The Most Difficult Thing

The Most Difficult Thing
Charlotte Philby

WHAT WOULD YOU SACRIFICE TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH? ‘I devoured this’ Erin Kelly ‘Compulsive’ i Paper ‘Enigmatic’ Louise Candlish ‘A page-turning thriller’ BBC Radio 4 Open Book ‘Chilling’ Good Housekeeping ‘Addictive’ Joanna Cannon ‘Compelling’ Daily Telegraph On the surface, Anna Witherall personifies everything the aspirational magazine she works for represents. Married to her university boyfriend David, she has a beautiful home and gorgeous three-year-old twin daughters, Stella and Rose. But beneath the veneer of success and happiness, Anna is hiding a dark secret, one that threatens to unravel everything she has worked so hard to create. As Anna finds herself drawn into the dark and highly controlled world of secret intelligence, she is forced to question her family’s safety, and her own. Only one thing is certain: in order to protect her children, she must leave them, forever.   And someone is watching. Someone she thought she could trust. Someone who is determined to make them all pay. Stylish and assured, The Most Difficult Thing is an irresistible combination of contemporary espionage and domestic suspense, and a compulsive, highly charged examination of betrayal.

Copyright (#ued44c770-bc4d-5611-ba0b-508381081475)

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Charlotte Philby 2019

Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Elena Alferova / Trevillion Images

Charlotte Philby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008326982

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008327002

Version: 2019-06-03

Dedication (#ued44c770-bc4d-5611-ba0b-508381081475)

For Rosa

Epigraph (#ued44c770-bc4d-5611-ba0b-508381081475)

‘To know yourself is the most difficult thing’

Thales of Miletus

Contents

Cover (#u54e476a1-9fd9-5feb-8431-01c7a1843861)

Title Page (#u8f25a46c-56ce-5fe0-a9eb-8e1b8b7831f7)

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1: Anna

Chapter 2: Anna

Chapter 3: Anna

Chapter 4: Anna

Chapter 5: Anna

Chapter 6: Anna

Chapter 7: Anna

Chapter 8: Anna

Chapter 9: Anna

Chapter 10: Anna

Chapter 11: Anna

Chapter 12: Anna

Chapter 13: Anna

Chapter 14: Anna

Chapter 15: Anna

Chapter 16: Maria

Chapter 17: Maria

Chapter 18: Maria