on the ironing board and folded its arms as carefully as she had done the nappies. She reached for one of the dangling ornaments on her beaded necklace, and she held it like a talisman. "It's too much, Rachel," she finally said. "I can't accept it.
I'm sorry."
Rachel felt sudden tears well in her eyes. She said, "But we always . . . We're friends.
Aren't we friends?"
"We are."
"Then - "
"I can't reciprocate. I haven't the money, and even if I had ..." Sahlah went back to folding the garment, letting her sentence hang.
Rachel finished it for her. She'd known her friend long enough to realise what she was thinking.
"You'd give it to your parents. You wouldn't spend it on me."
"The money. Yes." It's what zve generally do was what she didn't add. She'd said it so often over the eleven years of their friendship - and she'd repeated it endlessly since first making Rachel aware of her intentions to marry a Pakistani stranger chosen by her parents - that there was no need for her to tack the sentence on to the declarations she'd already made.
Before coming to the house, Rachel hadn't con54 sidered the possibility that her visit to Sahlah might actually make her feel worse than she'd been feeling for the last few weeks.
She'd seen her future as a form of syllogism: Sahlah's fiance was dead; Sahlah was alive; ergo, Sahlah was free to resume her position as Rachel's best friend and the dearest companion of her future life. Apparently, however, this wasn't to be.
Rachel's stomach churned. She felt light in the head. After everything she'd done, after everything she'd known, after everything she'd been told and had loyally kept to herself because that's what friends did when they were best friends, right . . . ?
"I want you to have it." Rachel strove for the sort of tone one used when paying a visit to a house where death had paid a visit first. "I just came to say that I'm most awfully sorry about . . . well, about your . . . loss."
"Rachel," Sahlah said quietly. "Please don't."
"I understand how bereft you must be. Despite your having known him for so short a time, I'm sure you must have come to love him. Because --" She could hear her voice tightening. It soon would be shrill. "Because I know you wouldn't marry anyone you didn't love, Sahlah. You always said you'd never do that. So it only stands to reason that when you first saw Haytham, your heart just flew to him. And when he put his hand on your arm - his damp, clammy hand -- you knew he was the one. That's what happened, isn't it? And that's why you're so cut up now."
"I know it's hard for you to understand."
"Except you don't look cut up. At least not about Haytham. I wonder why. Does your dad wonder why?"
She was saying things she didn't mean to say.
It was as if her voice had a life all its own, and there was nothing she could do to bring it under control.
"You don't know what's going on inside me,"
Sahlah declared quietly, almost fiercely. "You want to judge me by your own standards, and you can't because they're different to mine."
"Like I'm different to you," Rachel added, and the words were bitter. "Isn't that right?"
Sahlah's voice softened. "We're friends, Rachel.
We've always been and we'll always be friends."
The assertion wounded Rachel more than any repudiation could have done. Because she knew the statement was just a statement. True though it may have been, it wasn't a promise.
Rachel fished in the breast pocket of her blouse and brought out the crumpled brochure she'd been carrying with her for more than two months.
She'd looked at it so often that she'd memorised its pictures and their accompanying pitch for the Clifftop Snuggeries, two-bedroom flats in three oblong brick buildings. As their name suggested, they sat above the sea on the South Promenade.
Depending upon which model one chose, the flats had either balconies or terraces, but in either case they each had a view: the Balford pleasure pier to the north or the endless grey-green stretch of sea to the east.
"These are the flats." Rachel unfolded the brochure. She didn't hand it over because somehow she knew that Sahlah would refuse to take it from her. "I got enough money saved to make the down payment. I could do that."
"Rachel, won't you try to see how things are in my world?"
"I mean,