she realised despondently, was a question she wasn’t ready to answer.
Sam was up early the next morning, eager for his surprise friend. Khaled had rung last night, and they’d agreed on a day’s outing to the zoo followed by a children’s tea back at Lucy’s house.
A whole day with Khaled. A whole day, Lucy thought with a sense of disbelief, as a family.
Even though Khaled wasn’t due until nine o’clock, she kept glancing out of the window all morning. Sam was perched on the sofa, informing her in a piping voice of every car that came crawling down the street.
Lucy’s nerves were taut, ready to break, and Khaled hadn’t even arrived yet.
She checked her appearance in the mirror once more, nervously smoothing her hair behind her ears, making sure that her pale pink V-neck jumper didn’t have any stains from breakfast.
Sam turned to watch her. ‘You look nice, Mummy.’
‘Thanks, darling.’ Lucy gave her son a quick, distracted smile. Why was she so nervous? Why had she spent twenty minutes deciding what to wear, how much make-up to put on?
Why did she care?
She didn’t want to care. She wanted to be cool, composed. In control.
All those things she’d told herself she would be when she went to Biryal, when she saw Khaled again.
Now she felt them hopelessly, helplessly, slipping away.
As the sedan pulled to a stop in front of the small terraced house, so like the dozen others on the narrow, suburban street, Khaled felt his heart leap in his chest.
Today he would meet his son. What would he look like? Sound like? Be like?
His mind whirled and wondered at the possibilities.
Sam.
Lucy.
She crept into his thoughts, slipped under the mental defences he’d erected over the years.
Lucy.
She was so much the same, he thought. She looked the same, with that luxuriant sweep of hair that made him itch to tangle his fingers in its richness, draw its silkiness against his lips as he’d once done with such casual, easy liberty. Now it was forbidden, and all the more tempting.
He loved the way she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, unafraid and defiant. The way sparks shot from her eyes, the colour of dark chocolate.
He loved the feel of her body, soft and pliant, against his—and he hadn’t felt that in four years. Yet now the memory tormented him, and he wanted to feel it again. ‘Wanted’ wasn’t even a strong enough word; he craved it. Needed it as much as a man needed a drug—or other medication.
Touching Lucy would be the most powerful prescription of all.
His knee ached, a cruel reminder of his own limitations, his weaknesses, and worst of all his inevitable decline. Lucy, he told himself yet again, was off-limits. She had to be, for Sam’s sake, for his own.
For hers.
He’d hurt her, Khaled knew. He’d seen it in her eyes, heard it in the jagged edge of her voice, and he realised he hadn’t let himself consider how much before. He’d thought only of what he’d spared her, spared himself.
Yet now she seemed determined to put the feelings she’d had for him aside, relics of an irrelevant history. He’d intended on doing the same, yet now he felt himself craving more. Of Lucy.
He hadn’t expected the intensity of need, of desire, when he’d seen her. He hadn’t expected to feel unmanned, weak and desperate for her touch, her smile.
Her love.
Like Lucy, he’d wanted to put their relationship behind them, relegate it to ‘pleasant anecdote’ status. He wanted to forget how much he’d loved her.
Yet now he was afraid he couldn’t.
His knee throbbed again; he’d refused painkillers that morning as they tended to make him drowsy. He wanted to be at full capacity for Sam. For his son.
As he exited the sedan and walked up to Lucy’s door, he heard a sudden squeal from the front window. Khaled saw a dark tousled head disappear behind a sofa before he heard the impatient rattling of the doorknob.
‘He’s here!’
Smiling, his heart expanding with joy, Khaled prepared to meet his son.
Her fingers fumbling on the lock, Lucy hastened to answer the door. She opened it, and there he was—Khaled.
Why did it feel so different now, so much more intimate? Perhaps it was Sam’s presence; perhaps it was simply because something had shifted or settled.
He’d been accepted.
She smiled and said quietly, ‘Hello, Khaled.’
‘Hello, Lucy.’
Sam’s earlier excitement had suddenly turned into shyness, and he now hid behind Lucy, one arm wound around her leg.
Lucy was afraid Khaled would be displeased by their son’s reticence, but he merely crouched down so he was eye-level with Sam.
‘Hello, Sam. My name is Khaled, and I’m a friend of your mother’s.’
Sam’s eyes were dark and wide, as dark and wide as Khaled’s, and he popped a thumb in his mouth, sucking industriously for a moment before he removed it and said, ‘That’s a funny sort of name.’
‘Sam!’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Khaled agreed. ‘It’s an Arabic name. I come from an island country on the other side of the world. It’s called Biryal.’
Lucy tensed, waiting, but Khaled said no more. Shrugging in acceptance, Sam asked, ‘How did you know my name?’
‘Your mother told me. She’s told me a bit about you.’
‘And we’re going to the zoo?’
‘Yes, if you’d like to.’
Sam nodded vigorously, and, smiling, Khaled stood up. Lucy caught a whiff of aftershave, that familiar cedar scent mingled with the musk that was just him, and her breath caught in her throat.
‘Would you like a coffee first?’ she asked. She tucked her hair behind her ears once more, a nervous gesture if there ever was one, and strove to find the composure that had been her armour, her defence, for so long.
‘That would be lovely, if Sam doesn’t mind postponing our trip for a few minutes?’
Sam looked ready to pout, and Lucy said quickly, ‘Of course he won’t. Sam, why don’t you show Khaled the zoo you made out of Lego yesterday? I’m sure he’d love to see it.’
‘I
