Sheikh's Woman

“Did you know?”

He paused. “No.”

Anna bit her lip. She wondered if it was perhaps because she hadn’t told him that she had reverted to this memory tonight. Had it weighed on her throughout the new pregnancy? Had fears for her new baby surfaced and found no outlet?

“Everything was fine. I was pretty stressed in some ways, but I didn’t really have doubts about what I was doing. At the very end something went wrong. I was in labour for hours and hours, and then it was too late for a Caesarean…they used the Ventouse cap.”

She swallowed, and her voice was suddenly expressionless. “It caused a brain haemorrhage. My baby died. They let me hold him, and he was…but there was a terrible bruise on his head…as if he was wearing a purple cap.”

No tears came to moisten the heat of her eyes or ease the pain in her heart. Her perfect baby, paper white and too still, but looking as if he was thinking very hard and would open his eyes any moment…

She wondered if that was how she had ended up giving birth in the back of a cab. Perhaps it was fear of a repetition that had made her leave it too late to get to the hospital.

“Why weren’t you there?” she asked, surfacing from her thoughts to look at him. “Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?”

“I flew in from abroad this evening. And this was six weeks ago?”

“That’s how it feels to me. I feel as though it’s the weekend I’m supposed to be going on that job to France, and that was about six weeks after the baby died. How long ago is that, really?”

“Did you ever feel, Anna, that you would like to—adopt a child? A baby to fill the void created by the death of your own baby?”

“It wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. Why are you asking me these questions now? Didn’t we—”

“Did you think of it—applying for adoption? Trying to find a baby?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Sometimes in the street, you know, you pass a woman with a baby, or even a woman who’s pregnant, and you just want to scream It’s not fair, but—no, I just…I got pretty depressed, I wasn’t doing much of anything till Lisbet conjured up this actor friend who wanted a mural in his place in France.”

She leaned over to caress the baby with a tender hand, then bent to kiss the perfectly formed little head. “Oh, you are so beautiful!” she whispered. She looked up, smiling. “I hope I remember soon. I can’t bear not knowing everything about her!”

He started to speak, and just then the car drew to a stop. Heavy rain was now thundering down on the roof, and all she could see were streaks of light from tall spotlights in the distance, as if they had entered some compound.

“Are we here?”

“Yes,” he said, as the door beside her opened. The dark-skinned chauffeur stood in the rain with a large black umbrella, and Anna quickly slipped out onto a pavement that was leaping with water. She heard the swooping crack of another umbrella behind her. Then she was being ushered up a curiously narrow flight of steps and through a doorway.

She glanced around her as Ishaq, with the baby, came in the door behind her.

It was very curious for a hospital reception. A low-ceilinged room, softly lighted, lushly decorated in natural wood and rich tapestries. A row of matching little curtains seemed to be covering several small windows at intervals along the wall. There was a bar at one end, by a small dining table with chairs. In front of her she saw a cluster of plush armchairs around a coffee table. Anna frowned, trying to piece together a coherent interpretation of the scene, but her mind was very slow to function. She could almost hear her own wheels grinding.

A woman in an Eastern outfit that didn’t look at all like a medical uniform appeared in the doorway behind the bar and came towards them. She spoke something in a foreign language, smiling and gesturing towards the sofa cluster. She moved to the entrance door behind them, dragged it fully shut and turned a handle. Still the pieces refused to fall into place.

Anna obediently sank down into an armchair. A second woman appeared. Dressed in another softly flowing outfit, with warm brown eyes and a very demure smile, she nodded and then descended upon the baby in Ishaq Ahmadi’s arms. She laughed and admired and then exchanged a few sentences of question and answer with Ishaq before taking the infant in her own arms and, with another smile all around, disappeared whence she had come.

“What’s going on?” Anna demanded, as alarm began to shrill behind the drowsy numbness in her head.

“Your bed is ready,” Ishaq murmured, bending over her and slipping his hands against her hips. At the touch of his strong hands she involuntarily smiled. “In a few minutes you can lie down and get some sleep.”

His hands lifted and she blinked stupidly while he drew two straps up and snapped them together over her hips. Under her feet she felt the throb of engines, and at last the pieces fell together.

“This isn’t a hospital, this is a plane!” Anna cried wildly.

Four

“Let me out,” Anna said, her hands snapping to the seat belt.

Ishaq Ahmadi fastened his own seat belt and moved one casual hand to still hers as she struggled with the mechanism. “We have been cleared for immediate takeoff,” he said.

“Stop the plane and let me off. Tell them to turn back,” she cried, pushing at his hand, which was no longer casual. “Where are you taking us? I want my baby!”

“The woman you saw is a children’s nurse. She is taking care of the baby, and no harm will come to her. Try and relax. You are ill, you have been in an accident.”

Her stomach churned sickly, her head pounded with pain, but she had to ignore that. She stared at him and showed her teeth. “Why are you doing this?” A sudden wrench released her seat belt, and Anna thrust herself to her feet.

Ishaq Ahmadi’s eyes flashed with irritation. “You know very well you have no right to such a display. You know you are in the wrong, deeply in the wrong.” He stabbed a forefinger at the chair she had just vacated. “Sit down before you fall down!”

With a little jerk, the plane started taxiing. “No!” Anna cried. She staggered and clutched the chair back, and with an oath Ishaq Ahmadi snapped a hand up and clasped her wrist in an unbreakable hold.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Help, help!”

A babble of concerned female voices arose from behind a bulkhead, and in another moment the hostess appeared in the doorway behind the bar.

“Sit down, Anna!”

The hostess cried a question in Arabic, and Ishaq Ahmadi answered in the same language. “Laa, laa, madame,” the woman said, gently urgent, and approached Anna with a soothing smile, then tried what her little English would do.

“Seat, madame, very dingerous. Pliz, seat.”

“I want to get off!” Anna shouted at the uncomprehending woman. “Stop the plane! Tell the captain it’s a mistake!”

The woman turned to Ishaq Ahmadi with a question, and he shook his head on a calm reply. Of course he had the upper hand if the cabin crew spoke only Arabic. Anna had a dim idea that all pilots had to speak English, but what were her chances of making it to the cockpit?

And if it was a private jet, the captain would be on Ishaq Ahmadi’s payroll. No doubt they all knew he was kidnapping his own wife.

Ahmadi got to his feet, holding Anna’s wrist in a grip that felt like steel cables, and forced her to move towards him.

The plane slowed, and they all stiffened as the captain’s voice came over the intercom—but it was only with the obvious Arabic equivalent of “Cabin staff, prepare for takeoff.” Ishaq Ahmadi barked something at the hostess and, with a consoling smile at Anna, she returned to her seat behind the bulkhead.

Ishaq Ahmadi sank into his seat again, dragging Anna inexorably down onto his lap. “You are being a fool,” he said. “No one is going to hurt you if you do not hurt yourself.”

She was sitting on him now as if he were the chair, and his arms were firmly locked around her waist, a human seat belt. The heat of his body seeped into hers, all down her spine and the backs of her thighs, his arms resting across her upper thighs, hands clasped against her abdomen.

Wherever her body met his, there was nothing but muscle. There was no give, no ounce of fat. It was like sitting on hot poured metal fresh from the forge, hardened, but the surface still slightly malleable. The stage when a sculptor removes the last, tiny blemishes, puts on the finishing touches. She had taken a course in metal sculpture at art college, and she had always loved the metal at this stage, Anna remembered dreamily. The heat, the slight surface give in something so innately strong, had a powerful sensual pull.

She realized she was half tranced. She felt very slow and stupid, and as the adrenaline in her body ebbed, her headache caught up with her again. She twisted to try to look over her shoulder into his face.

“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded.

His voice, close to her ear, said, “So that you and the baby will be safe.”