‘What happened?’ she questioned, propping herself up on her elbows to gulp it down, achingly aware of him and his proximity.
‘You were sick and now you’re better.’
Fragments of the night came filtering back. The way he’d pushed away those strands of sweaty hair from her brow. The way he’d carried her. She tried to push the image away. To think about things which wouldn’t make her realise how much she’d missed him. ‘I do remember. You gave me something disgusting to drink.’
‘I agree that taste-wise it’s not up there with nectar,’ he said wryly. ‘That was what we call a Dimdar. It’s an old desert remedy made from the sap of a rare cactus which grows in the Mekathasinian Sands, and which desert warriors have been using for centuries to treat their ailments.’
She was horribly aware that the inside of her mouth felt gritty and stale. ‘I need a shower.’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
But she felt horribly vulnerable as she struggled out of bed. As if she’d been caught with all her defences down and she wasn’t sure how best to erect them again. Grabbing an armful of clothes, she went along the corridor to the communal bathroom, but the face which stared back at her from the mirror confirmed her worst fears. She touched the sweat-soaked tendrils of her hair, which hung around her pinched face. Murat had seen her like this. Unwashed and pale and looking nothing like the woman he had once lived with.
She told herself she was no longer his arm-candy, nor was she trying to impress him. Nonetheless, she spent a long time in the sputtering shower, half expecting him to be gone by the time she returned to her room. He hadn’t, of course, and she blinked at the scene which greeted her. He had made the bed and boiled the kettle and was now pouring boiling water into two mugs, in which bobbed a couple of teabags. It made such a comforting yet incongruous image, that for a moment she felt as if she were right back in the middle of her delirium.
He glanced up as she walked in, his black eyes lingering on her for a moment longer than was necessary. ‘You look better,’ he commented.
‘That wouldn’t be difficult. I feel much better.’ She put her damp towel in the linen basket, knowing what she needed to say. But it felt strange to be doing so without her arms looped around his neck or her lips brushing against that unshaven jaw. ‘I want to thank you for what you did.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Yes, it was.’ She tried to concentrate on the situation as it was, rather than what she wanted it to be. She suddenly realised why he’d once told her that he wasn’t in the habit of seducing virgins. Their dreams are still intact. And hers had been, hadn’t they? No matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t do the dream stuff—she could see now that she had been deluding herself. She’d believed that she was immune to emotion because she had wanted to believe it and because it had allowed her to buy a ticket into his life. He’d wanted a no-strings affair and she’d convinced herself that she was happy to go along with that. But maybe at heart she was just a woman who’d been longing for him to commit to her all along.
‘I’m very grateful for all you’ve done, but I won’t take up any more of your time,’ she said, watching him squeeze out a teabag. ‘There must be something important needing your attention.’
‘I can take care of my own timetable, Cat,’ he said, handing her a mug of tea. ‘I want you to tell me about your mother.’
She felt her cheeks growing red. ‘I told you everything last night.’
He shook his head. ‘Not really. You spoke in terms of a problem, but not in terms of a solution. Has she ever tried rehab?’
‘Rehab’s expensive.’
‘So that’s a no?’
‘Of course it’s a no!’ she bit back. ‘We’re ordinary people, Murat. Where do you suppose we could find that kind of money?’
His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘You could have asked me.’
‘But that would have involved telling you—and I didn’t want to tell you, for reasons you can probably understand.’
‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said suddenly.
‘Well, you can’t.’
‘What are you so scared of, Cat?’
Surely even he knew the answer to that. She didn’t want to see the disgust on his face when he saw just how sordid her home life had been. And it wasn’t fair of him to want to intrude on her life like this. Because this wasn’t what happened in their particular relationship. They had separate lives. Separate futures.
Yet as she saw a familiar look of determination glinting from his eyes, she wondered what she was trying to protect herself from. She didn’t have to try to impress him any more. It was over. It didn’t matter how many of her dark secrets he discovered, did it?
‘If you want to meet my mother then we’ll go and meet her,’ she said. ‘When did you have in mind?’
‘How about now?’ His gaze searched her face. ‘That is, if you’re feeling well enough.’
Her throat constricted. ‘She won’t be expecting us. She won’t have had time to tidy the place up.’ She said the words as if she came from a normal house. As if she had the kind of mother who had ever bothered tidying up.
‘I don’t care,’ said Murat. ‘And before you say anything, I’d actually enjoy making an impromptu visit for once. Do you have any idea what usually happens when I plan a trip somewhere? How entire rooms are repainted and new furniture bought?’
‘You’re unlikely to get anything like that at my mother’s house,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’ll be lucky to get fresh milk, let alone fresh paint.’
His expression didn’t change. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Well, you’ve asked for it,’ she said as she looked round the room for her shoes.
She locked the door behind them and followed him down to the hotel car park, where his two black limousines were inciting a lot of interest.
In no time at all they had left the little seaside town and were driving past fields blurred with rain and dotted with the dripping forms of motionless sheep. She saw the grey buildings of villages and sometimes the fluttering of the distinctive Welsh flag, with its proud scarlet dragon set on a green and white background. The car picked up speed as they headed south, until tall columns of factory chimneys began to appear in the distance.
At last their small convoy entered a street which was barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the two cars. Rows of tiny identical houses lay before them and Catrin tried to imagine what they must look like to Murat’s eyes. Did he see the stray piece of garbage which drifted over the pavement, or notice the peeling paintwork on her mother’s front door?
She dreaded what the inside of the house would look like. If her sister was still here, then at least she could have relied on the place looking halfway respectable. But Rachel was now back at Uni and, while grateful that she was out of the inevitable firing line, Catrin was a mass of nerves as she rang the doorbell.
At first there was a pause so long that she wondered if her mother was down at the local pub. And didn’t part of her pray that was the case? So that they could just go away and this awful meeting would never happen? But she could hear the distant sound of the TV, and the slow shuffle of footsteps which greeted Murat’s second ring told her that her hopes were in vain.
The door opened and Ursula Thomas stood there, swaying a little as she peered at them—her stained and scruffy clothes failing to hide a faint paunch. Her once beautiful features were coarsened and ruddy, and the emerald eyes so like her daughter’s were heavily bloodshot. And just as she did pretty much every time she saw her, Catrin felt the inevitable wave of sadness which washed over her as she looked at her mother. What a waste, she thought. What a waste of a life.
‘Catrin?’ Ursula said, her gaze focusing and then refocusing.
‘Yes, Mum. It’s me. And I’ve brou
ght a...friend to see you. Murat, this is Ursula—my mother. Mum, this is Murat.’
Ursula looked up at Murat and gave him a vacant smile. ‘You haven’t got a smoke on you by any chance?’ she said.
Catrin half expected Murat to turn around and walk straight back to his car, but he did no such thing. Instead, he shrugged his broad shoulders as if people asked him such things every day of the week.
‘Not on me, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘May we come in?’
Ursula looked him up and down before opening the door to let them in.
As they picked their way over the discarded shoes and empty plastic bags which were littering the small hallway Catrin watched as Murat followed her mother into a tiny sitting room which reeked of stale smoke. On a small table next to a faded armchair stood a half-empty tumbler of vodka. Beside the glass was a crumpled cigarette packet and an overflowing ashtray. A game show blared out from the giant TV screen and the sound of the canned studio laughter added a surreal touch to the bizarre meeting.
Catrin wanted to curl up and die but her shame lasted only as long as it took for her self-worth to assert itself. Because she had done nothing to be ashamed of. This was not her house, nor her mess. And Ursula was ill, not wicked.
She glanced up at Murat but the expression on his hawkish face gave nothing away. He glanced down to meet her eyes and gave her the faintest of smiles.
‘I wonder if you’d mind going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, Cat?’ he questioned calmly. ‘While I have a talk to your mother.’
The request threw her. Confused her. She wanted to refuse, but something told her that refusal wasn’t an option.
‘Okay,’ she said, and left her mother blinking in some bewilderment as she realised she was going to be left alone with the towering figure of the Sultan.
Catrin let herself out onto the narrow street and sucked in some of the damp, cool air. On the other side of the street, she saw a curtain twitch and she turned to trace some of the old, familiar steps of her childhood. The little corner shop was still there, hanging on despite the inexorable march of the out-of-town hypermarket, and she bought a pack of cigarettes and a carton of milk.
She didn’t have a clue what Murat was going to say to her mother but right then she didn’t care, because she trusted him to do the right thing. He might have been emotionally closed down as a partner, but she’d read enough about Qurhah to know that he was revered as a ruler, both at home and abroad. And in truth, wasn’t it a comfort to have someone else taking over like this, even if it was only for a short while? Hadn’t the burden of responsibility always fallen on her?
She’d spent her life trying to shield Rachel from the fall-out of this sordid and erratic life. She’d cooked meals from store-cupboard scraps and bought food at the end of the day from the nearby market, when they were practically giving the stuff away. She’d known survival in bucket-loads, but she’d never known comfort. She had always been prepared for the final demands landing on the doormat. Or the telephone being cut off because the money put aside for the bill had been drunk away.
Maybe that was what had made her so determined to hang onto what Murat had offered her. Like some urchin who’d spent her life shivering outside in the cold, hadn’t she also been attracted by his lifestyle, which had cushioned her in unfamiliar luxury?
By the time she got back with the cigarettes, she found her mother slumped in the armchair, but the ashtray had been emptied and the glass of vodka replaced by a mug of black coffee. Murat emerged from the kitchen, his jacket removed and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
‘What’s going on?’ Catrin questioned, handing her mother the packet of cigarettes and watching as she began to tear at the cellophane wrapping with trembling fingers.
‘Your mother has agreed to go into rehab,’ he said.
Waiting for the stream of objection which didn’t come, Catrin narrowed her eyes. ‘How can she?’
‘I wonder if I could have a word with you, Cat?’ Murat’s voice cut through her words as easily as a hot knife slicing through butter. ‘In private.’
She joined him in the kitchen where, to her astonishment, he had started making inroads into the enormous pile of filthy dishes which were piled up in the sink. Shutting the door behind her, she stared at him in confusion.
‘Is this for real?’
He nodded. ‘Completely.’
She swallowed, not wanting to believe it. ‘What did you say to her to get her to agree to something like that?’
‘I repeated exactly what you told me. I said that she was going to kill herself if she carried on that way.’ His black gaze was very steady. ‘I think I managed to convince her that you and your sister would be completely devastated were that to happen. I told her that you’d both already suffered enough by watching her wreck her life and her health. I asked if she wanted to save herself, before it was too late. And then I said that I was prepared to pay for her to go into a rehabilitation unit.’
Wildly, Catrin shook her head. ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she said. ‘I looked into it once. It costs thousands of pounds.’
‘Which I can easily afford, as we both know. The money isn’t important.’ He stepped forward, stemming her objection by placing a forefinger over her lips. ‘Let me do it, Cat. I want to.’
Angrily, she jerked her mouth away from the touch of that distracting finger, hating the fact that her body could react to him even in moments like this. ‘Why? You don’t even know my mother.’
‘I think we both know why. For you.’
‘As a kind of pay-off?’ she questioned bitterly.
‘That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose, although I’d prefer not to think of what we shared in terms of money.’
‘Really? Don’t you think you’re being rather naïve? It was a transaction, Murat,’ she said. ‘You know it was.’
He flinched, but the gaze he fixed on her face was steady. ‘Let’s not quibble about what our relationship was, or wasn’t. Let’s just think about your mother. Surely she deserves this chance?’ he persisted. ‘Especially when I can send her to the best place money can buy.’
Catrin pursed her lips together. Of course he could. Murat could buy anything he pleased. Anything and anyone. He had bought her, hadn’t he? Purchased her just as surely as if he’d walked into a store and asked for a woman who would be willing to begin a brand-new life as his mistress. And she had gone along with it. She’d almost bitten his hand off in her eagerness.
But just because her easy acceptance of that role now appalled her—was it really fair to refuse her mother this one last chance?
She thought of the woman sitting slumped in the armchair next door, her whole world centred around a bottle of liquor and her health declining year on year. She thought about the way her own heart froze every time the phone rang, wondering if this was going to be the call she’d spent her whole life dreading. Was she going to allow her own wounded pride to stop her from accepting this potential lifeline which might just save her mother?
She looked into Murat’s face, as stern and as implacable now as she’d ever seen it. Her gaze travelled down to the whorls of hairs on his powerful forearms, all damp from where he’d been washing up. He was trying, she realised. He was doing the best he could. He might not be able to offer her anything in the way of a future but he was using his considerable power to reach out and help her mother. What right did she have to turn that help down, just because her heart was broken?
‘Yes, of course she deserves it,’ she said stiffly. ‘And if you really mean it then I’d like to accept your kind offer.’
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Then let’s put that in motion straight away.’
She hesitated. ‘I know I must have sounded like an ungrateful, spoilt brat just now, but I wasn’t really thinking straight.’
‘Spoilt?’ At th
is he gave a flat laugh. ‘I’ve known plenty of spoiled women in my life, Cat, but that is one description I wouldn’t dream of applying to you. If you’re agreeable, I can make a few phone calls while you help your mother to pack and then I’ll take you back to the hotel.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘BEFORE I SAY goodbye, I want...’ Catrin cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I want to say something. You’ve been so kind to my mother, Murat. More than kind. And I don’t know how I can ever possibly thank you.’
In the faintly tinted light of the limousine, Murat looked into Cat’s screwed-up face—guessing how much those unsteady words had cost her to say.
He thought back to the scene which had greeted him at her mother’s house. He had seen much during desert warfare which had shocked him, but he had been completely taken aback by the squalor he’d encountered there. He wondered if subconsciously Cat had rebelled against that childhood squalor and whether that had been one of the reasons why she’d become such an exemplary homemaker.
He prayed that his intervention with her mother would work, because he knew that addicts had a notoriously poor rate of recovery. He had sensed Cat’s anxiety as they had waited for the doctor’s car which was to take Ursula Thomas to the airport and ultimately to the rehab unit in Arizona. And he had sensed her hope, too. He had seen her struggling to hold onto her composure as she had gently helped her mother into the back of the car. He tried to imagine the child she must have been, growing up with that constant sense of chaos and terror. Having to protect her younger sister from all the confusion which surrounded them. His heart had clenched then, with pain for all she must have experienced, and frustration that nobody had been there to help her.
She had spent most of the journey back to the hotel in silence, looking out of the window as if she’d never seen those rain-soft views before. But now that they were here, she had no choice but to look at him and he could sense her reluctance to do so. Was it his imagination, or were those cactus-green eyes suspiciously bright? Was she close to tears? He wouldn’t know. Over the years he had been subjected to the tearful displays of many women, often provoked by his refusal to do what they wanted. But this particular woman had never once cried in front of him.
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