Master of the Desert

As he did so the light streamed in, and she noticed something glinting so softly she almost missed it. Lying forgotten in the dust, a tiny necklace sparkled in the light. She scooped it up and slipped it into her pocket. It was a diamond-studded heart on a broken chain, and carried enough vibrations for her to know that it must have landed on the floor when someone had snatched it from their neck as they ran out of the room.

Her mother, maybe—tearing off the necklace before she’d left the citadel for good?

Ra’id remained silent in the background as she walked slowly round the room. It was impossible not to notice the many photographs, poignant reminders of a small boy with dark, curly hair and bronzed skin—a boy who looked a lot like Ra’id. ‘So, this is my brother,’ Antonia murmured, lifting up one of the frames to study the image more closely before carefully putting the frame back in its place.

‘This room hasn’t been touched since your mother left—in a hurry, I’m told.’

And who could blame her? Antonia thought, shivering as she remembered the tiny heart on its broken chain currently residing in her pocket. ‘It seems unfair that anyone would accuse Helena of deserting her little boy.’

‘What would you call it?’ Ra’id demanded from his very different perspective. ‘When she was heard crying out that Razi was the worst mistake she had ever made?’

‘I would call this imprisonment,’ Antonia said, gazing at the heavy door with its prominent lock and bolt. ‘Maybe my mother was no longer attractive to your father once she’d had a baby—I don’t know the reason. She was frightened and very young. But I do know Helena must have been distraught, losing her child, and she wouldn’t have kept all these photographs around her if she hadn’t loved her son.’ Antonia’s hand flew to her mouth as she stared around what to her seemed little better than a prison cell. ‘I’m not surprised Helena seized the opportunity to escape.’

‘And yet you want to live here?’

‘I wouldn’t be living here under duress.’

And she was a very different woman from her mother, Antonia realised, knowing all the fripperies of life she had previously thought so important to her had only left her hungry for real-life experience, like an unrelieved diet of canapés when what she longed for was steak and chips. ‘And any time I want to leave, I’ll just have to jump in the car…’ The words froze on her lips as Ra’id stared at her, and somewhere deep inside her heart she felt a stab of panic.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HE LEFT her tidying her mother’s room. He couldn’t bring himself to stand over her, and any thought of gloating as Antonia viewed the sad trivia of a life given over to pleasure had vanished. Whether he cared to accept it or not, Antonia had made him see things differently. Helena had been a victim, and a very young victim at that, with no means of helping herself. He could see that now, and his father should have seen it years back, but it was too late to revisit the past and change the mistakes that had been made. Instead, he chose to do something about the present, which in this case meant getting down and dirty with the plumbing to see if it was possible to bring water here.

It would take major restoration work, he concluded, but it could be done. He found he was pleased about that as he closed the door on the ancient boiler-room and walked up the steps into the light. He was just brushing off his hands when he spotted Antonia heaving a sack out of the building. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said, racing across the courtyard to lift it out of her hands.

She squinted her eyes against the sun in order to stare up at him. ‘Collecting things for the thrift shop. You do have them in Sinnebar?’

‘Yes, we do.’ He gave himself a moment to rejig his air of command into something more accommodating for the mother of his child—a woman so determined to go ahead with her plan it wouldn’t have surprised him to see Antonia with a spade, digging a trench to change the water course by herself, if she had to.

‘You collect and I’ll carry the bag for you,’ he suggested, wishing he could remain immune to the fact that Antonia had obviously been crying. She’d put on a brave face for him while they had been in her mother’s room, but the moment he had left it, she must have broken down. ‘We’ll stack them in here,’ he said briskly, trying to harden his heart to her and failing miserably. ‘I’ll have everything collected and cleaned, and then distributed to the appropriate agencies.’

‘So you do have a heart, Ra’id,’ she said.