‘Did your meeting not go well?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Better than I could ever have imagined.’ A rare take-it-or-leave-it arrogance had carried him through dinner tonight. He’d cut through the waffle and, refusing to play the games of bluff and counter-bluff, had gone straight to the bottom line, had told them what he wanted, what he was prepared to offer. Maybe his passion had convinced them. ‘Beyond the four of us at dinner tonight, you are the first to know what the world will hear two days from now. That Ramal Hamrah is about to have its own airline.’
‘Oh.’ Then, ‘That is big.’
‘Every deal is big, only the numbers change.’ Then, looking down at her, ‘When you buy your pink taxi it will be huge.’
‘It’ll be a miracle,’ she said with feeling, ‘but, if it ever happens, I promise you that I’ll look up at the stars and remind myself not to get too big for my boots.’
He took her arm as they crossed the road and, when they reached the safety of the footpath, he tucked it safely beneath his before once more looking up at the reddish haze of the sky and said, ‘Not in London, Metcalfe.’ For a moment she’d frozen, but maybe his use of her surname reassured her and, as she relaxed, he moved on. ‘I suppose you could go to the Planetarium.’
‘Not necessary. In London you don’t look up to see the stars. You look down.’ He frowned and she laughed. ‘Didn’t you know that the streets of London aren’t paved with gold, they’re paved with stars.’
‘They are?’
He looked down and then sideways, at her. ‘Obviously I’m missing something.’
‘We’re in Berkeley Square?’ she prompted. ‘And?’
‘You’ve never heard the song?’ She shook her head. ‘Why would you? It’s ancient.’
Berkeley Square … Something snagged in his memory, a scratchy old record his grandfather used to play. ‘I thought it was about a nightingale.’
‘You do know it!
‘I remember the tune.’ He hummed a snatch of it and she smiled.
‘Almost,’ she said, laughing. ‘But it’s not just the nightingale. There’s a line in there about stars too.’ She lifted her shoulders in an awkward little shrug. ‘My dad used to sing it to my mum,’ she said, as if she felt she had to explain how she knew. ‘They used to dance around the kitchen …’
‘Really?’ He found the idea enchanting. ‘Like this?’ And as he turned his arm went naturally to her waist. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Sing …’ he commanded.
Diana could not believe this was happening. There were still people about—Zahir’s kind of people, men in dinner jackets, women in evening clothes—heading towards the fashionable nightclubs in the area to celebrate some special occasion. Laughing, joking, posing as someone took photographs with a camera phone.
Maybe if she’d been dressed in a glamorous gown she wouldn’t have felt so foolish. But in her uniform …
‘Don’t!’ she begged, but Zahir caught her hand and, humming, began to spin her along the footpath. ‘Zahir …’ Then, ‘For heaven’s sake, that’s not even the right tune!’
‘No? How does it go?’
Maybe his excitement, his joy, were infectious, but somehow, before she knew it, she was singing it to him, filling gaps in the words with ‘da-da-de-dum’s and he was humming and they were dancing around Berkeley Square to a song that was old when her parents had first danced to it. A song in which the magic of falling in love made the impossible happen. Made London a place where angels dined, where nightingales sang and where the streets were paved with stars.
Dancing as if they were alone in the universe and the streets truly were paved with stars.
It was only when she came to the end of the song that she realised they had stopped dancing, that they were standing by the car. That Zahir was simply holding her.
That what she wanted more than anything in the world was for him to kiss her again.
And as if reading her thoughts, he raised her hand to his lips, before tilting his head as if listening to something very faint.
‘Can you hear it?’ he murmured. ‘The nightingale.’
It was a question that asked more than whether she could, impossibly, hear a shy woodland bird singing in a London square.
It took every atom of common sense to ignore the soft touch of his breath against her cheek, his fingers still wrapped about hers, his hand warm against her waist. To ignore the magic of the nightingale’s sweet song filling her heart.
It took Freddy’s voice saying, ‘Will you be home before I go to bed, Mummy?’ The memory of her promise, ‘I’ll be there when you wake up.’
‘No, sir,’ she managed, her voice not quite her own. ‘I think you’ll find that’s a sparrow.’
And with that she shattered the fragile beauty of the moment and the danger passed. He took a step back and said, with the gravest of smiles, ‘I forgot, Metcalfe. You don’t believe in fairy stories.’
For a moment she wanted to deny it. Instead, she said, ‘Neither, sir, do you.’
‘No.’ He repeated the touch of his lips to her finger and, without a word, turned and began to walk away. What?
‘Sir!’ He did not seem to hear her. ‘Where are you going?’ Then, in desperation, ‘Zahir!’
Without stopping, without turning, he said, ‘Go home, Metcalfe. I’ll walk back to the hotel.’
‘But …’
He stopped. Looked up to a sky fogged with neon. But? But what? What was she thinking? As if in answer to her unspoken question, he turned and, as their eyes met, she knew ‘what’. She’d always known.
She’d been here before and the raw power of the heat-charged look that passed between them scared her witless.
She’d had the sense to take a step back and then, as if seized by a determination to destroy herself all over again, she’d undone it all with that ‘but’.
And she had no excuse. She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old with her head in the clouds and her brains in cold storage. At eighteen there was some excuse. At twenty-three, with her reputation rebuilt, responsibilities …
She was fooling herself.
This was desire at its most primitive. The atavistic urge that powered all of creation. Age, experience, counted for nothing. There was no immunity …
‘But?’ Zahir finally prompted, his voice as soft as thistledown.
Without thought she’d reached out to him. Her hand was still extended, as if imploring him to come back. Finish what he’d started.
Slowly, deliberately,
