Heathrow’s Business Class lounge was hot. Her head throbbed as she took a glass of champagne from the attendant’s perfectly manicured fingers, trying to steady the trembling in her hands. What the fuck was going on? How could he think it was OK to do this, without running it past her first – and yet, she reasoned, was it that different to Paris? Wasn’t it those unexpected acts that were in part what had attracted her to him in the first place? Why did she feel like the ground had torn open beneath her?
‘Will your husband have one?’
‘He’s not my husband,’ she said, wishing she could suck the words back in as soon as she’d said them.
Only hesitating for a second, the waitress laid down the second flute and walked away. Trying to push down the feeling that something wasn’t right, Gabriela let her mind circle the particulars of how he had done it without her noticing. The arrangements made behind her back, the conspiring with Polina, the silent accessing of her passport. She felt a chill as she pictured him rifling through her things; the bags she had already stripped of any remnant of her other life.
But still, he shouldn’t have done it. It was not his place to rifle through her life like that. She felt herself bubbling with rage at the thought of it.
Pulling Layla closer towards her, she closed her eyes and the image of Sadie and Callum appeared, their faces slightly out of focus. How could she leave them here, without them knowing she had gone? And yet, it was the least rational of thoughts. Moscow was exactly where they already believed her to be. Instantly, her mind turned to Tom. How could he have let her go away like that, how could he sanction it, her spending seven months in another country with thousands of miles between her and her babies? Everything about this was wrong. The thought of leaving them here in England made her physically retch. What if there was an accident, what if the plane …
‘Are you OK?’ Ivan’s footsteps sped up behind her, and he laid a hand on her arm. ‘Are you sick?’
She flinched. ‘I don’t feel well. I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ she said, meaning every word.
‘Ssshh, you’re just anxious. It’s going to be wonderful. I have everything arranged. My mother is desperate to meet you, and sweet Layla …’
He ran a finger over their daughter’s hair and she shivered. Ivan’s mother. How had she never accounted for this moment?
‘I don’t have anything with me. My clothes, make-up …’ She fumbled for words. The fact was, she had hardly brought anything from home at all when she took up residence in Ivan’s house. She was used to travelling so much for her work, she told him, that she had got into the habit of not having many things; it was simpler that way.
‘Anything you need, we can buy when we get there. Believe me, you won’t want for anything, I’m going to look after you.’
He leaned in and kissed her forehead and she breathed deeply, absorbing the scent of him, reminding herself that this was Ivan. This was the man she loved. It was natural to be fearful, but everything would be fine. Letting her face press against his chest, the sound of his blood pounding against her ear, she said it again and again, imagining that if she said it enough, eventually she would believe her own words.
The flight took 270 minutes. She experienced every second like a countdown to her own execution.
By the time they landed, it was as though she had crossed into a parallel world, her mind numb, as if the shock had shut down certain parts of her brain.
The car that met them at Sheremetyevo airport was almost a carbon copy of the Range Rover 4x4 they had left back in London; blacked-out windows and smooth leather seats. Ivan, who mostly used a driver when travelling on business, barely used the car and it had become yet another thing of his that had become Gabriela’s by proxy, without him ever asking for anything in return. At least not verbally.
The endless pine forests on the outskirts of the city which had been white with snow the last time she was here were now green, the July sun streaming in across the wide cloudless sky.
The apartment was on the top floor of a blue terrace on Krivoarbatsky Lane, a narrow street set back from one of the wider boulevards, lined with trees. It was a part of town Gabriela knew reasonably well, a short walk from the British Embassy, and the proximity to this aspect of her history both thrilled and unnerved her as they stepped out of the lift and into the flat.
‘Wow.’ Her eyes took in the floor-to-ceiling windows flooding the space with light, the portraits hanging on the wall reminding her of those which adorned the grand staircase at KCS.
‘You like it?’
‘It’s stunning.’ Her voice trailed off as her attention was caught by a nude painting above the fireplace. ‘Ivan …?’
‘You like Modigliani?’
She turned to look up at him. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Why not?’
Layla pulled at Gabriela’s hair in a way that signalled it was time to feed, and grateful for the interruption, she practically fell into the sofa, this time having the presence of mind to take out one of the bottles she had prepared in London from her bag.
It suited her not to ask how much money he had, to put the thought out of her mind despite the considerable allowance that poured into her bank account every month. As far as she was concerned, there was no shame in it, it was a more than reasonable recompense for her loss of earnings. She didn’t factor in that she hadn’t earned a wage for months before they had met. She also didn’t stop to give much thought to how she might justify the portion she syphoned off each month, secreting it quietly into her and Tom’s joint account.
Tom. The moment she thought of him, she felt a jolt. She could go for so long without thinking of him, without thinking of their children, and then – bang – there they were, and for a moment everything else fell away and every part of her stung with the pain of it.