The Husband She Never Knew

Ammar didn’t answer. He couldn’t; he had no words. He never had the right words, yet he hated that he had hurt her. The thought that he’d caused her so much pain—enough that it still made her cry years later—was unbearable; he forced it away, along with all the other thoughts that he couldn’t face. There were, he knew, far too many of them. ‘Then let me make it right,’ he said. The words felt unfamiliar, awkward, and yet he meant them.

‘How?’ She swiped at her eyes, angry again.

‘By giving our marriage a second chance.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide, like a trapped animal’s. Then she looked away. ‘Our marriage,’ she said flatly, ‘never was. Annulled, Ammar. Like it—we—didn’t exist.’

‘We did exist.’ Sometimes he felt as if his time with Noelle, his self with Noelle, was more real than anything before or after. Yet he was not about to admit such a thing to her now.

She shook her head, her anger replaced by a weary bewilderment. ‘Why do you even want such a thing? You didn’t want to be married to me before. Why now?’

‘I always,’ Ammar said, ‘wanted to be married to you.’

Her mouth dropped open and she looked as if she wanted to argue. Again. He looked away, fought the rush of painful fury he felt at revealing such weakness.

‘I cannot believe that,’ Noelle said flatly. ‘I won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because—’ She pressed a trembling fist to her mouth, her eyes still so heartbreakingly wide. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense.’

He knew it didn’t. He felt the weight of all the things he hadn’t told her, things he was afraid to tell her because he knew she would look at him differently. She would hate him, perhaps far more than she thought she did now.

‘None of this makes any sense,’ she whispered.

Ammar stared down at the table, took a deep breath. ‘You loved me once.’

Silence. He looked up and saw her staring at him with such confused sorrow that it made everything inside him burn and writhe. Why had he said such a thing?

‘Yes, I did,’ she finally said. ‘Once. But you destroyed that, Ammar, when you rejected me without any explanation. You refused to come to me on our wedding night—or any night after. Do you remember?’

He clenched his jaw so hard his whole head hurt. ‘I remember.’

‘You ignored me day after day, left me to rot on that wretched island without so much as a word of explanation. And then,’ she finished, her voice breaking, ‘when I came to you and tried to seduce my own husband, you sent me away in no uncertain terms!’

Every word she spoke was true, and yet still they made him furious. He rose from the table, laying his palms flat on its surface as he faced her and her accusing glare. ‘Clearly there is no point in continuing this conversation. You may return to your room and we will talk again tomorrow.’

She let out a harsh sound, something caught between a sob and another sharp laugh. ‘What is this, Ammar, The Arabian Nights? Am I to be fetched day after day into your presence until I finally break down and agree to your ridiculous demands?’

His head throbbed and he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘If I remember correctly, Scheherazade gained her own happiness at the end of that tale.’

‘And was threatened with death every day!’

‘I am not threatening you,’ Ammar said, suddenly unbearably weary. He did not want to fight her. He had not wanted this bitter acrimony at all, and yet he recognised it was at least in part his own damnable doing. ‘You are safe here with me, I promise you. But you are too tired and it is too late for you to go anywhere tonight. Rest. Sleep. We will talk tomorrow.’

‘And then you’ll let me go?’

He stared at her, saw the hungry longing in her eyes, and felt a deep sorrow sweep through him. Once she’d looked at him like that, with such desire and even love that it had both humbled and amazed him. And he’d driven her away from him on purpose. At the time it had felt like his only recourse; perhaps it was once again. Perhaps he sought the impossible. To change. To be loved once more, and truly. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he said again, and to his shame his voice choked a little. He turned away from her and after a long tense moment he heard the gentle patter of her feet, and then the creak and click of the door opening and shutting.

He was alone.

Noelle slept terribly. Anger kept her awake at first, pacing the confines of her elegant bedroom. Ammar’s house was deathly still, the only sound the whisper of wind on sand outside. She felt as if she’d landed on the moon.

And surely the evening’s events belonged on a different planet—she still could not credit that Ammar wanted to restore their marriage. I want us to be husband and wife.

Why did that single statement send an icy thrill of terror and even excitement through her? Or was it simply shock? They’d never been husband and wife, not truly.

Even now Noelle remembered the ache of confusion and misery she’d felt, waiting for Ammar to come to her on their wedding night. They’d married at her family’s chateau and planned to spend their wedding night in a private wing all to themselves. She’d gone to the bedroom, changed into a lacy and virginal peignoir she’d bought at a very exclusive boutique in Paris and, trembling with anticipation, had waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Once the doorknob had turned and Noelle had jolted upright from where she’d lain on the bed, desperate for him to come to her, only to hear someone’s—surely Ammar’s— quiet footsteps pad back down the hall. The rest of the night had been spent in a lonely misery of confusion.

The next day they’d travelled to his father’s home and base, Alhaja Island. Ammar had been horribly remote, barely speaking to her. Hesitantly, Noelle had asked him what had happened and he had said something about a business call, which had made her feel small and unimportant. A business call was more important than his own wedding night?

There had been no time for a proper conversation, and she’d been too young, too inexperienced and confused for a confrontation. She’d kept waiting for Ammar to change back into the man she knew and loved, but he never did.

That evening he’d flown to Lisbon for yet another business engagement. She’d remained on Alhaja, waiting for his return. Before their marriage they’d talked about setting up a house outside Paris, near enough the city for work but a good place for children, for family. She’d had it all planned out, the bookshop she would open in the Latin Quarter, the house they would buy, a cottage really, with wrought iron rails and a blue-painted door. She’d pictured it all, her work, her home, her life, all with Ammar. Dreams, she thought now, the old bitterness corroding her soul. Stupid, foolish dreams. She’d waited for two long, lonely months on Alhaja before she realised Ammar had no plans to return. And in a desperate last-ditch attempt to win her husband back, she’d flown to Rome to meet him.

It hadn’t been easy; she’d had to call her father, coax him into letting her use his private jet. Balkri Tannous did not keep any means of transport on Alhaja, and so she’d been a virtual prisoner with the household staff, a silent, sullen crew. Her father had agreed, surprised yet able to deny her nothing—which Noelle had known—and through several begging phone calls to Ammar’s staff, as well as a helpless-female act with the concierge, she’d contrived to find the name of his hotel and wait in his room dressed only in a silk teddy and stiletto heels.