The bounce-back was immediate: I’m out of the country on business …

‘Fuck!’ The sound of her own voice made her jump and for a moment she imagined herself running out of the front door. Instead, she walked upstairs, the house in darkness, and lay on the bed waiting for the sleeping pills to pull her under.

Around 3 a.m., unconsciousness finally enveloped and held her there, deep in its embrace until just past 9 when, stirring in bed, she heard the key in the lock telling her Tom was home after dropping the kids at school.

He didn’t come upstairs and when she heard the door clicking closed again ten minutes later, she ventured down and found the kitchen immaculate, only then recalling Tom saying something about having a job to quote on this morning. She looked around the room; the house felt strangely like a stage set, all the correct props in their rightful place but something about them artificial. Sitting at the kitchen table, she felt as though her limbs had been severed and her body was floating along on a stream, unable to pull herself back as the sea opened up ahead.

Chapter 68

Gabriela

She claimed she was taking the first ten days after Sadie’s school broke up as holiday leave from the job Tom still believed she had, and the four of them went on day trips to Margate and Brighton, courtesy of the generous allowance Ivan placed into her account each month.

‘I just travel so much for work, it would feel like a busman’s holiday to go abroad,’ she’d reasoned, when Tom broached the possibility of heading somewhere more exotic, knowing that she couldn’t leave England with Layla as young as she was.

‘That was nice,’ Tom said as they settled on the train back from Brighton to Victoria, laying out an M&S picnic on the table in front of them, Callum already asleep.

Sadie’s hairline was smudged with sun-cream, and she absent-mindedly swung her feet as she tucked into an egg and cress sandwich.

‘She seems happy,’ Gabriela said, only then realising how long it was since she’d seen her daughter so content. She reached across the table and squeezed her.

‘She likes us spending time together,’ Tom replied and Gabriela felt his words bristle against her.

On the way home from Victoria station, taking the tube straight through to Highbury before jumping in a cab, she felt a prickling sensation at the nape of her neck. Every so often she felt herself turn, her eyes scouring the crowds for something she felt but could not see.

For the unimaginably elongated stretch of Sadie and Callum’s school holidays, she had to revive the charade that she had a working life, leaving the house early in the morning and killing time wandering the more obscure streets of London, terrified she would bump into her children.