the platform, she follows the familiar path towards the exit. The sun presses against her cheeks as she steps out onto the pavement, holding her head down, her hair falling in front of her face, reaching into her bag and pulling out a pair of sunglasses.
Putting the glasses on, she turns slightly and catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the boulangerie, and she is struck for a moment by the image of a woman she no longer recognises. Standing straighter, hardening herself against any doubts, she follows the familiar route, down Lichfield Road, past the perfectly manicured privet hedges, the pristine gravel and obligatory plantation blinds, turning right into an unsigned side street. A moment later she reaches into her bag, pulling out the keys and pressing the button to unlock the door. With a flash of the headlights, the Range Rover clicks open and she steps into it, breathing in the smell of fresh leather.
As she turns the key in the ignition, the radio blares a song she knows and the shock of the unexpected noise makes her cry out. It takes a moment to compose herself, palms pressed against the steering wheel, before she looks over her shoulder and reverses, taking her usual route along the wide open streets of South-West London, towards Richmond. It’s a different world here and she feels not so much safe as anonymous. These are not her people, and in this car with its tinted windows and hyper-clean paintwork she is almost certainly unrecognisable.
On Richmond Road, she turns into the Waitrose car park and pulls into a space. There is silence as the engine cuts out, apart from the sound of her breath rising and falling in shallow bursts in her chest. Stepping out onto the pavement, she helps herself to a trolley, working her way through the aisles, selecting the sort of basics you might buy for a picnic. As she turns into the baby and toddler aisle, she gives a cursory glance over her shoulder. Once she is sure she is alone, she continues walking, picking out a selection of organic purees she would never have dreamt of buying for Sadie and Callum.
It takes several minutes to gather all that she needs, making her way to the till as she pulls out the phone and dials. When Polina answers, she speaks more quietly than usual, unable to keep the relief of this contact out of her voice.
‘How are you?’ Gabriela asks, affecting her brightest intonation, giving a polite wave of recognition to the cashier and an apologetic smile at the rudeness of talking into the phone while the woman begins to scan the items on the belt.
‘How are you?’ Polina’s voice asks on the end of the line and she replies, ‘I’m good. I’ve had a change of plan with work so I’m on my way back now – I’m just at the supermarket picking up some supplies. Is there anything we need?’
Before Polina can answer, Gabriela adds quickly, ‘How’s Layla?’
‘I’ll put the phone to her ear,’ Polina says.
Reaching into her bag for her purse, Gabriela stops as she hears the child’s breath. The lump that has been rising in her throat softens into something thick and expansive, so that she can only stand stock-still, drinking in the broken inflections of her daughter’s voice.
Gabriela’s voice breaks. ‘Oh baby … My baby, I’ve missed you. Mummy will be home in a minute, OK?’
The sky was full of movement the night she and Tom met, or maybe it had just been so long since she’d last looked up.
The queue outside the Jazz Cafe ran behind a shabby blue velvet rope so that she was pressed against the building on Parkway while Saoirse tucked the laces into the side of her trainers. It was Saoirse who had bought the tickets, turning up at Gabriela’s house and making her dad let her in even though she’d told him she wasn’t in the mood for visitors. But what could she expect? He was always so bloody weak.
She had just returned from her year abroad, in Paris, as part of her degree, and was back for good this time – or until she could find a way out. The last time she’d been home was an overnight return to London for her mother’s funeral, earlier in the year. In Paris, she could almost forget that she was gone, but here in London the memory followed her so that it felt safer to keep still.
‘Please, Saoirse, I just don’t fancy it. Take someone else, yeah?’ she had protested but Saoirse wouldn’t back down.
‘It’s been four months – you have to come out sometime.’
Gabriela had wanted to scream at her, to take her face in her hands and tell her that her mother was dead and that she had hated her and she didn’t know how to live without her and that she was terrified.
But instead, she said, ‘Lee Scratch Perry? Never heard of him.’
‘He’s a complete nutter,’ Saoirse grinned. ‘If you’re lucky he’ll be wearing a disco ball on his head …’
Inside the club, the room was dark and thick with cigarette smoke and dry ice as they moved through the crowd towards the bar.
‘What you drinking?’ Saoirse asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Gabriela shrugged, as if what she wanted no longer counted for anything.
As Saoirse leaned in to order, Gabriela turned away and that’s when she saw him, across the bar, watching her.
‘Here you go …’ Saoirse handed her a shot of tequila and Gabriela winced, licking the line of salt from her hand, the granules rough against her tongue, feeling the burn of the alcohol in her throat as she tossed back her head, sinking her teeth into the flesh of the lemon, her eyes squeezing together, pushing against the pain.
‘Shit!’
‘Right, another one!’ Saoirse lined up two more shots. This time when Gabriela looked up she felt someone next to her and as she turned she saw him there, an inch or so away. Saoirse raised her eyebrows and grinned as if she were about to say something, but then she turned and started speaking to someone standing next to her, and then she was dancing on the other side of the room.
‘Same again?’ Gabriela lip-read his words through the smoke machine, his voice straining above the clash of the keyboards.
She shook her head, shuddering, and a moment later he passed her a beer.
Pausing briefly, she took the drink and clinked the base of her bottle against his.
‘Thanks.’
He nodded and smiled, as if he was considering something.
‘What?’ She couldn’t help but smile back at him.
He shook his head, still holding her eyes. ‘Nothing.’
The walk from the Jazz Cafe to his flat, in the basement of one of the tall smog-stained terraces that clung to one another on a short stretch of Prince of Wales Road, was surprisingly warm even at this time of night. The fact of the onset of summer, when she thought of it, knocked her sideways. If there had been a spring to speak of that year, it had completely passed her by.
In her mind, winter still enveloped London, her brain hovering over the funeral back in March, the scene flickering like a paused film: a small
