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‘It was just a bad dream. I used to have them when I was younger, sometimes.’
His face turned towards her. ‘After the crash, you mean?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but they didn’t start immediately—more like six months later. Apparently, it’s very common with very young children who lose a parent.’ She drew in a breath. ‘Parents... The grief counsellor said it was my way of coming to terms with what had happened.’
Her legs were trembling again.
‘I used to get really panicky about going to bed. Dan tried loads of different things. A nightlight...warm, milky drinks. But what worked in the end was him sleeping on the floor by my bed.’
Like some faithful hound. She could see Dan’s face. Outwardly calm, reassuring, unfazed. But beneath the patient, soothing smile he’d been exhausted. Shattered by grief and regret and the need to do his best for her even though she wasn’t his child.
‘He did that every night,’ she said quietly. ‘Even though it went on for quite a long time...maybe a year. Always the same dream.’
There was another silence.
‘Apart from tonight?’
His voice was so low she might have missed his question. She stared at him, her heart beating unevenly. ‘Why do you say that?’
He hesitated, as if he was debating something. Then, ‘You were shouting Khalid’s name. But you obviously hadn’t met him until this evening, so you must have been having a different nightmare.’
His words fluttered up towards the moon like moths.
‘It started off the same.’ She swallowed, reluctant to go back to the beginning, knowing what was to follow. ‘I’m playing hide and seek with my brothers. It was my favourite game. I was always the best at hiding.’
She half expected Omar to make some facetious remark, but he said nothing.
‘I’m in the ranch house. Only then the house collapses and there’s this mist...’ She shivered. ‘It’s cold, and then I realise I’m in a graveyard. I can’t hear Ed counting any more, but there are other voices. And then the mist gets brighter and brighter, and I know it’s the men with the cameras. The men who camped outside my parents’ house for days...’
Gazing down at Delphi, Omar felt sick to his stomach. His heart felt as if it was going to break through his ribs. So intensely it took his breath away, he wanted to reach out and touch her small, stiff body, to pull her close until that pain in her face melted away.
She had never talked about the days following her parents’ accident, and even now she was only doing so obliquely, by telling him about her dream. But he knew how much she feared the paparazzi, and the efforts she had made her whole life to avoid coming to their attention.
A beat of anger pulsed across his skin. He hated it that they still cornered her when she was at her most vulnerable. Asleep, and trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape.
‘What happens next?’ he said quietly.
‘That’s when I start running.’
His chest tightened. A year before they’d met, two years ago now, Delphi had gone to Wyoming to help tag the wild horses. He could still remember her face, that mix of envy and empathy, as she’d told him about the trip. About how some of the mustangs had refused to be caught. How they would keep running, their pounding hooves filling the air with dust.
Delphi had been running since she was four years old. In one way or another she hadn’t ever stopped running. First from the paparazzi. From her scandalous past and her fear of being hurt. Then from him and the wreck of their marriage.
‘And I try to run,’ she went on. ‘Only I can’t because I’m holding Khalid, and I’m scared I’ll trip.’
Omar stared down at her, his pulse jerking. When she had been in the bathroom he had switched on the light, sensing that it would comfort her. Now, though, the air in the room had gone dark with the sadness and pain of her past.
Her mouth trembled. ‘And then the mist starts to swallow me up and I can’t see my hands.’
He saw the flash of pain in her eyes, the panic.
‘I can’t feel them. And then I let go of Khalid. I let go of him—’
She made a small, wordless noise and pressed her hand not against her mouth, but in front of her stomach, just as she had back in the garden, and he moved then, crossing the room in three strides, putting his arms around her and pulling her close.
Her head was on his shoulder, and she was sobbing, and he didn’t try to stop her. He knew she was crying for another baby. A baby that she would never press close to her beating heart.
His chest tightened. He had wanted this for so long. Wanted her to confide in him...wanted her to need him and only him. And now he had what he wanted. Only he felt no satisfaction or triumph. Instead, he felt suddenly and savagely angry with himself. What kind of man would want his wife to be so diminished and desperate?
