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‘Tora,’ he said, stopping her from taking that first step just yet, ‘once upon a time, you said you loved me. Did you mean it?’
She turned her head to the velvet sky and the wide belt of stars that was more clearly visible now they were out of the city precinct. ‘I thought I did. And then I was just so angry with you, that it blocked everything out. I hated you for what you had done and what you had believed of me. After everything we had been through. I was so angry.’
He closed his eyes. ‘And now?’
‘Now I’m just sad for what could have been.’
And he couldn’t let her go without telling her. ‘I know it’s too late, but I am a fool where love is concerned, but I want you to know that there was love between us. There is love that I feel for you.’
She swallowed back on a sob. So good of him to tell her that now, when he was putting her on a plane to leave. ‘Do you call it love to judge someone as guilty before you even ask them for the truth? Do you call it love to treat that person like a criminal? Because if you do, you have a very warped idea of love.’
‘Tora, I am so sorry. I didn’t want to believe it was true, but you said you had nothing to do with your cousin, and there was evidence you’d spoken to him just recently, and I felt betrayed and deceived and it was like my father all over again, except this time it was you, and that felt a hundred times worse.’
She stared at him. ‘My darling cousin stole my inheritance. All the money from my parents’ estate. All the money I’d promised Sally and Steve. I’d just come from a meeting with him to tell me the happy news that all the money was gone. Why do you think I was so angry that night in the bar?’
He hung his head. ‘God, I’m a fool. I will never make up to you the wrongs I have done you.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you will. Goodbye, Rashid.’ And she turned and fled up the stairs into the plane, knowing she had to get into the safety of the cabin before she lost it completely. Knowing she had to escape while she had the chance, while she still had one last shred of dignity intact, even if her heart lay broken into tiny pieces.
* * *
Something was wrong. Tora blinked into wakefulness after a tortured sleep. ‘We’re coming in to land,’ the flight attendant said.
‘Already?’ said Tora, knowing she couldn’t possibly have slept for that long.
‘Yes,’ said the attendant, clearing away cups and plates. ‘If you look outside your window, you’ll see the lights of Cologne ahead.’
Cologne?
‘We’re landing in Germany?’
‘But of course,’ said the attendant. ‘Didn’t you know?’
* * *
Sally hugged her friend so tight when Tora reached the hospital that she thought she might snap in two but she didn’t mind one little bit. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were coming. And now you’re here!’ And she hugged her again.
‘How’s Steve?’ Tora asked, hoping above hope that Sally’s happiness wasn’t solely down to her arrival.
Sally smiled over clenched teeth, a tentative smile of optimism. ‘We thought it was the end—it looked like the end—and the doctors suggested trying something experimental but it was so expensive and I couldn’t give them the go ahead, but then some anonymous benefactor contacted the clinic just last night and asked them to pull out all stops.’ She shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe the difference in him in just a few hours. It’s a miracle,’ she said, and fell into her friend’s arms again.
Anonymous benefactor?
Tora had a clue she knew exactly who it was and why he’d done it. And a broken heart made its first tentative steps to heal and love again.
* * *
She was punch drunk when she wrote the email. High on life and one life in particular, who was looking more human every day as he made a steady recovery. High on the happiness that her friend radiated constantly.
She hit Send and turned off her tablet and sat back on the lounge chair of the tiny flat she shared with Sally, feeling the rapid beating of her heart.
Well, it was out there. Now all she could do was wait.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THERE WAS A glow coming from the courtyard, coming from inside the Pavilion of Mahabbah. And when a smiling Kareem led her inside, she could see why. The pavilion was lit with a thousand candles, their flames flickering and dancing in the night breeze, and for a moment as Kareem disappeared there was just the croak and plop of frogs amongst the lily pads and the haunting cries of the peacocks as she took it all in.
