With Madeleine gone, her role was unofficially absorbed into Gabriela’s, so that she was now reporting again directly to Emsworth with their once ten-strong team culled to just four. Not only did this give Gabriela the chance to prove herself as a leader, but it provided the perfect vantage point from which to watch his every move.
It was the sweetest of feelings, him believing he was using her to keep an eye on everything that happened in the department, insisting on rubber-stamping every decision that was made, being kept abreast of every action taken, every morsel of information uncovered, and all along knowing that she was watching him, keeping tabs on exactly what piqued his interest – and handing everything she discovered straight back to Madeleine at the NCA.
‘Do you think we should speak to someone here about our suspicions?’ Gabriela asked one day.
‘Absolutely not. We can’t trust anyone there. Not even Serena or Johnny,’ Madeleine replied without hesitation.
‘But when you said, months ago, that there were suspicions in your department about confidential stuff being leaked, surely whoever it was that alerted you might have more information, and we could work together?’
‘Gabs, leave this to me, OK? No one can know what we’re doing. Not yet. Not until we know more about what’s going on. Oh, and do me a favour,’ Madeleine added thoughtfully. ‘Let me know when he’s next off to Moscow …’
‘Why?’ Gabriela asked, and she could almost hear her friend smiling at the end of the phone.
‘Just do it, would you? Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if we get something.’
‘I know you will,’ Gabriela said, and as she hung up she felt a buzz like electricity charging through her veins.
Despite the satisfaction of these calls, and of knowing the work that was going on to catch Emsworth out in whatever it was he was involved in, it had become a tic of Gabriela’s to refresh the internal jobs board, imagining herself in another department, rising up through the ranks.
And finally she saw it, the following year: an opening for a senior lead in Human Rights and Democracy. Not only was it precisely the role she had been aspiring to for so long, but there was enough overlap with what they had been doing of late to ensure, in anyone’s mind, that she was as qualified as one might hope to be. She shivered at the possibility as she made her application, knowing in her bones this role was meant for her.
‘I’m thinking of applying for the job in Human Rights,’ she said to Emsworth at the end of their next briefing. After all, she could hardly keep it from him, and it would be necessary to have his support.
He looked thoughtful for a moment and then he nodded. ‘Very good. Well, I’m sure you’re an excellent candidate.’
The positivity of his response briefly silenced her. ‘Thank you very much. I’m very excited about applying. Does that mean you’d back me, to Bradford, in my application?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he asked and she stood, relieved, a brief stir of guilt before reminding herself of all he’d already put them through. Besides, it would hardly be an act of generosity on his part to lend support for her application: she had earned this.
In characteristically convoluted FCO style, it was February by the time applications were considered and the new recruit announced.
It was a particularly mild morning and the remnants of the rain overnight left a light sheen on the pavement outside as she gathered her things in preparation for dropping Sadie at nursery. Tom was staying at home with Callum, who was unwell and had been up most of the night so that none of them had slept properly.
Retrieving items of clothing from across the house and grabbing Sadie’s scooter on their way out of the door, Gabriela feared she was already running late. She’d need to drop Sadie off early if she was to make the 9.30 a.m. briefing. Whatever bug Callum was carrying, Gabriela was about to be struck with it too: her head was pounding and her nose feeling as though it had been filled with rags. But she couldn’t afford to get sick, not now; not with the decision about to be made about the new HRD job – though, given Bradford’s indiscretion in the final interview, she already knew it was as good as hers.
‘Sadie, please, hurry up!’ she snapped, though the voice in her head reminded her this was not her daughter’s fault.
Sadie was making her way along the pavement without allowing herself to touch the lines between the slabs, hopping between each with an intense focus that should have been endearing, or, if she’d been paying better attention, a sign that something was off. It was a behaviour Gabriela herself had adopted at times in childhood when life felt particularly beyond her control; one of those incongruous ways, along with the counting and the systematic blinking, that helped her feel like she had some sort of hold over her universe, which seemed already to spin either too fast or too slow.
Pulling her gloves off with her teeth, Gabriela typed an email on her phone to Madeleine, whom she was supposed to be meeting for lunch. Gabriela had had to cancel their last get-together and, though today was already looking rammed, she couldn’t cancel again – even if she had embarrassingly little to share. Recently, Emsworth had gone remarkably quiet, indicating no particular interest in any of the work he signed off. It was almost as if a shutter had been pulled down.
She typed with her index finger, the wind causing her eyes to stream.
1.30 at the restaurant is perfect – see you then x
She pressed Send and felt a rush of panic at the prospect of everything she had to do. How was it possible to be this tired and still be standing upright? And it wasn’t just the rough night’s sleep that had done her in. Recently, with her amped-up workload and preparation for the interviews she’d been undertaking, things had started to spiral so that some days she felt so overwhelmed she had to hide in a cubicle in the bathroom and remind herself to breathe. To complicate matters, she couldn’t tell Tom about her recent job application. As far as he was concerned, she was still working under Madeleine as she had been when she was in Hanoi. To tell him about the change in circumstances would have been to give him a voice in the conversation around her career that she simply didn’t want him to have.
Perhaps she was thinking about the satisfaction she’d seen on his face those mornings while she was on leave when he went out on the job with Jim, the look that belied his insistence that he was happy to stay at home while she went out to work. Perhaps she wasn’t willing to start a dialogue that might lead somewhere she didn’t want it to go – and maybe that was perfectly reasonable, given her history.
She was able to draw a line between her desperate need for control and the experience of being abandoned as a child. She understood that a therapist might have rationalised the increasingly secretive behaviour as another manifestation of her need to manage aspects of her life, triggered by the inevitable chaos of becoming a mother – and the shift in identity that comes with that.
There was also another, more simple possibility: that she was just selfish.
By the time she got to the tube station at 8.35, having dropped Sadie at the nursery, she felt like she had been put through a blender. As she reached the platform, rats scuttled through the arch of the tunnel, heralding the arrival of the train.
Exiting the tube half an hour later, she had to push against the wind that blew through the station, ducking into a coffee shop where she ordered a double espresso before making her way to the bathroom. The tap spat out hot water, scalding her hands as she rinsed off the soap.
Removing the grey beret Tom had bought her the previous Christmas, she reached into her bag and pulled out a brush. It had belonged to her mother, and her mother before that; the soft tufts of horsehair had rubbed away in parts over time, and the smooth curve of the handle urged her to hold it tight. By the time her mum had died in her early fifties, struck by the same cancer that had taken her own mother around the same age, Valentina had barely a grey hair on her head. Gabriela’s own wavy locks were still the same colour they had always been, though the texture had coarsened since she’d had the children, as if bolstering itself against the implications of motherhood.
For a moment she considered her reflection. Despite having recently hit her thirties, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose gave her a child-like quality. Her relative youth was something that both served and blighted her, not least in the diplomatic quarter where disarmament could be one’s greatest asset. What at first drew in men like Emsworth, attracted by the vivacity and apparent malleability of inexperience, emboldened them to belittle and reject in that distinct way that men had with young women, without thinking twice. Without believing there would be any consequences at all.
Serena was already in the office, fresh-faced and straight from the gym, when Gabriela arrived. She smiled across at her as she settled at her desk. ‘Bad journey?’
Gabriela bristled, annoyed at how easily Serena read her mood, but she managed a smile.
‘No, just cold. I’m going to get another coffee, want one?’
‘Not for me,’ Serena waved her hand. ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine-thirty.’
‘You’re not coming to the briefing?’
Serena frowned. ‘That was cancelled, didn’t you get the email?’
Gabriela paused. ‘What? No, when?’
‘On Friday evening – I’m sure you must have been …’
She scrolled through her emails and then clicked open the message, hovering over the recipients before pulling a confused expression. ‘You’re not in CC, you must have slipped off.’
Gabriela nodded, working hard to seem unconcerned, despite the feeling of unease working its way up her back, like an unseen hand.
‘Yes, that must be it.’
It was midday when Emsworth finally surfaced. Feeling emboldened, Gabriela gave him a minute to settle at his desk before she made a beeline for his office, striding straight past Lauren who raised her hand.
‘Sorry, do you need something?’
‘I just need to see Emsworth,’ she replied, her fingers already rapping against the wood.
Walking in as soon as she heard his voice, she noted the annoyance in his face. For someone with a hypothetical open-door policy he appeared remarkably surprised to see someone walk through it.
‘Gabriela. How can I help?’
Moving into the room and settling on the seat opposite his desk, Gabriela said, ‘Hi, I was expecting to see you earlier but the meeting was cancelled, apparently.’
His face barely moved. ‘That’s right.’
Brushing over the fact that he hadn’t bothered to tell her about it, she continued, ‘So I just wanted to make sure everything was teed up. We haven’t had a meeting for a while and I think it’s important we’re all up to date.’
‘Actually, I was going to drop you a line later, about the job.’ Emsworth’s expression changed and she watched him, slowing down, lining up his words for the perfect delivery.
Noting the blankness of her expression, he said, ‘They haven’t told you? They’ve made a decision – that’s where I was this morning. And it looks like good news for you …’
Her whole body vibrated with excitement. ‘Oh wow!’
‘Wow, indeed,’ he said, delivering the news with a smile. ‘You see, you’re just doing so well here, it would be a shame – a real shame – to lose you. And they understood that, when I explained it to them. They understood why I needed to keep you, what with Madeleine walking out on us like that. Anyway, like I said, it’s good news for you! Without Serena in the department, we can apply for an extra pair of hands, so you’re not struggling to keep on top of things quite so much … You do seem to be struggling. And like I said, I’m always here, to watch over things.’
‘Serena?’
It was as if someone had turned down the volume on the world. For the next few seconds, she watched Emsworth’s features moving – the too-soft shine of his cheeks, his lips puckering as he enunciated her defeat, but the meaning remained unclear.
‘What the fuck?’ The words slipped out before she could control them.
Emsworth visibly recoiled. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That job was mine. You said so; Bradford, in the final interview, he told me it was as good as sealed …’
‘Oh Gabriela, come now, don’t be ridiculous. Firstly, there’s no way anyone would make a promise like that without due process. And frankly, I thought we were doing you a favour. This role, it’s loaded with responsibility, you’d be taking on infinitely more …’
‘I know, that is precisely why I applied! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ever since Madeleine left I’ve effectively been doing several roles at once, without any additional pay or recognition, and you told me— This job, please, it means everything to me … Please …’ There was a desperation to her voice that repulsed them both.
‘Well, that’s quite an admission.’ He was quiet for a few seconds and then he shrugged. ‘The problem is, it’s all about trust. We need someone we can rely on 100 per cent.’
‘You can rely on me,’ she said, and he sneered.
‘Can I?’ As he leaned forward, she felt a chill move across the room.
‘You know you can.’
Without saying anything, he reached into his bag and pulled out a camera. Zooming into the screen he dropped it on the desk, the image of Gabriela and Madeleine in the window of Daphne’s staring back at her. She looked up at him and he arched an eyebrow before picking the camera up again and zooming in further so that she could see, pixelated but clear enough, the image she was holding in her hand: the photo of Emsworth’s meeting at the bar in Moscow.
‘Did you really think I wouldn’t be watching you? That I wouldn’t find out?’ His words were perfectly enunciated, as if he was savouring every one of them.
For a moment Gabriela felt as though her voice box had been cut out, and then she spoke, as though controlled by an outside force.
‘You think you can blackmail me? I know all about you, about Francisco Nguema …’ She enunciated every syllable with precision. ‘I’ll tell everyone.’
His face shifted then. ‘Oh, Gabriela.’ He paused, as though genuinely regretful about what he was about to do, and then he reached again into his bag. This time the photographs he pulled from the envelope made her gag: dismembered body parts, a woman with her teeth and eyes pulled out, lying next to the corpse of a child.
‘Jesus …’ Gabriela bent double and when she sat back up, Emsworth was holding another wad of images. The first was of her house, the ordinariness of the building peculiar to her, in this context. As he pulled out the next picture, she thought she would be sick. Tom, Callum and Sadie on the walk to school, Tom’s head at an angle as if turning to say something to Sadie who was lingering behind in that way of hers.
‘You …’ She couldn’t think of the word. Her mind was spinning, all the blood in her head throbbing at her temples, blotting out Emsworth’s voice as he spoke again.
‘What kind of people do you think we’re dealing with here?’ he asked, his words quiet and measured.
She stood, taking a step back, away from the images of bloody limbs juxtaposed against those of her children’s faces.
There was a ringing sound in her ears as she stood, her legs threatening to buckle.
‘You …’ Her whole body was shaking; her voice when she spoke again was little more than a whisper, as though she’d been kicked in the windpipe.
He spoke as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Gabriela, if you mention a word of this to anyone – Madeleine, your husband – sorry, boyfriend – any friends – and here I would name specific ones, but to be honest you don’t seem to have many … If you mention a word to anyone, they will find you and they will kill you. Do you understand what I am saying? If you ever so much as mention my name, or that of anyone you think you know anything about, your children will die.’
With that, he reached forward and picked up the photos, shuffling them neatly into a pile as if preparing to create a family album.
‘Oh, and with regard to handing in your notice, I’ll explain to HR. Just send an email explaining that you’ve had a family emergency, you had to leave without working your notice. Keep it brief. Don’t worry, I’ll vouch for you, smooth things over here. And you can leave your work phone on your desk. You won’t be needing that anymore.’
Gabriela said nothing, moving backwards towards the door as though she had been shot.