It was a perfect winter’s day, frost settled across the immaculately pruned hedge as they reversed out of the driveway.
‘Have you got the nappy bag?’ Ivan asked as they moved along the crescent, their daughter already asleep in the car seat.
‘Of course I have the nappy bag,’ she replied, snorting in a way that was intended to make a statement. Briefly, she turned to offer some sort of riposte, but what would be the point?
It was true that she had become forgetful over the past months; focusing so intently on the crucial elements meant that everything else fell through the cracks. But she wasn’t the only one whose mood had shifted. Since his return from his trip to Moscow with Layla, Ivan had been so distracted that she had barely seen him at all.
At first she had enjoyed them, these newly expressed mood swings of his: both as a precursor to exhilarating sex, and a demonstration of an emotional range that Tom had always lacked. But recently the outbursts had been replaced by a quiet broodiness.
‘I hope you like it. The spa is new and they have wonderful masseuses,’ Ivan said as they picked up speed a few minutes later, his tone changing completely. ‘I’ve booked you in for ninety minutes tomorrow. Once you’ve had a good night’s sleep. The beds are world-class, not to mention the in-house babysitting and crèche.’
She could tell he was trying to atone for his snappiness and she reached out her hand to touch his, as it moved the gearstick into fourth.
Without turning to her, he said, ‘You know, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’
‘OK,’ she said.
‘Part of the reason I wanted to take Layla home was that my mother is ill. She’s not dying, not yet, but she is frail and the doctors … Well, they want her to go into a home, but she refuses and …’
There was a moment as he prepared himself to finish his sentence. ‘And I was thinking, with everything that is happening with my business here, it might make sense for us to move there, at least for a few months, or years, while she is getting better, or …’
Gabriela’s hand instinctively pulled away from his and he turned briefly to her in the passenger seat, assessing her reaction.
‘What? I thought you would at least think about it. It makes sense, Gabriela … I mean, what’s holding us here? You have no family here anymore, and my mother is desperate to spend time with her only granddaughter. And I want Layla to know her roots. Besides, I know how much you love Russia …’
‘What is holding us?’ It was the best she could manage to say. ‘What about my work, for a start? For God’s sake, Ivan, you’re not the only one who has a job. What about my life? I mean, Jesus, you can’t just spring something like this on me and expect me to—’
It was then that Gabriela saw her.
Just as the car pulled up to the traffic lights, there was Sadie. So close, Gabriela could have wound down her window and called out to her.
Her beautiful daughter, with two other girls – girls she vaguely recognised from school events – and a woman she hadn’t seen before. One of her friends’ mother? Her eyes moved between Sadie and the girls, both looking so much older than her daughter, so much more self-assured, their long hair swishing as they moved across the pedestrian crossing, leaning in to each other, laughing at a private joke.
From this distance, unable to call out, watching her through the blacked-out glass, Gabriela could see Sadie’s unease, how she stood slightly away from her friends, not quite in with the joke.
Gabriela was oblivious now to the sound of Ivan’s voice in the seat next to her. Ivan, who had watched her first-born moving across the road in front of him and not known a thing.
Sitting up straight, craning towards the vision of her daughter disappearing on the other side of the road, being absorbed into the crowds, her nails dug into the seat so that when she pulled them away a minute later, they had left scratch-marks in the leather.
‘Gabriela, are you OK?’
When his voice came into focus, she realised she was leaning on the dashboard, her eyes unblinking. When she looked up and spotted her reflection in the mirror, her skin looked grey, her mouth contorted in a way that Ivan could not have ignored.
‘What’s going on, are you sick?’
‘Yes,’ she gasped.
‘Do you want me to pull over?’
‘No,’ she shouted, imagining her daughter, just feet away from them. Her voice was suddenly high-pitched and urgent. From the back seat she heard Layla, waking suddenly, breaking into a cry.
‘Keep going, Ivan, please, let’s just get there. Please don’t stop!’
‘Gabriela?’
Ivan’s voice was soft and muted on the other side of the door.
In the darkness of the hotel bathroom, the terrazzo tiles were cool against her back as she leaned against the wall of the walk-in shower.
Before she could push the thought away, Gabriela saw Sadie, the same age that Layla is now, in the bath at home, splashing her palms flat against the water and screaming with laughter. In the memory, she watched from the doorway, having just come in from work, Sadie and Tom oblivious to her presence.
She stood there watching for a moment and then she, too, laughed, at the sheer joyfulness of her daughter’s expression. Yet when Sadie looked up and saw her there, her face fell apart. Pushing herself to standing, sending water cascading over the side of the bath, she started to whimper for her mother, calling for her to pick her up. But there was no towel and so Gabriela moved out of the room to get one, and by the time she came back Sadie wouldn’t look Gabriela in the eye, let alone let her hold her.
Closing her eyes, Gabriela drew in the silence on the other side of the door before Ivan spoke again. It was then that she realised she was shaking with cold. Standing, she took a towel from the heated rail on the wall and wrapped it around herself.
‘Gabriela, I’m worried, are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ she managed, her voice disconnected from her body. ‘I feel feverish, I think it’s just a cold. I’m going to get dressed and have a lie-down.’
There was a hesitation and then he said, ‘All right, well, I’m going to take Layla down to the crèche. You don’t want lunch?’
‘You go. I’ll have something later.’
She imagined him straightening himself and winking a reassurance to their daughter.
‘No problem. Sleep well.’
When she woke later, Ivan still wasn’t back. Sliding open the windows, she looked out over Harvey Nichols and the Lamborghinis and Brazilian blow-dries that typified this corner of Knightsbridge: just a couple of miles from the part of the city in which she had grown up, but another world entirely.
Feeling in need of a change of scene, she walked down to the spa, moving gingerly at first, checking that there was no one there who might recognise her, however unlikely it seemed in a place that cost this much per night.
Leaving her clothes in the locker room and moving through to the spa area, she peeled off her robe and opened the door to one of the steam rooms where she was hit by the smell of eucalyptus, so strong it filled her throat, seizing her chest so that her breath became slow and heavy.
Leaning back against the tiles, the heat making her flinch, she closed her eyes. When the door sprang open a moment later, she felt herself gasp.
‘Sorry,’ a woman’s voice said and she smiled as she settled herself on the other side of the room.
Finally, Gabriela allowed her eyes to close again and saw Tom’s face drift in front of her, her fingers tensing against the ledge she was sitting on, the sweat streaming from her forehead mingling with the tears that shook her body.
How much longer could she go on like this, the lies following night and day so that there was no rest, even in sleep? And yet, how could she escape? Unless she told Tom. When the thought occurred to her now it seemed the most lucid she’d had in a long time.
Leaving Tom, she was under no illusion, would mean exposing herself not just to him but also to Sadie and Callum – but what choice did she have left? Leaving Layla was not an option, not when she was so young, so in need of her mother in every way.
And yet, in order to come clean to Tom, to be able to live a life with Ivan and Layla, and still share access to Sadie and Callum, she would have to tell Ivan about them too. When she thought of him, a chill rolled over her skin, despite the intense heat clinging to every wall. But this wasn’t about him, this was about the baby. She would do the right thing. Wouldn’t she?
Once, she almost laughed to herself, all of this had seemed possible, right even. Yet however she looked at it now, she could see she was doomed. The only way forward was self-annihilation.
Unable to stop the thoughts from flooding through her mind, she went back to their suite and took one of her sleeping pills, falling, at least temporarily, into sweet oblivion. She was still dozing when Ivan returned, the light from the crack in the curtain illuminating his silhouette as he moved through the bedroom, a shopping bag held behind his back.
She watched him through half-closed eyes from the bed.
When she heard the sound of him talking from the walk-in wardrobe, a while later, she sat up and stretched, her bones cracking. Wondering whether it was time yet to collect Layla from the crèche, she stepped into the slippers by the bed and walked towards the other side of the suite, following the hushed tones of Ivan’s voice.
Moving slowly behind him, trying to stay quiet so as not to disturb his call, she stood there for a moment until he turned, the phone to his ear, his face falling when he saw her.
‘Jesus, Gabriela,’ he said, once he’d gathered himself, holding his hand over the microphone.
‘Sorry,’ she replied, hurt by the aggression in his voice.
‘I’ll call you back,’ he spoke into the speaker and then, giving her his full attention, ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that.’
‘I wasn’t sneaking, I just didn’t want to disturb you. Where have you been?’
‘I went for a walk. I thought you could do with the time to yourself. We should go and get Layla. Did you go to the spa?’
‘Yes,’ she said, following him back into the bedroom.
‘Right. Well, you’re not dressed so I’d better go down. Have a look at the dinner menu. We’ll order room service tonight.’
‘Sure. Ivan, is everything OK?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
Waiting until she’d heard his footsteps disappear down the hallway, she stood and moved back towards the walk-in wardrobe. There was something about the way he had looked at her before he left the room that made her self-conscious of her appearance. Since Layla, her skin had been prone to break-outs, and the sleepless nights were taking their toll on other parts of her body too.
She slipped the nightgown over her head and pulled a dress from the hangers, hearing something drop at the back of the wardrobe.
There was nothing obvious that had fallen to the floor. Pausing, she pushed her fingers into the clothes hanging from the rail and felt along the back until she touched a bag, partly suspended against the back of the wardrobe, pinned in place by a couple of wooden hangers. It must have fallen from the open shelf above and become lodged there.
Pulling it out, she saw it was the same bag Ivan had been holding behind his back when he came in earlier. It was made of thick card, with ribbons for handles, and when she peered inside, without giving herself pause to think, she saw two boxes.
Her heartbeat quickening, she was aware of the front door unlocked in the other room, just paces from here, with Ivan likely to return soon with Layla from the crèche. Her fingers fumbling with the catch, she cracked open one of the boxes and found a woman’s watch encrusted in diamonds.
‘Gabriela?’
Ivan’s voice was suddenly there in the next room, followed by Layla’s cry.
‘Coming!’ she shouted, stuffing the box back into the bag and pushing it back on the shelf above the wardrobe, hoping that’s where it had been stashed before it fell, turning just in time to see them both in the doorway watching her.
‘You got dressed?’
‘I felt like a mess. Do you like it?’ She took a step towards him, distracting him with the soft red silk she’d bought with his allowance a week earlier.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, handing her Layla, and as she held her daughter against her chest, she felt ripples of unease, like cuts, up her arms.