex smile. How they’d met. Where their wedding had taken place. And a million other things.
    Why did he love her?
    She pressed the ‘back’ button, stupidly surprised to see Mark’s face appearing before her. She clicked on his name and idly read the details set out there, noticing that he looked disdainfully handsome in his photo, but not really taking the words in.
    Back at the search page, she typed in ‘Chloe and Alex Markham’ again, just in case, but there was nothing new. She