‘Of course, you can’t settle for that,’ her sister told her sternly on the phone an hour later. ‘I’ll be flying in to see you in a few weeks.’
‘The plane fares to Zenara cost a fortune!’ Izzy warned her twin.
Maya laughed but it was an almost bitter laugh that made Izzy frown because she didn’t get the joke. ‘Money’s not a problem for me now,’ her sister declared. ‘We have a lot to catch up on but I’m concentrating on the fact that I’ve settled Mum and Dad’s problems for all time and no sacrifice is too great to achieve that, is it?’
‘If you’re the sacrifice, I’m not sure,’ Izzy sighed. ‘Oh, Maya, do you truly hate this job?’
‘It’s not a typical job. We’ll talk when I see you. Face to face is always better.’
But the weeks passed and in the end Maya wasn’t able to visit. First, she fell ill and said she didn’t want Izzy to visit her in Italy, which hurt but had to be accepted. And then in the aftermath she said she didn’t feel either like travelling or entertaining and that had to be accepted too, Izzy conceding that for the very first time her twin was asking for space from her. Maybe it was part of growing up and attaining adult independence, she reasoned worriedly, wondering if she had been coming across as a little too clingy and demanding in the sibling stakes while resolving to let Maya get on with forging her own path.
In the meantime, life went on in Zenara. Izzy was able to satisfy her curiosity about Rafiq’s first marriage as he began talking more freely to her. ‘The guilt after Fadith’s death was the worst burden.’ Rafiq sighed, smoothing long fingers over the firm swell of Izzy’s pregnant stomach as they lay in bed a few weeks later. ‘In truth the marriage was miserable for both of us. Fadith never attained what she most desired…a child or even the status of Queen.’
‘Was that so important to her?’ Izzy queried, running a hand down over his flat, taut stomach to stroke him with tender possessive fingertips and smile as he stretched and groaned half under his breath, loving the effect she could have on him. ‘I mean, I can understand her desire for a child, particularly when the two of you were hoping for an heir to the throne, but I don’t really understand why being Queen was so important.’
‘Because that was why she married me. Status meant a lot to her and her family.’
‘I can’t understand that outlook.’
‘No, but then you’re different, wonderfully different,’ Rafiq growled, rolling her over to pin her beneath him. ‘Fadith never loved me, never wanted me for me. A passionate clandestine romance with one of her brother’s friends before our marriage set that in stone. He died in a car crash and she decided that she’d never love again, which is why she agreed to marry me.’
‘So, she wasn’t a virgin,’ Izzy remarked in surprise.
‘No but she was honest enough to tell me that before I agreed to marry her. I was shocked, out of my depth because I was much more naïve than she was and although virginity isn’t demanded, it is rather taken for granted in a marriage at our level. Girls are sheltered, guarded in our society,’ Rafiq confided. ‘I was more surprised that she had loved someone else.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Izzy whispered reflectively. ‘That was far too much for you to take on at sixteen.’
‘I wasn’t jealous because she felt more like a sister to me than a wife for months after we married,’ Rafiq admitted wryly. ‘That brought problems too. All she ever really seemed to want from me was a baby and, sadly, when she didn’t achieve motherhood she blamed me for it. She was totally convinced that if there was anything wrong with either of us, it had to be my problem, my flaw.’
Izzy winced, imagining what that must’ve been like for them both when the expected development failed to materialise over ten long years. ‘For me, babies were always something I knew I wanted but it was also something that was planned for way in the distant future,’ she told him absently. ‘But now that it’s something very much in the present, I’ve adjusted.’
They had moved back to the royal palace outside Hayad and Rafiq had taken up his usual duties, taking her with him on official activities when it was appropriate to do so. After a couple of engagements at schools, Izzy found herself becoming interested in the education system and she agreed to take those visits on. A second ultrasound revealed that she was carrying two girls. She flew over to London twice to visit her family with Rafiq by her side and found her parents and her little brother hale and hearty, her father talking with enthusiasm about some new sales job he had managed to get. The visit, however, had been dominated by Izzy needing to come clean and explain to her family who Rafiq was and that they were married. She told Maya on the phone, where Maya dropped her own marriage bombshell, telling Izzy about a whirlwind romance with her new Italian boss. Something in Maya’s story didn’t quite sit right with Izzy, but Maya deflected her twin’s worried questioning, choosing instead to concentrate on Izzy’s own news.
As her pregnancy advanced, the nausea vanished but Izzy went out less, aside from a short trip back to the UK to spend a weekend with Maya and her new husband and their extended family. The fact was that Izzy was embarrassed by her increasingly cumbersome body. Her beautiful cunningly shaped maternity clothes could only do so much and she still thought she most closely resembled a barrel because a twin pregnancy on her slight frame was enormous. Rafiq might tell her that
