Michelle Reid - The Arabian Love-Child

By tomorrow he would have pulled the plug on Serena’s finances. And his mother had ceased to be an issue when she’d died on the day of his birth. Which left only Melanie—or Mrs Portreath, he amended bitterly as he picked up the stack of her papers with the intention of consigning those to the waste-paper bin along with everything else.

Only something caught his eye and he hesitated…

MELANIE had no idea how she managed to get home again. She had only a vague recollection of standing on an Underground train and being strangely comforted because she was just one more blank face amongst many. But now here she stood in her own warm kitchen, surrounded by everything that represented familiarity, comfort and security to her—and she felt like an alien.

An alien being in an alien place, present, yet not a part of. It was an odd sensation, because she recognised everything yet couldn’t seem to connect with any of it. The old Aga set into the chimney-breast, for instance, the scrubbed table that took up too much space but was as much a part of the family as Robbie’s pictures decorating the cork notice-board on the wall by the door. Assorted mugs hung from old-fashioned cup hooks suspended beneath one of the ancient wall cabinets, and at some point since coming home, she had set the old kettle to heat on the Aga, though she didn’t remember doing it. It was puffing out steam in a gentle flow now, telling her the water was hot but not yet boiling. She had lost her shoes somewhere and was standing on cold quarry tiling in silk stockings that had cost her the absolute earth, though it felt as if she was floating above the floor.

Shock. She was suffering from shock. She understood that even if she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Every time she tried to think what had thrust her into this foggy state she experienced that awful sinking sensation of a lift swooping downwards and the claustrophobic sensation of being encased in steel. But what had happened before the lift and what had come after it was refusing to show itself.

She looked at the wall clock, saw it wasn’t even one o’clock yet, and realised she’d done well to get back so quickly after…

That lift swooped her downwards again and she fumbled for a kitchen chair then sank onto it, put a cold hand up to cover her mouth and caught a brief flash of Rafiq’s stone-like face. She blinked slowly as the part of her brain that stored pictures refused to connect with the part that stored emotion.

He’d thrown her out.

She dropped the hand onto the table, fingertips hovering in the air as if they knew that making contact with anything solid would cause some kind of horrible calamity.

He’d played with her like a cat with a mouse. He’d insulted her, kissed her, had brought her right there to the very edge of panic by suddenly showing an interest in things she’d no longer wanted him to know about. Then, quite calmly and precisely, he had thrown her out.

Her fingers began to curl down towards the table, her stomach muscles coiled into a ball, and at last blood began to pump more oxygen to her brain. Across the kitchen the kettle began to make hissing noises; the clock on the wall chimed the hour. The fingers touched base and she stood up; it was quick and tense and impulsive.

How could she have got it so wrong? How could she have talked herself into believing that he possessed a heart worth pleading with? Where had she ever got the stupid idea that he was a worthy father for her very precious son?

The telephone mounted on the wall behind her began ringing. Forcing herself to go and answer it took most of her self-control.

‘I saw you come back,’ a female voice said. ‘How did it go?’

It was her neighbour, Sophia. ‘It didn’t go anywhere,’ Melanie replied, then burst into tears.

Sophia arrived within minutes, banging on the back door with a demand to be let in after having come through the hole in the hedge that separated their two gardens. She was a tall, dark-haired, sex-seething bombshell with lavender eyes and a lush mouth that could slay the world. But inside the stunning outer casing lurked a legal mind that was a sharp as a razor and as tough as the glass ceiling she was striving to break through.

‘Dry those tears,’ she instructed the moment Melanie opened the door to her. ‘He doesn’t deserve them, and you know he doesn’t.’

Half an hour later Melanie had poured the whole thing out to her over a cup of tea. By then Sophia’s amazing eyes had turned glassy. ‘It sounds to me as if you and Robbie have just had a very lucky escape. The man is a first-class bastard. I did tell you, you should have stuck with me, kid,’ she added sagely. ‘I’m a much better father-figure for any boy child.’

It was such a ludicrous thing to say that Melanie laughed for the first time. But in a lot of ways Sophia was speaking the truth, because her neighbour’s curt, no-nonsense approach to life had always appealed to Robbie. When he was in need of something other than his mother’s loving softness he would disappear through the hole in the hedge to search out Sophia. So did Melanie, come to that.

‘What did your lawyer have to say when you told him?’ Sophia asked curiously. ‘The same as me—I told you so?’

Randal. Melanie’s brain ground to a halt again; she went still, her eyes fixed and blank. Then—

‘Oh, dear God,’ Melanie breathed, then jumped up and made a dive for the telephone.

‘What?’ Sophia demanded anxiously. ‘What did I say?’

‘Oh—hello.’ Melanie cut across Sophia with the tense greeting. ‘I need to speak to Randal Soames, please. I’m M-Mrs Portreath…W-what do you mean he isn’t there? I was supposed to be meeting him there for lunch!’

‘Mr Soames was called out on urgent business, Mrs Portreath,’ his secretary told her. ‘I was expecting you to arrive at any minute so I could offer you his apologies.’

She didn’t want an apology. ‘I have to speak to Randal!’ She was becoming hysterical. ‘When will he be back?’

‘He didn’t say…’

‘W-well…’ Melanie took in a breath and tried to calm herself ‘…I need you to get him on his mobile phone and tell him I have s-speak to him urgently.’

‘Yes, Mrs Portreath. I will try to contact him for you but I can’t promise. He tends to switch off his mobile when he’s in a meeting, you see.’

Melanie placed the receiver back on its rest, then sank weakly against the wall and put a hand up to cover her aching eyes.

‘What was all that about?’ Sophia questioned.

‘I left my papers on Rafiq’s desk,’ she breathed. ‘How could I have been so stupid!’

The covering hand began to tremble. On a sigh, Sophia came to place an arm across her shoulders. ‘Okay, calm down,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘I think you need to remember that he didn’t give you much chance to do otherwise,’ she pointed out.

No, he hadn’t, Melanie agreed. He’d just got rid of her. He’d heard enough—had enough—and had just got up and marched her out! Sophia almost copied him by marching her back to the kitchen table and sitting her down again, only her friend used a guiding arm to do it whereas Rafiq hadn’t even spared her a glance, never mind touched her! As if she was unclean. As if he would have contaminated himself if he’d remained in her company too long.

A shudder ripped through her. ‘Stop shaking,’ Sophia commanded. ‘The man isn’t worth the grief.’

But Melanie didn’t want to stop shaking. She wanted to shiver and shake and remember another time when he’d done almost the same thing. She had followed him back to London, had almost had hysterics in her desire to get inside his embassy and plead with him. What she’d met with when she’d eventually been granted an audience had been Rafiq locked into his Arab persona, about to attend some formal function dressed in a dark red cloak, white tunic and wearing a white gut rah on his head. He’d looked taller and leaner, foreign and formidable. His face had taken on a whole new appearance: harder, savage, honed to emulate some cold-eyed, winged predator. ‘Get out.’ He’d said those two immortal words then turned his back on her to stride away.