LITMIR.BIZ

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You were with a single man and …’ She bites her lip and turns away. She squeezes my hand, shakes her head, and says softly, ‘I am so sorry …’

      ‘Hey, it’s not your fault,’ I say, resting my head on her shoulder. ‘It’s probably for the best,’ I continue over-cheerily, fighting back the tears.

      Faye comes over from the far end of the table, perches on the edge of the banquette, swivels round to face me, and says warmly, ‘Darling, it’s so good to see you.’ She brushes aside my wet fringe and plants a warm kiss on my forehead.

      ‘How’s Tariq?’ I enquire, anxious for news of my beloved godson.

      ‘He’s started school and loves it,’ she says, beaming, as she always does at the mention of his name.

      I can hardly believe it’s only six years ago that we sat here, in this very spot, by the fireplace, toasting Faye’s new, glamorous life in Dubai …

      ‘You’ve only known him a few months, Faye,’ we’d said with a mixture of excitement and consternation. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

      ‘I know it’s a gamble. But it feels right.’ She’d smiled, stroking her little bump, the huge rock on her finger catching the light from the fire. ‘And now Junior’s on the way, I just know it’s fate. I’ve waited a long time for my dashing prince to come along, and I’m lucky he found me in the nick of time, before I’m faded and forty-five, and my biological clock comes to a grinding halt.’

      ‘Ooh, it’s like Lawrence of Arabia and Love Actually all rolled into one,’ I’d said, swooning back into the sofa.

      The ‘fairy tale’ began one New Year’s Eve in the Gulf …

      Determined not to spend yet another Hogmanay in pj’s and a comfy cardie, getting slowly sozzled, whilst watching repeats of Only Fools and Horses – either that, or at some dire party, being groped at midnight by a total stranger with rubber legs and beery breath – we requested the same trip, packed our sparkly frocks, and headed off to the sun.

      So there we were, dressed to kill, huddled around the buffet table by the swimming pool, retching and spluttering into our napkins like a bunch of ladettes, having discovered the grey stuff we’d just devoured was in fact lambs’ brains, when out popped a tall, swarthy, linen-suited stranger from behind the swan ice sculpture.

      ‘Ladies, ladies, ladies! This is a great delicacy in my country,’ he’d said with mock indignation and a mischievous grin.

      We didn’t move or speak for several seconds, so mesmerised were we by this smouldering vision of exotic gorgeousness – think Antonio Banderas.

      ‘Sahir,’ he’d said in a low voice, bowing slightly, then delicately kissing our hands in turn. His long-lashed, melted-chocolate eyes held your gaze, making you feel like you were the only woman at the party – correction – on the planet. ‘I am the owner of the hotel.’ Signalling the waiter, he then called authoritatively, ‘Champagne for the ladies!’

      Up until that moment I had never believed in love at first sight, but as the strains of Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ floated across the shimmering pool, you could almost hear Cupid’s arrow whistle past and hit its targets, as surely as if Oberon himself had squeezed some magic potion in their eyes.

      Backlit by the orangey-red, evening sunlight, Faye positively dazzled. The sequins in her dress and the diamond combs in her golden hair glittered and sparkled, and Sahir fell hopelessly under her spell. He propelled her to the dance floor, and that was it: the start of a glamorous, heart-fluttering, pulse-quickening Mills-&-Boon-style love affair.

      Faye begged and shamelessly bribed crew scheduling with home baking and fresh produce from her mum’s allotment, swapping her rostered flights for Dubai night-stops. She’d be met at the airport by a chauffeured, air-conditioned Mercedes, wined and dined at the best hotels, and showered with expensive jewellery. We lived our romantic fantasies through Faye.

      Funny, isn’t it, how a girl’s overwhelming desire to be scooped up by a dark, brooding Mr Darcy in breeches and a white, floppy shirt, may cause her to misplace her common sense and ignore the sirens screaming in her ears; because, you see, for all his good looks and charm, this Arabian knight turned out to be a villain in disguise.

      Whilst eager to embrace her new culture, Faye struggled with the language, the loneliness, the heat, and the homesickness.

      ‘Strife and sacrifice are good,’ her new husband had told her coldly. ‘This teaches discipline and humility.’

      ‘But I never see you. If you’re not at the hotel, you’re either “on business” in Abu Dhabi or Bahrain. Then when you are at home, you’re tired and irritable and don’t have time for me and Tariq,’ she’d cried, painfully aware that she sounded like the archetypal nagging wife.

      ‘My mother and sisters, they help with the boy. What is wrong with you?’ Sahir sniped at her. ‘You are spoiled and ungrateful.’

      She loathed the way he always referred to Tariq as ‘the boy’, like some fusty, Dickensian father, and she hated the way his mother and older sisters took over the childcare and the running of the house, jabbering and whispering to one another, as if she were invisible.

      ‘Why can’t it just be the three of us, Sahir?’ she’d once said to him tentatively.

      ‘In my country we look after the family. Will you see them thrown out onto the street?’ he’d yelled.

      ‘I don’t mean …’

      ‘Enough! I will hear no more of this,’ he said, gripping her arm and shaking her, those same eyes that once made her heart melt, now angry and cold.

      What had happened to the bubbly, self-assured, fun-loving, golden girl? Where had she gone? Faye realised she was totally miscast in the role of the subservient, dutiful wife and daughter-in-law. There was only one thing for it: to flee her gilded cage, taking her baby chick with her.

      The story of their clandestine escape in the dead of night could have been plucked straight from the pages of an edge-of-the-seat John Grisham thriller.

      ‘Tariq is my son and he belongs here. I have contacts in high places in London. Remember this.’

      Her ex-husband’s threats regularly terrorise her mind during those drifting moments before sleep seizes control – usually in some crew hotel thousands of miles away from home.

      I hope with all my heart that this time my gut instinct is wrong, but although Faye has been granted custody, I have an uneasy feeling we haven’t seen the last of Sahir.

      Nevertheless, despite a string of seriously disastrous relationships between us, we all remain silly, romantic fools, firm in the belief that Mr Right may yet appear – ETA as yet unknown. It’s not as if we’re expecting some Greek god to come along, but even one of the Grecian-2000 variety would do very nicely, thank you.

      That is all but Rachel; she called off the search some fifteen years ago, when she married her childhood sweetheart, Dave, who is a policeman. They keep our belief in love and romance alive. Yet behind that happy, smiley exterior lurks a deep sadness, a grief, which she hides very well; we all know it’s there, lying just beneath the surface, and so we are careful never to speak of it. But sometimes when she thinks no one is looking, a shadow flickers across her face, and you may momentarily catch a glimpse of the anxious, heartbroken Rachel, and then she is gone, as the mask is raised once more.

      The town hall clock is chiming twelve by the time we totter out onto the pavement and giggle our nighty-nights and must-do-this-more-oftens. I jam on my cycle helmet and pedal hard, head bent forward against the needle-sharp rain.

      An aeroplane drones overhead, its tail-light blinking in between the squally clouds. I find myself gazing wistfully at it. My mood darkens in that instant.

      Where is Nigel right now? In mid-air, or sleeping in a king-size bed in some far-off, exotic land, a nubile,

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