The streets of her childhood felt strange as the taxi moved through Kentish Town, the buildings dirtier, their proportions more cramped after the genteel expanse of Richmond upon Thames.
Keeping her thoughts in the past as the car pulled up outside on the street where she had lived for her entire adult life, she was able to briefly stave off the feeling of pure terror that rose up inside her, irrepressible at last, as the house loomed ahead. Inside, she could see the hallway light was on. Even before she placed her key in the lock, she could picture Tom settled on the sofa in his usual position, not so much watching the television as staring through it, his finger absent-mindedly tracing the rim of his glass of wine.
Did he wonder where she’d been all weekend while he and the children were in Scotland; did he imagine where she might sleep on the sojourns for work that apparently kept her away for days at a time? If the tables had been turned she would never not have asked, she decided – and yet, was that true? How easily had she let this thing with him and Harriet grow; this thing that she could not name?
She had intentionally waited until the children would be in bed to come home, not wanting them to witness the fallout, whatever shape it might take. But now she regretted the decision, longing not only for their bodies to press against hers, but for the distraction they would provide, a foil for the conversation they were about to have, the deep, unavoidable well that was about to open up in the centre of her universe, swallowing them whole.
When she moved through the tiny hallway, rendered even smaller by the contrast to Ivan’s wide open entrance, she saw that Tom wasn’t on the sofa, or in the kitchen. It was the flash of amber from his cigarette that led her out through the garden door.
The moment she saw him there, the hatred she’d built up towards him fell away. In the darkness, his features were softened so that he was the Tom she had met all those years ago in the club; the Tom who had held her hand through both labours.
Looking up, he attempted a smile, which was instantly obliterated by a wash of sadness. Looking closer, she saw that he had been crying.
‘Hey,’ he said as she settled on the other chair, the garden light turning off as quickly as it had come on.
‘Hey,’ she replied. Any wind she’d had left in her as she stepped into the house had been pulled from her sails.
He didn’t ask where she had been.
‘There’s wine in the kitchen if you want it,’ he said and she shook her head.
‘I’m OK.’
He sighed. ‘But we’re not, are we?’
His words hung in the air.
‘No, we’re not.’
‘What’s going on, Gabriela?’
There was a moment of silence and then she felt her body clench.
‘You’re asking me?’
His words hardened in response. ‘Well, I’m not sure who else I should ask.’
‘To be honest, Tom, I would have thought it should be me asking you.’
She wasn’t going to be the first to break. She wouldn’t let him have this one so easily.
‘You asking me what’s going on? That doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ she snapped without raising her voice, aware of the children’s rooms above their heads, and the neighbours who could hear their every breath.
‘When was the last time you asked what was going on with us, Gabriela? With me and the kids?’
He spread his arms out, gesturing towards the windows where the glow from Callum’s nightlight had dissolved into black.
‘Oh please, what are you even talking about? Don’t make this all about you. That’s such a typical male move. You want me to ask you straight, then OK, I will: how long have you and Harriet been sleeping together?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, come on, Tom. I saw you at the concert … Remember?’
He cackled then. ‘The concert! Of course, the concert you didn’t actually see because you were so late. Is that the concert you’re referring to? The concert you ran off from, to go back to work – to a job that means more to you than your family? That concert?’
‘Oh, fuck off, not all of us get to spend our day lording around between drop-off and pick-up, spending someone’s else’s money …’
He stood up then, leaning into her. ‘No, fuck you, Gabriela.’
He slammed his palm on the table and she saw a curtain twitch in one of the neighbouring houses.
For the first time in her life, she cowered away from him.
‘I mean, wow, you really have no idea why we were talking, do you? Not even an inkling?’
Tom’s eyes glistened and she felt herself lean backwards in her chair.
‘That woman is the mother of the girl who has been bullying our daughter so badly that most afternoons after school she shuts herself in her room and cries.’
He was whispering now, but with an intensity that lit his face. ‘That woman is the person I’ve been having hour-long conversations with on the phone, when I’m not pissing about, trying to work out how to help fix things because you’re so busy, so fucking stressed out, that I’m worried if I share this problem with you that you might break. The reason, Gabriela, that we were so involved in conversation is that our daughter is so stressed that I’m worried she is going to be irrevocably damaged at a time when she is also in mourning for her mother, who might as well be dead for the amount of attention she gives this family!’
His voice hummed with quiet rage, his face pulsing with it.
‘Why do you think I keep whisking the kids away at any given opportunity, subjecting them to endless bloody car journeys to my parents’, to Saoirse and Jim’s, to anywhere where we can actually breathe? You think that woman is the threat to our family, Gabriela? You think some mother from school is what is going to be the end of all this? You, Gabriela – your fucking job—’
He was laughing, his eyes full of rage. ‘You know what, I wish I was so simple! I wish I could go around shagging other women, that it was that easy. But you know the sad truth of all this, Gabriela, is that I could never do that to you. Never.’
He shook his finger in her face, as if his words were a point of terrible regret. ‘And not just because I love you so fucking much it hurts me to even think of my own life without you, but because I know what that would do to our children. All they want is their mother. But you’re too damn selfish to notice, let alone give a shit.’
The night air seemed to crackle with the energy that was rising off him.
‘Tom, I …’ she tried to respond but her words fell away as he stormed into the house, raising his hand against her feeble attempts to defend herself as he walked back through the kitchen and vanished through the hall, leaving a steaming trail of hatred in his wake.