Madeleine called again as Gabriela entered the tube station, and she pressed Reject, expecting to receive another frustrated voicemail. Madeleine had been due to travel abroad for work a couple of days after Gabriela walked out of the FCO for the final time, and so there was little risk of her showing up at the house demanding an explanation. But she’d be back soon, and there was only so long she could be fobbed off without a proper explanation as to why Gabriela had left so abruptly, not least given their pact, however ineffectual it had been.
When Gabriela got home that evening, Tom was waiting for her in the living room, Sadie and Callum already asleep upstairs.
‘I was thinking we could take the kids to see my parents this weekend,’ he said before Gabriela had a chance to make her excuses to have a bath and head to bed. For a moment her heart leapt at the chance to get away, the change of scene, time with the kids, but instantly her anticipation turned to dread. The prospect of the drive to Edinburgh, Tom and her side by side, free to catch up in a way that just couldn’t end well. Not yet. Not while she was still undecided as to what she should do.
‘I can’t do this weekend,’ she said, pausing. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I know I’ve been really distracted recently, there’s just been so much going on at work and I—’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, picking up his coat and walking towards the door. ‘I’m going for a drink. I’ll see you later.’
Over the next few days with Tom and the kids away, a stillness settled through the house. Without the constant jangle of family life, of slammed doors, suffocating silences, the constant demands for attention that were never met, the house rang with questions Gabriela struggled to answer. The main one was devastatingly simple: how long did she think she could carry on with this?
While she could hardly believe the house was really under watch from within, still she found herself rushing from one room to the next, haunted by the sense that she was being chased. As though running from a future that was inevitable as the grave.
By the time Tom and the kids returned on the Sunday, she was desperate to see them.
‘Gabriela?’
She heard the shaking of keys and then Tom’s voice through the front door as she lay upstairs on the bed with a book, trying to escape her own head. Leaping up, she walked quickly to the hall and down the stairs to where Tom was standing, a suitcase still in his right hand, the other hand propping open the front door.
‘Hey, love.’ He kissed her on the cheek and pulled her into a hug before turning to indicate their children, comatose in the back of the car.
‘When was the last time that happened?’ he said, and she struggled to remember. They would be six and four this year – so far from being babies, and yet where had that time gone? The thought struck her briefly as heartbreaking.
‘How was the journey?’
‘Oh, you know, deeply glamorous. Matilda and The BFG on loop, outbreaks of war from the back seat, occasional retching.’
‘I missed you,’ she said.
‘If you hold the front door, I’ll bring them in one at a time,’ he replied before stopping and turning to her, kissing her on the mouth. ‘I’ve missed you too.’
Lying awake one night, a few days later, she decided to tell him everything – to clear the air of all the lies swelling between them, the duplicity as destructive to her family as any threat Emsworth had mustered. Even if she couldn’t expect that Tom would know what to do, just the fact that he knew would infinitely lighten the burden.
She placed the memory of the photos firmly out of mind, telling herself that Emsworth was all talk. He could have pulled those images from anywhere; he could have found them online and printed them off to scare her with.
She would tell Madeleine, too. Madeleine would be livid that it had taken her so long to come clean, but now was better than never. Besides, the only way in which he could definitively ruin her life was by destroying her mind, and by backing her into this corner that was exactly what he was doing, crushing her from the inside out. The one thing he hadn’t anticipated was that she would call his bluff.
She chose a Friday evening to do it, building herself up to it as she made her way back from her pacing along the Thames. She’d called Madeleine earlier that morning, leaving a message to say she had something important to tell her and asking her to ring back when she could. Collecting a takeaway on her way home from her and Tom’s favourite curry house in Kentish Town, she texted him en route, asking him to stick the kids in front of a movie so that they could eat in peace. I have something I need to tell you.
Gabriela knew something was wrong even as she reached the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked as she moved into the hall and Tom gave her a look that told her to back off.
Sadie was sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes red and swollen.
‘Something happened at the park, after school.’ Tom’s face warned her to tread carefully.
‘What happened?’
‘Sadie … she went off with someone.’
‘I didn’t,’ Sadie said, her voice on the verge of hysterics. ‘I told you, he said he was a friend of Mummy’s …’
A fist hit her stomach.
‘What happened, baby?’ she asked and Sadie looked away, ashamed.
Tom beckoned Gabriela towards the back door, stroking his daughter’s hair reassuringly as he passed.
‘A man … I don’t quite understand what happened, but we were at the playground on the Heath after school and I was helping Callum on the bridge, and when I turned around, Sadie wasn’t there.’
‘What do you mean she wasn’t there?’ Gabriela said, her voice accusing.
‘I mean she wasn’t fucking there … I looked for her for about five minutes and when I found her she was outside on the path, with an ice cream. She said some man had told her he was a friend of yours and to come with him to the café, that it was a surprise that you were waiting there … And then he bought her an ice cream and sent her back.’
Gabriela felt a scratching down the back of her throat and she turned, lunging towards Sadie so that she jumped.
‘Sadie, who was the man?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, obviously scared. ‘He was just a man.’
‘What did he look like?’ Gabriela asked and her daughter started to cry.
‘I don’t know …’
‘What colour was his hair, his skin, his eyes? You must remember something, this is important. Think!’
Tom stepped between them, his eyes warning her to stop.
‘Sadie, it’s OK,’ he said, still facing Gabriela, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not your fault, OK? We’re not angry. We’re just happy that you’re OK.’
‘I already called the police,’ he added under his breath. ‘She gave them a description. He was a white guy, brown hair, she didn’t remember anything else.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Gabriela asked, and Tom shrugged.
‘I didn’t want to worry you – and what would be the point? Sadie was safe, and what could you have done from the office apart from panic? I know how busy you’ve been, I didn’t want you to rush home for no reason.’
‘No reason?’
‘For God’s sake, Gabs, please calm down. It was a shock, but it’s happened and she’s OK. All right?’
He held her face in his hands before pulling her into a hug. ‘She’s OK.’ He waited a moment and then he said, ‘So, your text: what was it you wanted to tell me?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, pressing her nails into his back. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just all go to bed. I don’t feel hungry anymore.’
Once Tom was asleep, Gabriela got up. She could not quieten her mind, the memory of the message she’d left for Madeleine replaying in her head. The message she’d left telling Madeleine to call back, that she had something important to share, something Madeleine would really want to hear …
Someone had been listening. Someone was listening to her messages, and they had responded with their very own, delivered to her via her daughter. For hours her mind circled the reality of what had happened, and then she faced it head on, staring it in the face so that she could see it for what it was: Emsworth had had her daughter abducted. Sadie. A man she didn’t know had held Sadie’s hand and led her through the Heath, a place where Gabriela believed they were all safe, and bought her an ice cream. She imagined the invisible imprint of his hands wrapped around the cone that touched her daughter’s mouth.
She wanted to scream. No, she wanted to storm out of the door and run to Emsworth’s house and pull one of his sons from their bed and hold a knife to his neck. She wanted to watch Emsworth’s face as he saw the blood.
Calm down, she told herself, knowing such thoughts would get her nowhere. Besides, where did he live? Without her work phone, she didn’t even have his mobile number.
She pulled out her phone, opening Gmail, pressing New Message. Her fingers hovered above the keys.
She knew his work email by heart, but what would she say? Any correspondence to the FCO was monitored, and how would he react to her contacting him there?
The truth was, she didn’t need to contact him. She didn’t need to email him or write a letter, corner him in a dark alley to tell him that she had changed her mind, that she was not going to tell. Because whatever she did or did not do, he already knew.
For a moment, she imagined running out into the street and screaming a very different message to him, into the wind. Daubing her home with the words she dared not type. Instead, she moved to the cupboard and pulled out a wine glass and sat at the table with a drink before moving to the sofa sometime around two, considering her next steps.
She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when Tom came down the next morning.
‘Did you not sleep?’ he asked and Gabriela shook her head.
‘Me neither. I’m going to call the police this morning, follow it up.’
‘What’s the point?’ she snapped, desperate to stop thinking about it, or at least for Tom to. Terrified that he would put two and two together, ridiculous as that seemed. Of all the conclusions he might jump to …
‘What’s the point? Really? Well, maybe that they catch the guy so he doesn’t try to abduct another little girl, Gabs. That could be a reasonable point.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said, looking away. ‘I mean, fuck’s sake, Tom, why weren’t you watching her?’
‘Excuse me?’ He turned to her so that she wished the words back in her mouth, but she couldn’t stand down.
‘You heard me.’
‘Fuck you.’ He practically spat the words. ‘What a fucking thing to say. Do you have any idea how full on it is trying to watch two of them with the playground that packed? No, of course you don’t, because when was the last time you took them out on your own?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She pulled herself upright, her cheeks burning with combined fury and the knowledge that he was right. But she’d been working, up until a few weeks ago. She was earning money to pay for the roof over their heads. His architectural wet dream.
‘Oh look, just leave it, yeah?’
‘No,’ she said, standing up, knowing it was a bad idea to pursue this, but unable to stop herself. ‘Say what you think, Tom – you think I’m …’
They were in the doorway to the hall and when she looked up, Sadie and Callum were standing on the stairs watching them.
‘Hey darlings. Mummy and Daddy were just talking about something. Did we wake you?’
‘Come on guys,’ Tom said, ushering them back upstairs without looking at her. ‘We’d better get you ready for school. Your mum had better hurry, too, or she’ll be late for her precious job.’
As soon as Tom had left with the children, Gabriela dressed and headed to the phone shop on Holloway Road, buying a new SIM to fit her phone.
Outside, she took her old SIM from her pocket and dropped it into the nearest bin.
They barely spoke for two days after that. When Tom did finally address her, he said, ‘I’m thinking of going away for a few days. Jim and I … There’s a gig up in Glasgow …’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘It’s next weekend …’
‘OK. Fine with me.’
‘Really?’ He sounded surprised. ‘But won’t it interfere with work? The kids will need dropping off and picking up on the Friday from tennis camp.’
‘That’s OK.’
She moved towards the fridge to pull out a drink, and when she turned around he was watching her.
‘So you’re fine with it?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘OK.’ There was a hint of disbelief in his voice. ‘I’ll go and call Jim then, tell him that we’re on.’
‘By the way, I’ve got a new number,’ Gabriela added before Tom disappeared out the door.
‘How come?’
‘They’ve upgraded our phones. Everyone has a new one.’
She waited for him to call her out, but he barely shrugged. ‘Fine. Text it to me and I’ll replace the old one.’
Tom left first thing on Friday morning. The kids’ tennis club that ran for the duration of half-term didn’t start until ten. Sadie had packed her things in a bag and was waiting at the foot of the stairs when Gabriela came down, just after seven.
‘Is Callum still asleep?’ she asked and Sadie nodded.
‘Hey, listen,’ Gabriela said, settling herself next to her daughter on the narrow tread and kissing her on the forehead, drawing her towards her and relishing the feeling of the child in her arms. Closing her eyes, from nowhere she pictured the image of St Genevieve and immediately her mind moved to her own mother. Gabriela winced.
Sitting up, she lifted Sadie’s face to look at hers. ‘That man, on the Heath … he didn’t do anything to you?’
Sadie held her eye and shook her head. ‘He just took me to the café and bought me an ice cream.’
‘How old was he?’ She was racking her mind for meaningful questions, hoping to elicit an answer – what kind, she couldn’t be sure: one, she supposed, that would suggest it was unconnected to Emsworth, a fluke event that would free her of the guilt that ran up her back like fingers, threatening to choke her.
‘Don’t know,’ Sadie said. ‘He said he was your friend …’ She started to cry and Gabriela wrapped her arms around her again.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. I promise it’s not your fault. Everything’s going to be OK.’
There was a soft breeze as she opened the front door a while later, Callum taking her hand and tottering along next to her as they made their way from the house, along Crofton Road. Sadie walked a few steps ahead, her hair swishing against the top of her rucksack.
As they approached the tennis courts Gabriela looked sidelong at Sadie to check if the venue threw up any associations from the incident in the playground a little further along the path, but her daughter looked undaunted. Briefly, Gabriela bristled at the thought of leaving them there, but then she remembered, with a further chill, that it really could have happened anywhere.
‘They’re supervised all day, right?’ she probed the coaches before leaving.
‘Of course,’ they smiled back at her, just another diligent mother making sure her babies were safe. ‘They won’t be out of our sight.’
‘I’ll pick you up at four, OK?’ She kissed each of them on the forehead and watched them run towards the other children, falling into easy conversation with faces she didn’t recognise.
Turning reluctantly from the courts, she moved automatically towards the café, reluctant to head straight home, back to the incarceration of those four walls. Besides, she wasn’t ready to leave the children just yet, not entirely.
Walking in the direction of South End Green, her feet moving of their own accord along the path they knew so well, she reached the top of Kite Hill, the view of London spilling across the skyline like the chaotic signature of a life support monitor; she considered stopping for a moment to take in the skyline. But when she reached the bench, she saw it was already taken by a couple of women lost in conversation, side by side. The younger one was seated on the bench, her hand resting on a double pushchair; the older woman in a trench coat. How she envied them. When was the last time she had been out for a walk with a friend? The very prospect of it felt odd, and yet so much of her youth had been spent here on the Heath, roaming every inch of it with Saoirse on long hot summers and dark wet winters that seemed they would never end.
Looking back through a nostalgic lens, the light bleeding through the leaves at the tops of the trees, she pictured them sprawling on the long grass at the end of Fitzroy Park, where a secret world opened out at the end of the lane. Their very own Narnia.
It was the same lane her mother and father and she would amble down years earlier, her mother regaling them with the lyrics of Keats who also used to walk here.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue
They had been sitting at the table in the garden one evening when Saoirse told her she couldn’t have children. She hadn’t known then that Gabriela was already pregnant with Sadie. It had made it awkward, telling her about the pregnancy mere months later, though she said all the right things, squealing when they asked her and Jim to be, in the loosest sense of the words, Sadie’s godparents. But beneath the expression of excitement, Gabriela could see the pain in her friend’s eyes. She could see it every time she whinged about Sadie’s lack of sleep or yet another kids’ party or the countless ways in which she found herself demonstrating her reluctance to be a parent.
And though it had been easy to tell herself they had simply lost touch, that they drifted apart in the way that old friends do, when she thought of it, when she really looked into the past without blinking, making herself study it in a way that was both painful and momentarily blinding, she knew this was not the whole truth.
Saoirse disapproved. Of the mother Gabriela was, or rather the mother that she had failed to be. The mother Saoirse had never had the chance to become.
It was the unspoken line between them, the force that quietly pushed them away from one another.
The morning of Sadie’s fourth birthday, Gabriela had taken the train to Bath to meet the estate agents who were supposedly overseeing the rental of her mother’s house. Burglars had got in while the current tenants were away on holiday and there was a dispute over liability relating to certain items which the insurance company was refusing to cover.
It was another glitch she could not afford to deal with. The previous tenants had left the place in a state and the costs of the repairs when they left had hardly been touched by the deposit the agency had taken, and the only course of action, as she saw it, was to go there and put a rocket up their arses.
Saoirse and Jim had been staying the night. By the time she got home at around three that afternoon, emotionally frazzled, only to find Tom had yet to pick up the cake she had ordered two weeks earlier in order to ensure it would be ready for the big day, she was ready to kill.
‘Jesus Christ, Gabriela, it’s just a cake, calm down.’
‘Calm down? Tom, it’s a cake I ordered for our daughter’s birthday, not for the day after our daughter’s birthday …’
‘I’ll go and get it now! People aren’t coming for another hour.’
‘Great, so you get to go off and do that while I sort out the birthday tea. I assume you haven’t started getting that ready?’ She opened the fridge and started pulling out a loaf of bread and cheese to make sandwiches.
‘It’s four little kids, Gabriela, I hardly think they’re expecting cordon bleu. I’ve bought crisps and cartons of juice, the sandwiches will take five minutes, if that, and Saoirse and Jim have the balloons already blown up in their car. They’ll be back with the kids at half past. Chill out, OK? It’s going to be fine.’
She bit her lip so hard that she felt it might bleed.
He was right, though. The party had gone well, without so much as an outburst of tears over who won pass-the-parcel. Tom had spent most of the time topping up parents’ glasses while Gabriela doled out the birthday tea, cleaning up as she went along, keeping herself busy so as to avoid any opportunity to become embroiled in unwanted small-talk.
Once the kids had all gone, Jim and Tom headed out for a pint, and Saoirse and Gabriela settled in the garden with a bottle of wine and some roll-ups Tom had left in the drawer.
‘Jesus, I thought they’d never leave,’ Gabriela said, pouring Saoirse a glass and lighting up.
‘Who?’
‘The mothers,’ she said, turning the ‘s’ into a hiss.
‘They weren’t that bad,’ Saoirse said, and Gabriela raised her eyebrows.
‘Yeah, well, you don’t know what it’s like.’
‘What what’s like?’
They had both had a few glasses over the duration of the party, and in the sunlight she could see the danger dancing at the side of Saoirse’s eyes in that way she knew so well.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Gabriela said ungracefully, trying to side-shuffle away from whatever it was that was making her tetchy.
‘No, Gabriela. I don’t know what what’s like?’
‘You know, having to hang out with your kids’ friends’ parents.’
Saoirse snorted. ‘Like you’d know either?’
‘Excuse me?’
Saoirse was lighting one of Tom’s roll-ups and when she looked up, she shot Gabriela a look she recognised as one her friend reserved, growing up, for other people. Never her.
‘When was the last time you hung out with Sadie and her friends’ mums?’
The question was very clear and yet she stumbled.
‘Are you serious?’
Saoirse looked at her without replying.
‘Saoirse, is there something you want to say to me?’
Saoirse didn’t rush to answer, but when she spoke it was as though she had been mulling the words over in her mind for years. ‘I just wonder if you should have a think about what you’re doing.’
‘What I’m doing?’
‘About your choices. The kids, they never see you. They’re growing up so quickly … If I had kids, I—’
‘Yeah, but you don’t have kids, do you, Saoirse? So what the fuck do you know?’ The words shot out of her mouth with a savagery that she instantly regretted.
‘Hey, love.’ Saoirse’s face changed suddenly and when Gabriela turned she saw Callum standing in the doorway, his eyes wide with worry. ‘Your mum and I were just telling each other a story. How’re you doing, is your programme finished? Do you want me to put something else on?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Gabriela said, standing and walking across the garden to pick up Callum.
Saoirse must have slipped out while she was busy putting on Tom and Jerry, for when she turned back to where she had been sitting, Saoirse was gone.
‘Darling, have you seen Aunty Saoirse?’ Gabriela asked Sadie, who was sitting on her bed flicking through a picture book. When she looked up, there was a sadness in her eyes and Gabriela wondered if her daughter had heard them talking.
‘She went to see Uncle Jim and Daddy at the pub,’ Sadie said.
‘Oh yes,’ Gabriela said brightly. ‘I think she said, I must have forgotten.’
After a pause, she asked, ‘Are you OK?’
Sadie nodded.
‘You had a good birthday?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you want to come downstairs, watch cartoons with Callum and me?’
She shook her head.
Gabriela inhaled. ‘OK. Well, we’re downstairs if you change your mind.’
Callum fell asleep on the sofa, less than an hour later. As she carried him up to his room, she peeked through Sadie’s door and saw the light was off.
Tucking Callum in, she headed straight to bed, worn out by the afternoon’s wine and the argument with Saoirse. She was already asleep by the time the three of them returned from the pub that night. When she woke up the next morning, Saoirse and Jim had gone.
Gabriela’s mind was dragged back into the present by the sound of her phone. For a moment, she imagined Madeleine’s number flashing on the screen, returning her call, the one in which she had asked her to ring back, that she had something she needed to tell her … Shit. What would she say? Madeleine would be back in London soon and she wouldn’t be easily fobbed off. As far as she was concerned the two of them were still committed to investigating Emsworth with their two-pronged approach. Now that she wasn’t there in the office, Gabriela could legitimately bow out – except for the problem of what to tell Madeleine in terms of why she had left, and to explain away the voicemail she had left.
Though perhaps she was overthinking it. People left jobs all the time; not least women with young families. She could tell Madeleine she was disheartened having not got the promotion and had decided to take some time out to spend with the kids before they were both in school. It would be a believable enough lie, from anyone else.
But as she pulled the phone from her pocket, seeing Tom’s name on the screen, she remembered that no one apart from Tom had this number. Not Emsworth. Not whomever it was he had paid to listen into her calls. And not Madeleine.
She might have felt invincible. She might have felt she could disappear off her friend’s radar, avoiding the awkward questions Madeleine was yet to ask, had it not been for the fact that Madeleine worked for the NCA, meaning she could find Gabriela’s home address in a matter of minutes, once she started looking. And given that Madeleine still had not been given an answer as to why Gabriela left the FCO, it would only be a matter of time before she found a spare moment to call, from wherever far-flung place she was now, to grill her on the details. If she rang and found Gabriela’s old number disconnected, there was no telling how dramatically she would react, what questions she would start to ask, and to whom.
Letting Tom’s call ring out, Gabriela logged onto her emails and retrieved Madeleine’s number from the signature of one of her more recent emails.
Keeping her words light, her explanations fudged, she typed: ‘Hey, it’s Gabriela … Got a new phone, and a new job! Kind of. Family stuff … I’ll explain when you’re back. FYI, last message was a false alarm. Sorry … Know you’re busy, don’t bother calling before you’re in London, just text me when you’re back. Gx.’
Pushing her phone into her pocket, Gabriela felt briefly jubilant. That was one potential minefield kept at bay, but it didn’t resolve the more pressing problem of her diminishing funds. Now that she was out of work, the money she had left from her final pay cheque and the remaining inheritance from her father could only last so long. If bills, addressed to her – because this was her house, after all, and Tom was still officially her tenant – went unpaid, and red-stamped letters started piling through the door, then surely even Tom would have to sit up and take notice. If the classes their children were enrolled into each week, the new sports kits they needed, the lunches they’d grown accustomed to at the pizza restaurant down the road, had to be phased out – then surely he would start asking questions. Wouldn’t he?
She walked for more than an hour, with half a mind on the children, looping back towards the direction of home before she reached Kenwood, sneaking past the tennis courts and looking in, reassured to see Sadie and Callum in the throes of a game.
By the time she got home it was nearly eleven thirty. Filling the kettle, she sat for several minutes at the kitchen table with nothing but the familiar white noise of Radio 4 wrestling with the sound of the boiling water.
Standing briefly to make coffee, she pulled out the laptop from her bag and settled at the kitchen table, before logging onto a job site. After a few clicks, she reached the words ‘Past employment’, and instantly slammed the screen shut. Standing, she walked to the counter, held onto the worktop and screamed. The sound of her own voice soothed her and when she turned, for a moment she could see her father seated on his reclining chair facing the garden.
Quite clearly, she could recall him sitting for hours on end after they had moved in without saying a word. The thought squeezed at her chest, constricting her breath, and she realised how much she missed those days, however painful they might have felt back then. The simplicity of that contact, the complicity of the silences, the lack of expectation on either side.
The sound of knuckles rapping against the square of frosted glass at the end of the hall cut through the silence, and she took a sharp intake of breath. Applying the chain, she opened the door a fraction and saw the postman’s face looking expectantly back at her.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said hastily, opening the door properly and taking the pile of post from his outstretched hands.
Feeling her breath return to normal, she leaned back against the glass. Marching back to the table, she picked up her keys and headed out into the sun, surprised by the overwhelming brightness as it hit her.
She walked and walked until it was time to collect the children. As she approached, Sadie and Callum were immersed in a cool-down activity and for a few minutes she stood and watched them from a distance, a twinge in her heart at seeing them in a way that a parent rarely does; that brief insight into the person they are, without the family unit to prop them up. Callum smiled coyly, shrugging his shoulders as he returned the ball to one of the older boys. Sadie suddenly looked so much older, so self-contained, as she absent-mindedly plucked the strings of her racket between shots.
‘Where did you go?’ Sadie asked as they walked home, stopping for an ice lolly in the newsagent’s on Swain’s Lane.
‘Work,’ her mother said, her voice fracturing, but only for a split second.
Sadie was quiet and when Gabriela turned to her she was looking at her already, her expression unreadable.
‘Why?’ she asked, smiling quizzically.
Sadie shrugged. ‘You haven’t got your bag.’
‘Well, eagle eye, if you must know, I was working from home.’ They were holding hands and Gabriela hoped her daughter hadn’t felt her grip momentarily tighten.
As she watched Sadie run ahead to catch up with Callum, she thought perhaps she could do this, and then she felt the doubt drifting in again, without warning, creeping up on her like a fog, barely visible from a distance, but once it hit, so blinding that it enveloped everything.
Without Tom, the weekend passed quickly; a trip to the supermarket bleeding into hours loafing around the house, Callum kicking a ball against the wall of their tiny garden while Sadie drew, her legs tucked under her, curled on the sun lounger.
That Monday, she couldn’t be bothered to cook and so the three of them went for a quick pizza at the old Italian café on the roundabout by Parliament Hill Fields after tennis, the kids heading straight for the sofa when they got home, not noticing their father was already back as they grappled over the remote.
Gabriela spotted Tom through the kitchen doors pacing the bottom of the garden. It took a moment to register that he was on the phone. Even from this distance, she could sense the intensity with which he was speaking.
When he came back in, his eyes widened as he saw her standing there.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ he replied, attempting a smile. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘Course. You?’
He brushed his hand over her back as he moved past.
‘Who were you talking to?’
He paused for a moment in the hallway and then replied, ‘Harriet, Millie’s mum. She was asking if Sadie could have a play date on Friday.’
When he turned to face her, Gabriela looked back at him in silence, acknowledging for the first time in their relationship that Tom was lying.