Deception on His Mind (34 page)

By the seafront, however, Rachel had realised that she couldn't possibly outrace the police. And if the detective went to Sahlah's house first, matters could even turn out worse. Sahlah's mum or that slimy Yumn would tell the detective the truth—that Sahlah had gone to work with her father
(despite
the untimely death of her intended, which is what Yumn would no doubt add)—so the sergeant would take herself off to the mustard factory next. And if she showed up while Rachel was there, trying to rationalise what Sahlah would surely believe was an unforgivable betrayal—not to mention trying to warn her friend of an impending police visit that would be rife with questions to take her by surprise … How would it look? It would look like someone was bloody well guilty of something, all right. And while it was true that Rachel
was
guilty, she wasn't guilty of the Big Thing. She hadn't harmed Haytham Querashi at all. Only … Well, perhaps that wasn't quite true when one thought about it, was it?

She'd lifted her bicycle onto the pavement and rolled it to the seawall. She'd leaned it against the barrier and sat for a good quarter of an hour, feeling the sun's heat rise from the concrete like blistering bubbles against her bum. She wasn't ready to go back to the shop and face her mother's probing questions. She couldn't get to Sahlah before the police. So she'd realised that she had to come up with a place to go until the coast was clear, allowing her to bike back to the mustard factory and have a word with her friend.

Which is how she finally ended up where she was at the moment: at the Cliff top Snuggeries. It had been the only place she could think of.

She'd had to retrace her route to get here, bypassing the High Street and Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery by pedalling along the Marine Parade instead. This was a rougher go because she had to wend her way up the steep acclivity of the shoreline's Upper Parade, an activity that was sheer torture in the heat, but she had no real choice in the matter. Trying to get to the Snuggeries via Church Road's gentler slope would have meant pedalling up the High Street, directly in front of Racon Jewellery. One glimpse of Rachel darting by on her bike and Connie would have been out of the shop in a fury, screeching like the victim of a shotgun hold-up.

As a result, Rachel had arrived at the Snuggeries in a virtual lather. She'd dropped her bicycle next to a dusty bed of begonias, and she'd staggered round to the back of the flats. Here there was a garden comprising a strip of sunbrowned lawn, three narrow flower beds planted with drooping cornflowers, tickseed, and daisies, two stone birdbaths, and a wooden bench. Rachel sank onto this. It faced not the sea but the flats themselves, and they looked at her in a silent reproach that she could barely tolerate. They displayed what she'd loved best about them: the balconies above and the terraces below, both of which looked out not only on the garden but on the winding path of Southcliff Promenade, which curved above the sea.

We're lost to you, lost to you, the Clifftop Snuggeries seemed to be saying. Your well-laid plans went awry, Rachel Winfield, and where are you now?

Rachel turned from the sight of them, her throat tight and sore. She rubbed the back of her arm against her forehead and wished for a Twister, imagining how soothing the lemon and lime ice cream would have felt as it slid down her throat. She pivoted on the bench and looked out at the sea. The sun blazed above without a hint of pity, while far out on the horizon, the thin bank of fog lay as it had for days.

Rachel balanced her chin on her fist, her fist on the back of the bench. Her eyes stung as if a fierce salty wind were blowing, and she blinked hard and fast to make the tears disappear. She wished herself anywhere but where she was, facing the lonely place that anger, resentment, and jealousy had taken her.

What did it really mean to pledge yourself to another person? At one time she would have been able to answer the question with ease. Pledging yourself meant extending your hand and holding within it another's heart, the secrets of her soul, and the dearest of her dreams. It meant offering safety, a haven where anything was possible and everything between two kindred souls was perfectly understood. Pledging yourself meant saying “We're equals” and “Whatever trouble comes, we'll face it together.” That's what she'd thought about pledging at one time. How artless her promise of loyalty had been.

But they
had
begun as equals, she and Sahlah, two schoolgirls who were last chosen for teams, who weren't allowed, invited—or who just didn't dare—to attend their schoolmates’ parties or dances, whose coyly decorated valentine shoeboxes at the back of their classroom in junior school would have gone empty had each of them not remembered the other and what it felt like to be out in the cold. She and Sahlah had indeed begun as equals. It's where they finished that off-balanced the scales.

Rachel swallowed against the tight soreness in her throat. She hadn't meant harm to anyone, really. She'd only meant the truth to come out. It was all for the best when people learned the truth. Wasn't it better than living a lie?

But Rachel knew that the real lie was the one she was telling herself right now. And the evidence of this was right behind her, played out in brick with ruched curtains at the windows and a red FOR SALE sticker pasted across its door.

She didn't want to think of the flat. “Our very last one,” the salesman had called it, twinkling at her meaningfully and doing his best to ignore the freak-show nature of her face. “Just the thing for a starter home. That's what you're looking for, I'll wager, isn't it? Who's the lucky bloke?”

But Rachel hadn't thought of marriage and children when she'd walked through the flat, examining cupboards, looking out at the view, swinging open windows. She'd thought of Sahlah. She'd thought of cooking dinner together, of sitting in front of the grate that held that glowing hopelessly artificial fire, of drinking tea on the minuscule terrace in the spring, of talking and dreaming and being to each other what they'd been for a decade: a very best friend.

She hadn't been looking for a flat when she'd stumbled across Clifftop Snuggeries’ final unit. She'd been bicycling back from Sahlah's. It had been a visit like many other visits they'd had together over the years: talk, laughter, music, and tea but this time interrupted by Yumn's bursting into the room with one of her imperious demands. She wanted Sahlah to give her a pedicure. At once. Now. It had made no difference that Sahlah was entertaining a guest. Yumn had given an order, and she expected it to be obeyed. Rachel had noticed how Sahlah changed when her sister-in-law spoke. The joyous girl she was became a submissive servant: obedient, docile, and once again the frightened child at the junior school who'd been teased and bullied.

So when Rachel came to the red billboard with the announcement FINAL
PHASE!
ALL THE MOD CONS! emblazoned on it, she'd turned her bicycle off Westberry Way and coasted up the drive to the flats. What she'd encountered in the salesman was not an overweight and overeager middle-aged failure with a stain on his tie, but a purveyor of dreams.

But dreams, she'd learned, had a way of fracturing and leading one to disappointment. Perhaps, therefore, it was better never to dream at all. Because when one learned to harbour hopes, one also—

“Rachel.”

Rachel started. She swung round from her view of the endless level sheet of North Sea. Sahlah was standing before her. Her
dupattā
had fallen round her shoulders, and her face was grave. The strawberry birthmark on her cheek had deepened in colour, signalling as it always did the depth of a feeling that she couldn't hide.

“Sahlah! How did you …? What're you …?” Rachel didn't know how to begin what they had to say to each other.

“I went to the shop first. Your mum said you'd run off after the woman from Scotland Yard came round. I thought you might come here.”

“’Cause you know me,” Rachel said miserably. She plucked at a gold thread in her skirt. It wove brightly through the red and blue swirls of the material's pattern. “You know me better than anyone, Sahlah. And I know you.”

“I thought we knew each other,” Sahlah said. “But I'm not sure now. I'm not even sure we're friends any longer.”

Rachel didn't know what hurt worse, the knowledge that she'd dealt Sahlah a terrible blow or the blow that Sahlah was dealing in return. She couldn't look at her because at the moment it felt like looking at her friend would be opening up for a more grievous injury than she could bear.

“Why did you give the receipt to Haytham? I know he had it because of you, Rachel. Your mum wouldn't have been likely to pass it on. But I don't understand why you gave it to him.”

“You told me you loved Theo.” Rachel's tongue felt thick and her mind felt desperate for an answer that could explain what was even to herself inexplicable. “You
said
you loved him.”

“I can't be with Theo. I told you that as well. I said my family would never allow it.”

“And it broke your heart. You said that, Sahlah. You said, ‘I love him. He's like the other half of myself.’ That's what you said.”

“I also said that we couldn't marry, despite what I wanted, despite everything we shared and hoped and …” Sahlah's voice faltered. Rachel looked up. Her friend's eyes were liquid, and she turned her head away abruptly, looking north towards the pier where Theo Shaw was. After a moment she went on. “I said that when the time came, I would have to marry the man chosen by my parents. We'd talked about that, you and I. You can't deny it. I said, ‘Theo's lost to me, Rachel.’ You remember that. You knew I could never be with him. So what did you hope to accomplish by giving the receipt to Haytham?”

“You didn't love Haytham.”

“Yes. All right. I didn't love Haytham. And he didn't love me.”

“It's not right to marry when you don't love each other. You can't be happy when you don't love each other. It's like starting out life in the middle of a lie.”

Sahlah came to the bench and sat. Rachel lowered her head. She could see the edge of her friend's linen trousers, her slender foot, and the strap of her sandal. The sight of these parts of the whole that was Sahlah struck Rachel with sadness. Never in years had she felt so alone.

“You knew my parents wouldn't allow a marriage to Theo. They would've cast me out of my family. But you told Haytham about Theo anyway—”

Rachel's head flew up in swift reaction. “Not his name. I swear. I didn't tell Haytham his name.”

“Because,” Sahlah continued, and she spoke more to herself than to Rachel, as if she were in the process of deducing Rachel's motivation as she went along, “you hoped Haytham would end his engagement to me. And then what?” Sahlah gestured towards the row of flats, and for the first time Rachel saw them as Sahlah doubtless saw them: cheaply built, without character or distinction. “I would have been free to live here with you? Did you expect my father would really have allowed that?”

“You love Theo,” Rachel said weakly. “You said.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you were acting in
my
interests?” Sahlah asked. “Are you saying that you would've been pleased had Theo and I married? I don't believe you. Because there's another truth that you're not admitting: Had I tried to marry Theo—which I wouldn't, of course—but had I tried, you would have done something to stop that as well.”

“I wouldn't!”

“We would have planned to run off because that's the only way I could have managed it. I would have told you: my best friend. And you would have made certain it didn't happen. Probably by telling my father in advance. Or by telling Munhannad or even by—”

“No! I never! I
never!”
Rachel couldn't prevent the tears, and she hated herself for a weakness which she knew that her friend would never show. She swung round again, her face to the sea. The sun beat on her, heating her tears as soon as she shed them, heating them so quickly that they dried on her skin and she felt the pulling tightness of their salt.

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.”