SHORT STORY

This week, HELLO! shares an exclusive extract from a thriller by journalist and author Charlotte Philby, who is the granddaughter of communist double-agent Kim

Sadie is in the kitchen, already dressed in school uniform, fastening the clips on the violin she chose for her most recent birthday, when Gabriela heads downstairs the following morning. Seven years old: how the hell did that happen? Briefly, she wonders what the fallout will be for Sadie after all this. Will it send her over the edge? But there is no point trying to second-guess her daughter, whose emotions are always more nuanced, less discernible than her own at the same age.

“Mum, have you seen my sheet music?”

“This what you’re looking for?’’ Tom squeezes past, cradling a cup, and drops the pristinely kept wad of paper onto her school bag, winking at her as he settles on one of the chairs squeezed up against the kitchen table.

Part of her wants to run after her daughter, to throw her to the ground and to hold them both there – to stop time

“Made you a tea,” he says and Gabriela fixes her jaw into a smile, moving forward to clear away the cereal bowls that will otherwise languish until she comes home, and then she stops. I will not be coming home. She hears the words as a whisper between her temples.

There is a brief moment when she is struck by the enormity of it, but then she sees her son walking into the room and instantly everything is as it was. Once again she is Sadie and Callum’s mother and she is preparing for a normal day at the office, for a job that Tom watches her forfeit so much of their life together for, without ever making her explain why. The job in which he has watched her rise through the ranks while he takes bit parts as a freelance architect, picking up the pieces without so much as a suppressed sigh.