The Second Woman Read online

  She thinks of Gabriela without emotion, forcing herself to push her own feelings aside. There is no time for that. The children will still be at school, which will give their mother time to gather their things without causing alarm. Tom might be home, but what she does or doesn’t tell him now is none of Madeleine’s concern. As long as he goes with her, which surely even with all that is happening he will have to understand is necessary … That is all that matters now.

  But first, Madeleine has to get a plan in place, to sort out the arrangements, as promised. Beyond that, Gabriela is on her own. She has to be: her life depends on it.

  Artemis

  Greece, the Eighties

  It had been Clive’s idea. He had said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, so obvious that Artemis had been stunned into submissive silence. A baby? They were sitting on the boat, bobbing on the surface of the water seemingly miles from shore, the stretch of beach behind them coming in and out of focus like an optical illusion.

  At first she had stared at him in disbelief. How would that even work? They were still living in different countries, with Clive visiting every few months, and when they were together they would conduct their relationship in the privacy of the old village, Artemis still refusing to risk being exposed.

  It was a charade, of course. However careful they might have been to stay away as much as possible from prying eyes, the island was like a fishbowl. There was no way her parents hadn’t heard the rumours that would no doubt be crackling across the parched scrubland, but so far Rena and Markos had chosen to ignore them – or at least they had chosen not to confront them head on. Athena, who had done little to conceal her jealousy over her friend’s ensnaring of exactly the kind of man she had wanted to snag for herself, had simply refused to acknowledge their relationship. As far as she was concerned, Artemis and Clive as a couple didn’t exist, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  ‘OK, where would we live?’ Artemis said after a while, taking a swig from a bottle of beer, playing along.

  ‘London.’

  ‘I can’t just move to London.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Her jaw went slack as she tried to think up reasons, beyond the obvious fact that she had no more connection to the place than she had to the moon.

  Clive pushed again. ‘You’ll love it.’

  Would she? She tried to picture it: the heaving crowds at Camden Market overlaid with the stench of incense and cheap meat; the gigs at the Dublin Castle, the pub Clive had described one night as they lay between the trees, staring up at the stars.

  He had sent her a letter not long after he’d last returned to London – a single sentence, ‘I miss you’, on a sheet of white A5 paper. Inside, was a photo of a house with tiled steps leading to the front door, wisteria hanging over the arch. On the back of the photo, Clive had written, ‘In case you wanted to picture where I am now.’

  There was something so intimate about the gesture, something so tender … the house itself was beautiful, and yet something about it had unnerved her.

  She dismissed the memory now, focusing on his question: why not?

  It was a fair enough question, in a sense. There were certainly alluring details in the world Clive described – the homes of John Keats and Sigmund Freud, all within spitting distance of Clive’s family house. Irresistible snippets of history embedded in his beloved corner of North London, and yet when she tried to picture the scene beyond the framework of the house itself it was all too vague, too fanciful ever to try to place herself within it.

  Maybe she just wasn’t trying hard enough. Was she really intent on spending her whole life here, on the island? When she thought of staying, her blood ran as cold as when she imagined what it would mean to leave.

  Though the prospect of seeing Jorgos again had plagued her for a while after Clive mentioned their meeting, Artemis had pushed it to the back of her mind. As far as she knew, he was still living on Skiathos, and the likelihood of him coming back to the island to visit and her bumping into him was no greater than it had been before. Besides, there was no reason for her to be afraid of him, was there? He couldn’t hurt her. Not any more.

  Clive’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘What’s here for you? I mean what’s really here – beyond your parents and the job at the bakery? You want more than that, I know you do, even if you deny it. You could open a gallery in London, a proper gallery …’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, turning away from him. Could he not understand what a betrayal it would be to leave? She was the only child her parents had left. And yet, was Helena’s absence really the reason she felt compelled to stay?

  ‘I brought you something,’ Clive said, reaching into his bag and pulling out a small black leather box. He opened it to show a necklace resting on a bed of cream-coloured silk. For a moment, Artemis was reminded of the image of Snow White laid out in her coffin.

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ Clive said, without looking up at her.

  She closed her eyes as he clasped the amethyst necklace around her throat.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ he said, letting the hair fall against her back. ‘It’s as if it was made for you.’

  The necklace felt a little tight as she breathed in but it would be wrong to mention it. Instead she turned and leaned into him.

  ‘Thank you, it’s perfect.’

  Madeleine

  London, the day before Anna dies

  The house throbs with heat. Madeleine must have forgotten to turn off the radiators and radio before leaving this morning, and the sound of a Chopin nocturne rings out of the speakers. Moving across the room, she slams her palm on the off-button and pulls her phone from her handbag.

  She hasn’t spoken to Harry in months and for a moment she wonders if he might be bunkered down somewhere, already undercover, his phone strategically abandoned in a drawer on the boat where he lives. Scrolling through to his name, she presses call, closing her eyes and opening them again when the phone starts to ring.

  ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

  Her body sags with relief at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Harry. I need a favour. It’s important. Are you around tomorrow?’

  Gabriela hadn’t even said thank you.

  This is the thought that criss-crosses Madeleine’s mind as she makes her way to King’s Cross the next morning.

  Even after Madeleine had slipped the papers across the table to her, giving her time for the words to sink in as she read.

  Mr Ivan Popov is director of a number of global companies. One of them is GEF Energy Ltd, a business engaged in the provision of renewable energy and solar power. The ownership of GEF is divided between an investment company and another company, the Stan Group, registered to the British Virgin Islands.

  Even after Madeline had explained about Gabriela’s partner Popov being implicated in bribery related to his efforts running one of Vasiliev’s companies outside of Russia. Even when she had told her that Vasiliev had had Gabriela tailed by investigators and that when Vasiliev had confronted Popov with evidence of Gabriela’s other life, he hadn’t believed her, it hadn’t occurred to Gabriela to show any gratitude. Madeleine had told her this out of kindness, out of a misplaced sense of duty to an old friend. Even then, Gabriela hadn’t said thank you to Madeleine for saving her neck.

  Madeleine sometimes wonders about the men she encounters in her line of work: the traffickers, the paedophiles. So often, when she gets them face-to-face, they display signs of what she can only describe as a God complex: an unwavering belief that their needs are paramount, that they are wholly deserving of the life they chose, and that they will get away with it. With Gabriela, it is hard to know if she is deeply narcissistic or just naive. And yet whatever she might have been planning, long-term, Gabriela no longer has a choice, either way. Not any more. Vasiliev knows who she is and the moment Popov is arrested, which will be any minute now, before he can flee to Moscow, Gabriela’s life –
and those of her children – will be in terrible danger.

  Even Gabriela will have to understand that. For as long as they live, she and Tom are shackled together – and there is nothing either of them can do to escape. They may never have married but they, more than anyone, were wedded together: until death do them part.

  Artemis

  Greece, the Eighties

  The speed with which Artemis became pregnant shocked them both, though perhaps there was an inevitability to it. Clive approached sex with the same hunger that he showed for food. She had heard people talk about submitting to their partner in bed, but that suggested an element of coercion or one-sidedness that didn’t resonate with her own experience. What surprised Artemis about the physicality between them was how fiercely she wanted him back. When she thought about the fact of her pregnancy, once it had happened, she saw it as an inevitability; there was an urgency to the energy that ran between them that would result in producing a new life – a life over which, once born, she had no control.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Artemis said suddenly as they approached the port, when the day finally came to share the news with her parents.

  From the footpath where she and Clive now stood, she could just make out the outline of her father’s body under the awning. Her mother was seated beside him at the table where they were due to have their first meal all together, away from the house. Markos had resisted at first – why go out and pay to eat when Rena’s cooking was better than any restaurant could produce? But Artemis had been uncharacteristically insistent and her mother, sensing the importance of it, backed up her daughter’s arguments. She was tired, Rena said, not in the mood to cook. They should go out. Artemis had shot her a grateful look. It was as though Rena intuitively understood that this conversation, whatever it might entail, had to happen somewhere outside of their four walls – somewhere that wasn’t Markos’ domain.

  Her parents had met Clive a few times by now. Despite her apprehension, they had accepted his presence in their daughter’s life in a way that made Artemis believe things might be OK after all.

  When she saw Rena and Markos waiting for them now, her mother dressed in her smartest clothes beneath the awning of Yannis’ bar, she realised it wasn’t apprehension she was feeling, but rage. Rage for all those years when Rena and Markos must have heard her crying at night but never came to ask her why she wept. Rage for the times they placed their own trauma at the loss of their dead child above the needs of the one who had lived. The fury that suddenly rose through her as she stood watching them in the blackness of the evening, her parents’ faces illuminated under the lights of Yannis’ bar, was shocking. After everything she had been through, not only had they failed to offer the warmth she had so badly needed in the years after Helena died, but they had trapped Artemis here, enabling her fear; allowing her to believe it wouldn’t be fair on them for her to go.

  She felt her heels press down into the tarmac, as if pushing against what had been and, instinctively, what was to come. Feeling her resistance, Clive squeezed her fingers inside his. He stopped and turned to face her, his eyes moving discreetly towards her belly.

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She held his gaze. ‘I just, maybe it would be better if I spoke to my parents alone …’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Clive said reassuringly. ‘We are doing this together. What are you so scared of? You’re twenty-six, you’re not a child. Besides, it’s happy news …’

  He applied further pressure to her hand, before releasing it. ‘Come on. Let’s not keep them waiting.’

  Clive stepped ahead of her, stretching out his hand as they approached. ‘Markos.’

  Artemis saw her father’s posture stiffen at the presence of the man who had stepped in and stolen the heart of his daughter. Artemis had always thought of Markos as a big man but she watched him physically shrink in Clive’s presence. Everything about her new paramour commanded space and attention, and even Markos could not resist compliance.

  ‘Rena … Kalispera.’ Clive saved a special smile for Artemis’ mother, kissing her lightly on both cheeks, trying out one of the few Greek phrases he had learnt over the intermittent months he had spent on the island.

  Keeping her attention on Clive, Artemis kissed her parents hello, neither seeming to notice the energy that was coming off her like fat in a pan.

  With little mutual language to bolster the group in small talk, Artemis waited only as long as it took for the appetisers to arrive before she delivered the first part of the news, avoiding eye contact as she spoke. There was a brief silence and then her mother cried out, in relief. A grandchild! Even out of wedlock, a grandchild with a foreigner was better than no grandchild, and they could marry before the baby arrived. She was not so old-fashioned; they were not the most religious family. Whatever God they might have once believed in had abandoned them one night more than twenty years earlier.

  And a baby was a gift … Rena’s eyes brimmed with tears. She understood all too well what a precious gift a baby was.

  Artemis couldn’t stay furious with her mother as she shared the second part of their news. Once she had spoken, Rena’s face dropped.

  England?

  Artemis hardly dared look at Markos. When she did, he stretched his mouth into a tiny smile, the best he could manage. For the first time since she was a child, she saw tears form in the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Yamas,’ he said, his voice gravelly, as if something was stuck in his chest. And then, in English, his eyes fixed on hers, ‘To your health.’

  Athena was less diplomatic when Artemis told her the news the next day. ‘What do you mean, London? But you’ve barely even been further than Skiathos. You never even wanted to—’

  ‘Can’t you just be happy for me?’ Artemis snapped at her friend. ‘We’re having a baby together, we have to live as a family. Clive has a job, a business in London … and what is there for me here? My mother’s bakery? You think I want to spend the rest of my life doing the same—’

  She stopped, realising what she was saying. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … Maybe you could come and stay with us …’

  Athena turned angrily and wiped away her tears. This had been her dream for as long as either of them could remember, to find someone and move away; to start a life apart from the island. As far as Athena was concerned, Panos was only ever a stopgap, even though they had been together on-and-off since school. Artemis resented how dismissive Athena was of him; Panos was a good man, he deserved more respect, but it wasn’t Artemis’ place to say anything, certainly not now. After years of dismissing her friend’s ambition, rolling her eyes – a self-preservation tactic to defend herself against the prospect of her best friend leaving the island – Artemis had taken Athena’s dream for herself. And what – now she expected Athena to be happy for her? She was a traitor, and she knew it. In leaving, she was abandoning the only people who had ever really loved her, as well as the person who could never leave. For a moment, she let herself picture Helena’s face – fair skin, the cupid’s bow, the details diminished over time.

  She turned away then, allowing her mind to fix in the present.

  There was a ripple of satisfaction when she thought of herself leaving, a sense that she was transforming from an ugly duckling into a swan, and all those who doubted her were being forced to watch. After so many years of being complicit in her own entrapment, she was escaping the version of herself that always defined her, a version she had not chosen. So why was she shaking?

  ‘Hey,’ Artemis said, taking her friend’s hand, struggling to find the words to finish the sentence. When the words came at her, what she wanted to say was that she was scared – that if it was up to her she and Clive would stay forever, even if she hated it here in so many ways. She wanted to tell Athena that there was nothing for her in England, other than the father of her child.

  ‘Look, Clive’s business is just starting to take off and fo
r now he has to be based in London. But who knows …’ she heard herself say instead.

  ‘Don’t,’ Athena replied, pulling her hand away. ‘Don’t pretend you’re coming back.’

  Harry

  London, the day before Anna dies

  Harry is shaking as he leaves the park, a wind creeping in as he walks towards the crescent of Nash buildings that line the street, Maria having gone ahead, taking with her the letter she had watched him write.

  He moves slowly, letting his thoughts sprawl in front of him. This is his last chance to think.

  Does he trust her? His mind darkens. Does she trust him? Neither of them has much choice, she must have surmised. As far as she’s concerned, they are the only ones left who can help Anna.

  He thinks of Clive’s face earlier that day and stops dead, finally processing what is going to happen next.

  Artemis

  Greece, the Eighties

  ‘You look beautiful,’ Athena announced with just a hint of jealousy, as Artemis stood in front of her wearing the dress Rena had pulled out of storage and given to her daughter the week before the wedding. Maid-of-honour duties appeared to have stymied the fallout Artemis had been expecting when she told her best friend of the plan for a shotgun wedding. Their plan, rather – Clive and her parents. Artemis, after all, had barely been part of the conversation as the decision was made and a venue booked for before they were due to leave for England, and soon people she hadn’t spoken to for months were stopping her in the street to congratulate her on her engagement.