Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(147)

Sahlah waited. There was only one reason for her friend to appear at the factory. Rachel was her route to the means by which she would begin to put her life back in order, and her arrival suggested that the means were at hand. It wouldn't be easy to arrange to be gone for the length of time necessary to take care of her problem—her parents had long ago made it their practice to hold her accountable for every moment of her day—but with Rachel's help, surely she'd be able to create a plausible excuse for an absence whose length would guarantee a successful visit to a doctor or a clinic or a casualty ward where someone skilled in the process could end the nightmare that she'd been living for the last—

Sahlah schooled herself to draw past the desperation. Rachel was here, she said silently. Rachel had come.

“Can you talk?” Rachel asked. “I mean”—with a glance towards the door leading into the administration offices—”maybe outside is better than here. You know.”

Sahlah rose and followed her friend out into the sunlight. Despite the heat, she felt unaccountably cool, but the coolness ran beneath her skin as if her veins argued with what her senses perceived.

Rachel found a shady spot where the factory wall cast a shadow in the afternoon light. She faced Sahlah, looking beyond her shoulder to the sprawl of the industrial estate, as if the mattress factory held a fascination that she had to experience immediately.

Just when Sahlah was beginning to wonder if her friend would ever speak, Rachel finally did so. “I can't,” she said.

The coolness beneath Sahlah's skin seemed to spread into her lungs. “Can't what?”

“You know.”

“I don't. Tell me.”

Rachel moved her eyes from the mattress factory to Sahlah's face. Sahlah wondered that she'd never noticed before how misshapen those eyes were, one slightly lower than the other and too widely set—even after surgery—to be deemed natural. It was one of the features of Rachel that Sahlah had disciplined herself to overlook. Rachel couldn't help the way she'd been born. No one could.

“I've thought and thought,” Rachel said. “All last night. I didn't even sleep. I can't help you with …you know …with what you asked.”

At first Sahlah didn't want to believe that Rachel was talking about the abortion. But there was no avoiding the implacable resolve that settled the odd, uneven features on her friend's face.

All Sahlah could manage to say was “You can't.”

“Sahlah, I talked to Theo,” Rachel said in a rush. “I know, I know. You didn't want me to, but your thinking's wrong cause you're in a state. It's only fair for Theo to have some say in this. You got to see that.”

“This isn't Theo's concern.” Sahlah could hear the stiffness in her voice.

“Tell that to Theo,” Rachel said. “He sicked up in a rubbish bin when I told him what you were planning to do. Now, don't look like that, Sahlah. I know what you're thinking. Like his being sick meant he didn't mean to do anything to help you. That's what I decided at first as well. But I thought and thought about this all last night, and I just know that if you wait and give things a chance to settle down and give Theo a chance to do right—”

“You didn't listen,” Sahlah finally cut in. Her body was tense with the need to take some sort of action and take it at once. She recognised the panic for what it was, but recognition did nothing to quell it. “Did you hear anything I said to you yesterday, Rachel? I can't marry Theo, I can't be with Theo, I can't even talk to Theo publicly. Why won't you see that?”

“Okay, I see it,” Rachel said. “And maybe you won't be able to talk to him for a while. Maybe you won't even be able to talk to him till the baby comes. But once the baby does come … I mean, he's a human being, Sahlah. He's not a monster. He's a decent man who knows what's right. Some other bloke might look the other way forever, but not Theo Shaw. Theo's not going to reject his own baby for long. You'll see.”

Sahlah felt as if she were sinking into the lumpy, hot ground beneath her feet. “And how do you propose that I keep my family from knowing about all this? About being pregnant? About having a baby?”

“You can't,” Rachel said with perfect reason, in the voice of a girl who hadn't the slightest idea what kind of encumbrances went with being born female into a traditional Asian family. “You'll have to tell your mum and dad.”

“Rachel.” Sahlah's mind careened from one possibility to the next, each of them presenting an unacceptable alternative of what to do and how to do it. “You've got to listen to me. You've got to try to understand.”

“But it's more than just what's right for you and the baby and Theo,” Rachel said, still reason incarnate. “I thought and thought last night about what's right for me as well.”

“How does this have anything to do with you? All I need from you is information. And a little help to get me away from here—or from my parents’ house—with enough time to see a doctor.”

“But it's not like going to the market, Sahlah. You can't just pop in and say to some bloke, ‘I got a kid inside me I want to get rid of.’ We'd have to go more than once—you and me—and—”