Charlotte Philby - A Double Life

It takes several minutes to gather all that she needs, making her way to the till as she pulls out the phone and dials. When Polina answers, she speaks more quietly than usual, unable to keep the relief of this contact out of her voice.

‘How are you?’ Gabriela asks, affecting her brightest intonation, giving a polite wave of recognition to the cashier and an apologetic smile at the rudeness of talking into the phone while the woman begins to scan the items on the belt.

‘How are you?’ Polina’s voice asks on the end of the line and she replies, ‘I’m good. I’ve had a change of plan with work so I’m on my way back now – I’m just at the supermarket picking up some supplies. Is there anything we need?’

Before Polina can answer, Gabriela adds quickly, ‘How’s Layla?’

‘I’ll put the phone to her ear,’ Polina says.

Reaching into her bag for her purse, Gabriela stops as she hears the child’s breath. The lump that has been rising in her throat softens into something thick and expansive, so that she can only stand stock-still, drinking in the broken inflections of her daughter’s voice.

Gabriela’s voice breaks. ‘Oh baby … My baby, I’ve missed you. Mummy will be home in a minute, OK?’

The sky was full of movement the night she and Tom met, or maybe it had just been so long since she’d last looked up.

The queue outside the Jazz Cafe ran behind a shabby blue velvet rope so that she was pressed against the building on Parkway while Saoirse tucked the laces into the side of her trainers. It was Saoirse who had bought the tickets, turning up at Gabriela’s house and making her dad let her in even though she’d told him she wasn’t in the mood for visitors. But what could she expect? He was always so bloody weak.

She had just returned from her year abroad, in Paris, as part of her degree, and was back for good this time – or until she could find a way out. The last time she’d been home was an overnight return to London for her mother’s funeral, earlier in the year. In Paris, she could almost forget that she was gone, but here in London the memory followed her so that it felt safer to keep still.

‘Please, Saoirse, I just don’t fancy it. Take someone else, yeah?’ she had protested but Saoirse wouldn’t back down.

‘It’s been four months – you have to come out sometime.’

Gabriela had wanted to scream at her, to take her face in her hands and tell her that her mother was dead and that she had hated her and she didn’t know how to live without her and that she was terrified.

But instead, she said, ‘Lee Scratch Perry? Never heard of him.’

‘He’s a complete nutter,’ Saoirse grinned. ‘If you’re lucky he’ll be wearing a disco ball on his head …’

Inside the club, the room was dark and thick with cigarette smoke and dry ice as they moved through the crowd towards the bar.

‘What you drinking?’ Saoirse asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Gabriela shrugged, as if what she wanted no longer counted for anything.

As Saoirse leaned in to order, Gabriela turned away and that’s when she saw him, across the bar, watching her.

‘Here you go …’ Saoirse handed her a shot of tequila and Gabriela winced, licking the line of salt from her hand, the granules rough against her tongue, feeling the burn of the alcohol in her throat as she tossed back her head, sinking her teeth into the flesh of the lemon, her eyes squeezing together, pushing against the pain.

‘Shit!’

‘Right, another one!’ Saoirse lined up two more shots. This time when Gabriela looked up she felt someone next to her and as she turned she saw him there, an inch or so away. Saoirse raised her eyebrows and grinned as if she were about to say something, but then she turned and started speaking to someone standing next to her, and then she was dancing on the other side of the room.

‘Same again?’ Gabriela lip-read his words through the smoke machine, his voice straining above the clash of the keyboards.

She shook her head, shuddering, and a moment later he passed her a beer.

Pausing briefly, she took the drink and clinked the base of her bottle against his.

‘Thanks.’

He nodded and smiled, as if he was considering something.

‘What?’ She couldn’t help but smile back at him.

He shook his head, still holding her eyes. ‘Nothing.’

The walk from the Jazz Cafe to his flat, in the basement of one of the tall smog-stained terraces that clung to one another on a short stretch of Prince of Wales Road, was surprisingly warm even at this time of night. The fact of the onset of summer, when she thought of it, knocked her sideways. If there had been a spring to speak of that year, it had completely passed her by.

In her mind, winter still enveloped London, her brain hovering over the funeral back in March, the scene flickering like a paused film: a small group of friends and family wrapped in black coats and colourful scarves lining the edges of the plot in Paddington Old Cemetery, their heads bowed against the wind; her dad’s face ashen amongst them.

The immediacy of the memory stung at the corners of her eyes, but then she felt Tom’s hand brush against hers as he worked the key in the front door, and the image fell away.

‘It’s a bit damp, hence the smell,’ he said without a hint of apology. Away from the noise of the bar, she noticed the trace of a Scottish accent.

He moved ahead of her, making no attempt to kick away the coats that lay strewn on the floor, as if he’d left in a rush, cups scattered across every surface of the studio flat. Beneath the clutter, there was a certain order to the space: the guitar propped up on a stand in the corner, music stacked beside a small Yamaha keyboard. The table was rounded at the corners with A-line legs.

It occurred to her then that she had no idea what he did, this man whose flat she was suddenly inside. She had no idea how she had even come to be here.

‘I’m a student,’ he said as if reading her mind, and she squinted in disbelief.

‘Really? How old are you?’

‘Forty-two,’ he shrugged and noting the faint look of alarm on her face, tilted his head. ‘Oh, come on. Really? I’m twenty-four. But I’m studying architecture which takes about ninety-seven years, so … How about you?’

She yawned. ‘Younger than that … just.’

It can’t have been much later than midnight but any energy she’d felt in the bar had faded so that all she wanted was to lie down and close her eyes.

‘Would you like a drink?’

She shook her head.

He moved towards her slowly, so sure of himself and yet unimposing.

‘You look knackered.’

She nodded.

‘You can have my bed.’ He pointed towards a single mattress in the corner.

‘Come with me,’ she held out her hand to him. They passed out sometime later, his arm pulling her towards the warmth of his body, pinning her there in a way that was both suffocating and yet so comforting that she had to wait until he was asleep before pushing him away.

I look up through squinted eyelids, German techno beats sliding around my head. From here, above the outline of people’s limbs, I can see it is dark outside. Around me, the party is still heaving so that I can only just make out a vague impression of Jess a few feet away on the sofa talking to a man, her lips moving in slow motion.

As if pushing through a brick wall, I manage to draw the strength to sit up, willing my eyelids to follow suit. My cheeks, the inside of which I’ve chewed raw, feel like they are sinking away from my face towards the floor.

‘Jess?’ My voice is unexpectedly loud, though no one else seems to hear it. I try again but the effect is a slosh of vowels.