‘Are you OK?’ Ivan asks when he arrives back at the house a few minutes later, with a bottle of gin. ‘You look nervous.’
‘Me? I’m fine,’ she says, working hard to still her trembling fingers, spotting the pestle and mortar still in view on the counter.
‘Probably just need a drink.’
She lets him pour, while she stirs the beef bourguignon she has defrosted, a hunk of icy flesh thawing in the pan. While he does so, she watches him, imagining, and then trying to block out, the thoughts that must be scurrying around his head. Why didn’t he go to Moscow? Does he know what she is planning?
No, she tells herself, not letting her mind go there. There is no way he could know. Besides, he is not a threat, not directly. There is no evidence to suggest that he is violent, or anything other than the middleman: morally reprehensible, perhaps, but not necessarily dangerous. Not to her, not to their daughter. She has a mental flash of Masha’s face in the photo on Ivan’s mother’s wall and closes her eyes.
‘Can I help?’ Ivan asks, and she jumps.
‘God, you gave me a shock! No, it’s all under control. How about another G and T?’
‘You drank the last one quickly. Good job I’m not counting,’ he replies as he takes the glass she has discreetly emptied into the sink and pours out another double measure for each of them.
‘Drink up,’ she says, watching him down another glass before encouraging him to refill. ‘Otherwise I’ll be drunk on my own.’
He raises his eyebrows and moves into the other room to answer a phone call as she serves up the food, glancing behind her as she reaches into her pocket for the powder she crushed from the sleeping pills in her pocket while Ivan was at the shop buying gin, pouring half into Ivan’s bowl and the other half into Polina’s before stirring quickly with a spoon and carrying them through to the living room.
It had been a last-minute decision, made in panic, to take the remainder of the pills from her washbag. She has no idea if the dosage she has left will be enough, or too much. She is not thinking straight enough to weigh up the risk. All she knows is that she has to get Layla out.
Fleetingly, she thinks of Madeleine’s final instructions: ‘In order to get witness protection, we’ll need you to testify against Emsworth. Your eyewitness testimony of the meeting in Moscow, and the photo of the papers he was copying. And anything else you have on him.’
‘Where’s Layla now?’ Madeleine had added, businesslike, and Gabriela had barely registered the fact that she already knew about her daughter’s existence; there was no time to question how long she’d been aware of this double life of hers, nodding along with her lies, her jaw tensed.
‘She’s with her nanny,’ Gabriela said and Madeleine nodded.
‘OK. Well, I assume you’ll want to take your daughter with you.’
‘Of course.’
‘Very well. You have twenty-four hours to get her and gather Tom and the kids somewhere safe. I’ll be waiting for your call.’
Neither of them had reckoned on Ivan being home. Because why would he be?
‘Another glass of wine?’ she asks as they settle in front of the television after dinner.
‘No,’ Ivan says firmly, holding up a hand. ‘I feel—’
He cuts himself off, and in the hallway she hears Polina moving back towards the living room. Slipping her head around the doorway, she looks pale. ‘Thank you for supper. I have loaded the dishwasher. If you don’t mind, I’ll check on Layla then I’ll head to bed. I’m feeling tired.’
‘You and me both,’ Ivan says, stifling a yawn.
‘I know. Me too. Actually, why don’t we go up?’
It takes less than ten minutes before Ivan is fast asleep. Resisting the urge to feel his pulse to check he is alive, she gets out of bed and heads into the hallway. Through the crack in Polina’s bedroom door, Gabriela sees that she is also asleep.
Making her footsteps as light as she can, she moves into Layla’s room and lifts her daughter slowly from the cot, willing her not to cry out. When she starts to stir, Gabriela buries her face in her baby’s head and whispers hushing noises before pressing her daughter to her chest and feeling her breath level out again.
The buggy is already assembled in the hall and she tiptoes down the stairs, holding her breath so tightly that she fears she might pass out.
As she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she hears a light switch on above her and she stops, her whole body frozen to the spot. Clutching Layla to her, she listens to the footsteps crossing the landing towards the top of the stairs.
She steps back so that she is pressed against the wall, in shadow, but then the bathroom door closes and she hears Polina cough lightly as she uses the toilet.
Waiting there, she listens to her run the tap and then step back out of the bathroom. There is a moment’s hesitation at the top of the stairs and Gabriela waits, in horror, for her to come down in search of a glass of water, the effect of the tablets crushed into her food making her mouth dry. She shouldn’t have woken up at all, given how comatose Ivan was, but she hardly ate any of the dinner Gabriela produced, unlike Ivan, who had settled in for two helpings while she watched on, silently urging him to keep going. Gabriela had been relieved when Polina had headed upstairs so early, clearly worn out.
For a fleeting moment, she wonders if it was something else that had been bothering her, making her look so wan, but then she hears her move back towards her room, pausing only briefly in front of the door to Layla’s room, where she has bundled the covers so as to mimic her shape in the dark.
Once Polina’s door has been pulled to, though still slightly ajar as she always leaves it in order to listen out for Layla, she moves quickly, opening the front door, careful not to make a sound, and lifts the buggy outside into the night, with her daughter still asleep in her other arm.
She has just a small bag, which she hooks over the handlebars of the pushchair, only strapping Layla into the seat once they are safely down the road, out of earshot in case she might call out at the disturbance. But she doesn’t. She barely stirs as Gabriela pulls the blanket over her.
Walking quickly away from the house, she gives a discreet look over her shoulder as they turn the corner towards the high street and the cashpoint where she withdraws £300 and slides it carefully into her bag.
Waiting until they are out of sight of the CCTV cameras that line the main street, dark as it is this late in the evening, she stands back slightly so that she is concealed by a doorway, before pulling out her phone and ringing one of the smaller cab firms.
‘Hello, I’d like a car for a long-haul journey, as soon as possible, please,’ she says, reeling off the address of the house they are in front of. ‘I’ll need a car seat. As soon as you can. My name’s Jill.’
‘You off on your holidays then?’ the cabbie asks as the car sweeps onto the M4, half an hour later.
‘Something like that,’ she says. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m just going to make a phone call. Is it possible to put on the radio?’
Waiting until the music plays, she pulls her phone from her bag and stares at the screen for a moment before searching for Saoirse’s number and pressing call.
She answers after three rings and the sound of her voice strikes Gabriela in the solar plexus. ‘Gabriela?’
‘Hi,’ she says, the emotions rising up in her chest. ‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’
‘No.’ There is a pause. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m so sorry to do this, but something has happened and I need your help.’
‘OK,’ Saoirse replies immediately.
‘Can I come and stay for a night? Tom and the kids will come separately.’
Gabriela keeps her voice low so that the driver does not hear, should any questions be raised further down the line. Because she is not foolish enough to think that Ivan won’t come looking, even if he is behind bars.
‘No problem,’ Saoirse says, without warmth. She knows, in a way that she can no longer deny, that her absence over the years has cut deep. But nothing she can do will ever stop Saoirse being there for her when she needs her. To her, the sort of friendship they have is a life-long contract, unbreakable no matter what.
‘You know I wouldn’t ask, if it wasn’t …’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘What time will you be here?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve just left London.’
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll text you the address. I’ll wait up.’
‘Thank you, Saoirse.’
But by the time Gabriela has finished saying her name, she has already hung up.
She calls twice before Tom answers, his voice thick with sleep.
‘Tom, listen to me – what I’m about to say makes no sense but I need you to do exactly what I tell you to, OK? I need you to get up immediately and go and get the kids. Pack a bag, just a few bits; I have our passports …’
Instinctively, she places her hand over her bag, in which she has placed Layla’s passport alongside those of her family.
‘Our passports? What the hell, Gabriela—’
‘Tom,’ she interrupts him, flicking a look at the driver who is too busy humming along to the radio to be distracted by the tone in her voice. ‘Just do as I say, OK? I wouldn’t be saying it unless it was very important. You need to grab a change of clothes for the kids and come straight to Saoirse and Jim’s. I’m on my way there now.’
She can tell he wants to ask something else but he restrains himself, saying instead, ‘Right. Can you at least tell me why?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you more when you get here.’