The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby

73: Anna

       Chapter 74: Maria

       Chapter 75: Anna

       Acknowledgements

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       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      I felt my abdominal muscles twinge as I lowered myself to sit. The bench by the lamp post at the foot of the bridge, just as planned.

      It had been almost two months since the surgery but still the scar was so raw that I felt tearing across my abdomen if I so much as lifted one of the twins at the wrong angle. Letting my eyelids drop for a moment, I pushed the thought of the girls out of my mind.

      Open the box, close the box. Just as the doctor had taught me.

      They were not so much benches that lined the stretch of pavement along this part of the Thames. More slabs, like a procession of concrete coffins quietly guarding the water.

      It was dusk. Winter. The terminal gloom had long set in, and with it the sort of damp cold that gnawed its way into your bones. A thin gust of wind snuck through the opening in my cardigan as I pulled the grey cashmere closer across my breasts, still swollen.

      ‘For God’s sake, Harry,’ I cursed him silently, my eyes rolling up towards the stone-coloured sky.

      For as long as I can remember, I have always been early. It is a pathological politeness that brings with it control; no one wants to be the last person to step into a room. It was one of the things we shared, at the beginning, he and I. How many times had I arrived early to meet him, before all this had started, only to find him already lurking under an amber glow at the end of the bar?

      Yet it was nearly five, and the pavement around me was virtually empty but for a steady stream of deflated tourists and office workers scuttling towards the Tube.

      What was he playing at? David would be home from work by six, as had been his wont since the babies had arrived and, almost overnight, he too had been reborn, his naturally attentive, easy parental love a reminder of everything I could never be.

      I had told Maria I was just going shopping for babygros. What was Harry doing? Careful not to make any sudden movements, which I had come to accept would be followed by a sharp stab of pain, I pulled my phone from my navy leather handbag, my hand trembling.

      No new messages.

      My fingers were a bluish-red. I had hardly left the confines of the house since the birth, two months ago, aside from those ritualistic processions along the darker recesses of Hampstead Heath, under the instruction of the nanny. The Nanny. The truth was, she was always so much more than that. Ever-competent Maria silently heaving the double buggy down the front steps, seeing me off from the shadows of the doorway.

      I loved the way the air chilled my lungs. Even the buildings on Millbank, which loomed over us from the other side of Lambeth Bridge, seemed to shiver. I had forgotten how cold it got out here. How easy it is to forget.

      Hoping I’d maybe missed something in the string of messages that had passed between Harry and me, I flicked my fingers across the screen. Nothing. How many times had I reread his messages? How many times had I crept across the hallway while the girls slept, my toes curling into the carpet, sliding the lock closed behind me, carefully retrieving the phone from where I kept it, stuck behind the drawer of the cupboard where the bathroom cleaning products were kept – somewhere I could guarantee David would never look?

      Telling myself I would wait five more minutes before considering my next step, I flicked through a stream of encrypted messages. Once again, my attention was caught by a single image: a photograph, blurred, but clear enough – my father-in-law, the grandfather of my children, shaking hands with a man in a dark suit – his thick black beard a smear of tar across a smudge of flesh.

      Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the streetlights flick on along the river. Looking up, I saw him. Those fierce blue eyes drilling a hole in my chest. Breathing sharply, as if struck, I said his name: ‘Harry.’

PART ONE

       CHAPTER 1

       Anna

       Three Years Later

      The house is still, as it always is at this hour. Once again, I have hardly slept, taking a moment to savour the peace, the calm before the storm: this moment in which I am neither who I was nor who I will become. My eyes skitter across the silver clock by my bed, the one that had belonged to David’s mother: 5.40 a.m. 1 May. The date is already firmly etched in my mind, as it will be for as long as I live.

      Dawn has always been my favourite time of day. As a child I would wander the narrow hall of my parents’ house under a hazy bruise of light, gazing through the window overlooking a cul-de-sac of privets and exhaust pipes, imagining myself somewhere else.

      David is still asleep. I sit, slowly, careful not to rouse him, his body a mound of flesh under a blanket of Marimekko florals.

      I have spent most of the night going over the plan in my head, sealing every second of it into the recesses of memory, ensuring it could never be prised out again should I be caught. Caught. It’s not a word I allow myself to linger on too long.

      Creeping from the bed, with its expensive linen sheets and tasteful throws, I sit at the stool in front of the small oak dressing table with its neat displays of family life. Trophies, trinkets of a world I have made my own. Among them, a bronze frame with a photo of David and me in front of the vista of his father’s house in Greece. One of many of his family’s boltholes that we have jetted between over the years, the planes leaving tracks like scars through the sky, visible only to those who glance up at just the right moment.

      So young we were then, clinging to one another in front of the pool, the Greek sun bleaching out our features. David’s body turned towards mine, claiming me. Our first holiday together had been a victory, almost. This was where it all had really begun. I was his prize, he had said it a hundred times, but he never knew that he was also mine. Not yet, but he will.

      The thought jars in my mind, and I lift my head, catching my reflection in the oval mirror. For a moment I am transfixed. The same light blonde hair, pale green eyes, high cheekbones. Hardened, now. The years of insomnia have caught up with me, in the hollows of my eyes. The corners of my mouth, cracked from years of fixed smiles.

      My phone is plugged into the charger on the wall. Silently, I lift it, glancing at David’s sleeping body in the mirror – the soft line of which I could draw from memory – before tapping my password into a second phone, stashed in the pocket of my silk dressing gown. My fingers leave a streak of sweat across the screen. The phone is the same model, same sleek black cover as my other one. Same pin number – the date Harry and I first met. Fundamental differences you would have to peer inside to see.

      Once again, I flick through a stream of messages from Harry, distracted for a moment by a chip in my blood-red nail polish. Hearing David stir in the bed, I expertly lock the phone while concentrating my face in the direction of the neat row of perfumes and creams in front of me, replacing it in the pocket of my gown as I stand.

      ‘What time is it?’

      David’s voice drifts across the room, still thick with sleep.

      ‘Nearly six. My flight isn’t until twelve but I have work to catch up on; Milly’s off on maternity leave today.’

      I picture my assistant, whose belly