Desert Fantasies(52)

That the detailed conservation programme she’d spent hours, weeks, months putting together would never be brought to fruition. That the young trees she’d had planted might never become the orchard she’d envisioned. That six years of her life had been devoted to something he’d decided to bring to an end.

Was it weak to want to delay the moment? His fingers moved against the palm of her hand. He was going to hurt her and Bahiyaa had known him better than he’d known himself. It was going to crucify him to do it.

‘Wh-why are there so many copper coffee-pots here?’ she asked, a break in her voice.

He loved it that she was nervous around him. Loved seeing the pulse beating at the base of her neck. All his adult life he’d been pursued by women. In the West it was almost entirely physical. Women who wanted the cachet of being known to be his lover. In Amrah, women wanted the status and security he could give them. Polly wanted neither, but her body betrayed her attraction to him and it excited him.

‘The dalla is a symbol of Arabic hospitality,’ he said, releasing her hand. ‘The willingness to share what you have with others has its roots in survival.’

‘Yes, but why so many? Even if this were a stage set you’d expect a few less. I love the idea of gahwa, though.’ Polly took her sunglasses off her head, then slipped off the band she’d tied her hair back with. Rashid watched, distracted as she ran her fingers through the plait, loosening her hair into a curtain of waves that brushed her shoulders.

‘Bahiyaa explained it. It’s polite to drink two cups, so your host can feel bountiful, but not three, because that might expose him to want.’

He smiled.

‘After you’ve drunk the second cup you shake it to show you’ve finished. Next time, if I manage to make it through the experience without fainting, I’ll be ready.’

His eyes rested on her lightly sun-kissed face, her earnest expression, as she tried to keep talking so he would have something other than his father’s illness to think about.

She was a woman who understood grief. She knew you needed to come in and out of it. In her company he found he could relax. He was interested in what she said and thought. He liked the way her eyes sparkled, the way they changed from blue to almost grey when she passed from happy to sad.

And he loved the way Polly wanted to explore a culture not her own. Her beautiful hands still showed the carefully drawn hennaed pattern his sister had applied, and would for days.

Her eyes followed his gaze. ‘Bahiyaa painted it,’ she said, self-consciously. Her forefinger traced the outline on her left hand. ‘It took hours to dry. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so long doing nothing in my entire life.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘I’ve enjoyed Bahiyaa’s company so much. I will miss her.’

‘And she you.’

‘I wish I’d had a sister. Or brother. I think it would have been fun not to be quite so alone.’ Then, ‘Is…?’ Polly stopped, biting the side of her lip.

‘Go on.’

The tip of her tongue came out to moisten the very centre of her top lip. ‘Is…?’ She stopped again, then changed tack. ‘Do you feel like an only child?’

Beautiful blue eyes looked across at him expecting an answer to a question no one had ever thought to ask him before. It took him to an area he’d suppressed because it had been easier to see his mother as ‘bad’ and to see himself only as his father’s son.

But, of course, there were so many shades of grey—and the truth was his mother had been kind to her two stepchildren. Had loved them. The sibling bond he shared with Hanif and Bahiyaa had been forged then.

So, no, he didn’t feel like an only child. Even though his grandfather saw a distinction between Hanif and himself, they never had. They were brothers. Bahiyaa was their sister.

‘Hanif was four when Princess Yasmeen died. Bahiyaa a baby. Neither of them have strong memories of their own mother.’

And they’d adopted his. They’d been a happy family. A unit. It was his father who had taken a mallet to it. It seemed so obvious now, but it came as a revelation.

‘My mother was the only maternal figure they’d known.’

‘So losing her was as difficult for them as you.’

No, that wasn’t true. As painful and traumatic as his mother’s leaving Amrah had been for them all, it was only he who had felt he had to rip out part of himself.

‘Do they see her now?’

‘Hanif has done.’

‘And Bahiyaa?’

Rashid shook his head. ‘She has never travelled outside of Amrah.’

‘Never?’ Polly’s eyebrows shot up, her expressive face showing more than just amazement.

‘She was married to Omeir at seventeen.’

Even as he said it the full force of what that had meant for Bahiyaa hit him. Seventeen. She’d endured a life sentence. Was still enduring it. It was perhaps just as well his father still refused to see him. Anger rolled over him. All the more potent because it had no outlet.

‘Rashid.’

He looked up to see Polly watching him, her eyes concerned. Fearful.

‘I could hate him,’ he said, forcing the words out. There was no one else on earth he could say that to and know they’d hear it for what it was. ‘I do hate him.’

‘Don’t.’

She reached out and took hold of his hand, as he had done hers. With infinite care she turned it over and smoothed her hand across his palm.

‘My grandma believed the whole of your life was mapped out on the palm of your hand. Everything. Who you married. How many children. Whether you’d be sick. Prosperous.’

The light feather-soft touch of her fingers across his skin made it hard to concentrate, but his anger was evaporating like water in summer. She soothed him.

‘She believed there was nothing we could do about any of it. But I’ve never believed there’s a life mapped out for us. It has to be all about choices.’

Still those fingers moved over his hand.

‘Some will be good and others not so good. You just have to hope you make enough good ones enough of the time to live a good life. Hating your father would be a bad choice.’

‘What he’s done is—’

‘Wrong,’ she finished for him. ‘Your father is flawed. He made poor choices at some crucial points of his life. And those choices damaged other people. Hurt you. But he is dying, Rashid. You can be angry about some of the things he’s done without forgetting the good things.’

And there were good things. It was that that ripped him in two. He wanted things to be black and white. Clearly right or wrong. A person good or bad. It was hard to admire his father so much, want his approval, and yet hate what he refused to put right for Bahiyaa. Then to realise he’d denied him a relationship with his mother and broken promises he must have made to her.

‘Your time with him is running out. Can’t you see your father before he dies?’

‘Perhaps.’

But perhaps not. What had made his father such a good leader of men was his ability to make a decision and stick to it.

Polly’s blue eyes were clear and strong. Without a doubt she would risk the rejection. He might, too, if it weren’t for Bahiyaa.

‘I will go if he asks for me. I cannot go without Bahiyaa.’ Hanif aside, he had never spoken about this to anyone. Not even Bahiyaa, though he was sure she suspected.

‘Four years ago,’ he began, his voice scraping across razor blades, ‘when Bahiyaa first came to me I went to see my father.’

It was painful to talk about, but with Polly it was possible. She radiated warmth. Acceptance.

‘I told him. I told him about Bahiyaa.’

He had told him everything. He’d described her injuries in graphic detail: the bruises on her face and body, the broken bones and the mental scarring caused by years of living in fear. Ten years. He’d told him how Bahiyaa had suffered silently and struggled to cope.

‘My father said that Bahiyaa had brought dis-honour to our family and that he considered her dead to him. That as long as I chose to shelter her I was not welcome in his home.’

She frowned. ‘You haven’t seen him since Bahiyaa came to live with you four years ago?’

He nodded.

Polly sat back in her chair and looked at him. ‘You are a remarkable man,’ she said slowly.

Of all the things he’d expected her to say that hadn’t been it. He couldn’t have anticipated his reaction to her words either. It was like ice breaking deep inside him.

‘I told you Bahiyaa was lucky to have you for a brother, but I hadn’t realised quite how lucky. She must have been terrified.’

‘She still is. And will be as long as Omeir continues to insist he wants her to come home.’

‘Why does he want her to?’ Polly reached forward to pick up her glass and drained the last of her pineapple juice.

Who knew? Any man who treated a woman as Omeir had treated Bahiyaa was someone beyond his comprehension. ‘He says he loves her, but it’s a warped kind of love. It may be pressure from his family. I don’t know.’

‘She can’t go back.’

‘No.’ Bahiyaa would return to that life over his dead body.

‘I should really mind my own business, particularly when it comes to things I don’t know anything about. I hadn’t realised what taking Bahiyaa in had meant for you. I just can’t resist trying to sort everything and everyone out and sometimes they’re just not fixable.’