Paddington was heaving, a throng of commuters bustling for space beneath the departures board. Gabriela squinted up at the platform numbers, cradling a cup of coffee in one hand, her overnight bag in the other.
It seemed like another lifetime when she’d stood in this station on her way to clear out her mother’s house the summer after her death, once she had seen out her year in Paris – leaving without saying goodbye to Pierre, partly for the thrill she got out of imagining him knocking at her apartment door and finding her gone, and partly because she simply wasn’t sure what to say.
Her dad had offered to drive her there, as Tom had tried too, but there was something so intrusive about the idea of him rooting around in her stuff that she ended up making an excuse about needing to do this on her own. In the end, she had agreed to let Saoirse go with her and they had stood smoking roll-ups in silence as they waited for the train to roll into the exact platform she was boarding from now, with the same uncertainty, the strangely familiar feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.
The train was relatively empty. As London gave way to intermittent fields and then rolling hills, she let herself relax back into the seat. Tom had taken the children in the car the day before, piling them in among the sleeping bags, thrown-together clothes and cheap wine and then heading straight to Devon in the Friday night traffic.
She and the kids had spoken on the phone before she left the following morning, Sadie ploughing on at double-speed about Saoirse and Jim’s new puppy, Daphne; Saoirse in the background sending her love, too busy cooking pancakes to come to the phone.
She tried to push back the hurt she felt and focus on her own deceit.
‘Madeleine’s party might go on late, so tell your father I’ll give you a call on Sunday,’ she said to Sadie, covering her tracks in advance. ‘What time will you guys be back?’
‘Not until late,’ Sadie said, repeating Tom’s answer for him, before barely listening to Gabriela’s goodbye.
Bath Station echoed with voices as Gabriela stepped out onto the platform two hours later, her feet hesitating before making contact with the ground. Around her, the space seemed to spin with movement and sounds; families reuniting with group hugs, a busker’s guitar straining against the screech of brakes.
When her phone rang a minute later, she almost didn’t answer. At least it helped her to think of it that way, retrospectively. She liked to think she had drawn back, even briefly, in that moment, hovering on the edge of a line that once crossed could never be stepped back from.
After all, it wasn’t too late, not yet. She could have called Tom back then and there and told him she’d had a change of heart. She could have taken the next train down to Devon, which wasn’t that far from here, when she came to think of it. The sudden realisation of her proximity to Tom and the children was instantly terrifying and instinctively she glanced over her shoulder as she answered the phone, her tone lightly enquiring, as if the call could be anyone.
‘Hello?’ Her hand held the phone tightly against her ear, containing the sound of his voice.
‘Are you here?’
Did she pause before answering?
‘Yes.’
‘Come outside, I’m waiting in a car.’
Pressing her overnight bag tightly against her side, she held it both like a shield and an arsenal of weaponry as she moved out through the exit and into the city.
It was immediately obvious even before the headlights blinked surreptitiously: the shine of the buffed bodywork incongruous against the grubby backdrop of buildings immediately opposite the taxi rank. Gabriela could feel eyes on her as the door opened and she ducked inside the car with its impossibly clean seats, devoid of stray crisps and discarded DVDs.
The brief feeling of being watched brought back a sudden memory of Emsworth, of the tail he had put on her. How had she forgotten? The likelihood was that he still had someone watching her now, and yet even that didn’t make her think twice before stepping into the car. It was as if in Ivan’s presence she felt protected against the world, cushioned against reality. Impenetrable even with her head floating in the firing line.
For a moment he didn’t speak, he didn’t move forward to greet her in any way. He simply looked, as if memorising everything about her.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ she said, and he smiled, his eyes shining.
‘It’s good to see you.’ There was a sincerity in his voice that moved her.
Leaning forward gently, he kissed her on both cheeks and the smell of him was intoxicatingly unfamiliar.
‘You said low-key,’ he said as the car pulled off. ‘And I took you at your word, so I hope you meant it …’
‘Good,’ she said, with a flush of relief, remembering her insistence that they avoid one of the fashionable spa hotels in the area, just in case of bumping into anyone she knew.
‘Well, it shouldn’t take too long,’ he said as the driver let off the handbrake, the sudden movement of the car causing her to shunt forward, and Ivan held out his hand to catch her.
He smiled. ‘You should probably put on your belt.’
The village was the sort of chocolate-box picture-postcard scene she had spent so many years resenting after her mother had left, abandoning them for a similarly provincial existence.
Through Ivan’s eyes, she saw it in a more rational light – the beautiful thatched roofs, the walled garden, the church spire piercing the grey sky, as they approached.
He led her through the archway into the inn, watching her to check her reaction.
‘Don’t look surprised. Even we nouveaux-riche Russians are capable of discretion when the occasion calls for it.’
She tried to laugh as he squeezed her hand, moving purposefully towards the reception desk, but her whole body was trembling. Despite the lightness of the conversation, every part of her throbbed with a wary acceptance of what was happening. She was checking into a hotel with a man she hardly knew, a man who was not the father of her children. With every step, she shifted closer towards a point from which there was no return. Here, in this fragile state of purgatory, hanging precariously between before and after, the inevitability of what awaited them hovered just in front of her, though still far enough away that she could claim not to see it. There was an irony in that, or perhaps a twisted logic, given what would follow.
And then they were on the stairs, and his hand rested a moment on the door to their room. With a single step, she was inside and the door behind her closed.
They barely left the hotel for the duration of their stay, moving between the bed and the freestanding bath, safe within the confines of those four walls. Briefly they made it to the dining hall, where the sound of other diners vanished so that all she could hear was the tinkle of cutlery and the sound of the blood pounding in her body.
‘So what attracted you to Russia?’ he asked later that night, stroking her hair, his body cradling hers under the soft cotton sheets.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, her heartbeat quickening at the prospect of another lie. But when she opened her mouth, the truth spilled out. ‘When I was growing up, my mother was obsessed with Russian philosophy.’
Noting his expression, she smiled. ‘Yes, she was deeply pretentious … Like I said, we didn’t have a great relationship – I’m not sure she was necessarily the person you’d want to be stuck next to at a dinner party after a few drinks, but she was … I don’t know, she was a character. I think that’s what you call it, someone who is a clever arsehole? She was impassioned.’
Ivan laughed.
‘Her parents were Jewish and had escaped persecution in Spain under Franco. My grandmother was a Communist, as a direct reaction to Fascism, I suppose. My mother was young when her own mother died and she became obsessed with reading up about Communism, though I don’t think she was ever convinced. So I think she transferred that interest to something more palatable; she became obsessed with Russian philosophy and culture instead. She took me to see the Bolshoi at the Royal Festival Hall in London when I was a child, and she sobbed the whole way through. I’ve never seen her so happy.’
‘She sounds impressive,’ Ivan said and she felt herself flinch.
‘She was,’ she said. ‘Just not that interested in being a mother.’
Gabriela felt a slight tightening in her chest.
He paused. ‘I think we would have had a lot to talk about.’
‘You would have,’ she said, allowing herself to be distracted from the comparison. ‘She would have thought you were wonderful.’
‘So she had good taste,’ he laughed, rolling her over so that she was facing him. ‘And what about your father?’
‘He was a maths teacher, a professor at the local college. He and my mother met at a student rally – a veritable cliché – but I’m not sure they were ever suited to one another. My father adored her, and she … I suppose she loved to be adored.’
‘They didn’t stay together?’
She shook her head. ‘They were always poles apart. You need something in common, don’t you?’
Gabriela felt her voice dry up as she spoke, the realisation taking hold. ‘You need more than a child to hold you together, to help you go the distance. Sometimes fondness, even love, isn’t enough.’
He watched her then and she spotted his cheekbone clench and she wished she could push the words back into her mouth.
When he spoke he said, ‘Life isn’t always straightforward.’ As he reached his hands towards her face and kissed her gently, any wariness she felt at the strangeness of his expression melted away.
Saying goodbye at the train station on Sunday morning, Ivan respecting her insistence that she take the train home on the basis that she had work to catch up on, she cried, the repercussions of what she had done, what she could never step back from, rattling through her as he held her in his arms. Or maybe she was crying because she had to leave.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ he asked tenderly, touching the tear rolling down her cheek. ‘Come home with me.’
She shook her head, urging herself to pull it together. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ There was an urgency to his voice, a hint of frustration.
‘It’s complicated,’ she said and rolled her eyes in ridicule at the cliché. ‘No, it really is. I’m … I’m not in a position to start a relationship.’
He looked at her, watching the shape of the words tumbling from her lips with an intensity that made her look away, but then his grip tightened and he nodded, considering something she couldn’t fathom.
‘It’s complicated,’ she repeated, because there was nothing else to say, and he watched her, a look of acceptance finally spreading across his features.
‘OK,’ he said at last.
‘Thank you for a beautiful weekend,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go now.’
But even as she pulled away from him, there was a look in his eye that told her he knew she couldn’t stay away.