Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(64)

She ducked out of the shop but glanced back quickly. Both women were watching her. Whatever they knew, they would talk about eventually. People did that when the conditions were right. Perhaps, Barbara thought, the sight of that missing golden bracelet would light a fire beneath the Winfields and defrost their tongues. She needed to find it.


RACHEL LOCKED HERSELF in the loo. The moment the sergeant moved out of their range of vision, she bolted into the back room. She dashed down the passage created between the wall and a freestanding row of shelves. The loo was next to the shop's back door, and she made for this and bolted the door behind her.

She pressed her hands together to stop their shaking, and when she was unsuccessful at doing this, she used both of them to turn on the tap in the small, triangular basin. She was burning hot and icy cold at the same time, which didn't seem possible. She knew there was a procedure to follow when physical sensations like these came over one, but she couldn't have said for love or money what the procedures were. She settled on splashing her face with water, and she was splashing away when Connie banged on the door.

“You get out here, Rachel Lynn,” she ordered. “We got some talking to do, you and me.”

Rachel gasped, “Can't. I'm being sick.”

“Being sick, my little toe,” Connie snapped. “You going to open this door for me, or am I going to axe it in to get you?”

“I had to go the whole time she was here,” Rachel said, and she lifted her skirt to sit on the toilet for the complete effect.

“I thought you said you were being sick.” Connie's voice had the sound of triumph associated with mothers who catch their daughters in a lie. “Isn't that what you just said? So what is it, Rachel Lynn? You sick? You going? What?”

“Not that kind of sick,” Rachel said. “The other. You know. So c'n I have a bit of privacy, please?”

There was a silence. Rachel could imagine her mother tapping her small and shapely foot against the floor. It was what she usually did when she was planning a course of action.

“Give me a minute, Mum,” Rachel pleaded. “My stomach's all clenched up on itself. Listen. Is that the shop door ringing?”

“Don't play with me, girl. I'll be watching the clock. And I know how long it takes to do what in the loo. You got that, Rache?”

Rachel heard her mother's sharp footsteps fading as she headed to the front of the building. She knew that she'd bought herself a few minutes only, and she struggled to gather her fragmented thoughts together in order to form them into a plan. You're a fighter, Rache, she told herself in much the same mental voice she'd used in childhood when preparing every morning for another round of bullying from her merciless schoolmates. So think. Think. It doesn't matter two pins if everyone in the world goes and lets you down, Rache, because you've still got yourself and yourself is what counts.

But she hadn't believed that two months before when Sahlah Malik had revealed her decision to submit herself to her parents’ wishes for an arranged marriage to an unknown man from Pakistan. Instead of remembering that she still had herself, she'd been horrified at the thought of losing Sahlah. After which, she'd felt both lost and abandoned. And at the end, she'd believed herself cruelly betrayed. The ground upon which she'd long had faith that her future was built had fractured suddenly and irreparably beneath her, and in that instant she'd forgotten life's most important lesson completely. For the ten years following her birth, she'd lived with the certain belief that success, failure, and happiness were available to her through the effort of a single individual on earth: Rachel Lynn Winfield. Thus, the taunts of her schoolmates had stung her but they'd never scarred her, and she'd grown adept at forging her own way. But meeting Sahlah had changed all that, and she'd allowed herself to see their friendship as central to what the future held.

Oh, it had been stupid—stupid—to think in such a fashion, and she knew that now. But in those first terrible moments when Sahlah had revealed her intentions in that calm and gentle way of hers—the way that had made her, too, the victim of bullies who wouldn't dare to raise a nasty hand against Sahlah Malik or to voice a slur about the hue of her skin whenever Rachel Winfield was in the vicinity—all that Rachel could think was, What about me? What about us? What about our plans? We were saving up to put money on a flat, we were going to have pine furniture in it with big deep cushions, we were going to set up a workshop for you on one side of your bedroom so you could make your jewellery without your nephews getting into your trays, we were going to collect shells on the beach, we were going to have two cats, you were going to teach me to cook, and I was going to teach you … what? What on earth could I have taught you, Sahlah? What on earth had I ever to offer you?

But she hadn't said that. Instead, she'd said, “Married? You? Married, Sahlah? Who? Not … but I thought you always said that you couldn't—”

“A man from Karachi. A man my parents have chosen for me,” Sahlah had said.

“You mean …? You can't mean a stranger, Sahlah. You can't mean someone you don't even know.”

“It's the way my parents married. It's the way most of my people marry.”

“Your people, your people,” Rachel had scoffed. She'd been trying to laugh the idea off, to make Sahlah see how ludicrous it was. “You're English,” she said. “You were born in England. You're no more Asian than I am. What d'you know about him, anyway? Is he fat? Is he ugly? Does he have false teeth? Does he have hairs sprouting from his nose and his ears? And how old is he? Is he some bloke of sixty with varicose veins?”