A Double Life. Charlotte Philby

      

      A DOUBLE LIFE

      Charlotte Philby

       Copyright

      The Borough Press

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      HarperCollinsPublishers

      1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road

      Dublin 4, Ireland

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

      Copyright © Charlotte Philby 2020

      Maura Dooley, Mirror, from Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002 (Bloodaxe Books, 2002). Reproduced with permission of Bloodaxe Books.

       www.bloodaxebooks.com

      Charlotte Philby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008365219

      Ebook Edition © 2020 ISBN: 9780008365196

      Version: 2021-02-25

       Praise for A Double Life:

      ‘Superbly crafted with heart-stopping twists and chills galore. A new star has arrived in the thriller firmament’

       Thriller of the Year, THE TIMES

      ‘A seriously stylish, hugely compelling mystery: Charlotte Philby redefines a male-dominated genre with her brilliantly complex female characters. I was utterly gripped’

       LUCY FOLEY

      ‘I fell into the vivid, frightening world Charlotte Philby creates so skilfully and didn’t resurface until long after I’d turned the last page. Her characters are so real you genuinely fret over their safety in their jobs and personal lives. Everything about this book feels as plausible as if it might happen tomorrow. She is a hugely original and talented writer’

       JANE CASEY

      ‘A Double Life confirms Charlotte Philby as the master of a sub-genre she basically invented, dealing in the dangerous area where working motherhood and international espionage collide. Heart-breaking, gripping and always beautifully written, I can’t wait to see what she does next’

       ERIN KELLY

      ‘Brilliantly executed and tense’

       SUNDAY TIMES

      ‘Terribly compelling … persuasive and absorbing’

       OBSERVER

      ‘Philby is creating her own niche of beautifully observed, fast-paced, multi-layered novels … In Gabriela and Isobel, Philby develops two fascinating characters who have to face challenges that women the world over will recognise, but rarely get to read about on the page. A Double Life is a wonderful novel’

       HOLLY WATT

      ‘A pacy, gripping read that kept us on the edge of our seats’

       INDEPENDENT

      ‘I like a novel where the intrepid investigative journalist and the Foreign Office rising star are both women. And where two separate stories eventually converge around a conspiracy that touches the very top of the establishment and destroys everything’

       EVENING STANDARD

      ‘Dark and compelling’

       BELLA

      ‘As innovative a spy novel as we might expect from the granddaughter of Kim Philby … A gripping account of two complex lives’

       IRISH TIMES

       Dedication

       For Jesse

       Epigraph

       ‘The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men’

      Henry David Thoreau

      Mirror

       In my mother’s house

       is the friendly mirror,

       the only glass in which I look

       and think I see myself,

       think, yes, that’s what

       I think I’m like,

       that’s who I am. The only

       glass in which I look and smile.

       Just as this baby smiles

       at the baby who always

       smiles at her, the one in

       her mother’s arms, the mother

       who looks like me, who

       smiles at herself in her

       mother’s mirror, the friendly

       mirror in her mother’s house.

       But if I move to one side

       we vanish, the woman I thought

       was me, the baby making friends

       with herself, we move to one side

       and the mirror holds no future, no past,

       in its liquid frame, only the corner

       of an open window, a bee visiting

       the