A Double Life by Charlotte Philby

Author:Charlotte Philby [Philby, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008365172
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-06-04T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

Gabriela

Paddington was heaving, a throng of commuters bustling for space beneath the departures board. Gabriela squinted up at the platform numbers, cradling a cup of coffee in one hand, her overnight bag in the other.

It seemed like another lifetime when she’d stood in this station on her way to clear out her mother’s house the summer after her death, once she had seen out her year in Paris – leaving without saying goodbye to Pierre, partly for the thrill she got out of imagining him knocking at her apartment door and finding her gone, and partly because she simply wasn’t sure what to say.

Her dad had offered to drive her there, as Tom had tried too, but there was something so intrusive about the idea of him rooting around in her stuff that she ended up making an excuse about needing to do this on her own. In the end, she had agreed to let Saoirse go with her and they had stood smoking roll-ups in silence as they waited for the train to roll into the exact platform she was boarding from now, with the same uncertainty, the strangely familiar feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.

The train was relatively empty. As London gave way to intermittent fields and then rolling hills, she let herself relax back into the seat. Tom had taken the children in the car the day before, piling them in among the sleeping bags, thrown-together clothes and cheap wine and then heading straight to Devon in the Friday night traffic.

She and the kids had spoken on the phone before she left the following morning, Sadie ploughing on at double-speed about Saoirse and Jim’s new puppy, Daphne; Saoirse in the background sending her love, too busy cooking pancakes to come to the phone.

She tried to push back the hurt she felt and focus on her own deceit.

‘Madeleine’s party might go on late, so tell your father I’ll give you a call on Sunday,’ she said to Sadie, covering her tracks in advance. ‘What time will you guys be back?’

‘Not until late,’ Sadie said, repeating Tom’s answer for him, before barely listening to Gabriela’s goodbye.

Bath Station echoed with voices as Gabriela stepped out onto the platform two hours later, her feet hesitating before making contact with the ground. Around her, the space seemed to spin with movement and sounds; families reuniting with group hugs, a busker’s guitar straining against the screech of brakes.

When her phone rang a minute later, she almost didn’t answer. At least it helped her to think of it that way, retrospectively. She liked to think she had drawn back, even briefly, in that moment, hovering on the edge of a line that once crossed could never be stepped back from.

After all, it wasn’t too late, not yet. She could have called Tom back then and there and told him she’d had a change of heart. She could have taken the next train down to Devon, which wasn’t that far from here, when she came to think of it.

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