Wild Hunger

‘Water would be wonderful, please,’ she whispered.

There was a sound of running feet on the stairs at that instant and Sara Ounissi appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She stopped dead, her long black hair tumbled around her white face, and looked at her friend hurriedly.

‘Oh, Keira…are you OK?’

Keira’s white mouth trembled into a faint smile. ‘I’m just fine,’ she said, and tried to get up. A second later she fainted. Gerard was just too late to catch her. She lay face down on the floor while he was still leaping to interrupt her fall.

‘Call her doctor!’ he ordered Sara before he picked Keira up again and put her back on the bed.

Sara didn’t argue. She hurried out without a word. Gerard thought wryly, Her husband must be a very happy man; I hope he knows how lucky he is! Why don’t I ever meet girls like her? Well, I did meet her, of course, and never tried to get to know her. How was I to know she was perfect wife material? But then I wasn’t looking for a wife. I’m still not, in fact.

Marriage was not part of Gerard’s game plan.

He turned back to look at the other girl, his brows dark, his eyes smouldering. He was desperately sorry for her, and yet he was affronted by her too. When he thought of the desperate struggle to survive in spite of everything which he had seen in other places it made him deeply angry to think that this stupid girl, with everything to live for, in a safe, sheltered country, was busy trying to kill herself over silly vanity.

What was her family doing, allowing her to get into this state? He glanced around the room as if looking for clues and saw some photographs on a chest by the window. He went over to look hard at them.

One was of Keira and a woman in a bikini who from a distance looked young, not much older than Keira herself—until you looked more closely, and saw that the tanned skin was faintly wrinkled on the neck, and the face too tight. A face-lift? he thought. Was this her mother? Red hair, green eyes, a tall, very slim woman—who else could it be? He saw the same woman in another photo, again with Keira, but a lot of other people gathered around them, in a luxuriously furnished reception-room with marble floors and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

This time they were with a much older man-grey-haired, heavily tanned, wearing a tropical lightweight suit in a pale colour. He had his arm around the red-headed woman and was smiling into the camera.

I know him! thought Gerard. The face was very familiar. But he couldn’t remember where he had seen it before. He closely examined the room in the photo—people in Britain didn’t go in for marble floors in their homes. That usually meant a Mediterranean setting, which fitted with the blue skies you saw through the open French windows, and the sunlight flooding the room, but the furniture had an Arab look to it.

Tangier? Wasn’t that where Keira’s stepfather was supposed to be at the moment? Perhaps he had a villa there?

There were pictures crowded together on the walls of the room in the photo. He looked closer, curious, and was impressed as he recognised some well-known, contemporary artists. Gerard was something of an expert on twentieth-century art. He had an art degree and had chosen the artists of post Second World War Europe as the subject of his degree thesis.

These paintings could be copies, of course, but somehow he didn’t think it likely. The home in which they hung was far too luxurious. If they were originals, the owner of the villa must either be very wealthy or knowledgeable enough to pick up young artists before their work was highly priced.

Why on earth weren’t Keira’s parents doing something about her illness? They obviously had money. Didn’t they care what happened to her? Or didn’t they know? Had she managed to keep her bulimia a secret from them?

Keira stirred a moment later, black lashes flickering against pale cheeks, a little sigh escaping.

He quickly went back to her. ‘Just lie still; don’t move again,’ Gerard told her quite gently as the lashes rose and he found himself looking into those slanting green eyes. His finger and thumb gripped her wrist, taking her pulse. It was faint and faraway; her skin felt icy.

‘Where’s Sara?’ she whispered. Her gaze moved from his downbent face, flicked around the rest of the room.

‘She’s gone to call your doctor.’

‘No!’ She tried to sit up but he pushed her back against the pillows, holding her shoulders down, leaning over.

‘Be sensible. For God’s sake, girl, do you want to die?’

If it was possible, she turned whiter, her lips quivering, then she tried to laugh.

‘Don’t be so melodramatic! Oh, will you stop interfering? You may think you’re trying to help me but you’re only making things ten times worse.’

‘You don’t know what’s best for you,’ Gerard said obstinately.

She gave him a sarcastic look. ‘And you do, of course! You men are all the same. Sara has married one who treats her like a cross between a doll and a slave. I can’t believe she actually seems to enjoy it; I think she’s temporarily insane. Well, I’m not letting you run my life for me, so get out of my home and mind your own business.’

He hadn’t been able to do anything to stop the death and misery he had seen during the civil war, but he wasn’t going to stand aside and let this girl destroy herself without trying to stop her.

‘You’ll see a doctor if I have to tie you to that bed,’ he insisted.

Sara came back into the room with a glass of water. Gerard lifted Keira and she took the glass, sipped some of the water very slowly, as if allowing it to trickle down her sore throat.

‘Dr Patel will be here any minute,’ Sara told them.

Keira looked at her furiously. ‘You shouldn’t have rung him. You know what he’ll say. He’ll only go through the old routine again, trying to persuade me to go into that stupid clinic, and I’m not going, so you will both have wasted your time. The attack’s over, OK? I’m fine; I just had a little hiccup, nothing serious.’

‘It looked damned serious to me!’ exploded Gerard. ‘Your kitchen looks like a bomb’s hit it! You need help.’

She flinched, gave him that stricken look again, then turned crossly on her friend. ‘What’s he doing here? You didn’t ask him in, did you? Come to that, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back home with Rashid? How did you both get in here?’

‘Benny rang me,’ Sara said uneasily. ‘He was worried about you.’

‘Benny!’ The green eyes glittered. ‘I might have known! Wait till I get hold of him!’

‘He cares about you.’ Sara looked pleadingly at her. ‘So do I, Keira. I’m sorry you lost the contract.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ She threw Gerard a hostile look. ‘And you still haven’t told me why he’s here—what on earth possessed you to involve him?’

‘I couldn’t get in, but I knew you were in there; I heard you at one point. I was desperate, Keira; I thought his front door key might fit your door.’

‘You can be so daft!’ muttered Keira, scowling.

‘Sorry,’ Sara said softly. ‘I was upset. Gerard was very helpful; he suggested I got another key from the agent—that hadn’t occurred to me; I was too upset to think properly. Men always seem to be able to think clearly, however upset they get.’ She gave Gerard an admiring smile.

Keira snorted. ‘Don’t butter him up! He’ll be purring in a minute.’

‘It was clever of him,’ Sara said. ‘I drove round to the agent’s, but when I got back Gerard had already managed to open the door and was up here with you.’

Keira turned her eyes back to Gerard. ‘How…?’

‘I slipped the lock with a credit card,’ he admitted coolly.

She was outraged. ‘I could call the police and have you arrested for that! That’s burglary.’

‘I thought I might be saving your life! Your friend gave me the impression you could be dying.’

A voice called from downstairs and Sara said with relief, ‘Dr Patel!’ She went out, called, ‘Come up, please, Doctor.’

Keira looked coldly at Gerard. ‘Thank you for all your help,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Goodbye. Shut the front door behind you and if you ever burgle my house again I really will call the police, however good an excuse you think up!’

He got up. ‘Thanks for the gratitude. Next time you try to kill yourself I’ll just let you go ahead, don’t worry.’

He passed the doctor on the landing. ‘The best of luck; you’ll need it, with her,’ he told him, and the startled man gave him a stare, then a sudden, amused grin.