Madeleine was still in Vietnam by the time Callum was born, the following July, in a labour that lasted less than six hours from her first contraction to the moment Gabriela held him in her arms for the first time – on the same ward at the Whittington Hospital in which she’d been born three decades earlier.
‘I was sure it would be another girl,’ Gabriela whispered to Tom as their son blinked up at the world, their eyes meeting for the first time. He reminded her of an exotic bird fallen from its nest, a creature to which she had no more immediate connection than that of an anthropologist exploring new and treacherous lands.
She agreed to take the full year’s leave after Callum was born, on Tom’s request. He had been offered a job working on a residential project in Islington, with Jim. He had been so desperate to do it, and she had been keen to let him. She didn’t want to always be the one calling the shots, and it was Tom’s turn. Besides, she reasoned, she might enjoy it, the extra time with the kids, long walks on the Heath, building up a bond with Callum before heading back to work for good.
But within days of agreeing to it, the resentment started to build like a wall in her chest. Storming the streets of Dartmouth Park and Gospel Oak in those early weeks, desperate to get Callum to sleep, his relentless wailing rising from the double-buggy, for a moment she considered pushing the whole thing into the road. She didn’t, but the fact that in that moment she had wanted to was enough to scare her, to prove that she had that in her, just below the surface. How easy, she thought, it would be to cross the line from which there was no return.
‘He can smell your milk, that’s all,’ the health visitor said by way of comfort when she confided that she felt constantly hounded by him.
‘Is it true that boys tend to be more needy?’ she asked, desperate for confirmation that it wasn’t a reflection of something she was doing wrong.
‘I mean, they’re babies. They are needy, because you’re their mother – they need you to survive.’ She said it as if it was the most simple thing in the world. It was ironic, she thought, that with the birth of her children, Gabriela should be granted the most powerful role in the world, and yet it was a role that made her feel completely and utterly impotent.
When Madeleine called to say she was in town and would Gabriela like to meet for lunch, it was like being offered a reprieve. She practically counted down the minutes to their meeting, which took place at Daphne’s, an old family-run restaurant in an unassuming spot in the backstreets of Camden Town, roughly equidistant between her house and Madeleine’s flat in Marylebone.
Leaving Callum with Tom, she couldn’t shift the sense as she walked down Royal College Street that she was not alone. Putting it down to the anomalous feeling of going out for a grown-up lunch without the baby after so long, she refused to turn around. The moment she saw Madeleine at their usual table in the window, her red lips wrestling with a piece of bread, any concerns she had melted away.
‘Look at you!’ Madeleine beamed up at her, taking a moment to inspect Gabriela’s features before kissing her warmly on both cheeks. ‘I’ve missed this face.’
She smiled. ‘Bloody hell, don’t look too closely … I’ve slept about three minutes this week. Anyway, that is almost literally the most boring sentence I have ever uttered – sorry. Please can we get a drink before I start talking about hand, foot and mouth disease?’
Madeleine grimaced and Gabriela gave her a look that told her not to ask, though part of her wished she would.
‘That’s the attitude, and I’m one step ahead …’ Madeleine passed her a glass of white wine from behind the menu propped on the table between them, and poured another for herself.
‘The children, oh my God, how are they?’
‘Well, Sadie is two and very sweet, and Callum is exhausting and gorgeous and has destroyed what was left of my tits, and that is the last word I’m going to say on the subject because I actually can’t be trusted not to turn into a tedious wretch if I start chatting about my kids … Cheers.’ she breathed in as she lifted her glass. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’
Madeleine shrugged. ‘You’re only human … So you’re looking forward to going back to work?’
Gabriela exhaled. ‘I suppose so. I mean yes, desperately, just to get out of the house, to be doing something with my brain … But the office is actually intolerable without you. Emsworth, he’s—’ She took a gulp of her drink before leaning back, making a groaning noise. ‘I just hate him.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Madeleine said.
Gabrielle held her eye for a moment. ‘OK then,’ she said, a rush of excitement taking hold as she reached down into her bag and pulled out the envelope she had been carrying around for so long, as if challenging herself to say something, hardly believing she had finally found the nerve.
‘So,’ she said, bolstered by seeing Madeleine again, by this brief window into her other life, but still aware she was making an insinuation that she could never retract. ‘Look, I don’t know if it’s anything, but when I was in Moscow, I saw Emsworth having a meeting. I don’t know who with, but it was fucking weird. He made me swear not to tell anyone in the department that I’d seen him. It could be nothing but it didn’t sit right … The way he was acting was … the whole thing was odd.’
Gabriela paused before sliding a photo across the table, looking away and carrying on before she could lose her nerve.
‘I took this picture. And it’s not just that. He’s been printing off information. Papers relating to an African businessman called Francisco Nguema. When I looked him up in the files, it seems he is tied up in corrupt business dealings with a number of British businessmen, as well as internationally. There wasn’t a photo but when I googled him … I think it’s this guy.’
She pointed to the man in the suit.
When she looked up, Madeleine’s eyes were shining. ‘Bloody hell. You’ve been sitting on this since Moscow?’
Gabriela blushed. ‘I’m sorry, Mads. Really, I wanted to tell you. I tried. I just …’
Madeleine shook her head. ‘I get it. I mean I don’t get it at all, you moron, but it’s good that you told me. I’m sure as hell going to look into it.’
She breathed in. ‘In the meantime, Miss bloody Marple, I’ve been wanting to ask you something too … How about, when you finish maternity leave, coming to work for me instead?’
Gabriela’s whole body was vibrating with excitement as she left the restaurant.
Keen to escape the crowds that battled it out come rain or shine across the bars and pubs and the same market stalls selling the same tatty T-shirts and bongs, she headed past the doorway she and Saoirse would duck into as schoolgirls, having snuck out of school early to smoke bidis on the canal. Saoirse. When she thought of her now, she felt a pang of guilt. Jesus, how long had it been since they had last spoken? Had Gabriela even called to say thank you since their last trip to visit Saoirse and Jim at their new home near Teignmouth, having traded in hipster Hackney for the Devon coast?
She would ring her later, she told herself as she crossed the bridge before Chalk Farm Road and headed on to the canal. Walking west towards the zoo, she lifted her mind away from the towpath and the couples vying for space with cyclists, away from the weeping willow and the lawns extending down to the water where colourful boats pushed out plumes of smoke. Slowly, she allowed herself to think through Madeleine’s offer of a new role on her return from maternity leave.
‘I’m working on an ongoing project, coordinating efforts between different departments who work with victims of human trafficking from Vietnam, tackling the networks that facilitate the trafficking …’ she had explained. ‘The victims tend to end up in in nail bars, fruit-picking, sex work … I’m looking to bring someone in from the existing team in London to help tee up efforts here that at the moment are being made almost in isolation, with the objective that if we work unilaterally we can get the best results. A theory that one might have assumed would be par for the course in an organisation such as ours, unless, like us, you work for it …’
Tom was running a bath by the time Gabriela arrived home, just after six, a couple of parcels in her bag filled with gifts for the kids, and a compendium of modernist design for Tom which she suddenly panicked she might have bought for him the year before. It was only a fortnight until Christmas and she’d barely had a moment to think about presents, let alone putting up a tree, operating on the premise that anything that could present a physical hazard if tugged at would be instantly destroyed by Callum, the Human Detonator as Tom had affectionately renamed him.
‘How was lunch?’ Tom called out from the bathroom when he heard her feet on the stairs.
‘It was good,’ she said joining him, her eyes shining. ‘And guess what?’ She felt an energy rush when she considered it, unlike anything she had felt in years.
‘I’ve been headhunted for a new role— Hello, my darlings …’
She leaned in to kiss her children on their heads.
‘No way?’ Tom looked as happy as she felt, his whole face lighting up to reflect hers. ‘That’s brilliant!’
The sincerity of his expression was touching, and she stopped to look at him for a moment, wondering how much she should tell him, before turning to pick up Callum from where he was propped in a bath-chair next to his sister, wrapping him in a towel and pulling him onto her knee as she perched at the edge of the toilet seat, for want of anywhere else to sit.
‘So, what is it? Actually, look, I’ll get Sadie out of the bath … Come on, Princess. And then I’m going to make us a drink and you can tell me all about it.’
‘Thank you,’ she said after a moment and Tom laughed.
‘What for? I didn’t do anything. If you’re happy, I’m happy. You know that.’
She swallowed, aware of how true his words were.