For a moment, I am completely still, gathering my wits; even the blood in my veins seems to have stopped pumping. Everything is still, and then I kick the door open, turning on the light and moving into the bedroom, my body now surging with fear and adrenaline as I cast my eyes frantically around the room, and then behind the door. But the room – aside from the unmade bed and the clothes scattered across the floor – is empty.

The next sound comes from beyond the bedroom and I run back into the kitchen, stopping dead as the figure of a man disappears through the front door towards the stairs. Beside me, the bathroom door is slowly moving on its hinges with the reverberations of whoever it was, who must have been hiding in there when I came in.

After a moment’s hesitation, I lunge forward, making it to the top of the stairs just as the shadow takes its last step through the front door.

Using the full force of my body, I throw myself from the top of the staircase, taking the steps in twos before landing on my heel, which buckles below the weight. As I fall, the last thing I remember is a bolt of pain slicing up my calf and then my head hitting the skirting board before the world turns black.

Chapter 45

Gabriela

The streets of her childhood felt strange as the taxi moved through Kentish Town, the buildings dirtier, their proportions more cramped after the genteel expanse of Richmond upon Thames.

Keeping her thoughts in the past as the car pulled up outside on the street where she had lived for her entire adult life, she was able to briefly stave off the feeling of pure terror that rose up inside her, irrepressible at last, as the house loomed ahead. Inside, she could see the hallway light was on. Even before she placed her key in the lock, she could picture Tom settled on the sofa in his usual position, not so much watching the television as staring through it, his finger absent-mindedly tracing the rim of his glass of wine.

Did he wonder where she’d been all weekend while he and the children were in Scotland; did he imagine where she might sleep on the sojourns for work that apparently kept her away for days at a time? If the tables had been turned she would never not have asked, she decided – and yet, was that true? How easily had she let this thing with him and Harriet grow; this thing that she could not name?