the practice anyway, she explained.
There was no time like the present to get her toes damp by dipping them into the waters of cosmetic improvement.
Well, she thought as she observed her face now.
She wouldn't exactly be finding herself on the cover of Vogue in the foreseeable future.
Nor would she be selected as a sterling example of a woman's triumph over a broken nose, a bruised face, and an unfortunate set of features that could most mercifully be described as snubby. But for the moment she would do. Especially in dim lighting or among people whose vision had re438 cently begun to fail them.
She took a moment to shove her supplies into the medicine cabinet. Then she scooped up her shoulder bag and left the room.
She was hungry, but dinner was going to have to wait indefinitely. Through the windows of the hotel bar upon her arrival, she'd seen Taymullah Azhar and his daughter on the lawn, and she wanted to talk to them - or at least to one of them - before they got away.
She descended the stairs and crossed the passage to cut through the bar. Since he was well occupied with seeing to the needs of his resident diners, Basil Treves would not be able to waylay her. He'd waved at her meaningfully upon seeing her enter the hotel earlier. He'd gone so far as to mouth, "We must talk," and to waggle his eyebrows in a fashion that related he had something of a momentous nature to impart. But he'd been in the process of ferrying dishes to the dining room, and when he'd mouthed "Later" and tilted his shoulders to indicate he was asking a question, she'd made much of giving him a vigorous thumbs-up to keep lubricated the machinery of his fragile ego. The man was unsavoury, beyond a doubt. But he had his uses. After all, he'd been responsible for unknowingly handing them Fahd Kumhar. God alone knew what other jewels he would manage to mine, given half a chance and equal encouragement. But at the moment she wanted to talk to Azhar, so she was just as happy to see that Treves was unavailable.
She ducked into the bar and crossed to the french doors, which were wide open to the dusk.
There she hesitated for a moment.
Azhar and his daughter were sitting just outside on the flagstone terrace, the child hunched over a spotty wrought iron table on which a chess board was set up, the father leaning back in his chair with a cigarette dangling from his fingers.
A smile played round the corners of his mouth as he watched Hadiyyah. Obviously unaware that he was being observed, he allowed his features to take on a softness that Barbara had never seen in them before.
"How much time do you want, khushi?" he asked. "I believe that I have you trapped, and you're only prolonging your king's death throes."
"I'm thinking, Dad." Hadiyyah squirmed to a new position on her seat, rising on her knees with her elbows on the table and her bottom in the air. She made a closer scrutiny of the battlefield.
Her fingers drifted first towards a knight, then towards the single remaining castle. Her queen had already been taken, Barbara noted, and she was attempting to mount an attack against far superior forces. She began to slide the castle forward.
Her father said, "Ah," in anticipation.
She withdrew her fingers. "Changed my mind," she announced hastily. "Changed my mind, changed my mind."
"Hadiyyah." Her father drew her name out in affectionate impatience. "When you make a decision, you must adhere to it."
"Sounds just like life," Barbara said. She stepped out of the bar to join them.
"Barbara!" Hadiyyah's little body rose on her chair till she was kneeling upright. "You're here!
I kept watching and watching for you at dinner.
I had to eat with Mrs. Porter 'cause Dad wasn't here, and I wished and wished that she was you.
What've you done to your face?" Her own face screwed up, then lit as she realised.
"You've painted it! You've covered your bruises. You look quite nice. Doesn't Barbara look quite nice, Dad?"
Azhar had risen, and he nodded politely. When Hadiyyah chanted, "Sit, sit, please sit," he fetched a third chair so that Barbara could join them. He offered his cigarettes and lit hers wordlessly when she took one.
"Mummy uses make-up as well," Hadiyyah confided chattily as Barbara settled in. "She's going to teach me how to do it properly when I'm old enough. She makes her eyes the