Though perhaps she was overthinking it. People left jobs all the time; not least women with young families. She could tell Madeleine she was disheartened having not got the promotion and had decided to take some time out to spend with the kids before they were both in school. It would be a believable enough lie, from anyone else.

But as she pulled the phone from her pocket, seeing Tom’s name on the screen, she remembered that no one apart from Tom had this number. Not Emsworth. Not whomever it was he had paid to listen into her calls. And not Madeleine.

She might have felt invincible. She might have felt she could disappear off her friend’s radar, avoiding the awkward questions Madeleine was yet to ask, had it not been for the fact that Madeleine worked for the NCA, meaning she could find Gabriela’s home address in a matter of minutes, once she started looking. And given that Madeleine still had not been given an answer as to why Gabriela left the FCO, it would only be a matter of time before she found a spare moment to call, from wherever far-flung place she was now, to grill her on the details. If she rang and found Gabriela’s old number disconnected, there was no telling how dramatically she would react, what questions she would start to ask, and to whom.

Letting Tom’s call ring out, Gabriela logged onto her emails and retrieved Madeleine’s number from the signature of one of her more recent emails.

Keeping her words light, her explanations fudged, she typed: ‘Hey, it’s Gabriela … Got a new phone, and a new job! Kind of. Family stuff … I’ll explain when you’re back. FYI, last message was a false alarm. Sorry … Know you’re busy, don’t bother calling before you’re in London, just text me when you’re back. Gx.’

Pushing her phone into her pocket, Gabriela felt briefly jubilant. That was one potential minefield kept at bay, but it didn’t resolve the more pressing problem of her diminishing funds. Now that she was out of work, the money she had left from her final pay cheque and the remaining inheritance from her father could only last so long. If bills, addressed to her – because this was her house, after all, and Tom was still officially her tenant – went unpaid, and red-stamped letters started piling through the door, then surely even Tom would have to sit up and take notice. If the classes their children were enrolled into each week, the new sports kits they needed, the lunches they’d grown accustomed to at the pizza restaurant down the road, had to be phased out – then surely he would start asking questions. Wouldn’t he?