‘Isobel,’ the muffled voice says. ‘I am watching you. No police, or I will kill you too.’

Chapter 26

Gabriela

Tom was at band practice when she got home that evening, a note on the table saying that Harriet, one of the mothers of Sadie’s new nursery friends, had agreed to take the kids given that she’d failed to get back in time, and that Tom would pick them up on his way home as he couldn’t reach her to confirm that she’d be able to.

She had drunk so much by then that she had to read the words twice before moving to the counter and pulling down a half-finished bottle of wine and filling a glass. It was still sitting on her bedside table when she woke the following morning, as if from a strange dream.

Tom and she hardly spoke, he giving her the silent treatment and she too distracted to notice as she pulled on work clothes and left the house, wondering where the hell she was going to go, the hangover compressing her head from all sides. For want of a more inspired plan, she took the tube to Oxford Circus and sat on a bench on one of the squares until her body told her she needed to eat.

Walking to the nearest Pret, she picked a sandwich at random from the shelf and paid without waiting for her change. She pulled out a chair at the nearest table, drew her phone from her bag and composed an email to Emsworth, copying in HR as instructed.

Dear Guy, As mentioned, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to tend to a family emergency with immediate effect and will not be able to return to the office. I hope you will understand. I’ve left my phone in the drawer of my desk. Gabriela

For another month or so, her days followed variations of the same theme, waking at the crack of dawn and leaving before her family got up, avoiding the possibility of a conversation she couldn’t trust herself to have with Tom, which was to say any conversation at all. How could she trust herself not to slip up; not to say something that would give her away? Because no matter how she racked her brain she couldn’t think of a way to tell him that she had left the FCO without telling the truth about why. One slip-up would be all it would take. As far as she knew the house could be bugged; there could be men following her at this very moment. The children were at risk, that much she could not afford to doubt … But at risk from whom?