able to even see him, who knows what happens next? Certainly not me! All I can do is keep going.’
She suspected she sounded hard and uncaring, but from the moment she’d agreed to carry a child for her brother and his partner, an agreement made, as Gillian had reminded her, after much soul-searching, she’d steeled herself not to get emotionally involved with a baby that would never be hers. She’d played it music Bill and Oliver loved, told it long stories about its parents, cautious always to remember it was their baby, not hers.
It would never be hers.
Now its future was as uncertain as her own, and she had no idea which way to turn. No wonder the challenge the man had offered had seemed like a lifeline—a tiny chink of light shining through the dark, enveloping cloud.
Then another thought struck her. Had the man said ‘our’ departure? Did he intend to hang around?
She felt a shiver travel down her spine, and her toes curled again …
Khalifa sat in the hospital’s boardroom, listening to his lawyers speaking to their counterparts from the hospital, but his mind was on a woman with heavy-framed glasses, a pregnant woman who seemed totally uninvolved in her own pregnancy. Zara had been transformed by hers, overjoyed by the confirmation, then delighting in every little detail, so wrapped up in the changes happening in her body that any interest she might ever have had in her husband—not much, he had to admit—had disappeared.
To be fair to her, the arranged marriage had suited him as he’d been building the hospital at the time, busy with the thousand details that had always seemed to need his attention, far too busy to be dealing with wooing a woman. Later, Zara’s involvement in her pregnancy had freed him from guilt that he spent so little time with her, though in retrospect …
He passed a hand across his face, wiping away any trace of emotion that might have slipped through his guard. Emotion weakened a man and the history of his tribe, stretching back thousands of years, proved it had survived because of the strength of its leaders. Now, in particular, with El Tinine taking its place among its oil-rich neighbours and moving into a modern world, he, the leader, had to be particularly strong.
‘Of course we will do all we can to assist you in selecting the equipment you need for the new unit in your hospital,’ the chief medical officer was saying. ‘Dr Jones has updated our unit as and when funds became available. She knows what works best, particularly in a small unit where you are combining different levels of patient need. I’ll get my secretary to put together a list of equipment we’ve bought recently and the suppliers’ brochures. Dr Jones will be able to tell you why she made the choices she did.’
He hurried out of the room.
Dr Jones … The name echoed in Khalifa’s head.
Something about the woman was bothering him, something that went beyond her apparent disregard for her pregnancy. Was it because she’d challenged him?
Not something Zara had ever done.
But Zara had been his wife, not his colleague, so it couldn’t be that …
Was it because Dr Jones running from something—the father of her baby?—that she’d leapt at his offer to come to Al Tinine? There had been no consultation with anyone, no consideration of family or friends, just how soon could she get away.
Yes, she was running from something, it had to be that, but did it matter? And why was he thinking about her when he had so much else he hoped to achieve in this short visit?
It had to be her pregnancy and the memories it had stirred.
The guilt …
He, too, left the room, making his way back to the neonatal ward, telling himself he wanted to inspect it more closely, telling himself it had nothing to do with Dr Jones.
She was bent over the crib she’d been called to earlier and as she straightened he could read the concern on her face. She left the unit, sliding open the door and almost knocking him over in her haste to get to the little alcove.
‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, then stopped as she realised whom she’d bumped into. ‘Oh, it’s you! I am sorry—I’m a klutz, always knocking things over or running into people. My family said it was because I live in my head, and I suppose that’s right at the moment. The baby in that crib was abandoned—found wrapped in newspaper in a park—and the police haven’t been able to trace the mother. We call her Alexandra, after the park.’
Liz heard her rush of words and wondered what it was about this man that turned her into a blithering idiot, admitting to her clumsiness, thrusting ancient family history at a total stranger.
‘The baby was found in a park?’
Despite the level of disbelief in the man’s voice, her toes curled again. This was ridiculous. It had to stop. Probably it was hormonal …
‘Last week,’ she told him, ‘and, really, there’s nothing much wrong with her—she was a little hypothermic, occasional apnoea, but now …’
‘Who will take her?’
Liz sighed.
‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ she admitted. ‘She’ll be taken into care. And while I know the people who care for babies and children are excellent, she won’t get a permanent placement because she obviously has a mother somewhere. And right now when she desperately needs to bond with someone, she’ll be going somewhere on a temporary basis.’
Why was she telling this stranger her worries? Liz wondered, frowning at the man as if he’d somehow drawn the words from her by …
Osmosis?
Magic?
She had no idea by what. Perhaps it was because he was here that she’d rattled on, because worrying about Alexandra was preferable to worrying about her own problems.
‘You think the mother might return to claim her? Is that why the placement is temporary?’
Liz shook her head.
‘I doubt she’ll return to claim her. If she’d wanted her, why leave her in the first place? But if the authorities find the mother, they will do what they can to help her should she decide to keep the baby. It’s a delicate situation but, whatever happens, until little Alexandra is officially given up for adoption, she’ll be in limbo.’
Like me, Liz thought, and almost patted her burgeoning belly.
The man was frowning at her.
‘You are concerned?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m concerned,’ Liz told him. ‘This is a baby we’re talking about. She’s already had a rough start, so she deserves the very best.’
It didn’t add up, Khalifa decided. This woman’s attitude to a stranger’s child, and her apparent disregard for her own pregnancy, although perhaps he was reading her wrongly. Perhaps this was her work face, and at home she talked and sang to her unborn child as much as Zara had to hers.
She and her partner talked and sang—
‘Will
