The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby

to ask, two phones?

      ‘One’s for work.’ I spoke quickly, my eyes moving to David, who was making his way towards me now.

      ‘Everything OK?’

      Working hard to hold his attention with my eyes, to distract him from my fingers, I arranged my face into a smile, the blood pounding in my chest.

      When the customs officer spoke again, I missed her words.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘I said, you’ll have to run them through the X-ray. Go back through.’

      She was becoming exasperated, as were the family behind us, the toddler’s screams growing louder with each second that passed.

      Giving David a smile, I followed the woman’s pointed finger back through the metal archway, moving as fast as was reasonable towards the stack of plastic trays, placing the phones side by side in the rectangular cradle. As I scanned my mind for possible explanations I could use to reassure David, all I could focus on was the sound of the child’s voice rising in shrill peaks behind me; the wail of the metal detectors going off one after another across the hall, rising and falling like an air-raid siren.

      I could of course repeat that it was a work phone, but he would be instantly suspicious as to why I hadn’t mentioned it before. All of this, everything, relied on me giving him no reason to doubt anything I said. Ever. The moment he started to question me, even for something seemingly innocuous, would be the moment everything would start to unravel.

      Besides, I wondered, could I lie to his face without giving myself away? It seems laughable now that I had credited myself with having so much integrity.

      David’s eyes stayed on mine as he continued walking towards me, trance-like, and I held them there, willing him with every inch of my body not to look away. If his gaze so much as slipped towards the glistening line of tiny crystals of sweat that had formed above my lips, the spell would be broken.

      As I opened my mouth to speak – to tell the only lie my mind could fathom – there was a sound like a gunshot and every eye in the room swooped towards me. Instantly, the room fell quiet. A second later, there was a wail from the child behind us and it was then that I understood the source of the noise: a bottle of milk the boy’s parents had been using in an attempt at placation being thrown and hitting the ground with the force of a missile.