A Whisper of Disgrace

‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ she said.

‘I wish that too.’

She wriggled her body against him. ‘And I promise I won’t ever be late again.’

Kulal gave an odd kind of smile before brushing his lips over hers one final time. ‘Let’s hope not.’

Rosa went to the studios, but as the crew began to mike her up for her segment, she thought that they didn’t seem as chatty as usual. And afterwards, when she went to the dressing room to wipe off her make-up, there was a knock at the door.

It was Arnaud Bertrand and she raised her eyebrows in surprise, because he didn’t usually come to her dressing room.

‘Have you got a minute?’ he said awkwardly. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Talk away.’ She smiled at him in the mirror. ‘Do you mean here, or would you rather go next door and we can get some coffee?’

‘No, here is fine.’ He looked slightly uncomfortable, his hands digging deep into the pockets of his trousers. ‘Rosa, there’s no easy way to say this, but I’m afraid we’re pulling your slot.’

She turned round. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bosses have decided that it’s no longer working.’

She gazed at him blankly. ‘But … I don’t understand. You told me that everyone loved the feature. You said that you hadn’t had so much fan mail since Johnny Depp gave that interview.’

He didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘I’m afraid it’s out of my hands.’

Rosa frowned as her heart began to pound loudly in her chest. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’

Arnaud looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Nothing has happened.’

‘You’re not a very good liar, Arnaud.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Has this got something to do with my husband?’

‘I can’t—’

‘Oh, I think you can. Tell me!’ she said, and then softened her voice. ‘Please.’

There was a moment of silence before he gave a sigh of resignation. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you—but you didn’t hear it from me. It does have something to do with your husband. In fact, it has everything to do with him. He’s threatened to pull out of the documentary if we don’t stop …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘“Monopolising my wife” was how I think he phrased it.’

Rosa flinched to think that any man could be old-fashioned and chauvinistic enough to march up to a bunch of TV executives and tell them something like that. ‘And you’re willing to just cave in?’ she questioned heatedly. ‘To let this go just because you want to make some damned documentary about his country?’

Arnaud shook his head. ‘It’s not just the documentary!’ he said. ‘It’s everything else. Your husband is a powerful man, Rosa—not just in Paris, but pretty much everywhere else. And you don’t make enemies of men like that.’

The realisation of what Kulal had done suddenly hit her and Rosa felt sick. Her heart was pounding and her chest felt so tight that Arnaud reached out towards her in alarm.

‘Mon dieu!’ he exclaimed. ‘But your face is like chalk! Sit down, and I will fetch you some water.’

But she shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said fiercely. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? She wanted to regain her honour and her pride and there was only one way she was going to do that.

She flipped through her address book before going outside, ignoring Kulal’s official limousine which was waiting for her just as it always was. Quickly, she darted down one of the side streets and felt a flash of triumph as she gave her bodyguard the slip, before clicking onto the map section of her phone. Her footsteps were rapid as she walked to the sixteenth arrondissement until she had reached the ornate nineteenth-century building which housed Kulal’s foundation.

She realised that it was the first time she’d ever been inside the building and she saw the receptionist’s look of shock as she walked in.

‘I’m Rosa,’ she said automatically, knowing how hot and dishevelled she must look after her dash across the city.

‘You are the sheikh’s wife,’ breathed the receptionist, her look of shock deepening. ‘And I have seen you on the television.’

‘Where is he?’ Rosa asked quietly. ‘Where is the sheikh?’

‘I’m afraid he is in a meeting, and I’ll have to—’

‘Where is he?’ Rosa repeated, and then spotted the staircase on the opposite side of the lobby. He would be at the top of the building—of course he would—because powerful people always chose their vantage points up high, so that they could look down on the rest of the world. She ran up the stairs, two at a time, until there was nowhere left to go and she passed another receptionist who had clearly been warned that trouble was on the way. The woman shot a horrified glance in the direction of a set of double doors and that look told Rosa everything she needed to know.