Читать книгу A Double Life - Charlotte Philby - Страница 9

It is hardly warm enough to warrant an evening in the garden, but something about the house is pushing her out. After all these years, and all the memories she made here in her teens and early twenties before Tom had so much as set foot inside its four walls, their home is already taking his side. So when he goes out for a smoke, savouring the single roll-up he still allows himself each day now that he is staring down the barrel of forty, she follows him into the starless night.

Pulling on a jacket, she brings with her the slightly too warm bottle of Sauvignon she picked up at the off-licence near Dartmouth Park Hill on her way home, partly to calm her nerves, partly for the excuse to partition off this section of her life, to annex it safely away from the day she has just left behind. The beginning of the end.

‘Ten ninety-nine?’ Tom takes a swig of his beer, incredulity written in the lines above the bridge of his nose. She follows his gaze to the bottle she is clutching by the neck and for a moment she feels herself on the cusp of laughter that will mutate into sobs if she is not careful. Screams that will reverberate through the house where their children sleep.

How the hell are they talking about the price of a bottle of wine? But he has no reason to suspect this is anything but an ordinary evening, the end of a day just like any other.

‘How was work?’ he asks as she takes a seat beside him on one of the worn garden chairs. It shifts precariously on cracked paving, the same shoddy stones that have been there since her father first bought the place, more than two decades ago. The memory of those days, however complicated they might have seemed at the time, soothes her briefly.

‘Work?’ she repeats, buying herself time, wondering if Tom notices her bristle as she pictures her desk; the job she fought tooth and nail to get and then to keep.

Before she can answer, he continues, uncharacteristically forthright. ‘I’m worried about you, Gabs. This case. Ever since you came back from Moscow …’

‘Jesus, Tom, it’s not supposed to be easy,’ she snaps, immediately holding out her hands by way of apology. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just tired.’

It is true, she thinks: I am so tired. It is not the whole truth but what more can she tell him? She is bound to secrecy, her lips have been sewn shut. As he watches her from across the lopsided plastic table, she registers the sound of a car moving too fast on the street outside. She imagines the needle pushing through the skin at the edges of her mouth. Instantly, she is transported to the bedroom upstairs, just a few weeks after she and her father had moved in. She and her best friend Saoirse in matching crop-tops, kneeling on the floor, her head level with the mattress, her earlobe flat against the CD case, which Saoirse has placed on the bed.

‘You’ve burnt the needle properly, right?’

‘Obviously,’ Saoirse says as she clamps Gabriela’s shoulder with one hand and with the other removes the ice cube she has been holding against her skin. Cold water trickles down Gabriela’s neck. As her friend breathes in sharply, Gabriela feels the remaining ice slide to the floor, Saoirse holding her shoulder a little too tight as she pushes the pin through the soft nub of flesh.

More than twenty years later, she touches her earlobe. The memory of her own cries of pain, tinged with defiant euphoria, ricochets around her head as she looks up to the window of that same room, where now stands the goose-shaped lamp that keeps guard on Callum’s windowsill. The lamp which, now that he is five years old, her son claims to have outgrown, though he never pushes the point. Secretly, she knows he is no more keen to grow up than she is to lose him to the girls and then the women or the men who will inevitably step in to claim him. The hands that would have taken him from her even if she hadn’t already made it possible for them to be torn apart.

Sadie is in the kitchen, already dressed in school uniform, fastening the clips on the violin she chose for her most recent birthday, when Gabriela heads downstairs the following morning. Seven years old: how the hell did that happen? Briefly, she wonders what the fall-out will be for Sadie, after all this. Will it send her over the edge? But there is no point trying to second-guess her daughter, whose emotions are always more nuanced, less discernible than her own at the same age. There is an air of pointedness about Sadie’s refusal to cause trouble for them in the way that Gabriela is prepared for that she finds unsettling. No, she reprimands herself, her fists tightening – it is not Sadie whose behaviour she needs fear.

‘Mum, have you seen my sheet music?’

As her daughter speaks, Gabriela’s eye catches the wine glasses from the night before, which stand marooned on the table where she is packing her school bag.

‘This what you’re looking for?’ Tom squeezes past cradling a cup and drops the pristinely kept wad of paper onto her school bag, winking at her as he settles on one of the chairs squeezed up against the kitchen table.

‘Made you a tea,’ he says and Gabriela fixes her jaw into a smile, moving forward to clear away the cereal bowls that will otherwise languish until she comes home, and then she stops. I will not be coming home. She hears the words as a whisper between her temples. There is a brief moment when she is struck by the enormity of it, but then she sees her son walking into the room and instantly everything is as it was. Once again she is Sadie and Callum’s mother and she is preparing for a normal day at the office, for a job that Tom watches her forfeit so much of their life together, without ever making her explain why. The job in which he has watched her rise through the ranks while he takes bit parts as a freelance architect, picking up the pieces without so much as a suppressed sigh.

‘Want me to walk you in?’ he asks Sadie, leaning back in his chair, rustling open yesterday’s copy of the Guardian. Sadie throws him the same look she has been giving him since she was a toddler – something between despair and total adoration. For the past few weeks, Tom has let her make the short journey alone and Gabriela can’t tell him why it makes her so uncomfortable, their child being so far out of their reach.

Enjoying the familiarity of the rapport between himself and Sadie, the reversal of the traditional parent/child roles, he shrugs, widening his eyes as if to say, What? We don’t have to leave for five minutes.

‘Leave the girl alone,’ Gabriela plays along, batting his feet off the table as she passes, sweeping up the trail of cups and bowls and opening the dishwasher.

‘I’ll do that,’ he calls over from his seat, without moving.

Ignoring him, she stacks the crockery in a neat row.

‘Are you out tonight or in?’

‘Jesus, Tom …’

‘I know, I know, I’m messing with you! I hadn’t forgotten. It’s on the calendar, right there, where it always is. So you’ll be back on Thursday?’

‘That’s right.’ She swallows, keeping her eyes trained on the dirty cutlery she is placing in the stand.

‘You’re going away again?’ It is Callum’s voice this time, and her heart strains so that it feels like it might tear.

‘Oi, what’s so bad about hanging out with your old dad? Come on, love, Mum’s got to work, you know that.’

It’s always Tom’s instinct to dive in to protect her from the decisions she has made, and his refusal to let her defend herself grates on her.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ she says, the lie lingering in her throat. ‘I promise.’

As she opens the front door, she watches Sadie disappear around the corner of their street. Part of her wants to run after her daughter, to throw her to the ground and to hold them both there – to stop time, her face buried in Sadie’s neck, and somehow to go back and unravel the knot. Not back, she scolds herself as she loses sight of her daughter, for the last time on this street. How could she think that?

The walk to Tufnell Park tube station helps clear her head, gently easing her mindset from the domestic world to her other life. The trees lining Dartmouth Park Hill radiate new energy, their shoots a reminder that whatever happens, the world will go on.

Preparing to cross at the traffic lights, she starts to think through everything she has to do, and only now does it strike her that she has failed to buy credit ahead of time for the second SIM card she keeps tucked in the lining of her handbag. She swears under her breath as the green man fades to red, cursing herself for allowing such a pivotal element to fall through the net. But it’s pointless berating herself for it now – it is not an option, at this stage, to let things fall apart.

Heading into the newsagent’s diagonally opposite the station, she skims the headlines of the newspapers to distract herself from the fear that pummels at her stomach as she makes her way through the aisles, making sure there is no one here she recognises, no one to pull her up on why she is using a burner, probing her with their hilarious quips about her being not a civil servant after all but a spy, or maybe a drug dealer.

It was the kind of joke Tom had made when she was seconded to Russia, her first posting after joining the FCO. And her last.

‘What are you, some sort of double agent? Working for the FSB now, Gabs?’

But the jokes had stopped by the time she returned. In the days leading up to her most recent stint in Moscow, Tom had long since ceased laughing. By the time she got back he looked at her as though he didn’t know her at all – and he was completely right.

‘Seven months?’ His look had been disbelieving at first, as if he had been waiting for her to remind him it was April Fool’s Day.

‘I know, it seems like a long time.’ She felt sick but she couldn’t let him understand how wrong this was. The situation had to be presented as non-negotiable – a necessary but surmountable task.

‘What about the kids?’ His face changed then. ‘We could come with you. It could be an adventure. You always said you wanted one of those.’

Her cheeks burn as she remembers how quickly she had snapped her reply.

No.

It must have been impossible for him not to notice the change in her since she came back, but he has worked so hard not to push her on it. He does not comment on the physical shifts, which she can’t avoid when she looks at her reflection. Nothing about her body is unscarred, though it is her mind that will truly never be the same.

Leaving the newsagent with her phone topped up, she crosses towards the tube station. The carriage is unusually empty as she settles onto a seat, taking out the Burberry trench coat she bought to match the boots she denied to Tom when he asked if they were new.

Holding her bag tightly on her lap as if holding on for her life, she feels the outline of the car keys press reassuringly against her fingers, through the leather. Distracting herself, she looks up at the map of the Northern Line. For a moment, she pictures herself walking through the arch at King Charles Street, greeting the security guards who know her name and those of her children by now. She imagines familiar faces as she makes her way towards the main entrance, collecting her bag as it emerges from the scanner, nodding to the receptionists before heading through the turnstiles, the sound of metal grating closed behind her.

Except today this is not her route. Now, as the train stops at Embankment, she stands back to let an older lady off the train first, before stepping out onto the platform, walking past the exit sign, following the arrows indicating the District Line. There is a chance she will see someone she knows from the FCO but they will not question it; the sight of her heading away from the office in the direction of the Westbound District Line will not cause them any concern.

Taking a seat a few metres along the platform, she listens to the wind whistling through the tunnel. It is both warm and cold, and as the train approaches she stands, registering the air brushing against her face. Breathing deeply, taking a moment to gather herself, she steps forward towards the yellow line, looking to her right, watching the carriages tearing towards the crowd. For a moment, she meets the driver’s eye and sees a hint of dread, and then he is gone and the train has stopped and her legs shake as the doors open and she steps inside.

It is fifteen stops until it’s her turn to get off. There is too much time to think and so she closes her eyes, concentrating instead on the gentle rhythm until she hears the announcement: Kew Gardens. Opening them again, she is met by daylight as the train pulls into the outdoor station.

On the platform, she follows the familiar path towards the exit. The sun presses against her cheeks as she steps out onto the pavement, holding her head down, her hair falling in front of her face, reaching into her bag and pulling out a pair of sunglasses.

Putting the glasses on, she turns slightly and catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the boulangerie, and she is struck for a moment by the image of a woman she no longer recognises. Standing straighter, hardening herself against any doubts, she follows the familiar route, down Lichfield Road, past the perfectly manicured privet hedges, the pristine gravel and obligatory plantation blinds, turning right into an unsigned side street. A moment later she reaches into her bag, pulling out the keys and pressing the button to unlock the door. With a flash of the headlights, the Range Rover clicks open and she steps into it, breathing in the smell of fresh leather.

As she turns the key in the ignition, the radio blares a song she knows and the shock of the unexpected noise makes her cry out. It takes a moment to compose herself, palms pressed against the steering wheel, before she looks over her shoulder and reverses, taking her usual route along the wide open streets of South-West London, towards Richmond. It’s a different world here and she feels not so much safe as anonymous. These are not her people, and in this car with its tinted windows and hyper-clean paintwork she is almost certainly unrecognisable.

On Richmond Road, she turns into the Waitrose car park and pulls into a space. There is silence as the engine cuts out, apart from the sound of her breath rising and falling in shallow bursts in her chest. Stepping out onto the pavement, she helps herself to a trolley, working her way through the aisles, selecting the sort of basics you might buy for a picnic. As she turns into the baby and toddler aisle, she gives a cursory glance over her shoulder. Once she is sure she is alone, she continues walking, picking out a selection of organic purees she would never have dreamt of buying for Sadie and Callum.

It takes several minutes to gather all that she needs, making her way to the till as she pulls out the phone and dials. When Polina answers, she speaks more quietly than usual, unable to keep the relief of this contact out of her voice.

‘How are you?’ Gabriela asks, affecting her brightest intonation, giving a polite wave of recognition to the cashier and an apologetic smile at the rudeness of talking into the phone while the woman begins to scan the items on the belt.

‘How are you?’ Polina’s voice asks on the end of the line and she replies, ‘I’m good. I’ve had a change of plan with work so I’m on my way back now – I’m just at the supermarket picking up some supplies. Is there anything we need?’

Before Polina can answer, Gabriela adds quickly, ‘How’s Layla?’

‘I’ll put the phone to her ear,’ Polina says.

Reaching into her bag for her purse, Gabriela stops as she hears the child’s breath. The lump that has been rising in her throat softens into something thick and expansive, so that she can only stand stock-still, drinking in the broken inflections of her daughter’s voice.

Gabriela’s voice breaks. ‘Oh baby … My baby, I’ve missed you. Mummy will be home in a minute, OK?’