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His own eyes burning, he stroked her hair, speaking softly in Arabic, saying the words his mother had used whenever he’d fallen and hurt his knee. The same words she had spoken whenever his father had left early one morning without saying goodbye.
He felt her breathe out shakily and he shifted backwards on the bed, taking her with him, tucking the covers over her trembling body. Still stroking her hair, he said softly, ‘You didn’t let go of our baby, Delphi. If there was anything you could have done to hold on to it, you would have done.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I should never have gone back to England.’
He could feel her fighting for control, fighting to stay calm. It had caught him off guard, her deciding to go. He’d known England wasn’t a happy place for her—and not just because it was where her childhood had ended. After her parents’ deaths, Dylan Wright’s sisters had each tried to get custody of their niece, arguing that, unlike Dan, they were blood relatives. Dan had won, but it had been a long, vitriolic battle, played out in the tabloid press, and the media attention had got worse and worse.
The final straw had come when stories about Delphi had appeared online. It had been clear that the ‘sources close to the family’ quoted were people she had trusted. It was then that Dan had moved her to the ranch house.
Dan, the cuckolded husband, and substitute father had upended his world to make his wife’s daughter feel safe. No wonder Delphi trusted him.
‘Your father thought it was a good idea,’ he said quietly.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I called him. When I got back from Sydney. After you changed your mind again about going.’ He hesitated. Then, ‘I was worried. You were distracted. Preoccupied.’ Like his father. As always, that had been his first thought. ‘I told him I thought you should forget about going, but Dan said you needed to go.’
His chest felt tight. ‘She’s scared of what she’s going to feel,’ Dan had told him. ‘And when she’s scared, she pushes things and people away. And she’s been pushing the past away forever.’ There had been sadness in the older man’s voice. ‘I want to help her, only I can’t—because I’m part of the problem, part of that past. But you...you’re her future. So go with her, help her face the past and let her live the life she deserves.’
A wave of self-loathing rose up inside him. Because he hadn’t gone with her, had he? He had gone to meet Bob Maclean.
‘I know he wanted me to go. He tried so many times to make it happen,’ Delphi said in a small, bruised voice. ‘One year, we got all the way to the airport.’
The twist to the corner of her mouth told him that was as far as they’d got.
His throat was dry. ‘So what was different about this time?’
She bit down on the inside of her lip. ‘You.’ Her beautiful brown eyes flicked to his face, then away. ‘And then the pregnancy.’ Her breathing was suddenly unsteady again. ‘I really was going to tell you, but when I found out you were in Sydney, and I wanted to do it face to face. So I decided to wait.’
She glanced up at him, and in the light from the bedside lamp she looked soft-edged...like a painting.
‘Only the whole time I kept thinking about going to London. It was just there, in the back of my mind. And then I realised why. I realised that I wanted to tell them too. My parents, I mean. I wanted us all to be there together. But then everything went wrong.’
Her words fell into silence.
‘You said you couldn’t come. I should have told you then, only I was angry with you, so I didn’t. The whole flight over I felt odd, and then when I reached the graveyard it got worse. I thought it was just nerves and excitement.’
Hearing the echo of that excitement in her voice, Omar felt his heart squeeze tight. He knew all about that jittery anticipation; that mix of hope and tension. His father’s absences and returns had governed his life like the rising and setting of the sun. He could still remember all the days and sometimes weeks when Rashid had been away on business or staying at his other homes.
Everything around him had felt flimsy and makeshift...like scenery on a stage. His mother had always been breathless and on edge, like an actor waiting in the wings for her cue. And he had been a small, fearful boy, sitting like some sentinel by the window overlooking the driveway, scared both that Rashid would never return or, worse, that when he did, he would look right straight through his youngest child without even seeing him.
He felt a rush of shame. At least he had a father and a mother.
He stared down at Delphi’s small, tense body. ‘You’d waited so long to go there,’ he said gently.
There was no excitement in her face now. Just pain. ‘Long enough to realise that maybe another day would be a better idea. It’s not like it was some tradition I had to keep. I mean, I’d managed to miss the anniversary of their deaths every other year.’
His eyes didn’t leave her face, but he barely heard her words. Instead, that static was roaring in his ears again, and something that had been fluttering like moths’ wings at the edges of the mind was suddenly there centre-stage, clear and sharp in the spotlight. She had lost their baby on the same date she had lost her parents all those years ago.
He made himself speak. ‘You couldn’t have known the paparazzi would be there.’
Her face was paper-white. ‘Couldn’t I? They’d never left my parents alone in life—why should it have been any different when they were dead?’
She glanced past him to where a thin straight line of light was quivering along the horizon. It was the dawn of a new day—but not for Delphi. She was still reliving those hours alone in London.
‘The cramping started on my way back to the apartment. When I got there, I went to the bathroom, and that’s when I realised I was bleeding. I should have gone to the hospital, but I was too scared to move. And I thought if I stayed still the bleeding would stop.’
His hands tightened in her hair. He didn’t want to think about her bleeding, in pain, scared. Alone. Would the outcome have been different if he’d been there? Probably not. He knew that miscarriage was common...
