Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(85)

Sahlah said nothing at first. The only answer to Rachel's sobbing was the cry of gulls and the sound of a distant speedboat hurtling madly along in the sea.

“Rachel.” Sahlah touched her shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” Rachel wept. “I didn't mean … I didn't want … I only thought …” Her sobs broke the words like finely blown glass. “You can marry Theo. I won't stop you. And then you'll see.”

“What?”

“That all I wanted was for you to be happy. And if being happy means being with Theo, then that's exactly what I want you to do.”

“I can't marry Theo.”

“You can! You can! Why d'you always say that you can't and you won't?”

“Because my family won't accept it. It isn't our way. And even if it was—”

“You can tell your dad that the next bloke he brings over from Pakistan won't do. You can say the same about the bloke after that, and the next one as well. He won't make you marry anyone. You've said that yourself. So after a time when he knows you're unhappy with the blokes he's chosen—”

“That's just the point, Rachel. I don't have the time. Can't you see that? I don't have the time.”

Rachel scoffed. “You're just twenty years old. And no one thinks twenty is old these days. Not even the Asians. Girls your age go to university every day. They take jobs as bank clerks. They study law. They learn to be doctors. They don't all get married. What's wrong with you, Sahlah? You used to want more. You used to have dreams.” Rachel felt all the hopelessness of her situation, made worse by the fact that she couldn't force her friend to understand her meaning or accept her truths. She wrestled for words and finally gave up, saying, “D'you want to be like Yumn? Is that what you want?”

“I am like Yumn.”

“Oh right,” Rachel noted sardonically. “Just exactly like. With your body going completely to seed and nothing to look forward to ’cept a spreading bum and a baby every year.”

“That's right,” Sahlah said, and her voice was desolate. “Rachel, that's just exactly right.”

“It isn't! You don't have to be that way. You're clever. You're pretty. You can be more.”

“You aren't listening to me,” Sahlah said. “You haven't heard, so you don't understand. I don't have time. I don't have options. Not any longer, if I ever did. I am like Yumn. Just exactly like Yumn.”

Rachel felt one final reflex protestation rise to her lips. But this time Sahlah's expression stopped it. She was watching her so intently, her dark eyes so pained, that Rachel's remark was quashed. She breathed in to say bitterly, “You've gone half-cracked if you think you're like Yumn,” but the words were a fire thoroughly doused by what Sahlah's face was telling her.

“Yumn,” Rachel said on the breath she'd taken to excoriate her friend. “Oh m’ God, Sahlah. Yumn. D'you mean … You and Theo …? You never said!” Involuntarily, her gaze went over her friend's body, so carefully concealed beneath her loose clothing.

“Yes,” Sahlah said. “Which is why Haytham agreed to move the marriage forward.”

“He knew?”

“I couldn't have pretended the baby was his. Even if I'd thought I could do it, I had to tell him. He'd come here to marry me, but he'd been content to wait a bit—perhaps for six months—to give both of us time to get to know each other. I had to tell him there was no time. What could I say? Truth was my only option.”

Rachel felt staggered by the immensity of what her friend was telling her, taken in the context of her background, her religion, and her culture. And then she saw—even as she hated herself for seeing it—the possibility of salvation. Because if Haytham Querashi already knew that Theo Shaw was Sahlah's lover, then giving him that receipt, saying mysteriously, “Ask Sahlah about this,” and waiting for the desired result was behaviour for which she could forgive herself. She would only have been telling him something he already knew, accepted, and had come to terms with … if Sahlah had spoken the entire truth to him. “Did he know about Theo?” Rachel asked, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt for affirmation. “Did you tell him about Theo?”

“That's what you did for me,” Sahlah said.

Rachel's hope died again, and this time completely. “Who else knows?”

“No one. Yumn suspects. She would do, wouldn't she? She knows the signs well enough. But I've said nothing to her, and no one else knows.”

“Not Theo?”

Sahlah lowered her gaze, and Rachel followed this to her hands, which were clasped in her lap. The knuckles were whitened and they grew whiter. As if Theo Shaw's name had not come up, Sahlah said, “Haytham knew how little time we had to do the normal things couples do before they marry. Once I told him about my … about the baby, he didn't want me to be humiliated. He agreed to marriage as soon as possible.” She blinked slowly, as if to erase a memory. “Rachel, Haytham Querashi was a very good man.”

Rachel wanted to tell her that in addition to being a very good man, it was also likely that Haytham Querashi was a man who didn't want to bear the scorn of people within their community who would despise him for marrying an unchaste woman. It had been to his advantage as well that they marry as quickly as possible so as to pass the child off as his, no matter how light the colour of the baby's skin. But instead, Rachel thought about Theo Shaw, Sahlah's professed love for him, the knowledge she herself now possessed, and what she could do with it to make things right. But she had to know for certain first. She didn't want to take another misstep.