She had almost blurted it out in a moment of heightened emotion at the farewell drinks Madeleine had arranged in Gabriela’s honour the week before she went on leave, dragging her along to a pub on Derby Place. But as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, she felt herself pull back.

There would be no point warning Madeleine; it wasn’t like she had anything to hide. And Gabriela knew that if she did tell, Madeleine’s temper would mean she would be unable to resist confronting Emsworth, and that would backfire on both of them. Especially with Gabriela about to bugger off on maternity leave, she couldn’t afford to give him a single reason not to support her.

Pushing the words back in before they could form on her tongue, Gabriela had winced as she took a sip of red wine which tasted like paint stripper, lifting her glass to toast impending motherhood.

No. The easiest thing would be to forget he ever asked.

‘How was your day?’ Tom said when she got home, having walked along the river before boarding the train at Embankment, making the most of her last weeks of freedom as she instinctively saw them, before the baby arrived.

‘Good,’ she managed a smile as he swung his legs onto the sofa next to her.

‘Glad to hear it. And the best thing is, now you’re on leave you won’t have to think about that place for months. And when you go back, you’ve got the promotion to look forward to. It’s all happening, babe.’

She leaned back, nodding along, not willing to tell him that the prospect of the job Emsworth had as good as told her was hers had been snatched away so violently that the palm of her hands stung. Because to tell him would mean to face it, to think about something that was easier to ignore than confront. So she didn’t, telling herself that everything would be fine, imagining away the feeling of the unspoken lie swelling in her throat.

Chapter 12

Isobel

After a short deliberation, trembling in the pitch-black hallway of my flat, the air drifting in through the shards of broken glass, I decide against dialling 999. Even if I felt capable of having a rational conversation at three o’clock in the morning while dosed up on barbiturates, the idea of inviting the police into my home is not an option. For all I know, any one of the officers I work with on a day-to-day basis might turn up.

Somehow, after taping up the hole in the door with newspaper and Sellotape, I manage to fall back to sleep, and only wake again twelve hours later.