Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(12)

Rachel started at her full view of Sahlah's face. Her friend looked ill, and Rachel immediately forgot everything she'd rehearsed. Impulsively, she held out the gift she'd brought. She said, “This is for you. It's a present, Sahlah,” and at once felt like a miserable fool.

Slowly, Sahlah brushed the wrinkles from a nappie. She made the first fold in the material, lining up the corners with intense concentration.

Rachel said, “I didn't mean any of it. What do I know about love anyway? Me, of all people. And I know even less about marriage, don't I? Especially when you consider my circumstances. I mean, my mum was married for about ten minutes once. And she'd done it for love, according to her. So there you have it.”

Sahlah made two more folds in the nappie and placed it on the pile at the end of the ironing board. She walked to the window and checked on her nephews. It seemed a needless thing to do, Rachel thought. They were sleeping like the dead.

Rachel winced at the mental figure of speech. She had—she absolutely had—to avoid using or even thinking that word for the duration of her visit to this house. She said, “I'm sorry, Sahlah.”

“You didn't need to bring a gift,” Sahlah replied in a low voice.

“Do you forgive me? Please say that you forgive me. I couldn't bear it if you won't forgive me.”

“You don't need to apologise for anything, Rachel.”

“That means you don't forgive me, doesn't it?”

The delicately carved bone beads of Sahlah's earrings clicked together as she shook her head. But she said nothing.

“Will you take the present?” Rachel asked. “When I saw it, I thought of you. Open it. Please.” She wanted so much to bury the acrimony that had coloured their last conversation. She was desperate to take back her words and her accusations because she wanted to be back on her old footing with her friend.

After a moment of reflection, Sahlah gave a gentle sigh and took the box. She studied the wrapping paper before she removed it, and Rachel was pleased to see her smile at the drawings of tumbling kittens in a tangle of wool. She touched a fingertip to one of them. Then she eased the ribbon off the package and slid her finger beneath the Sellotape. When she had the top off the package, she lifted out the garment and ran her fingers along one of its golden threads.

As a peace offering, Rachel knew she had chosen well. The sherwani coat was long. Its collar was high. It offered respect to Sahlah's culture as well as to her religion. Worn with trousers, it would cover her completely. Her parents—whose good will and understanding were essential to Rachel's plans—could only approve. But at the same time, the coat underscored the value that Rachel placed upon her friendship with Sahlah. It was silk, liberally threaded with strands of gold. Its price declared itself everywhere, and Rachel had dipped deeply into her savings to pay for the garment. But that was of no account if it brought Sahlah back to her.

“The colour's what caught my eye,” Rachel said. “Burnt sienna's perfect with your skin. Put it on.” She gave a forced little laugh as Sahlah hesitated, her head bent to the coat and her index finger circling the edge of one of its buttons. Real horn, those buttons, Rachel wanted to say. But she couldn't get the words out. She was too afraid. “Don't be shy, Sahlah. Put it on. Don't you like it?”

Sahlah placed the coat on the ironing board and folded its arms as carefully as she had done the nappies. She reached for one of the dangling ornaments on her beaded necklace, and she held it like a talisman. “It's too much, Rachel,” she finally said. “I can't accept it. I'm sorry.”

Rachel felt sudden tears well in her eyes. She said, “But we always … We're friends. Aren't we friends?”

“We are.”

“Then—”

“I can't reciprocate. I haven't the money, and even if I had …” Sahlah went back to folding the garment, letting her sentence hang.

Rachel finished it for her. She'd known her friend long enough to realise what she was thinking. “You'd give it to your parents. You wouldn't spend it on me.”

“The money. Yes.” It's what we generally do was what she didn't add. She'd said it so often over the eleven years of their friendship—and she'd repeated it endlessly since first making Rachel aware of her intentions to marry a Pakistani stranger chosen by her parents—that there was no need for her to tack the sentence on to the declarations she'd already made.

Before coming to the house, Rachel hadn't considered the possibility that her visit to Sahlah might actually make her feel worse than she'd been feeling for the last few weeks. She'd seen her future as a form of syllogism: Sahlah's fiancé was dead; Sahlah was alive; ergo, Sahlah was free to resume her position as Rachel's best friend and the dearest companion of her future life. Apparently, however, this wasn't to be.

Rachel's stomach churned. She felt light in the head. After everything she'd done, after everything she'd known, after everything she'd been told and had loyally kept to herself because that's what friends did when they were best friends, right …?

“I want you to have it.” Rachel strove for the sort of tone one used when paying a visit to a house where death had paid a visit first. “I just came to say that I'm most awfully sorry about … well, about your … loss.”