The Most Difficult Thing Read online

  Copyright

  The Borough Press

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  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

  For Rosa

  Epigraph

  ‘To know yourself is the most difficult thing’

  Thales of Miletus

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  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

  Chapter 19: Maria

  Chapter 20: Maria

  Chapter 21: Maria

  Chapter 22: Maria

  Chapter 23: Anna

  Chapter 24: Anna

  Part Two

  Chapter 25: Anna

  Chapter 26: Maria

  Chapter 27: Anna

  Chapter 28: Anna

  Chapter 29: Anna

  Chapter 30: Maria

  Chapter 31: Anna

  Chapter 32: Anna

  Chapter 33: Maria

  Chapter 34: Anna

  Chapter 35: Maria

  Chapter 36: Anna

  Chapter 37: Anna

  Chapter 38: Maria

  Chapter 39: Anna

  Chapter 40: Maria

  Chapter 41: Anna

  Chapter 42: Anna

  Chapter 43: Maria

  Chapter 44: Anna

  Chapter 45: Maria

  Chapter 46: Anna

  Chapter 47: Maria

  Chapter 48: Anna

  Chapter 49: Maria

  Chapter 50: Anna

  Chapter 51: Maria

  Part Three

  Chapter 52: Anna

  Chapter 53: Anna

  Chapter 54: Maria

  Chapter 55: Anna

  Chapter 56: Anna

  Chapter 57: Maria

  Chapter 58: Anna

  Chapter 59: Anna

  Chapter 60: Maria

  Chapter 61: Anna

  Chapter 62: Anna

  Chapter 63: Maria

  Chapter 64: Anna

  Chapter 65: Maria

  Chapter 66: Anna

  Chapter 67: Maria

  Chapter 68: Anna

  Chapter 69: Maria

  Chapter 70: Maria

  Chapter 71: Anna

  Chapter 72: Maria

  Chapter 73: Anna

  Chapter 74: Maria

  Chapter 75: Anna

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I felt my abdominal muscles twinge as I lowered myself to sit. The bench by the lamp post at the foot of the bridge, just as planned.

  It had been almost two months since the surgery but still the scar was so raw that I felt tearing across my abdomen if I so much as lifted one of the twins at the wrong angle. Letting my eyelids drop for a moment, I pushed the thought of the girls out of my mind.

  Open the box, close the box. Just as the doctor had taught me.

  They were not so much benches that lined the stretch of pavement along this part of the Thames. More slabs, like a procession of concrete coffins quietly guarding the water.

  It was dusk. Winter. The terminal gloom had long set in, and with it the sort of damp cold that gnawed its way into your bones. A thin gust of wind snuck through the opening in my cardigan as I pulled the grey cashmere closer across my breasts, still swollen.

  ‘For God’s sake, Harry,’ I cursed him silently, my eyes rolling up towards the stone-coloured sky.

  For as long as I can remember, I have always been early. It is a pathological politeness that brings with it control; no one wants to be the last person to step into a room. It was one of the things we shared, at the beginning, he and I. How many times had I arrived early to meet him, before all this had started, only to find him already lurking under an amber glow at the end of the bar?

  Yet it was nearly five, and the pavement around me was virtually empty but for a steady stream of deflated tourists and office workers scuttling towards the Tube.

  What was he playing at? David would be home from work by six, as had been his wont since the babies had arrived and, almost overnight, he too had been reborn, his naturally attentive, easy parental love a reminder of everything I could never be.

  I had told Maria I was just going shopping for babygros. What was Harry doing? Careful not to make any sudden movements, which I had come to accept would be followed by a sharp stab of pain, I pulled my phone from my navy leather handbag, my hand trembling.

  No new messages.

  My fingers were a bluish-red. I had hardly left the confines of the house since the birth, two months ago, aside from those ritualistic processions along the darker recesses of Hampstead Heath, under the instruction of the nanny. The Nanny. The truth was, she was always so much more than that. Ever-competent Maria silently heaving the double buggy down the front steps, seeing me off from the shadows of the doorway.

  I loved the way the air chilled my lungs. Even the buildings on Millbank, which loomed over us from the other side of Lambeth Bridge, seemed to shiver. I had forgotten how cold it got out here. How easy it is to forget.

  Hoping I’d maybe missed something in the string of messages that had passed between Harry and me, I flicked my fingers across the screen. Nothing. How many times had I reread his messages? How many times had I crept across the hallway while the girls slept, my toes curling into the carpet, sliding the lock closed behind me, carefully retrieving the phone from where I kept it, stuck behind the drawer of the cupboard where the bathroom cleaning products were kept – somewhere I could guarantee David would never look?

  Telling myself I would wait five more minutes before considering my next ste
p, I flicked through a stream of encrypted messages. Once again, my attention was caught by a single image: a photograph, blurred, but clear enough – my father-in-law, the grandfather of my children, shaking hands with a man in a dark suit – his thick black beard a smear of tar across a smudge of flesh.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the streetlights flick on along the river. Looking up, I saw him. Those fierce blue eyes drilling a hole in my chest. Breathing sharply, as if struck, I said his name: ‘Harry.’

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Anna

  Three Years Later

  The house is still, as it always is at this hour. Once again, I have hardly slept, taking a moment to savour the peace, the calm before the storm: this moment in which I am neither who I was nor who I will become. My eyes skitter across the silver clock by my bed, the one that had belonged to David’s mother: 5.40 a.m. 1 May. The date is already firmly etched in my mind, as it will be for as long as I live.

  Dawn has always been my favourite time of day. As a child I would wander the narrow hall of my parents’ house under a hazy bruise of light, gazing through the window overlooking a cul-de-sac of privets and exhaust pipes, imagining myself somewhere else.

  David is still asleep. I sit, slowly, careful not to rouse him, his body a mound of flesh under a blanket of Marimekko florals.

  I have spent most of the night going over the plan in my head, sealing every second of it into the recesses of memory, ensuring it could never be prised out again should I be caught. Caught. It’s not a word I allow myself to linger on too long.

  Creeping from the bed, with its expensive linen sheets and tasteful throws, I sit at the stool in front of the small oak dressing table with its neat displays of family life. Trophies, trinkets of a world I have made my own. Among them, a bronze frame with a photo of David and me in front of the vista of his father’s house in Greece. One of many of his family’s boltholes that we have jetted between over the years, the planes leaving tracks like scars through the sky, visible only to those who glance up at just the right moment.

  So young we were then, clinging to one another in front of the pool, the Greek sun bleaching out our features. David’s body turned towards mine, claiming me. Our first holiday together had been a victory, almost. This was where it all had really begun. I was his prize, he had said it a hundred times, but he never knew that he was also mine. Not yet, but he will.

  The thought jars in my mind, and I lift my head, catching my reflection in the oval mirror. For a moment I am transfixed. The same light blonde hair, pale green eyes, high cheekbones. Hardened, now. The years of insomnia have caught up with me, in the hollows of my eyes. The corners of my mouth, cracked from years of fixed smiles.

  My phone is plugged into the charger on the wall. Silently, I lift it, glancing at David’s sleeping body in the mirror – the soft line of which I could draw from memory – before tapping my password into a second phone, stashed in the pocket of my silk dressing gown. My fingers leave a streak of sweat across the screen. The phone is the same model, same sleek black cover as my other one. Same pin number – the date Harry and I first met. Fundamental differences you would have to peer inside to see.

  Once again, I flick through a stream of messages from Harry, distracted for a moment by a chip in my blood-red nail polish. Hearing David stir in the bed, I expertly lock the phone while concentrating my face in the direction of the neat row of perfumes and creams in front of me, replacing it in the pocket of my gown as I stand.

  ‘What time is it?’

  David’s voice drifts across the room, still thick with sleep.

  ‘Nearly six. My flight isn’t until twelve but I have work to catch up on; Milly’s off on maternity leave today.’

  I picture my assistant, whose belly I have watched swell and groan under its own weight over the past months. I picture the young woman’s blotchy red cheeks, which she attempts, feebly, to mellow with slightly too-orange foundation; her increasingly uncomfortable gait.

  Over the past weeks, I could almost feel her pelvic bones grating as she delivered proofs of the next issue of the magazine to my office.

  Of course Milly believed she would be back within a few months of having the baby, four to six months’ maternity leave, she had told HR. I don’t believe it for a second. Not that it matters. Either way, I won’t be seeing her again.

  ‘I’m going to have a shower.’ David’s voice interrupts my thoughts.

  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 bet
ween 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

  Anna

  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?