She was on her way to meet Madeleine the following day, having told Tom and the kids she was taking a lieu day after her working weekend, when the bank rang. The news of Emsworth’s dismissal was still swimming in her head as she answered the phone. Amidst everything that was happening with Ivan, with so much else to keep her awake at night, Gabriela had almost forgotten he existed.
‘Ms Shaw, I’m calling about your mortgage. I just wanted to check everything was OK as we seem to be missing a repayment,’ the voice at the end of the phone said.
Gabriela’s mind had been firmly elsewhere, trying to compute the scant details from the previous evening’s news report, so that she had to make the woman at the end of the line repeat herself, stopping briefly to shelter from the wind in South End Green.
‘That can’t be right,’ she countered. There was no way she could have missed something as big as this, and yet how long had it been since she went through her accounts?
‘I’ll call you back,’ she said, picking up speed as she moved towards the cash machine attached to the old cinema in South End Green where she’d watched her first ever film with her dad. The cinema had long been closed, the building gutted, the contents and all those memories scooped out and dumped in a landfill somewhere before the shell of the building was converted into an M&S food hall.
Mentally, she tried to draw out the details from the past few weeks, finding her thoughts moving just out of reach whenever she tried to focus on one, shifting so that she couldn’t quite pin it down. She had never felt sick with Sadie or Callum, but she seemed to have an almost constant feeling of nausea this time around. Keeping on top of her finances while juggling the complexity of her various lies, meant her brain was constantly being pulled in six directions at once. It was as though her own body and mind were now working against her, pulling tricks so that whatever she did, she was doomed to fail.
There was a wind whipping through the trees. As she stood in the queue for the cash machine, she glanced back over her shoulder to check she was alone. It was new, this most recent feeling of being watched. She felt it in waves, the sensation that some creature was crawling through the crevices in her body, worming its way inside the knotted jumble of thoughts in her head, threatening to expose her.
The sound of the buttons as she entered her pin number focused her attention on the screen in front of her. Her fingers, she saw now, were shaking; the skin in the grooves of flesh between her forefinger and thumb was pink and chapped. Her bank balance emerged, and she paused to think about the implications of the numbers in front of her, the minus symbol confirming what she had just been told. And then she remembered: the new boiler at her mum’s house, which would have eaten up the money that came in from that month’s rent. How could she not have foreseen this? Yet with all that was going on, was it any surprise that she couldn’t hold together situations that she would never previously have let go unchecked?
The overarching implication was less straightforward to dismiss. The fact was that while until now she had just about made ends meet, suddenly things didn’t seem quite so certain. She needed money.
In another moment, she might have rung Tom. She might have asked him if he could access any of the cash due from the job he had been working on; but right now, riddled with uncertainty as she was, could she really risk rocking the boat? Could she trust that she was robust enough to withstand the questioning that might have followed?
She couldn’t be sure, afterwards, that she even made the decision consciously. Pulling out her other phone, she dialled his number, her fingers moving as if of their own accord.
Her face moved into a smile at the sound of his voice.
‘Gabriela!’ Despite his huffiness the day before, he sounded pleased to hear from her.
‘Ivan,’ she said, hesitating only for a second. ‘Listen. I need to ask a favour. I’m so sorry and I wouldn’t usually ask – I really wouldn’t – but …’
‘Gabriela,’ he stopped her. ‘You know you don’t have to do that, just tell me what you need.’
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I need to borrow some money.’
By the time Gabriela reached the Freemasons Arms, she was feeling calmer, Ivan having promised to transfer the cash to her so that it would arrive by the end of the day. Despite the weather, Madeleine was seated outside, under a heater, a pashmina wrapped around her.
‘Jesus, it’s been so long,’ Madeleine said, hugging her tightly.
‘Well, in my defence, you do now spend half your life flying around, saving the world … But we can talk about that later.’ Gabriela paused a moment before carrying on, ‘What the actual fuck?’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Assume you’re talking about our old friend Emsworth. Yeah, well, it looks like the discrimination case was an easy way out for him.’
‘What do you mean?’ Gabriela said, inching forward in her seat.
‘I mean, perhaps it was a convenient distraction.’
‘A distraction from what?’
Madeleine shrugged, her expression clouding with frustration. ‘I don’t know, exactly. As you say, I’ve been busy, and with you now a full-time Stepford Wife – I assume that’s what you meant by “new job” – my insider knowledge is somewhat diminished.’
Gabriela pulled a face, looking away as she said, ‘It won’t be for ever.’
‘You don’t have to defend yourself to me. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do … I think it’s great! Anyway, from what I’ve heard, the FCO decided to roll with this version of events to avoid a larger embarrassment. We both know we weren’t the only ones who were onto him, and it seems this option was deemed preferable to having the reputation of the organisation placed in jeopardy if the whole truth came out.’
‘What whole truth?’
‘Oh, come on, Gabs – if I knew that …’
Gabriela didn’t know what to say. The fizzing in her stomach was part satisfaction at knowing he’d been caught out, if only for a diversionary reason. His reputation was still in tatters, and that was something. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder who he might try to bring down with him. Although, from what Madeleine was implying, he was not being encouraged to speak out, rather to disappear quietly.
‘Anyway,’ Madeleine said, changing the subject. ‘What’s making you look so worried?’
For a moment, Gabriela considered drilling her for more information, but she knew Madeleine, and there was no point in probing further if she was not in the mood to share, assuming she knew any more than that, which there was no reason to believe she did. Besides, it wasn’t in Gabriela’s interest to encourage Madeleine to keep digging. Not now.
‘It’s Sadie,’ Gabriela said. ‘She’s been really anxious. I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve fucked everything up.’
Madeleine stretched her hand across the table and squeezed her arm. ‘You have not fucked everything up. Don’t say such ridiculous things.’
‘No, Mads, I really have.’
‘How? You’ve done what you thought was best for your family, I’m in awe of you.’
It was out of character for Madeleine to say something so heartfelt. Looking away, Gabriela was briefly bitten with shame and she thought how easy it would be to tell her, how easily she could let it all spill out: about Emsworth, about her affair with Ivan, her pregnancy, the lies she had told Tom about her job … The fuck-ups that were so huge, so sprawling that she could barely think about them as anything other than a sequence of individual facts for fear that they would otherwise steamroll her.
What shall I do? Part of her wanted to scream, to fold herself into her friend’s arms and feel herself disappear, even if just for a minute.
But whatever it was that was holding her together at this point was precariously fragile; all it would take would be for one part to be stripped back and the whole thing might collapse. Pulling away at one of the panel of lies could be the thing that ended up dismantling everything.
She might have considered leaving Tom, but his outburst had stalled her. Tom loved her, and more importantly he loved their children with a ferocity that she could never manage. Perhaps, too, the thought of him with Harriet had stung her so deeply that she knew she could not let anyone else have him.
But she loved Ivan, that was also a fact. He was the antidote to everything she resented about her life with Tom, and so, as unlikely as it might seem to some, she reasoned that moving between these two worlds was the perfect solution. As long as no one found out, and maybe they didn’t have to. She was hardly the first person in history to have maintained two families simultaneously. Admittedly she couldn’t think of another woman who had done so, but maybe women were just better at not getting caught.
So far, the evidence would suggest she could keep this double life going. How long had she convincingly kept up her pretence to Tom; how long had she been lying to him without him ever suspecting a thing? And Ivan had no reason to doubt her. It was risky, it would be hard work, but what wasn’t that was worth having in life?
Pulling herself together, she smiled at Madeleine.
‘You know what, I really don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about you. What’s been happening at work?’
Much as she knew Madeleine would have been willing to go there with her, had she chosen to have an intense heart-to-heart, Gabriela could almost feel her friend’s relief as she steered the conversation back to safer ground. Madeleine relished nothing more than talking about whatever investigation she had been working on.
‘Well, I’m off to Hanoi again next week to interview some undercover workers we’ve placed as part of our plan to track the various stages in the chain. It’s all very well targeting the smugglers in Vietnam and the UK, at the front end of the operation, but the next step is to weed out the facilitators. There is a whole chain that we’re piecing together. You know how it is, these things take time, but we’re getting there. And then there’s another angle we’re looking at too – women and girls being trafficked in from parts of Eastern Europe to work in the porn industry. I tell you, the fun never stops …’
She lit another cigarette and regarded Gabriela for a moment in a way that made her shift in her seat. Did she imagine her friend’s eyes flicking towards her belly, which had begun to swell, her body understanding too well, even at this early stage of pregnancy, what it had to do next?
‘Gabriela,’ she said gently, her face soft with worry. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?’
Pouring herself a glass of water to avoid Madeleine’s intense gaze, she nodded.
‘I’m sure. Like I said, I’m just tired. Being a full-time mum is relentless.’
‘Perhaps you should go away for a while,’ Madeleine suggested softly as they parted. ‘Take a break. Have some time on your own, away from the family and everything else … I’m sure Tom would understand.’
There were many things Madeleine might have been trying to tell her, but all Gabriela was aware of was the plan forming in her own mind.