Tom had stormed out of the house after their row. When he returned around two in the morning the smell of alcohol slowly enveloped the bedroom. Gabriela lay still, careful not to alert him to the fact that she was awake, and yet part of her, however wary, was desperate to reach out and touch him.
Something about the intensity of his outburst had moved her in a way she hadn’t felt for so long that she had almost forgotten the feelings she once had for him. Now she realised: she needed him to make her feel like she wasn’t already dead. That night, as he faced her, the rage pouring from him like venom, she had felt more alive in Tom’s presence than she had in years.
He barely met her eye over breakfast the following morning and when she leaned in to kiss him goodbye, he flinched.
‘About last night,’ she said, as she stood by the doorway looking back at him, but he shook his head dismissively.
‘Let’s just forget about last night.’
For the first couple of hours after he left the house, she managed to keep the inevitable thoughts at bay, but by the time she had finished scrubbing the bathroom and the kitchen until her fingers were raw, she had no choice but to face it: Tom was not having an affair.
The next morning she left early and headed for the tube, exiting at Charing Cross – not sure where she was heading but desperate to immerse herself in the crowds.
Drawing out her phone, she saw two missed calls from Ivan. Pushing through a knot of tourists gathered on the Strand, she stood with her back against a wall, the guilt swelling in her throat as she listened to his voicemail.
‘Gabriela, please call. We need to talk.’
There was a pause, as if he was going to say something else, but then he hung up.
She had needed the shield of the crowds, the anonymity they afforded her, the protection of countless strangers moving at a thousand different paces and directions, none of them asking anything of her. But now the pollution was like a fog, the sound of the traffic and the dustcart obliterating her thoughts so that no matter how fast she moved she couldn’t escape the feeling that the world was closing in on her. She was trapped.
‘Gabriela?’
When she turned, she saw Johnny standing in front of her, an apparition from a previous life. For a moment, out of context, she struggled to place him. It was only then that she realised, consciously, where she was. Looking up over his head, she saw the steps leading up to King Charles Street.
His expression changed when he saw her face.
‘I thought it was you. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Gabriela said too quickly, her voice breathy as if she’d been running.
Closing her eyes, she tried to clear her head. She needed to recall what he might know of her situation, what lies he had been party to, the version of her that she needed to embody in this moment. But, of course, he knew nothing about her and probably cared even less. They had worked together for a while, that was all.
‘What are you doing around here?’ he asked.
‘I’m—’ she paused. ‘I’m just going for a walk.’
‘OK, well, good to see you,’ he said, and she could see from his face that he was pleased to find a natural break in the conversation, an excuse to walk away. She could imagine him cursing himself for having called out to her. She could almost hear him returning to the office and pulling out a chair beside Serena. You won’t believe who I just saw, he’d say. Acting really strange.
Turning, she walked as fast as she could away from the direction of KCS until she reached Buckingham Palace, allowing her knees to buckle as she sat at a bench overlooking the hordes of tourists peering through the gates, like hecklers rattling the bars of a prison.
When she heard her phone ringing in her bag, she pulled it out and saw Ivan’s number flashing on the screen.
‘Hello?’
‘You didn’t call back,’ Ivan said. He sounded hurt.
She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot on.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, straight away, as if he had been sitting with whatever he was about to say for a long time and needed to get it off his chest.
‘If we’re going to do this, we need to do it properly.’
‘What does that mean?’ She knew exactly what it meant; what she had always known, on some level, that he’d ask.
‘I want you to move in with me.’
The silence that followed was filled with so many emotions that she couldn’t pinpoint a single one. In the end, the only answer she could find was the truth.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just not. I have other commitments. My job …’
‘What has moving in with me got to do with your work?’
‘It’s all-consuming, Ivan. I’m away so much and— I want my independence.’
‘Your independence?’ His voice was disbelieving.
She had nothing left to say. She felt empty, used up. So she said, ‘Can I think about it?’
This time it was he who went quiet. ‘Right,’ he said at last. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice.’
For the rest of the day, she kept walking, stopping only to buy a new SIM card and phone, with the number she would give to Ivan to stem the constant fear that he would call while she was with Tom, or vice versa.
Once she had set up the new device, she texted him to say she’d had to give back her work phone and this was her new number, not elaborating in her message but already forming the back story in her mind: due to government cuts, the charity was clamping down on non-work-related calls and as a result she’d bought herself a new phone. There was no reason for him to question that the number he’d been dialling wasn’t her work phone, or that she didn’t already have a personal device. It wasn’t as though he’d seen evidence of a glut of family or friends who’d need to contact her.
He didn’t reply to the text, and she took it as a sign that he was still reeling from her refusal to immediately commit to moving in with him.
‘How was your day?’ Tom asked when she got home. He was sitting on the sofa watching the news, his voice still wary, unsure of where they were in relation to one another. It was like a dance, these interactions, no one sure who was to take the next step, or where it would lead.
‘Tiring,’ she said, placing her bag on the table.
‘There’s pizza,’ Tom said.
‘Thanks.’
She took out a plate from the cupboard.
‘Where are the kids?’
‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘Hold on …’ He stopped talking to turn up the volume on the TV.
‘Gabriela?’ he called over to the kitchen area. ‘Isn’t that your boss?’
As she turned she saw a photo of Guy Emsworth, his porcine features filling the television screen as she moved across the room, the sight of him making her skin bristle.
‘An employee of Mr Emsworth’s department told the tribunal that Mr Emsworth, who until today was a leading director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, discriminated against her after she refused sexual advances … Serena Ghosh—’
‘You didn’t tell me about this,’ Tom said, turning to look at her where she stood behind the sofa, her whole body pinned to the spot.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the screen though the words no longer reached her.
In that moment, the ground fell away.
As she moved into the next room, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialled Madeleine’s number. The dialling tone told her she was back in England.
‘Are you watching the news?’ Madeleine said when she picked up.
‘Yes,’ Gabriela said. ‘Are you back? Can we meet?’