A Double Life. Charlotte Philby

self-consciously, and Gabriela looked up, blinking. ‘I was away and she died, so I came back. There’s not much else to say. Listen, I have to get to the pub, my shift starts at six.’

      Her father’s house stood on the corner of one of the streets that ladder behind Highgate Road, a Sixties new-build a stone’s throw from the Heath. It still baffled her how he had been able to afford a place in this prohibitively desirable enclave of Dartmouth Park, however poky it might have been, with his share of the sale of the ramshackle Victorian terrace off Camden Road that had been their family home. Sometimes she wondered if her parents had made a secret pact when they divorced, whether her mother had agreed to take a lesser share of the proceeds on the condition that she didn’t have to take her daughter with her.

      The day Tom came over for the first time, Michael combed his hair neatly to the side and pulled on his best clothes, a chequered M&S shirt he’d worn every other day after being taken on as maths professor at a nearby college, neatening the display of tins and condiments he had started to stockpile the day he bought the house, and had barely made a dent in since. Moving through the hallway that morning with Tom, past the mismatching table and chairs, the brown flocked sofa that once belonged to her grandparents, she noticed Michael had placed a small bunch of yellow flowers on the table for the occasion.

      It was the following January when her phone rang. They were having a drink at the Pineapple with Saoirse and Jim, winding down after a day sending out ever more CVs in the hunt for a proper job, or at least an internship, that would pull Gabriela out of her own head, now that her degree was finally coming to an end. There was something about the letters flashing on the screen, their shape solid and unyielding against the garish light of her phone at this time of night, No Caller ID, that made her hold onto the edge of her seat by her fingernails.

      ‘Ms Shaw?’

      She flattened her hand against the cracked leather seat of her stool and stood, the microphone warm against her ear as she pushed her way through the crowded bar and out onto the street.

      ‘Speaking.’

      ‘I’m calling from the Whittington Hospital, we have your number from a past calls list of Mr Michael Shaw, of …’

      Before the woman on the end of the phone could finish saying her address, she felt the pavement rush up to meet her. By the time she turned to see Tom moving through the heavy velvet curtain and out into the street after her, a few moments later, she was sitting on the kerb, her vision blurred through the tears.