ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Sheikh's Woman

“He booked an appointment for me, drove me down to the women’s clinic…. On the way, he stopped the carat a red light, and—I got out,” she murmured, staring at nothing. “And just kept walking. I didn’t look back, and Jonathan didn’t come after me. He never called again. Well, once,” she amended. “A couple of months later he phoned to ask if I planned to name him as the father on the birth certificate.”

She paused, but Ishaq Ahmadi simply waited for her to continue. “He said…he said he had no intention of being saddled with child support for the next twenty years. He had a job offer from Australia, and he was trying to decide whether to accept or not. And that was one of the criteria. If I was going to put his name down, he’d go to Australia.”

His hair glinted in the beam of a streetlight. They were on a highway. “And what did you say?”

She shook her head. “I hung up. We’ve never spoken since.”

“Did he go to Australia?”

“I never found out. I didn’t want to know.” She amended that. “Didn’t care.” She glanced out the window.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Where is the hospital?”

“North of London, in the country. Tell me what happened then.”

Her eyes burned. “My friends were really, really great about it—do you know Cecile and Lisbet?”

“How could your husband not know your friends?”

“Are Cecile and Philip married?”

He gazed at her. “Tell me about the baby, Anna.”

There was something in his attitude that made her uncomfortable. She murmured, “I’m sorry if you didn’t know before this. But maybe if you didn’t, you should have.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Did you know?”

He paused. “No.”

Anna bit her lip. She wondered if it was perhaps because she hadn’t told him that she had reverted to this memory tonight. Had it weighed on her throughout the new pregnancy? Had fears for her new baby surfaced and found no outlet?

“Everything was fine. I was pretty stressed in some ways, but I didn’t really have doubts about what I was doing. At the very end something went wrong. I was in labour for hours and hours, and then it was too late for a Caesarean…they used the Ventouse cap.”

She swallowed, and her voice was suddenly expressionless. “It caused a brain haemorrhage. My baby died. They let me hold him, and he was…but there was a terrible bruise on his head…as if he was wearing a purple cap.”

No tears came to moisten the heat of her eyes or ease the pain in her heart. Her perfect baby, paper white and too still, but looking as if he was thinking very hard and would open his eyes any moment…

She wondered if that was how she had ended up giving birth in the back of a cab. Perhaps it was fear of a repetition that had made her leave it too late to get to the hospital.

“Why weren’t you there?” she asked, surfacing from her thoughts to look at him. “Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?”

“I flew in from abroad this evening. And this was six weeks ago?”

“That’s how it feels to me. I feel as though it’s the weekend I’m supposed to be going on that job to France, and that was about six weeks after the baby died. How long ago is that, really?”

“Did you ever feel, Anna, that you would like to—adopt a child? A baby to fill the void created by the death of your own baby?”

“It wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. Why are you asking me these questions now? Didn’t we—”

“Did you think of it—applying for adoption? Trying to find a baby?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Sometimes in the street, you know, you pass a woman with a baby, or even a woman who’s pregnant, and you just want to scream It’s not fair, but—no, I just…I got pretty depressed, I wasn’t doing much of anything till Lisbet conjured up this actor friend who wanted a mural in his place in France.”

She leaned over to caress the baby with a tender hand, then bent to kiss the perfectly formed little head. “Oh, you are so beautiful!” she whispered. She looked up, smiling. “I hope I remember soon. I can’t bear not knowing everything about her!”

He started to speak, and just then the car drew to a stop. Heavy rain was now thundering down on the roof, and all she could see were streaks of light from tall spotlights in the distance, as if they had entered some compound.

“Are we here?”

“Yes,” he said, as the door beside her opened. The dark-skinned chauffeur stood in the rain with a large black umbrella, and Anna quickly slipped out onto a pavement that was leaping with water. She heard the swooping crack of another umbrella behind her. Then she was being ushered up a curiously narrow flight of steps and through a doorway.

She glanced around her as Ishaq, with the baby, came in the door behind her.

It was very curious for a hospital reception. A low-ceilinged room, softly lighted, lushly decorated in natural wood and rich tapestries. A row of matching little curtains seemed to be covering several small windows at intervals along the wall. There was a bar at one end, by a small dining table with chairs. In front of her she saw a cluster of plush armchairs around a coffee table. Anna frowned, trying to piece together a coherent interpretation of the scene, but her mind was very slow to function. She could almost hear her own wheels grinding.

A woman in an Eastern outfit that didn’t look at all like a medical uniform appeared in the doorway behind the bar and came towards them. She spoke something in a foreign language, smiling and gesturing towards the sofa cluster. She moved to the entrance door behind them, dragged it fully shut and turned a handle. Still the pieces refused to fall into place.

Anna obediently sank down into an armchair. A second woman appeared. Dressed in another softly flowing outfit, with warm brown eyes and a very demure smile, she nodded and then descended upon the baby in Ishaq Ahmadi’s arms. She laughed and admired and then exchanged a few sentences of question and answer with Ishaq before taking the infant in her own arms and, with another smile all around, disappeared whence she had come.

“What’s going on?” Anna demanded, as alarm began to shrill behind the drowsy numbness in her head.

“Your bed is ready,” Ishaq murmured, bending over her and slipping his hands against her hips. At the touch of his strong hands she involuntarily smiled. “In a few minutes you can lie down and get some sleep.”

His hands lifted and she blinked stupidly while he drew two straps up and snapped them together over her hips. Under her feet she felt the throb of engines, and at last the pieces fell together.

“This isn’t a hospital, this is a plane!” Anna cried wildly.

“Let me out,” Anna said, her hands snapping to the seat belt.

Ishaq Ahmadi fastened his own seat belt and moved one casual hand to still hers as she struggled with the mechanism. “We have been cleared for immediate takeoff,” he said.

“Stop the plane and let me off. Tell them to turn back,” she cried, pushing at his hand, which was no longer casual. “Where are you taking us? I want my baby!”

“The woman you saw is a children’s nurse. She is taking care of the baby, and no harm will come to her. Try and relax. You are ill, you have been in an accident.”

Her stomach churned sickly, her head pounded with pain, but she had to ignore that. She stared at him and showed her teeth. “Why are you doing this?” A sudden wrench released her seat belt, and Anna thrust herself to her feet.

Ishaq Ahmadi’s eyes flashed with irritation. “You know very well you have no right to such a display. You know you are in the wrong, deeply in the wrong.” He stabbed a forefinger at the chair she had just vacated. “Sit down before you fall down!”