Molly went pink with pleasure. ‘Zahra will know far more than me.’
‘But it was your idea. Run with it,’ Azrael advised with a sudden charismatic grin. ‘That is your punishment.’
Only it was anything but a punishment to be trusted with responsibility and to be with a man who invited and respected her opinions, Molly conceded inwardly. A mere two busy months into being Azrael’s wife, Molly was failing dismally at the challenge of stepping back from her emotions and suppressing forlorn hopes. She loved Azrael and every moment she spent with him only made her love him more. When had anyone but Maurice ever listened to her with respect? When had any man ever wanted her to the extent that Azrael seemed to want her? But her childhood insecurity, her secret fear that she was not loveable or even truly wanted, still haunted her and filled her with the terror that she was living in a dream world and that sooner or later Azrael would take a good clear look at her and wonder what he was doing with her.
For that reason, every time she was tempted to ask Azrael how long he believed their marriage would last, fear strangled her voice and kept her silent. It was better to enjoy what she had while she still had it, she reasoned unhappily, rather than stress about how she would feel when it came to an inevitable end.
They had spent the first weeks of their marriage touring Djalia by helicopter and Molly had seen everything from the unspoilt desert that was still home to nomadic tribes to the oil fields and the greener, more mountainous region to the north of the country. Zahra had become her right-hand woman, acting as interpreter for both culture and language while also becoming a good friend. Molly, however, kept her secret fears to herself and simply tried not to dwell on them.
She had dived into her agreement with Azrael to stay married to him and he had dived in with an equal lack of forethought. In mysterious addition, since their official wedding the reality that their marriage was not supposed to be real seemed to have become a taboo subject. In the same way as Azrael had backtracked from the concept of her having a child with him he retreated at speed from any discussion of the future, with the result that Molly sometimes felt as though she were living in a soap-bubble fantasy.
That was why it was such a boost to her confidence to be asked to work on the building of an international school, because that would not be a short-term project. In the same way, she now asked herself, how could she truly feel that their marriage was only temporary when Azrael had taken the time and trouble to accompany her to London to meet her grandfather in his care home? Indisputably, Azrael treated Maurice like a family member. On their most recent visit, when Azrael had seen her happy tears because Maurice had enjoyed a little window of recognition and had connected again with Molly as his granddaughter for the first time in months, Azrael had been so supportive and compassionate in his understanding of how much that acknowledgement had meant to his wife.
In fact, Azrael was just about perfect in the husband stakes, Molly acknowledged helplessly. They had discovered that they both liked to keep fit and Azrael had a workout room on the ground floor where they exercised together early in the morning. Their values were also similar. On a spicier note, she was married to an urgent and exciting lover, who made her feel like the sexiest woman alive. He regularly gave her little unexpected gifts that ranged from perfume to jewellery to lingerie. Even the fact that he was quite embarrassed giving her the fancy lingerie that he loved to see her wear had made her love him still more.
Azrael, she was learning by degrees, was not that much more sophisticated than she was, because his life had not accorded him much opportunity for self-indulgence. The depth of his concern for his people, the endless hours he worked striving to get everything right, hugely impressed her. She didn’t only love him, she also admired and respected him and she was incredibly happy being married to him.
But there were still little moments that could cruelly burst her cocoon of contentment. A couple of weeks after that first day of intimacy when Azrael had not used contraception with her, her period had arrived as usual. In truth she had been a tiny bit disappointed that she had not conceived and had scolded herself for that disappointment for it seemed wrong to want a child in a relationship that most probably would not last. There was also the sobering fact that Azrael had to think the same because he had been scrupulously careful to ensure that they did not run that risk again.
‘At least you won’t have that worry, then,’ Azrael had commented, which had convinced her that he was thankful that she had not conceived.
What he had left unsaid in that nebulous remark had haunted Molly for weeks afterwards, reminding her, as evidently she had reminded him, that their marriage was temporary and at that some yet unnamed time in the future they would part and go for a divorce. And the prospect of losing Azrael choked Molly as much as a gradually tightening noose round her throat because she couldn’t bear to contemplate the concept of suffering such a loss. In such a short space of time he had come to mean so much to her.