LITMIR.BIZ

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…’

      He stopped. Looked up to a sky fogged with neon. But? But what? What was she thinking? As if in answer to her unspoken question, he turned and, as their eyes met, she knew ‘what’. She’d always known.

      She’d been here before and the raw power of the heat-charged look that passed between them scared her witless.

      She’d had the sense to take a step back and then, as if seized by a determination to destroy herself all over again, she’d undone it all with that ‘but’.

      And she had no excuse. She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old with her head in the clouds and her brains in cold storage. At eighteen there was some excuse. At twenty-three, with her reputation rebuilt, responsibilities …

      She was fooling herself.

      This was desire at its most primitive. The atavistic urge that powered all of creation. Age, experience, counted for nothing. There was no immunity …

      ‘But?’ Zahir finally prompted, his voice as soft as thistledown.

      Without thought she’d reached out to him. Her hand was still extended, as if imploring him to come back. Finish what he’d started.

      Slowly, deliberately, she closed her hand, but somehow it stayed there and he took a step towards her.

      Maybe the movement broke the spell. Maybe age did help, because she swung her arm wildly towards the far corner of the square. ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ she said. ‘You need Charles Street. Then, um, Queen Street. Then Curzon Street.’

      ‘That’s out of the taxi drivers’ handbook, is it?’

      ‘Yes. No …’ Her eyes were still locked on to his. She could scarcely breathe. ‘Queen Street is one-way. I’d … a taxi … would have to cut along Erfield Street.’

      Zahir gently took her arm, opened the driver’s door of the car and said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Diana. Ten o’clock.’

      Zahir stood back as she climbed into the limo, fumbled to get the key in the ignition and, after what seemed like an age, drove away. Only then did he let loose the breath he seemed to have been holding for ever.

      He’d only met the woman a few hours ago and yet it was as if he’d been waiting for her all his life. She was the one who made him laugh, made him dance. Made him want to sing.

      Walking through the quiet streets, he should have been concentrating on the future, plans that had been a year in the making. Instead it was Diana Metcalfe who filled his head, heated him to the heart, made nightingales sing in the heart of London.

      Her father was dozing in front of the television, not conspicuously waiting for his little girl to come home, but he never went to bed until he knew she was safely in. As a teenager it had driven her mad. It still did but, a mother herself, these days Diana understood the need to know that your family was safe before you could rest. ‘Busy day?’ he asked.

      ‘Above average,’ she said, managing a grin as she peeled off her jacket. ‘An outbreak of food poisoning meant that I had the number one car and a sheikh.’ About whom the least said the better. Her father could read her like a book. ‘Did you manage okay?’ she asked, by way of diversion. ‘Freddy wasn’t too much for you?’

      ‘He was as good as gold. He’s spark out, bless him.’ He eased himself to his feet, limped into the kitchen, turning on the tap with his left hand, then holding the kettle beneath it. She wanted to say, Sit down … let me … but understood that his self-esteem was involved. Knew that the more he did, the better it was for his mobility. Her need, his determination, to look after Freddy for her had done more for his recovery from the stroke than all the months of phsyio. Had given him a reason to push himself to be mobile. ‘What’ll you have? Tea, chocolate?’

      All she wanted was to get to her room, shut the door, be on her own so that she could unravel the emotional tangle she’d got herself in, get her head around it, but her father looked forward to hearing about her day. ‘Chocolate, if you’ll have some with me. Has Mum gone up?’

      ‘Hours ago. She was rushed off her feet at the shop today, doing the flowers for some fancy society wedding. She looked whacked out.’

      ‘She could do with a holiday,’ Diana said, trying not to envy all those journalists and tour operators, being whisked away, first class on Sheikh Zahir’s magic carpet. ‘Maybe we could all go somewhere when school breaks up.’

      ‘You should be going on holiday with people your own age,’ he said, then looked away.

      ‘I don’t think Freddy would fit in with an eighteen-thirty package, do you?’ she joked, pretending she hadn’t noticed.

      ‘We’d look after him. You need to get out more. Get a life.’

      ‘Freddy is my life,’ she said.

      ‘Di—’

      ‘How’s the Test Match going?’ she asked.

      Once launched on the safer subject of cricket, her father’s passion, all she had to do was say ‘absolutely’ in all the appropriate places while he gave her chapter and verse on the weaknesses in the England team, the poor eyesight of the umpires, the quality of the wicket, while she drank her chocolate. Then, having rinsed her mug, she dropped a kiss on his balding head.

      ‘Tell Mum that I’ll see to Freddy in the morning. I don’t have to go in until nine. Don’t stay up too late,’ she chided, playing up to the pretence that he’d stayed up to watch something he wanted to see on the television, rather than because he was waiting for her to come home.

      She looked in on Freddy, straightened the cover that had slipped from his shoulders, lightly touching his dark curls. Five years old and already a heartbreaker, just like the man who’d fathered him.

      ‘Night, angel,’ she murmured, picking up the snowstorm that sat on his bookshelf. The snowflakes stirred, but she didn’t shake it, just returned it to its place. ‘Sleep tight.’

      Safe in her own room, she sat on the bed, opened the drawer of her night table and took out the little box in which she kept her treasures. At the bottom was a photograph taken at a party. Just a bunch of people turning as someone had called out ‘smile’. It was mere chance that she’d been on the same picture as Pete O’Hanlon, that someone had given it to her.

      All she had of Freddy’s father.

      The only reason she kept it was because, one day, Freddy would insist on knowing who his father was. By then, hopefully, memories, like the photograph, would have faded, people would have moved away and his name would have been forgotten. And Freddy would be valued for himself as a decent young man.

      The only reason she looked at it now was because five years had, without her noticing it, dulled her sense of danger. Because she needed to remind herself how much damage falling in lust could do.

      Eventually she closed the box, put it away. Hung up her uniform, laid out a clean shirt and underwear for the morning.

      Brushed her teeth. Finally crawled into the same single bed that she’d slept in all her life. And discovered that she’d been working on the wrong memory because the moment she closed her eyes she was confronted with Sheikh Zahir’s smile.

      The one that barely showed on the surface, was no more than a warmth behind his eyes.

      Felt his long fingers cradling her head, the touch of his breath on her cheek, his mouth …

      Diana finally dropped off, but her sleep was disturbed by dreams in which she was driving a sparkly pink taxi around and around the inside a snow globe. She was constantly being hailed by Sheikh Zahir who, when she stopped, didn’t get in the back but just looked at her and said, ‘Kiss me, I’m a prince.’

      Then, when she did, he turned into a frog.

      She woke with a start, her heart pounding, her mouth dry, for a moment unsure where

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