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She didn’t know what to say to that. Right now, she felt as if she had said everything that could be said. Only it wasn’t enough for Omar.
How could it be?
A pang of guilt pinched inside her chest. Whatever he might have accused her of, she hadn’t planned on telling him about the miscarriage today, at his father’s birthday party, surrounded by his family and friends. But then Jalila had brought over Khalid, and it had brought it all back, and the walls she had carefully built around herself to contain the hurt and pain had fallen away like petals on the wind.
Watching Omar hold the baby, seeing his fierce, brooding focus on Khalid’s sweet face, had almost made her double over. Was that what their baby would have looked like too? The answer to that question had made it impossible for her to stand there another moment, and so she had done what she always did when things hurt and scared her.
She had run.
And, because he was Omar, he couldn’t not follow. And, because he was Omar, by the time he’d caught up with her, he’d already known what question to ask.
The one she had decided nearly seven weeks ago never to answer.
And she knew that was unfair, and selfish and wrong, but the moment when it would have been possible had passed nearly seven weeks ago, in that gleaming anonymous bathroom in London. Then she had wanted him so badly it had hurt almost as much as the cramps.
Afterwards, she had thought she had no words for what had happened. No words to express the aching sense of loss and despair, the bruising emptiness.
Her throat tightened.
But in the end, all it had taken was four. ‘I had a miscarriage.’
It was the first time she had said it out loud, and it had been a shock saying it, hearing it. Maybe that was why she was still reeling inside. That and watching Omar’s face lose colour and stiffen with shock and pain.
She could still see his expression now; he had looked shattered.
Closing her eyes, Delphi leaned back in her seat. She didn’t want to think about Omar’s pain. It was more than she could manage when she still hadn’t come to terms with her own.
For weeks now the terrible dark memory of that day had been there, keening and scrabbling at the back of her mind to be let in. But she had kept it at bay—taking on extra work at the stables, watching reruns of familiar shows on TV late into the night so she was in a near-permanent state of physical exhaustion.
Now, though, the frantic, terrifying thing was loose, and she felt her legs start to shake just as they had in London.
It had started off as a stomachache. She’d put it down to too much adrenaline. And, arriving at the graveyard, she had felt the ache fade, swept away by a prickling rush of excitement that finally she had made it.
Over the years she had seen pictures of her parents’ graves in magazines and on the internet. Their headstones weren’t the first to be covered with lipstick kisses—Oscar Wilde and Marilyn Monroe were just two of the celebrities whose graves had received the same treatment. But none were as smothered in kisses as those of her parents’.
Their fans still loved them almost as much as she did, and she had waited so long to make this pilgrimage. But her excitement had been short-lived. Walking into the cemetery, she had expected to see perhaps a few particularly devoted followers. What she hadn’t anticipated was spotting a pack of paparazzi lounging beneath a huge yew tree, their cameras dangling over their shoulders like avant-garde handbags...
Behind her eyelids she caught a flicker of light, and then, opening her eyes, she flinched as a volley of flashes momentarily blinded her.
Fireworks.
Heart pounding, she watched them bloom in the darkness.
Was it a cosmic joke or just coincidence that as her world was imploding, the wider world kept sending up fireworks?
If Omar noticed the fireworks he gave no indication. He sat relaxed in the pilot’s seat, but his dark eyes were moving endlessly over the dials and buttons on the panel in front of him as he made minute recalibrations of height and speed.
There would be no talking now, she knew.
It was one of the things that had first attracted her to him. How he was one hundred percent in the moment. Whatever he was doing—be it driving, riding a horse, flying a helicopter—he had an incredible, unparalleled intensity of focus.
Her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. Once upon a time he had given her that same intensity of focus. Only then they’d got married and it had been as if he’d done enough. As if by giving her a ring and his name he thought he had proved himself once and for all. And then that focus, that glorious feeling of sunlight heating her skin, had stopped.
Her breathing sounded as if she’d been running.
Except in bed.
Then he had never faltered. And nor had she. It had been the one place she hadn’t questioned herself. How could she have when together they’d been so perfect? Like dancers moving instinctively, each had known exactly, intuitively, what the other wanted, what the other needed, demanded, craved. A flickering tongue. A whisper-soft caress. Hard, urgent kisses.
