Charlotte Philby - The Most Difficult Thing

I watch the corners of their mouths twitch in unison, their spoons suspended in front of their faces, engrossed in their own private world. Behind them, the glass doors leading out to the garden that I would never see again.

‘I love you.’ Had I said it aloud? I had tried to catch my daughters’ eyes for a final time, my fingers curled tightly around the edge of the breakfast table. But they were lost in their own arguments by then, oblivious to what was happening before them.

Startled, I blink, lifting my eyes once again so that I am now focusing on her face.

‘Sorry, I …’ Breathing in, I remind myself to stay calm. There is no reason for her to question any of this.

‘Thessaloniki. It’s for work, I’m a writer. There’s an art fair, I’m interviewing one of the curators.’ It is an unnecessary detail and for a moment I curse myself, but the security officer has moved on, no longer interested.

It is a balance; truth versus lie. The tiny details are the ones that guide me through. Things can be processed in small parts, after all. But too much truth and the whole thing comes unstuck.

It is true that the magazine is intending to cover the Thessaloniki event, and I am lined up to write the piece. That way, if on the unlikely off-chance David had ever bumped into one of my colleagues and mentioned it, I would be covered. What David does not know is that the show is not due to start for another three days, and by then, I will be long gone.

Once I am on the other side, I quickly check for my original passport, which I will dispose of once I reach Greece. I head to WHSmith to buy a paper. I can’t concentrate but I need something that will help me blend in, distract my eyes.

Scanning the neatly compartmentalised shelves, my attention is drawn to the luxury interiors title of which I am editor. Was.

I remember how the office building seemed to swell up from the pavement, the first time I saw it. Entering the revolving doors off Goswell Road, turning left as instructed, the palm of my hand nervously pressing at the sides of my coat. Acutely aware of how young and unsophisticated I must have seemed, I had forced my spine to straighten, my consonants to harden.

The office, a wash of soft grey carpet and low-hanging pendant lights, a wall of magazine covers, was a picture of good taste, framed on either side by views of the city.

At first I had felt like an intruder, following the immaculately presented editorial assistant through the warren of desks scattered with leather notepads and colour-coded books. But then there was a wave of pride, too, that I might finally feel part of something.

It had been a struggle not to fall apart when Meg told me, with a blush of shame, that she had been offered the chance to stay on at the paper, while I was thanked for my time and moved along. We had been having drinks with David at the pub near her flat when she announced it, before brushing it off as if it were no big deal.

I managed to hold it together just long enough to hug her before slipping away to the bathroom and weeping hot, angry tears into my sleeve. It would have been impossible for the two of them not to notice the red stains around my eyes when I emerged five minutes later, claiming to have had an allergic reaction to my make-up.

By the time I reached the Tube platform, later that evening, I was numb, unable to feel the tears dropping from my eyes. Would Meg have asked me to move in if she had not been feeling guilty about the job? I would question it later, just as I would question everything else. Back then, though, I was in no doubt – she was as committed to me as I was to her.

When David rang the day after Meg’s announcement about her new job on the news desk, I ignored his call before turning my phone to silent. It was a Saturday and the only noise from the street outside my parents’ house came from the neighbours herding their children, laughing, into the back of a black hearse-like car. Aside from the occasional movement on the stairs, inside the house stung with silence.

When he rang again, an hour or so later, his name flashing on the screen like a hand reaching in from another world, I pressed decline, too bereft to speak, and just like that he was gone. I was halfway to the bakery, to ask for my old job back, when I heard a ping alerting me to a new message.

Pulling out the phone, annoyed that he wouldn’t leave me alone with my misery, I read his words and stopped in my tracks.

‘She’s an old family friend.’ His voice rose above the swish of traffic when I called back a few minutes later, moving slowly along the grey paving slabs of Guildford town centre. ‘I hadn’t seen her in years but she is married to one of the bosses at my firm and we bumped into one another. I told her you had done a degree in English and about your internship at the paper, and … She wants to meet you.’

David’s voice was soft, listening intently at the end of the phone for my reply.

The interview had been arranged for the following week. Clarissa, I discovered, was exactly the kind of woman one would imagine to run a high-end magazine, exuding money and confidence and an overpowering smell of petunia. But she was kind, too, and generous. ‘Any friend of David’s …’ she had beamed, radiating warmth.

The memory of her words sends a pang of sadness through me. Picking up a magazine at random, I use the self-service checkout before making my way to the boarding gate.

I find my seat in Business Class, store my neat black suitcase overhead, and wait for the comforting purr of the engine. As the rest of the passengers fiddle with their seats, I draw out the phone from my bag and compose a message to Harry.

On my way.

‘Cabin crew, prepare for take-off.’

I raise my drink to my lips, the clatter of the ice vibrating against my glass. Gratefully, I absorb the captain’s words, their familiarity grounding me in my seat, creating a rhythm against which my breath rises and falls, in desperate chunks.

They are the same words I have heard on countless flights with David and the girls over the years. Maldives. Bali. The South of France. Of all the places we have been together, it is Provence that I think of now. Maria steadily marching the girls up and down the plane, her monotonous hush-hush enveloping me in a blanket of calm.

I close my eyes but the memory follows me. The girls’ faces trailing the cloudless sky through the car window during the drive from the airport to yet another of David’s father’s houses. This one is cushioned by lavender fields, the smell clinging to the air. The gravel crunched underfoot as we made our way from the cool air of the Mercedes towards the chateau, through a web of heat. My father-in-law was waiting under the arch of the doorway.

I watched him, my skin prickling as he swaggered out to meet us, the underarms of his crisp white shirt drenched in sweat. ‘My dear Anna!’

‘Clive.’ Had his name stumbled on my lips?

The panama tipped forward on his head, jarring against my cheek as he leaned in to kiss me.

‘Two times, darling, we like to play native around here …’ His voice was booming. ‘And where are my girls? Oh, let me have a good look at them.’

Clive blew an ostentatious kiss to Maria, and I worked hard to repress my jealousy at the thread that ran between them, the years their families had been connected in a way that would somehow always trump what David and I had. Maria, carrying one of my girls in the car seat, moving so comfortably alongside my husband, our other daughter asleep in his arms.

Clive took his son by the wrist, and as if reading my need for inclusion, said, ‘Well, I’m glad to see they still have their mother’s looks …’

Steadily, I let myself picture my daughters. Stella, all cheekbones and arch features, strident from the inside out. Her fall to earth padded by the arrival of her sister, a minute earlier.