She dropped her parcels on to the chair beside the telephone table and lifted the receiver to her ear. She gave her name, but there was some disturbance at the other end of the line before an unfamiliar voice demanded, 'Who is speaking, please?'
'Sarika Maynesfield,' she repeated her name, still enveloped by that strange cloak of calmness.
'Miss Maynesfield, this is Sergeant Singh of the Bombay Police,' the voice informed her, and her stomach lurched sickeningly.
'What can I do for you, Sergeant Singh?' The line went ominously silent and, thinking they might have been cut off, she said in a raised voice, 'Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Are you still there?'
Sergeant Singh coughed and cleared his throat, indicating that he was still very much at the other end of the line, then he started speaking in a strangely sombre voice. 'Miss Maynesfield, I am afraid I have unpleasant news to pass on to you.'
Again the line went silent, and Sarika prompted him frantically. 'What is the matter, Sergeant Singh? What has happened?'
'I am afraid that the yacht your parents were sailing on has disappeared,' came the dreaded, crushing reply. 'The Karachi port officials received a distress signal this morning, but the reception was very bad, and they have been unable to pinpoint the location of the yacht. A sea and air rescue team is out searching for them, but as yet their search has been unsuccessful.'
Sarika leaned heavily against the ornate marble telephone stand with the decorative mirror above it, and an icy numbness took possession of her as she stared blankly at the reflection of her stark white features. She knew now the reason for her uneasiness, but that did not make this horrifying news any less difficult to accept.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sean's rugged face appeared in the mirror beside Sarika's. She tried to speak to him, her lips moved, but she could not make a sound.
'Sarika, what's the matter? Why are you—'
'Hello! Hello, can you hear me, Miss Maynesfield?'
Sergeant Singh's voice came clearly from the receiver that dangled from her limp fingers, and Sean snatched the receiver from Sarika's hand. 'Hello, this is Sean O'Connor.'
Sarika stepped away from the table and leaned weakly against the wall while Sean spoke to the Sergeant. Ayah came bustling towards them from the direction of the kitchen. She took one look at Sarika's white face, and quickened her pace.
'What is going on?' Ayah demanded just as Sean replaced the receiver on its cradle. 'Tell me what has happened?'
'Reg Parker's yacht seems to have disappeared after sending out a distress signal this morning,' explained Sean. 'The Karachi port officials say there's a heavy storm raging up their way, and they couldn't get a bearing on the yacht's position at the time because the connection was severed. They're searching a wide radius in the hope of finding survivors, and the port officials have alerted all possible ships in the vicinity to be on the look-out for the yacht.'
'My poor Sarika,' Ayah crooned, her own face whitening with shock and grief as she took Sarika's arm and led her towards the living-room. 'My poor beti!'
Sarika walked like someone in a trance. At that moment she could feel nothing except that dreadful coldness as if she had been thrust into a bath filled with ice cubes. Ayah helped her into a chair, and she sat there staring straight ahead of her while Ayah fussed and crooned endearments.
'Drink this, it will make you feel better,' Sean's gravelly voice intruded into Sarika's numb world, and a glass of amber liquid was thrust into her line of vision. She shook her head in silent refusal, but he placed the glass in her hand, and held it there with his own as he raised it to her lips. 'Drink it!' he barked sternly.
Her nose wrinkled with distaste when she realised it was brandy, but she sipped it obediently, and as the welcoming warmth surged through her cold body, Sean removed his hand from about hers and left her to drink the brandy on her own. She could not drink more than half the amount he had poured for her, but he seemed satisfied when she handed the glass back to him.
'They're not coming back,' she said at last in a husky, anguished voice. 'They're not coming back, I know it!'
'Sarika, listen to me,' Sean intruded on Ayah's tender ministrations to lean over Sarika and grip her shoulders firmly. 'There's no cause yet to think the worst. The area the authorities have to search is vast, and there's every chance that Dave and Cara may still be found alive.'
'I know they won't be coming back,' Sarika insisted in a wooden voice. 'They're dead… I feel it!'
Ayah muttered something unintelligible as Sean released Sarika with an exasperated exclamation on his lips. 'I suggest you take her up to her room, Ayah, and make her lie down,' he instructed tersely. 'I have a few phone calls to make, but I'll look in later.'
'Come with me, pyaari,' murmured Ayah sympathetically as Sean strode out of the living-room. 'I will take care of you.'
Sarika wanted to cry as Ayah led her across the hall and up the stairs to her room, but the tears would not come. They were locked inside her like a heavy, leaden ache behind a steel door, and she herself had long since thrown away the key. She did not want to get into bed. She ignored Ayah's pleas and began to pace the floor with her arms wrapped about herself.
She was shaking inside when Sean finally walked into her room. His glance lingered for a moment on her white face with the haunted eyes, then he turned to Ayah, 'I've called the doctor, and he'll be here as soon as he can make it, but Sarika should be lying down.'
'I don't want to lie down, and I don't need a doctor!' Sarika protested, her teeth chattering as that icy coldness surged through her again.
'You're suffering from shock,' argued Sean with a calmness that suddenly infuriated her, and she turned on him with her eyes blazing.
'I don't need a doctor!'
'Calm down, beti,' Ayah murmured soothingly, her hands smoothing Sarika's honey-blonde hair away from her white face. 'Sean is only doing what he considers is best for you.'
'Best for me?' Sarika wanted to shout out in anguish. 'How does he know what's best for me?' The words, however, never left her lips. The room began to spin crazily, and the darkness of night seemed to descend upon her. She tried to fight it off, but it was too strong for her, and the last thing she remembered was the curious sensation that the floor was lifting to collide with her.
Sarika eventually surfaced sufficiently to realise that someone had undressed her and put her to bed, and she could only pray that it had been Ayah. Dr Banerjee was sitting next to her on the bed, and he was asking her questions while he examined her. She was answering him, but she had no clear knowledge of what she was actually saying. She felt the sting of a needle being jabbed into her arm, and then she knew no more until she awoke to a silence which was disturbed seconds later by the creaking of a chair.
She turned her head against the pillow in the dimly lit room, and her glance collided with Sean's dark eyes. He was sitting in the chair beside her bed and, in the grip of sudden terror, she sat up abruptly and clutched the sheets about her. What was he doing in her bedroom? And then she recalled all the terrible details of what had occurred that day.
'What time is it?' she asked, still feeling slightly drugged as she pushed her fingers through her tumbled hair.
'It's two-thirty in the morning,' Sean informed her after consulting his watch, and in the bedside light his rugged features took on a haggard look.
'What are you doing here in my room?' she demanded, her eyes widening at the discovery that Dr Banerjee's injection had made her sleep for hours.
'Ayah and I have been taking turns to sit with you.'
She felt embarrassed at the thought that he had been sitting there beside her bed while she was sleeping, but from the partly drugged recesses of her mind came an urgent query. 'Has there been any further news?'
'None.'
'They won't find them, you know,' she said with a fatalistic conviction which she could not explain.
Sean stared at her oddly for a moment, then he got up and walked across to
the low table between the padded chairs. 'Ayah left soup in a flask for you.'
'I don't want anything.'
'You hardly touched your lunch, and you slept through dinner.' She could hear him pouring something into a cup, then he turned and walked towards the bed with a firm tread. 'You must keep your strength up, so drink this soup.'
Strong fingers dislodged her hand from the sheets she clutched beneath her chin, and the cup of soup was placed in it. Sarika stared a long way up into that unrelenting face, and she simply did not have the strength to argue.
'I don't know why I let you bully me this way,' she muttered angrily, sipping at the hot liquid and finding it extremely tasty.
'At the moment you're incapable of taking care of yourself, so someone has to take charge.'
Sarika digested this slowly, and studied him speculatively over the rim of her mug when he resumed his seat. 'You're used to taking charge, aren't you,' she said at length. 'You're accustomed to being in a position of authority.'
Sean raised a sardonic eyebrow. 'What makes you say that?'
'It's just a feeling I have, and it makes me wonder why someone like yourself would want to work for my father.' She paled suddenly as the nightmare of the situation sent a new wave of coldness through her. 'I don't suppose they will continue the search in the dark.'
'They'll start again first thing in the morning.'
Sarika swallowed convulsively and tried to concentrate on drinking her soup, but her glance lingered on Sean. His features looked grim and drawn, and a shadowy growth of beard was beginning to show along the side of his jaw.
'Go to bed, Sean, you look exhausted.'
A hint of a smile touched his stern mouth. 'Are you trying to take charge of me now?'
'None of this need really concern you,' she tried to explain. 'They're my parents, and you merely work for my father.'
There was an odd little silence that filled her with uneasiness before he said harshly, 'My concern goes far deeper than you may realise at this moment, so don't attempt to shut me out, Sarika.'
She felt like a child who had been rapped once again over the knuckles, and lowered her gaze apologetically. 'I didn't intend my remark to sound rude.'
'Didn't you?' he mocked her, and his mockery was something she could not tolerate at that moment.
'Oh, please just go and leave me alone!' she begged huskily, lowering her head so that her hair fell forward to veil her quivering lips.
'I'll go, but I'll ask Ayah to come here to you.'
Sarika opened her mouth to protest, but he had gone, and she sat there in her silent, suddenly empty room, nursing her mug of soup between her trembling hands. She tried to drink her soup, but for some inexplicable reason it had become tasteless, and she was turning to place the mug on the bedside cupboard when Ayah walked into the room and closed the door behind her.
'Beti?' she enquired anxiously as she approached the bed, and all Sarika's fears suddenly leapt to the fore.
'Ayah!' she croaked. 'Oh, Ayah, what if they don't come back?'
'Then it is something we must accept, Sarika,' came the calm reply, but Sarika stubbornly refused to surrender to such logic.
'I shall never accept it!' she cried huskily, clinging to her somewhat childish hopes and dreams. 'There was so much I still wanted to do; so much I still hoped for. If they don't come back I shall never have the opportunity to tell them how much I loved them, and I'll never know if they loved me.'
'Pyaari,' crooned Ayah, stroking the heavy strands of hair away from Sarika's white, anguished face with gentle hands. 'Life is not always kind that way. My husband died before I could tell him I loved him, and as a result of his accident I lost the child I was carrying before I could hold it in my arms. I came to your parents a broken young woman who had to learn to accept what fate had dealt me, and that is why, when you were born, I took you to my heart as my own. You were such a pretty little thing, and Cara bhenji did me the honour of letting me name you. Sarika was the name I chose for you, and Cara bhenji placed you in my care from that very first day you opened your eyes to this sometimes cruel world.' There were tears in Ayah's dark brown eyes when she framed Sarika's face with her hands. 'Sarika, pyaari, God takes away, but he also gives back in ways that are wonderful, and, as he gave me you, he will also give to you someone to love and someone who will love you.'
Sarika felt something snap inside her; she felt her shoulders begin to shake, and then she was crying all over Ayah's white sari. The arms that held her were comforting and familiar, and once the tears had started Sarika could not stop them. They poured down her cheeks as if a dam inside her was overflowing, and Ayah, in her wisdom, did not attempt to check these great, choking tears that tore through Sarika's slender body.
'Oh, Ayah, Ayah!' Sarika sobbed at length against a scented shoulder which had become damp with her tears. 'What would I have done all these years without you?'
Ayah did not answer her. She merely rocked her in her arms and crooned those familiar endearments which had always succeeded in soothing Sarika through her childhood.
Sarika leaned back against the pillows with an exhausted sigh when the emotional storm had abated, and Ayah pulled the sheets up over her. 'Go to sleep, Sarika. Tomorrow will be a long day for you, and you must preserve your strength.'
Sarika did succeed in going to sleep again, and this time it was a natural, self-induced sleep from which she did not awaken until seven o'clock the Sunday morning. She leapt out of bed, bathed and dressed herself in navy cotton slacks and a white sleeveless blouse, and was seated at the breakfast table when Sean walked in. His jaw was clean-shaven, but his features still bore that grim expression she had seen in the early hours of the morning.
'Good morning,' he said abruptly, helping himself to bacon and eggs. 'I trust you slept again after I left your room last night… or rather this morning?'
'I slept well, thank you,' she murmured, feeling vaguely ashamed at making such a confession when he bore the look of a man who had stayed awake all night. 'Did you sleep?'
'No,' he confirmed her suspicions. 'I sat up all night in case the police had some news to telephone through to us.'
'There wasn't any news, was there?' she asked, holding her breath.
'None,' he answered abruptly, attacking his breakfast with a vigour she envied while she sat struggling to force down a slice of toast and coffee.
Ayah brought in a fresh pot of coffee for Sean, and some minutes later he got up from the table with the announcement, 'I'm going down to the police station to find out what's going on, and if there isn't something I could do.'
'I'm coming with you!' Sarika stopped him before he reached the door and, dabbing at her mouth with the table napkin, she got up from the table and said a hasty goodbye to Ayah before she followed Sean out of the house.
They did not speak to each other on the way to the police station. Sean sat staring grimly ahead of him while Sarika was trying to cope with her own thoughts. Her mind flitted over the past in an effort to recall one loving gesture from her parents. They had been devoted to each other, there was no doubt in her mind about that, but their devotion had never spilled over on to her. There had been a few occasions when they had tagged her along to a function as an adornment they could display to their friends, but the novelty had worn off as swiftly as it had begun. None of this had altered her feelings for her parents. She had loved them, and she had always believed that they loved her, but no verbal confirmation of their feelings had ever passed between them. There had never been a closeness between them such as the closeness that existed between Ayah and herself, and Sarika felt choked with sadness at the thought.
Sean turned in at the police station some minutes later and parked his Land Rover close to the entrance. Sarika shivered despite the warmth of the sun on her skin, and she welcomed the protective strength of Sean's hand beneath her elbow when they entered the building.
'I want to speak to Sergeant Singh,' Sean said authoritatively to the
young policeman who had leapt to attention behind the counter. 'Tell him it's urgent.'
'May I have your name, please?' the young Indian man asked politely, a hint of awe in his eyes when he looked up at Sean.
'O'Connor,' Sean answered abruptly. 'Sean O'Connor.'
The policeman stepped out from behind the counter and disappeared so quickly that Sarika did not notice which direction he had taken. She cast a swift, anxious glance up at Sean, and a faintly reassuring smile touched his mouth, but Sarika was too tense to relax. The young policeman appeared moments later, and she felt her facial muscles go rigid with nerves.
'Sergeant Singh will see you now,' he announced. 'If you will come this way, please.'
He led the way down a long, gloomy passage to a door on the right which stood slightly ajar, and he stepped aside respectfully as he gestured them to enter.
The Sergeant was a short, bulky man, and he rose behind his desk when they entered his office. 'Good morning, Mr O'Connor… Miss Maynesfield… please take a seat.'
'What news do you have for us?' Sean asked the moment they sat facing the sergeant across the wide desk.
'I am afraid that as yet I have no positive information to pass on to you,' Sergeant Singh answered regretfully. 'The Karachi police are still investigating the disappearance of the yacht, and the authorities have renewed their sea and air search, but other than that I cannot tell you anything.'
'A yacht the size of Reg Parker's can't simply disappear without trace,' Sean argued harshly, voicing Sarika's own panic-stricken thoughts.
'I am aware of that,' the Sergeant replied calmly, 'but in a storm such as the one that lashed the Pakistani coast, anything could have happened. They could have drifted off their course, and there is no telling where their exact location might have been at the time they sent out their distress signal.' His glance shifted to Sarika's white, pinched face, and his expression was at once sympathetic. 'I am sorry, Miss Maynesfield. I know how painful this must be to you, and I can understand your anxiety.'
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