I want to do that. I'd see to it that your name - as well as my own - went on the deed. Each month, you'd only have to pay - "
"I can't."
"You can," Rachel insisted. "You only think you can't because of how you've been brought up. But you don't need to live like this for the rest of your life. No one else does."
The older boy stirred in the cot and whimpered in his sleep. Sahlah went back to him.
Neither child was covered - it was far too warm in the room for that - so there was no adjustment to make in any bedclothes. Sahlah brushed her hand lightly against the boy's forehead. Asleep, he changed positions, his rump in the air.
"Rachel," Sahlah said, keeping her eyes on her nephew, "Haytham is dead, but that doesn't end my obligation to my family. If my father chooses another man for me tomorrow, I'll marry him. I must."
"Must? That's mad. You didn't even know him.
You won't know the next one. What about - "
'Wo. It's what I want to do."
Her voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking what the firmness of her tone implied.
She was saying, The past is dead without saying it. But she'd forgotten one thing.
Haytham Querashi was dead as well.
Rachel went to the ironing board and finished folding the coat. She was as careful about the task as Sahlah had been about folding the nappies.
She brought the hem up to meet the shoulders.
She formed the sides into thin wedges which she tucked into the waist. From the cot, Sahlah watched her.
When she had returned the coat to its box and taped the lid on it, Rachel spoke again.
"We always talked about how it would be."
"We were little then. It's easy to have dreams when you're just a child."
"You thought I wouldn't remember them."
"I thought you'd outgrow them."
The remark smarted, probably much more than Sahlah intended. It indicated the extent to which she had changed, the extent to which the circumstances of her life had changed her. It also indicated the degree to which Rachel had not changed at all. "Like you've outgrown them?" she asked.
Sahlah's gaze faltered under Rachel's. Her hand went to one of the bars on the children's cot, and her fingers grasped it. "Believe me, Rachel.
This is what I must do."
She looked as if she was trying to say more, but Rachel had no ability to draw inferences.
She tried to read Sahlah's face to understand what emotion and meaning underlay her statement.
But she couldn't grasp it. So she said, "Why?
Because it's your way? Because your father insists?
Because you'll be thrown out of your family if you don't do like you're told?"
"All of that's true."
"But there's more, isn't there? Isn't there more?" Rachel hurried on. "It doesn't matter if your family throw you out. I'll take care of you, Sahlah. We'll be together. I won't let anything bad happen to you."
Sahlah let out a soft, ironic laugh. She turned to the window and looked at the afternoon sunshine that beat relentlessly down on the garden, drying the soil, desiccating the lawn, robbing the flowers of life. "The bad's already happened," she said. "Where were you to stop it?"
The question chilled Rachel as no breath of cool wind could have done. It suggested that Sahlah had come to know the lengths to which Rachel had been willing to go in order to preserve their friendship. Her courage faltered. But she couldn't leave the house without knowing the truth. She didn't want to be faced with it, because if the truth was what she thought it might be, she would also be faced with the knowledge that she herself had been the cause of their friendship's demise. But there was no way round it that Rachel could see. She had barged her way in where she wasn't wanted. Now she would have to learn the cost.
"Sahlah," she said, "did Haytham - " She hesitated.
How to ask it without admitting the ugly extent to which she'd been willing to betray her friend?
"What?" Sahlah asked. "Did Haytham what?"
"Did he mention me at all to you? Ever?"
Sahlah looked so bewildered at the question that Rachel had her answer. It was accompanied by a swelling of relief so sweet that she tasted its sugar on the back of her tongue. Haytham Querashi had died saying nothing, she realised.
For the moment, at least, Rachel Winfield was safe.
From the window, Sahlah watched her friend pedal off on her bicycle. She was