now she could see that it commanded a view of the entire creek, and because she knew he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear, she said, ‘This is beautiful, Zahir. Has it always belonged to your family?’
‘No. I came across the house when I was out sailing one weekend. A storm blew up and I took shelter in the creek. The place was uninhabited, falling to rack and ruin, but it was love at first sight and I bought it. Restored it.’
‘You’ve done all this?’
‘I made a start, did the early clearance, but life intruded. My family needed me. Then I got involved with the travel business. The truth of the matter is that these days I speak and it is done.’
‘But the vision, the dream, is yours.’
‘A man needs dreams to sustain him,’ he said, turning abruptly away, opening the car door.
‘We all need dreams.’ Then, because the lie she had told hung between them and she wanted this over so that she could draw a line, begin to move on, she said, ‘About Freddy…’
He stopped. ‘You think that is why I came here today?’ he said, not turning. ‘To ask about your son?’
‘Didn’t you?’ Then, when he didn’t answer, ‘I let you think he was my lover so that you would walk away.’
He straightened. ‘Because you did not trust me.’
‘No! Because I did not trust myself…’
As he swung round to face her, she faltered. ‘Because once, when I was eighteen, I lost my head and hurt everyone who loved me…’
‘Is being a single mother such a big deal these days?’
‘No, but being a single mother and refusing to name the father is a very big deal.’
Zahir frowned. ‘Why would you protect a man from his responsibilities?’
‘I wasn’t protecting him, I was protecting Freddy. I didn’t want him tainted. Didn’t want anyone to look at him and say, “Like father, like son…” Always be looking for the first sign that he was going the same way.’
He reached out, caught her elbow, and somehow she was leaning against him, his arm around her, not in an embrace, but as support.
‘I was supposed to be the level-headed one in my year. The daughter every mother wanted…’ She gulped. ‘Maybe that was part of it. I was tired of being good. I just wanted to be like everyone else, part of the gang, but all those boys at school were so…ordinary.’
‘And it took extra-ordinary to make you bad?’ he said gently.
‘Pete O’Hanlon was different. Five years older. And so gloriously, perfectly dangerous.’
The words, his name, had spilled out before she was even aware she was thinking them. More than she’d told her mother. More than she’d told anyone.
‘He was the worst nightmare of every woman with an impressionable daughter. And boy, was I impressionable? He’d moved away, no one knew where he’d gone, what he was doing, but his cousin was in the same class at school as me and he came to her eighteenth birthday party. The air buzzed when he walked in. Every girl was suddenly taller, more alive. Every boy looked…dull.’
‘But he chose you…’
He’d waited until she was leaving. Had caught up with her, offered her a lift home.
‘There are more dangerous things than walking home alone in the dark,’ Zahir said when, finally, she stopped. ‘Where is he now?’
‘The morning after I got everything I deserved,’ she said. ‘He and three other men held up a bank. The police were waiting. He tried to shoot his way out and was killed.’ She shuddered. ‘I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that Sadie Redford would be so quick to invite Freddy over for a play-date with her little girl if she knew that.’
‘The sins of the father?’
The only sound was the air humming as the heat intensified. The high pitched note of cicadas stridulating below them in the garden. The blood pulsing in her ears as she waited for him to say something, anything.
‘You are his mother, Diana. Nothing else matters.’
‘No.’ Then, shaking her head, ‘Why did you come, Zahir?’
‘Because…’ He lifted his hand to her cheek. ‘Because I could not stop myself.’ He did not smile as he added, ‘It seems that I am not as strong as you.’
For a moment she thought he would kiss her, but he let his hand fall to his side.
‘You should get out of the sun now.’ Then, as he climbed into the car, ‘I promised Freddy that I would take him sailing tomorrow. I’ll be here at six.’
Zahir walked with Shula al-Attiyah in his mother’s garden, while their mothers gossiped and kept an eye on them. She was, just as his mother had promised, intelligent, well travelled, lively. Perfect in every respect but one. She was not Diana Metcalfe.
He sailed with Freddy the following morning and afterwards he ate a sumptuous
He could not have said what they talked about. Only that being with her was right. That leaving her felt like tearing himself in half.
In the afternoon he met Adina al-Thani. She was the girl recommended by his sister for the beauty of her hair. It was a smooth ebony curtain of silk that hung to her waist and it was indeed beautiful.
If it had been chestnut. If curls had corkscrewed every which way, it would have been perfect.
Later, he had dinner with his father, who had just returned from the Sudan. They talked about politics. About the new airline. They did not talk about his marriage. Or the visitors occupying his house at Nadira.
But when he was leaving his father said, ‘I want you to know that I’m proud of you, my son. This country needs men like you. Men who can take the future and mould it to their own vision.’
And he wasn’t sure if that made him feel better, or worse.
The next day he was forced to remain in the capital, deal with the mountain of paperwork that was coming in from London. Have lunch with Leila al-Kassami-the one who was not beautiful but had a lovely smile-and her mother.
She, of all of them, came closest to his heart’s desire. Perhaps if the smile had been preceded by the fleeting appearance of a dimple, if she had caught her lip between her teeth to stop herself from saying the first thing that came into her head…
As they left, he saw his mother watching him with an expression close to desperation and knew that he was running out of time.
That evening he took Diana on a tour of his ‘vision’. Showed her the cottages, the central building that would provide everything a visitor could dream of. The chandlery, the marina. The island where the restaurant was nearing completion. The pavilion where people seeking somewhere different to hold a wedding could make their vows.
She stood beside him beneath the domed canopy looking up at the tiny lapis and gold tiles that looked like the sky in that moment before it went black and said, ‘It’s beautiful, Zahir.’ And then she looked at him. ‘Like something out of a fairy tale.’
‘Wait until you see the real thing…’
‘Oh, but I have…’
‘No. Tonight I’ll drive you far beyond the reach of manmade light-only there is it possible to see the heavens as God made them.’
Once darkness fell, he’d take her into the desert and, maybe, beneath the infinity of the heavens, she would be able to understand, he would be able to understand why, despite the fact that she had somehow taken possession of his heart, tomorrow he would have to redeem his promise to his mother. Do his duty as a son.
‘I will not be able to come here again during your visit,’ he said. ‘But I want to give you this gift.’
Diana heard the words. Heard more, perhaps, than he’d intended to say. Something that they had both agreed upon from the very first. That there were no fairy tales.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ZAHIR was unusually silent on the trip out into the desert but, when he
