She’d gone about her work, thinking—hoping?—that Murat might telephone, even though she had told herself that she wouldn’t pick up. But he hadn’t. There had been nothing but a very loud silence from the Middle East, forcing her to face a truth she didn’t want to face. It seemed that it really was over. And even though she knew they couldn’t have carried on like that it didn’t stop her from feeling as if her world had suddenly become muted. As if a dark curtain had descended and shrouded everything which was bright and good.
‘You’ll need your passport, for ID purposes,’ Stephen Le Saux was saying. ‘And you’ll need to be ready in an hour. We’ll be flying you down to Newquay this afternoon, if that’s okay?’
‘That soon?’ questioned Catrin, standing up and smoothing her palms down over her uniform dress.
‘Unless you have something keeping you here?’
She would have laughed, if laughing hadn’t become such an alien concept. ‘No, there’s nothing keeping me here,’ she said.
She went directly to her room. At least other areas of her life were looking good. Rachel was doing well at Uni and her mother was doing even better in Arizona. Even though all contact with the outside world had been banned for the first six weeks of treatment, Catrin had spoken to one of the counsellors at the clinic, who had sounded cautiously optimistic about her progress.
Hastily, she packed a bag and was ready and waiting when the hotel mini-bus arrived to take her to Cardiff airport, with Stephen himself at the wheel. But she started feeling confused when they got to the airport and he took her straight to a rather plush waiting room.
‘Are you sure I’m in the right place?’ she questioned as she looked around to see several smartly dressed people sipping from glasses of champagne.
‘Of course you are,’ he answered smoothly. ‘And you’ll be well looked after, I can assure you. Have a good trip.’
Catrin had only ever travelled by air with Murat, with his staff making all the arrangements, and in a way this seemed no different. Maybe that was what made her so compliant—allowing herself to be shown onto a plane which was much larger than she’d expected for a relatively short flight to Cornwall. And it wasn’t until they were in the air—indeed, until they were crossing the English Channel that she started to realise that something was very wrong. For a start, she was the only person on the plane and the stunning redhead stewardess was treating her as if she were some kind of royalty.
Catrin summoned her over with a hand which had suddenly started trembling. ‘Would you mind telling me where this plane is headed?’
The redhead smiled. ‘Why, to Qurhah, of course.’
Catrin’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. ‘But I’m supposed to be going to Cornwall.’
The redhead’s smile grew wider. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said gently. ‘This is one of the Sultan’s jets and you are the esteemed guest of the Sultan himself. You’re flying to Simdahab, the capital of Qurhah.’
Catrin wanted to leap from her seat and say that she wasn’t going anywhere, and certainly not to Qurhah to see a man she couldn’t have. A man she was doing her level best to forget, who had now decided in some outrageously macho way to actually kidnap her. But she could hardly demand a parachute and throw herself out of the plane, could she? Especially when her knees were feeling so weak that she didn’t think she’d be able to stand, let alone make a dash for it.
With an angry little sound, she sat back in the plush seat, shaking her head when the stewardess offered her a glass of lime juice. But the long flight meant that she couldn’t keep refusing drinks, or food, even though she merely picked at the tempting morsels she was offered.