The Most Difficult Thing

Smiling convincingly back at him, I lay my hand on a pile of magazine pages, ‘Of course, I won’t be long with this.’

An hour later, I am standing by the door, ready to leave.

‘You look nice.’ David sweeps down the stairs, his polished brogues crushing against chenille carpet, nudging one of the girls’ scooters back in line against the wall in the hallway as he passes; the scooters he had insisted on buying them for their third birthday, a few months earlier, ignoring my concerns that they were too young.

I am dressed for the office. An Issey Miyake cream trouser suit fresh from the dry-cleaners. Shoulder-length hair tucked behind my ears. A slick of Chanel lipstick. The same perfume I spritz and step into every morning, the smell chasing me through the house, a reminder of who I am now.

It was what the papers always commented on, when a picture of me found its way into the society pages of some supplement or other. Perhaps they did not know what else to say: ‘Anna Witherall, editor wife of TradeSmart heir David Witherall, perfectly turned out in …’ Ethereal beauty. Enigmatic charm. These were the words they used. Lazy attempts to place a finger on my ability to stand out and disappear at the same time.

As David makes his way towards the open-plan kitchen – a wall of sliding glass at the back, lined with California poppies – I stand in the hall, making a show of the final check of my handbag. Inside my bag, my fingers are shaking.

Passport, keys, purse. Just another day.

‘I really think you should stay at Dad’s while you’re there, it will be much nicer than a hotel,’ David calls across the kitchen as I slip my feet into a pair of black leather mules, which stand side by side next to the girls’ shoes, Stella’s scuffed at the toe.

I feel the colour rise in my cheeks, and look down again so that he won’t notice. ‘Do you think?’

It is exactly what I have been relying on, of course. Knowing my husband as I do, I can predict that he will push for me to stay at his dad’s place; desperate for this connection to me, this ownership of my life, even when I am abroad.

‘There is actually a ferry, isn’t there, which runs directly from Thessaloniki to the island …’ I add casually, as if the thought has just occurred to me.

It takes four hours and fifty-five minutes, port to port. Not that I will be taking it, of course.

‘Honestly,’ I pace my words carefully, ‘your father won’t mind?’

David doesn’t look up from his newspaper. ‘I told you, he won’t be there, he won’t be in Greece for at least another month. I’ll send a message to Athena, tell her to make up the bed.’

Before I can answer I feel the phone purr in my pocket. I look down, keeping my breath light. WhatsApp message from Unknown Number.

Thinking of you.

Inhaling, I close my eyes before placing the handset in my bag along with my usual phone and house keys, and head into the kitchen, all tasteful teal cupboards and oak countertop. A chrome Smeg fridge plastered in naive children’s drawings, daffodils turning on the table, scattered with the detritus of breakfast.

Neatly dressed in matching pinafores, my daughters are slumped in their chairs, their eyes glued to the iPad their grandfather insisted on buying them. Their grandfather. The thought brushes against my knees and my legs bow. Feeling a rush of blood to my head, I place my hand on the countertop to steady myself, breathing deeply.

Looking up, I prepare to blame a stone in my shoe, a spasm of the spine, but no one has noticed.

This is it. I let my eyes shift between David, the competent father, and the girls. My girls. Still but not quite babies.

Something looms above them, a hint of the women they will become, the women I will never know. Rose’s left eye twitches as it always has when she is tired or worrying about something. Even now she is like a person with the weight of the world on her shoulders. A typical first-born, even if only by a minute. Stella, beside her, oblivious always. How long will she remain so? I feel the unwanted thoughts rise in my mind, and expertly push them down again, back into the pool of simmering acid in my gut.

‘Anna?’

I blink for a moment at the sound of my husband’s voice. How long have I been standing here?

‘I’ll get the door for you. Are you sure you don’t need a lift to the station?’ Is there a hint in his tone? Does he sense what is about to happen? For a second I wonder if I see something in his expression, but then I look again and it has gone.

Grateful for the distraction, I keep my voice light, though my lips are so dry I feel a sharp crack as they tighten. Keeping my hand steady, I shake my head and take a fresh slice of toast from David’s hand.

‘I’m sure.’

I thought it would really take something to kiss my children goodbye one morning and walk out the front door, knowing I wouldn’t be back. But in the end, it was simple. The door had already been opened; all I had to do was walk.

CHAPTER 2 (#ued44c770-bc4d-5611-ba0b-508381081475)

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

There is no going back now. The taxi glides away from the house, down the street towards South End Green, retreating effortlessly from my family home, away from the expensive brickwork and tended gardens I will never see again.

The sound of the indicator clicks out a steady rhythm. My body quietly shaking, I turn my head so that my driver will not look at me and see what I have done, I watch my life streak past through the window, the bumping motion of the car, the low hum of conversation from the radio.

The girls hadn’t lifted an eye as the horn beeped from the road. Why should they? To them, today is just another day. How long will it be until they learn the truth? How long until the illusion of our lives together comes crashing down, destroying everything I have created, everything that I hold dear?

‘Why couldn’t he get out and ring the bloody doorbell?’ These were David’s parting words.

I have called a different cab service from my usual. My face is automatically drawn to the locks on the car door as the motor flicks silently to life, the wheels rolling between the parade of five-storey terrace houses, into the unknown.

Moving through South End Green, I am bemused by the familiar bustle of London life – the sound of discarded cans rattling against the gutter, the boys in bloomers and long socks stuffed into the back of shiny 4x4s, an old woman with an empty buggy pushing uphill against the wind – the world still rolling on as if nothing has changed.

The traffic is heavy. When the car turns off, unexpectedly, at Finchley Road, my hand grips the door handle.

‘Short cut.’

The voice in the front seat senses my fear but it does little to allay my nerves.

As the car turns, my eyes are distracted by the sudden movements of the trees, the light sweeping over the rear-view mirror. When it levels out again, I see the driver’s eyes trained on mine for a fraction of a second, in the reflection, the rest of his face obscured.

It is an effort to keep my legs steady as I step out of the car at the airport, every stride pressing against the desire to break into a run.

The terminal is a wash of blurred faces and television screens. Slumped bodies, caps tilted over eyes, neon signs, metal archways. My body endlessly moves against the tide, my eyes flicking left and right beneath my sunglasses. There is a sudden pressure on my shoulder and I spin around but it is just a rucksack, protruding from a stranger’s back.

There is something satisfying about flying, I find: the routine of it, the rhythm; answering questions, nodding in the right place, yes, shaking your head, no. I am grateful for it now – for the process, a welcome distraction from what will come.

Nevertheless, my mind won’t settle. All I can do is run through the plan once more. There will be hours of waiting at the airport before my flight to Skiathos. My time there will be brief, a night at the most, and from there I will travel on using the ticket I will buy in person at the airport, a day later, in my new name – the one emblazoned in the pages of the passport Harry had couriered to the office days earlier.

By the time I reach security, the urge to get to the other side is almost as strong as the desire to stay.

The queues this morning are sprawling. Breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth, as the doctors taught me, I remain composed, even when confronted by an abnormally cheerful security officer.

‘Going somewhere nice?’

For a moment, my mind flips back to this morning. From this vantage point, I watch what happens as if I am a witness – soldered to the sidelines, my tongue cut out. Unable to intervene, I watch myself leaning forward to kiss my daughters on their foreheads, lingering a second longer than usual. Neither had moved, barely raising their eyes from the iPad, which David had propped up against a box of cereal, a cartoon dog tap-dancing on the screen.

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.