Sheikh's Woman. ALEXANDRA SELLERS
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I am,” she babbled, oddly made to feel guilty by his silent judgement, “but I can’t really remember my life. I certainly don’t remember you. Or—or the baby, or anything. How long have we been married?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Shall we say, two years?”
“Two years!” She recoiled in horror.
“What of your life do you remember? Your mind is obviously not a complete blank. You must have something in there…you remember giving birth?”
“Yes, but…but what I remember is that my baby died.”
“Ah,” he breathed, so softly she wasn’t even sure she had heard it.
“They told me just now that wasn’t true, but…” She reached out to touch the baby in his arms. “Oh, she’s so sweet! Isn’t she perfect? But I remember…” Her eyes clenched against the spasm of pain. “I remember holding my baby after he died.”
Her eyes searched his desperately in the darkness. “Maybe that was a long time ago?” she whispered.
“How long ago does it seem to you?”
The question seemed to trigger activity in her head. “Six weeks, I think….”
You’re going to have six wonderful weeks, Anna.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, as a large piece of her life suddenly fell into place. “I just remembered— I was on my way to a job in France. And Lisbet and Cecile were going to take me out for a really lovely dinner. It seems to me I’m…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Aren’t I supposed to be leaving on the Paris train tomorrow…Saturday? Alan Mitching’s house in France.” She opened her eyes. “Are you saying that was more than two years in the past?”
“What sort of a job?”
“He has a seventeenth-century place in the Dordogne area…they want murals in the dining room. They want—wanted a Greek temple effect. I’ve designed—” She broke off and gazed at him in the darkness while the limousine purred through the wet, empty streets. Traffic was light; it must be two or three in the morning.
“I can remember making the designs, but I can’t remember doing the actual work.” Panic rose up in her. “Why can’t I remember?”
“This state is not permanent. You will remember everything in time.”
The baby stirred and murmured and she watched as he shifted her a little.
“Let me hold her,” she said hungrily.
For a second he looked as if he was going to refuse, but she held out her arms, and he slipped the tiny bundle into her embrace. A smile seemed to start deep within her and flow outwards all through her body and spirit to reach her lips. Her arms tightened. Oh, how lovely to have a living baby to hold against her heart in place of that horrible, hurting memory!
“Oh, you’re so beautiful!” she whispered. She shifted her gaze to Ishaq Ahmadi. He was watching her. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
A muscle seemed to tense in his jaw. “Yes,” he said.
The chauffeur spoke through an intercom, and as her husband replied, Anna silently watched fleeting expressions wander over the baby’s face, felt the perfection of the little body against her breast. Time seemed to disappear in the now. She lost the urgency of wanting to know how she had got to this moment, and was happy just to be in it.
When he spoke to her again, she came to with a little start and realized she had been almost asleep. “Can you remember how you came to be in the taxi with the baby?”
Nothing. Not even vague shadows. She shook her head. “No.”
Then there was no sound except for rain and the flick of tires on the wet road. Anna was lost in contemplation again. She stroked the tiny fist. “Have we chosen a name for her?”
A passing headlight highlighted one side of his face, the side with the pirate patch over his eye.
“Her name is Safiyah.”
“Sophia?”
“Yes, it is a name that will not seem strange to English ears. Safi is not so far from Sophy.”
“Did we know it was going to be a girl?” she whispered, coughing as feeling closed her throat.
He glanced at her, the sleeping baby nestled so trustingly against her. “You are almost asleep,” he said. “Let me take her.”
He leaned over to lift the child from her arms. He was gentle and tender with her, but at the same time firm and confident, making Anna feel how safe the baby was with him.
Jonathan. “Oh!” she whispered.
“What is it?” Ishaq Ahmadi said, in a voice of quiet command. “What have you remembered?”
“Oh, just when you took the baby from me…I…” She pressed her hands to her eyes. Not when he took the baby, but the sight of him holding the infant as if he loved her and was prepared to protect and defend the innocent.
“Tell me!”
She lifted her head to see him watching her with a look of such intensity she gasped. Suddenly she wondered how much of her past she had confided to her husband. Was he a tolerant man? Or had he wanted her to lie about her life before him?
She stammered, “Did—did—?” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Did I tell you about…Jonathan? Jonathan Ryder?”
But even before the words were out she knew the answer was no.
Three
“Tell me now,” Ishaq Ahmadi commanded softly.
She wanted to lean against him, wanted to feel his arm around her, protecting her, holding her. She must have that right, she told herself, but somehow she lacked the courage to ask him to hold her.
She had always wanted to pat the tigers at the zoo, too. Now it seemed as if she had finally found her very own personal tiger…but she had forgotten how she’d tamed him. And until she remembered that, something told her it would be wise to treat him with caution.
“Tell me about Jonathan Ryder.”
Nervously she clasped her hands together, and suddenly a detail that had been nagging at her in the distance leapt into awareness.
“Why aren’t I wearing a wedding ring?” she demanded, holding both hands spread out before her and staring at them. On her fingers were several silver rings of varied design. But none was a wedding band.
There was a long, pregnant pause. Through the glass panel separating them from the driver, she heard a phone ring. The driver answered and spoke into it, giving instructions, it seemed.
Still he only looked at her.
“Did I…have we split up?”
“No.”
Just the bare syllable. His jaw seemed to tense, and she thought he threw her a look almost of contempt.
“About Jonathan,” he prompted again.
If they were having trouble in the marriage, was it because he was jealous? Or because she had not told him things, shared her troubles?
She thought, If I never told him about Jonathan, I should have.
“Jonathan—Jonathan and I were going together for about a year. We were talking about moving in together, but it wasn’t going to be simple, because we both owned a flat, and…well, it was taking us time to decide whether to sell his, or mine, or sell both and find somewhere new.”
Her heart began to beat with anxiety. “It is really more than two years ago?”
“How long does it seem to you?”
“It feels as if we split