For lies were all she had to give. The truth, always terrifying, had never felt more impossible than now, in the wake of Jahi’s visit. And his words about what he’d found, or failed to find, at the oasis where the twin palms grow.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Are your ears burning, Edward?’ Imogen asked as she tripped across the lawn, a glug of gin spilling from her precariously held glass. ‘Tom’s just been talking about you. He’s as drunk as a skunk, he’s hitting it very hard.’
‘It’s been a hard kind of day,’ said Edward.
‘So Tom’s said. Will you tell me what happened at Jeremy’s?’
‘He won’t,’ said Olivia. She had tried herself to get it out of him. (He, in an eerie echo of Jeremy’s words, had said, ‘Would you believe me if I told you that you don’t want to know?’)
Imogen said, ‘Tom says you need to question a local girl, that you’re off to find her in the morning. I didn’t catch her name.’
‘No?’ said Edward.
‘No,’ said Imogen. ‘He said you were looking for her earlier, it’s why you were so late here.’
‘Well, I was just telling Olly that I’m going to fetch her a fresh glass of champagne.’ His fingers rested lightly on Olivia’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
Olivia watched through tilting eyes as he loped through the revelry. There was a burst of music from the piano on the terrace and a handful of couples stood to dance. There were close to a hundred people thronging in the garden, eating platters of couscous and richly scented meat, smoking in the candlelight. Just as earlier, when Olivia had felt Clara’s presence in the Grays’ driveway, she sensed her again now; a whisper of blonde curls hidden behind the shadows of the Carters’ trees. How splendid. What fun. Olivia placed her hand to her chest, pressing against the pain. The night felt obscene, it was as though they were all dancing on Clara’s increasingly certain grave. She had said as much to Edward when he finally arrived. (‘Drink through it,’ he’d replied, downing the first of his brandies. ‘I intend to.’)
‘We’re going to go too,’ said Imogen.
‘What?’
‘Pay attention, darling. Tomorrow, we’re going to follow Edward and Tom, find out who this girl is that they’re going to see, what they want with her. We can lurk in the street until they’re finished and then get in to see her. I’ll be waiting outside your house at seven sharp, just be ready to ride out.’
Olivia shook her dizzy head. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll see you at seven.’ Imogen wandered away across the lawn.
Olivia sighed resignedly.
‘Come,’ said Edward. She jumped, she hadn’t heard him return. He slipped a glass into her hand. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
The two of them kept several feet apart as they made their way to the bottom of the garden. They picked up speed the further their legs took them, a silent agreement to hasten from view.
They passed through a leafy screen of palms and on towards the sea. Olivia let her arm brush Edward’s, she felt his skim hers. Fingers in fingers, a tightness in her stomach. She forgot to breathe.
They sat down. The night was balmy, filled with the scent of ripe citrus and jasmine, the tang of the sea, the dust of the desert. Olivia dropped her head on Edward’s shoulder, staring at the rippling water. She hiccupped. He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it, soft, warm. For a second she thought about Alistair, how his face would look if he saw them now, whether there was a chance he’d ever agree to set her free. And knowing there was no chance, and exactly how his face would look, she pushed him from her mind too, determined to keep him away until he returned and she was forced to think of him again. She didn’t want to think. She liked it, the not thinking. The booze-sopped evening had cast an enchantment on her. Imogen’s plans for the morrow felt like an irrelevance, a happening that would feature in some other life.
Time swam by. Olivia wasn’t sure what she and Edward talked about, only that they did, and that there was no agenda to their words. Just voices, a dip, a rise, a melody of trust.
He asked her to dance.
She gripped his fingers and rose unsteadily, head swimming as he pulled her up. He let go of her hands and ran his fingers around her silken waist. She could feel the pressure of him through her stays, but this time it didn’t hurt. Not really. (The alcohol, perhaps.) She dropped against him, breathed in his scent: smoke, brandy, that something else. He held her tighter. He was drunk, she knew, but his arms were sure and his steps steady as he turned her to the lilt of the distant piano.
‘I was terrified today, when you went into the water like that.’ His words were quiet, murmured, that northern burr stroking her ear. ‘You terrify me. Did you know that? No one has ever scared me before.’
‘Imogen says we break her heart.’ Olivia arched her neck, looking up at him. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said.
She went ahead, climbing the lawn towards the candlelight and music ahead. She waited in the shadows of the drawing room. He came in, he ran his hand around her back as they walked through the house. Their footsteps echoed in the foyer, clicked on the porch steps, crunched on the gravel driveway. He held her in front of him as they rode home, his breath on her neck. She leant back into him, absorbing the strength of him against her. A silent, barely admissible question whispered in her mind: Are we really going to do this?
He lifted her down from the saddle in the driveway. They stood, looking at one another, almost unable to believe the other was there. His eyes glinted down at her in the darkness. He ran his hand around her face, drew a deep breath. She placed her own hand over his, turned it and kissed his palm. With a sideways glance, she saw him close his eyes.
He took his stallion into the stables; she watched silently in the doorway as he tethered him. Her body tensed, alive with anticipation. He came back to her, took her hand, and they went inside. He followed her up the stairs, his arms around her, unbuttoning her bodice, easing the straps of her dress down. Her heart was racing. Her fingers, as she opened the door to her bedroom, shook.
She backed into the room, he was half lifting her, his mouth on hers, pushing her onto the bed. He knelt, coaxed her stockings from her legs, around the still smarting jellyfish sting; he dropped his lips onto her thighs, her calves, as he slid them free. ‘Olly,’ he said, ‘my Olly.’
She ran her hands around his neck, and let herself fall back. He leant over her, staring down at her. In that moment, all she knew was that he was there, and she was with him, and there was nowhere else she ever wanted to be. And all she saw, in his bottomless eyes, was a perfect, blissful reflection of everything she felt.
He unlaced her stays. She realised too late. She held his hand. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Just don’t.’
He looked at her askance, then shook his head. His fingers moved quickly, she couldn’t deny expertly. She stared at the ceiling, biting her lip as she felt her corset come free.
He went still. ‘No.’ His eyes widened in horror and pain. ‘No. Why haven’t you…? Was this why you ran, the other night…? I’ll kill him, I’m going to kill him.’
‘Please.’ She held his face, forced him to meet her eye. ‘Just be with me, please.’ His eyes flicked back to her body. She followed his stare, then looked away. It was distorted and ripped and not her own, not hers. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t think about it.’
‘I’m scared to touch you,’ he said. ‘I feel as though I’ll break you.’
‘You can’t.’ She pulled him to her, kissing him. ‘Not you.’
His breath shuddered. Slowly, he kissed her back. Their eyelashes touched. His lips moved, kissing her ear, her neck, faster, more intense, as though he understood her need, skimming the salty, sweaty dampness of her collarbone. He ran his hand around her, tracing her skin, barely touching. He moved against her, softly, tak
ing so much time. There was no pain. ‘I won’t let you live like this, darling Olly,’ he said. ‘I won’t leave you here.’
‘Just be with me now,’ she said.
He held her afterwards, a cocoon, a tender cocoon. Safe. She closed her eyes in the warmth of his arms, the support of his firm shoulder.
‘You’re my world,’ he said. ‘You’re everything. I can’t let anything else happen to you. I don’t think I could live.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ she said.
He pressed his lips to her head.
THE TENTH DAY
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Wake up, Nailah, come, open your eyes.’
‘What? What’s happened?’ Nailah bolted upright, heart pounding at the wrench from sleep. The room was dark around her, Cleo was snoring, but Isa, crouched beside her, was already up and dressed in her turquoise robe. Her cheeks, for once clean of any rouge, had a glow of exertion about them. ‘Has someone come?’ Nailah asked. ‘Who is it?’
‘No one,’ said Isa. ‘It’s me that’s been out, to see Kafele.’
‘Kafele?’ Nailah rubbed her eyes. ‘What time is it, Umi?’
‘Early. I couldn’t sleep for worrying. I told Kafele we need to get you away, today, before Jahi tries to, or those men come back. Come, get up. You need to fetch Babu. Kafele’s going to take you to stay with friends of his in Port Said.’
‘Port Said?’
‘Yes, you can disappear there. Kafele says that once he’s made arrangements for the business, he’ll return to fetch you, marry you. He loves you so.’ She sighed. ‘I realised as much last night.’
‘You move quickly, Umi.’ Nailah looked around the grimy room, at Cleo’s slumbering body, Babu’s stained mattress, the stale half-eaten loaf on the table. ‘I don’t want to ask this of him though. It’s not his plan.’
‘Plans are for fools and rich men.’
‘That must make you a fool then, Umi, for planning that I should escape.’
‘Whatever I am, here is what you’re going to do. Go to the hospital, make the nurses give you Babu’s medicines, whatever he needs. Take him to Kafele’s rooms at the warehouses. I’ll pack, have Cleo waiting for you.’
‘As easy as that?’ asked Nailah.
Isa nodded quickly. ‘So easy.’
Nailah wasn’t sure who she was trying hardest to convince.
‘Why aren’t you in your riding things?’ Imogen asked, frowning at Olivia’s cream day-dress as Olivia joined her in the early morning sun, just minutes after Edward had left. ‘You’re going to ruin that lovely gown.’
‘There’s not much I can do about that. If I’d got into my riding habit Edward would have smelt a rat.’ He’d still been in bed beside Olivia when she woke, his fingers resting on her thigh. She’d watched the way his lips moved in a smile. And she’d come close, so close, to telling him all she and Imogen were planning for the morning, but the sweetness of the silence had held her short. He’d said nothing about what he was up to either. Secrecy was a compelling kind of habit.
He’d helped her dress. He’d kissed her neck as he wrapped her waist in muslin and fastened the clasps of her bodice, the intimacy so much more intense in the light of dawn.
‘You’re blushing,’ said Imogen.
‘No I’m not,’ said Olivia, the burn in her cheeks intensifying.
Imogen’s lips twitched. ‘Let’s get on. Edward’s picking Tom up at the house, we can wait for them on the road into Alex.’
Olivia looked over her shoulder. ‘I think Fadil spotted me leaving just now, he’ll probably follow.’
‘Let’s ride via Clara’s then,’ said Imogen, ‘and make him think we’re going there. We have time.’
‘All right.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Sore.’
‘Like the rest of us. Ah well, nothing like a good gallop to brush the cobwebs away. Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Olivia decided that since they were at Clara’s, she’d check how Ralph was.
‘The poor lamb’s still asleep,’ said Sofia in a whisper as she joined Olivia outside the nursery. ‘The littly too, and sunburnt to boot. I could give you a smacked bottom, Mrs Livvy, for letting all that happen. I only wanted a few hours off, I didn’t expect you to nearly kill Ralphy.’
‘It was me that saved him.’ Olivia’s voice was indignant, she felt like a naughty child.
‘What was he doing in the sea in the first place?’
‘That’s an excellent question.’ This from Mildred, her dispassionate voice coming from just behind Olivia.
Slowly, Olivia turned to face her. Mildred was dressed in her usual grey taffeta, her hair scraped back beneath an old-fashioned cap. Her eyes glinted with something indiscernible, Olivia assumed disdain.
Seeing she had no choice but to speak to her, Olivia said, ‘You’re up early,’ her tone leaving no room for doubt about how displeased the fact made her.
Mildred raised her eyebrows. ‘Ralph’s a child,’ she said. ‘How could you have let it happen? I’m disappointed, but sadly most unsurprised.’
‘How unfortunate,’ said Olivia, affecting a carelessness she didn’t really feel. Her defences were down after last night, for once Mildred’s poison had penetrated, and it hurt. It made her angry how painful Mildred’s dislike of her was. She needed to leave before she let Mildred see.
She turned to go.
‘Your poor sister,’ said Mildred, her taunting tone a brake on Olivia’s feet. ‘Was it resentment that made you wait so long to call the police that day, were you getting your own back for all she’d had and you lost?’
‘What?’ Olivia’s mouth gaped. How had such a thought even occurred to Mildred?
‘Perhaps it was simple neglect,’ said Mildred.
‘Neglect?’ The word, half-shouted, was out before Olivia could swallow it. ‘Neglect?’ She sucked in her breath, recalling all those last days of terms, watching from her window as everyone but she was collected. ‘Don’t cry,’ Sister Catherine would say, ‘you mustn’t cry. You know what Sister Agnes does to girls who do.’ The questions from the other girls: ‘What did you do to your sister and grandmama? Why don’t they want you? Why can’t you remember?’
She pushed the heel of her hand to her aching head. ‘I was happy living with Beatrice in London,’ she said to Mildred, ‘I was truly happy again. And you ruined that too.’
‘Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Look at all you’ve got. Fine clothes, a beautiful house,’ Mildred’s lips turned, ‘a good husband.’
Olivia clenched her fists. Sofia took her arm, she might have said something placatory but Olivia didn’t hear her. All she heard was herself saying, ‘I hate you. I hate you so much. Father did too, I think. He never mentioned you, not ever. And you know who told me that, who said she understood why? Clara, your precious, darling Clara.’
‘That’s quite enough.’ Mildred turned on her heel. ‘Cheeky madam. Just like your —’
‘Mother? Is that what you were going to say?’
Mildred stormed away. As she disappeared from view, Olivia’s anger dissipated, a grand deflating. It left her feeling strangely defiled, a bitter knot in her stomach.
‘You shouldn’t lose your temper with her,’ said Sofia, ‘trust me. She’s the kind who likes to get a rise out of people, especially those she’s wronged. It makes her feel better about herself.’
Olivia took several deep breaths. Sofia squeezed her arm. Her fingers were thick, scrubbed, her nails short and square; honest hands, kind hands. Olivia saw them, then she saw them again. On another arm. She blinked. They were still there. So was she: chubbier, wearing a pinafore, in a nursery with hieroglyphic murals on the walls and a plate of stew before her. Hold your forks and knives like this, agapi mou. The memory lingered, it stayed.
But Clara wasn’t there. Still. Why wouldn’t she come?
Sofia was staring at her, brow furrowed beneath her caterpillar hair. ‘What’
s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Olivia. ‘I’m fine.’ She glanced around the empty hallway. The house felt strangely quiet. ‘Is everything else all right?’ she asked.
‘I wouldn’t say that. Mr Teddy took Hassan and El Masri away yesterday.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know, but they’re both back now.’ Sofia’s bottom lip turned. ‘Such a mess. All of it. To think of Mrs Clara…’ She caught her breath. ‘It’s killing me,’ she patted her chest, ‘in here. I want her home, that’s all. Home and safe.’
‘I know,’ said Olivia.
Sofia sighed. ‘Do you want to have breakfast whilst you wait for the boys to wake up?’
‘No,’ said Olivia, mind moving to Imogen outside, ‘thank you. I have to go. I’ll drop by again later.’
‘I’ll tell Ralph, he’ll like that.’
Olivia nodded, and, conscious of the time, bade Sofia a quick goodbye and ran down the stairs, trailing her fingers along the polished banister, and out up the driveway.
Imogen called for her to hurry. ‘Fadil came. I told him we were staying here for the morning, but I don’t think he believed me.’
‘Perhaps because you’re sitting on a horse.’
Imogen held out Bea’s reins. ‘Come.’ She nodded down the dusty road. ‘He’s lurking that way. We’re going to veer off the road, there’s a shortcut we can take. If we go fast, we should shake him off.’
‘All right,’ said Olivia. Shelving Sofia’s news about El Masri and Hassan for later, she pulled herself into the saddle.
‘Keep up,’ Imogen called, and then she was off, haring away in a cloud of sand. She rode as if she meant business, and Olivia, struggling to follow, suspected Fadil, with his lagged start, was long lost. As Imogen broke off over the sandbanks and into the undergrowth, Olivia felt her saddle, fastened on the looser setting in her haste to get away after Edward, slip. She ducked as Imogen led them beneath the crackling branches of a tree, ripping her skirt, and then lost her balance as Bea jolted. She tumbled to the ground, instinctively shielding her body with her arms, and hit her cheek on a stone.
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