Princess's Secret Baby(66)

                ‘This is your room,’ James said, and showed her the kitchen.

                ‘Ha, ha,’ Leila said, because she got his sarcasm now. ‘You will go very, very hungry if you wait for me to cook, and you don’t want to hear about when I tried to do dishes.’ She did make concessions though. ‘Show me how this works.’

                James pressed a button on the kettle. ‘But there has to be water in it.’

                They were so happy that even boiling a kettle was a celebration, but when he showed her another room, Leila thought she might cry. It was empty apart from a shelf that had a silver teddy on, the one he had bought when he had got her engagement ring.

                It was another happiest day of her life; every day with him turned into that.

                All her clothes and belongings were brought over from The Chatsfield, and James had staff put them away, right down to the last pair of shoes.

                She was in, she was home, and the best part for James was, that night there were, again, no tears.

                They overslept, of course.

                James’s phone bleeped a text and he found out from a rather irate Manu that he was half an hour late for their meeting.

                ‘I have to go,’ James said.

                ‘Where?’

                ‘I’ve got meetings at The Chatsfield over the next couple of days,’ James lightly explained. ‘I’ll call Muriel and tell her to come in tomorrow so you can get your bearings today.’

                ‘Who’s Muriel?’

                ‘She takes care of the place,’ James said. ‘She just comes in once a week while I’m away, but now I’m back she’ll come in daily, just for an hour or two. Well, not at the weekends.’

                ‘No cook?’

                ‘I told you, you can ring the restaurants downstairs.’

                ‘Just one person for a couple of hours a day?’

                ‘Is that a problem?’

                ‘No.’ Leila smiled. ‘It’s wonderful.’

                As he showered he thought about them and as he put on his suit he told her some of what he’d been thinking. After sixteen years of being ignored, James doubted his stilted Arabic could solve that in any conversation with her parents, but her brother kept trying to contact her and maybe there, there was something that he could do. ‘What about your brother?’ James asked when he came out. ‘Why don’t you make contact with him? He does seem to be trying to speak with you.’

                ‘I’m not talking to Zayn for what he did to you.’

                ‘Well, I didn’t appreciate it at the time but I get why he did what he did now. What if I spoke to him?’ James said, while not particularly relishing the thought, and he watched her guilty swallow.

                ‘I have something to tell you.’

                Finally, James thought. ‘Please do,’ he said.

                ‘It is something that might make you cross.’

                ‘Do tell!’

                ‘It was Sophie who revealed our names to the press.’