‘So you’re still planning on going back?’ His voice was harder.

She didn’t reply straight away. ‘Of course I’m going back, Ivan. I’ve always been open about that.’

He kept his gaze pinned on the traffic outside the car. Did she imagine the tears glistening in the corners of his eyes?

‘I suppose I imagined once Layla was here, you might feel more committed to her than your job.’

‘Committed?’ Her voice rose again. ‘I’m fully committed, Ivan.’

He turned sharply to her. ‘Don’t raise your voice to me in front of our daughter.’

Turning his attention to the driver, he said in English, ‘Straight home. I’ve lost my appetite.’

Chapter 63

Gabriela

The day she left Layla, tears streamed down her face.

When she pictured home she imagined a ravine, two bodies of rock once whole, torn in half with a gaping wound.

‘She’ll be fine, she knows me so well. Don’t you, baby?’ Polina assured her, taking Gabriela’s sleeping daughter from her arms and holding her to her own chest as the surrogate parent she was, intermittently, to become.

‘I know, but she’s only six weeks old.’ Gabriela was unable to stop her body from shaking.

‘You’ll be back soon,’ Polina added, her voice more tender than usual. ‘Besides, sounds like you don’t have a choice.’

Remembering the lie she had fed Ivan about the foreign conference she had to lead, Gabriela swallowed. ‘You know I wouldn’t be going, if it wasn’t so important.’

Polina ignored her words. ‘I’ll look after her, you know that, and Ivan will be back in a couple of days, too.’

Gabriela thought of him heading off on another one of his business trips, the argument from last night still percolating in her mind. He had been so bemused by her suggestion that there was little difference between him going off and leaving their daughter and her doing the same thing that it felt like another chasm had opened up that she could see no possible way to get back from.

‘But you’re her mother,’ he said, this alone was a rational argument.

It was baffling, she thought, this change of heart. He had been so understanding when she was pregnant, so on board when she repeatedly explained to him that she would still have to do stints abroad, even when the baby was young; drilling it into him so that there could be no mistaking her intentions down the line.

Yet the look on his face when she’d told him she was going away for a week, to work on the case she’d left early during her maternity leave, made her feel as if she had never prepared him for it at all.