AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Of course you were scared. What happened to you as a child was appalling. Of course it was going to affect how you see the world.’
‘The world, yes. But you were my husband. I should have talked to you. I should have told you how I was feeling and asked about your feelings. Only I didn’t try to fix things. It was easier for me to run and hide and blame you.’
‘Because I am to blame.’ His face was taut. ‘I made promises I didn’t keep. I said one thing and did another. I didn’t plan for it to happen. But then, on our honeymoon, my father called.’
Delphi blinked, but she wasn’t remembering that day on the beach in Maui, but her first meeting with Omar’s parents in New York. Rashid had been distracted, hardly present, but Omar had been the polar opposite. There had been a tension in him...
‘I remember,’ she said quietly.
Omar nodded. A muscle was working in his jaw. ‘And do you remember me telling you that it was an important deal? I told you it was necessary. I told myself it was a one-off.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘I was wrong.’
‘You made a mistake.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Your father must think very highly of you to bother you like that.’ She wanted to comfort him, but instead she saw his shoulders brace against an imaginary blow.
‘Not really. Mostly he struggles to notice me at all. Although, to be fair, it’s not just me. But I suppose I struggle with it the most.’
Glancing up at Omar’s face, she felt her heart tumble in her chest. His dark head was bent, and the strain in his voice was visible around his eyes, but she was seeing his face at Rashid’s party, and the tension beneath the beautiful smile. The same tension that had held his body taut like a switchblade during his parents’ visit to their New York apartment.
‘Because you’re the youngest?’
It was a hunch, but he nodded.
‘Everything I did had been done sixteen times already. Nothing I did mattered. And it was worse when we were all together. My brothers and sisters were always so much bigger and louder and more articulate than me. When I was with them, I felt like I was lost in this crowd. It was like nobody could see me or hear me.’
Tears filled Delphi’s eyes. When she was a child that had been her dream. She had longed to be invisible. But never from Dan or her brothers—just the wider world: the gossip-hungry public and the paparazzi who fed that hunger.
She glanced over to where their coffees sat cooling on the table. ‘Do they know how you feel?’
He shrugged. ‘Jalila does. And Hamdan. They understand. But it wasn’t the same for them. Jalila is one of seven, and Hamdan is one of nine. When my dad went away on business, or stayed at the other houses, it didn’t matter so much to them. But there was only me and my mother, and when he wasn’t there my mum found it hard. That’s why she would go away with him on business. Only then it was like I was living in this huge, empty mausoleum. That’s why I used to go and stay with Hamdan.’
Her chest squeezed tight. At the margins of her mind, things were falling into place. Like how he hated coming back to an empty apartment.
‘It sounds awful.’
She felt his grip on her hand tighten.
‘To be honest, it was worse sometimes when he was there. I was so desperate to get his attention, but then there was the pressure to keep him interested. And I never knew when he was going to leave, so I used to follow him around, because I was paranoid he would go without saying goodbye. Which he usually did.’
Delphi felt her stomach clench. And she had done it too—and hurt him by doing it. Only she hadn’t known she was hurting him in that way. Hadn’t known she was pressing against an old bruise. She had been too wrapped up in her own past even to consider that he had bruises too.
Her face must have shown some of the shock she was feeling, because he gave her a small, tight smile.
‘I don’t want you to think he’s a bad father, or that he doesn’t love me. He’s not and he does. And it’s not all his fault. He’s ninety years old, and he’s been preposterously rich since he was younger than me. That means he’s always the most important person in any room. Maybe not always—I mean, he does know heads of state and kings. But most of the time people treat him like a king, and so he acts like one. He never has to wait for anybody or anything, and if he gets bored then he just moves on to the next thing.’
He stared past her at brightly coloured dhows.
‘The trick is having the one thing in the room he’s curious about...’
And now, finally, she understood the long hours and the late nights. ‘That’s why you work so hard. To build something that holds your father’s attention.’
He nodded. ‘He ran a newspaper at university, and he loved it, but other things happened. He got into property and shipping. But he always had a soft spot for news and media, and I suppose I picked up on that. I did a stint at the Crimson when I was at Harvard, and I liked it. So when I got offered a chance to buy up a bunch of local news stations across the US, I took it.’
The intensity in his eyes transfigured his face.
‘It was probably the first time I’d ever held my father’s attention to the end of a conversation.’
She could hear the wonder in his voice. The wonder of a little boy finally managing to balance the obscure, complicated equation of novelty and challenge that held his father’s gaze.
‘That must have felt amazing,’ she said quietly.
