‘And that’s a zebra…they’re stripy. Have you seen one before? Do you know what they look like?’
‘Yes, I have. You’re right; they are stripy.’
Lucy smiled to herself, amazed and gratified that Khaled was humouring her son, that he knew how to. That he wanted to.
She poured the coffee and entered the lounge, stopping at the sight of Khaled stretched out beside Sam on the carpet, studying the Lego zoo with intent seriousness.
‘Here’s your coffee.’ She held the mug out awkwardly, still not used to the enforced intimacy of their situation. She wondered if she ever would be.
‘Thanks.’ Khaled stood up—stiffly, Lucy noticed. She almost asked about his knee, but then decided not to. Khaled had made it clear that he didn’t like talking about his injury.
‘Can we go now?’ Sam asked, and Lucy smiled.
‘I’ve just given Khaled his coffee, sweetheart. Why don’t you play for a few minutes and then we’ll go?’
Sam started to pout—three-year-olds, Lucy had noticed, were so good at that—but Khaled rescued the moment by picking up a discarded giraffe. ‘I think this one needs a pen.’
Sam hesitated, and then took the plastic animal from Khaled and began to construct a pen out of Lego.
Lucy cradled her mug between her hands and watched Khaled covertly over the rim.
Sleep had restored him, as it had her, and he looked awake and relaxed. He looked good, Lucy admitted, letting her gaze become bolder, sweeping over his familiar features that still somehow seemed so strange.
‘You cut your hair.’ The words popped out, and Lucy bit her lip. Khaled gave a wry smile.
‘The son of a king must have a different appearance from a rugby player.’
‘I never thought of you as the son of a king,’ Lucy admitted. ‘You were just Khaled, rugby star.’
‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I?’ There was a faint edge to his voice that Lucy couldn’t understand. ‘I never thought of myself as the son of a king either,’ Khaled added, and took a sip of coffee.
Lucy frowned. ‘But surely you knew you’d have to return to Biryal? You’ve been the heir your whole life.’
Khaled paused, his expression both shadowed and thoughtful. ‘In a manner of speaking. My family has always been royal, but Biryal was a British protectorate until the early 1960s. Then they gave us back our independence, and my father was poised to become king in the true sense. Unfortunately, his cousin Ghassan seized the throne while my father was travelling from Yemen to take it himself. The British supported Ghassan because it was easier and they didn’t want a civil war. They’d just withdrawn all their troops, after all. My father fled back to Yemen, where I was born and grew up.’
It was like something out of a history book or even a film, Lucy thought. ‘How long was Ghassan king?’
‘Twenty years, until he died without heirs. Then my father finally gained his throne.’ Khaled shook his head. ‘By that time he was bitter and suspicious of everyone.’ He paused, his gaze sliding away from hers to a dark memory. ‘Even me.’
‘You mean he was afraid that you would seize the throne?’
‘Or that rebel insurgents would use me as a puppet.’ Khaled shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what my father was thinking, but he wanted me out of the picture—which is why he sent me to boarding school in England when I was seven. Then university, and then I played rugby, which he encouraged. Anything to keep me from home.’ He spoke flatly, but Lucy still sensed the bitterness underneath.
‘So why did you go back?’ Lucy whispered. She was appalled by what sounded like a loveless childhood.
‘I knew I would have to go back eventually. And when I was injured it seemed like the time had finally come.’ He paused, taking another sip of coffee. When he spoke again, his voice was careful, deliberate. ‘A few weeks after my return, my father had a heart attack—a minor one, but it made him realise his own mortality, and he realised I was his heir, not a usurper. So he made a place for me, albeit a small one, and I accepted my royal duties.’ He put his empty mug on the coffee table and smiled at Sam. ‘Shall we go?’
Lucy was still mulling over all that Khaled had told her as they headed outside to the waiting sedan. It was more than she’d ever known before, more than he’d ever told her before. More than she’d ever asked.
The knowledge—and her own previous ignorance of it—unsettled her. Made her wonder.
She glanced over at Khaled; his face was averted from hers as he looked out of the window. She let her gaze rove over his strong profile, the hard lines of his cheek and jaw, and felt a pang of sorrowful curiosity.
Who are you ?
Sam, sandwiched between them, started to wriggle, and she spent the rest of the trip distracting him. Yet, even so, her mind and eyes would wander back to Khaled and she realised she wanted to know the answer to that question.
SAM was, as always, enthralled with the zoo. He insisted on being Khaled’s personal tour-guide, dragging him by the hand to the Butterfly Paradise and rainforest lookout, and of course his favourite, the spiders.
Lucy shuddered as they stood in front of a glass case housing some alarmingly large and hairy tarantulas.
‘You like spiders?’ Khaled asked Sam, whose nose was pressed against the glass.
‘Big, hairy ones,’ Sam confirmed.
‘There are some big spiders in Biryal,’ Khaled told him. ‘Some of the largest in the world. They spin yellow webs, sometimes several metres wide.’
‘Really?’ Sam’s eyes had grown huge, and Lucy couldn’t help but wince. Spiders were not exactly a compelling reason to return to Biryal—not for her, anyway. She couldn’t think of any compelling reasons to return to Biryal…except for Sam. Instinctively her gaze slid to her son, so innocent of the changes in store for him, and something in her tightened.
Khaled glanced at her over Sam, his eyes laughing. ‘Don’t worry, Lucy, they’re harmless.’
‘Mum doesn’t like spiders,’ Sam confided, and then he was tugging on Khaled’s hand again, leading him off to the Gorilla Kingdom.
By the end of the day they had tramped through the entire zoo and seen most of the animals at least twice. Sam, exhausted and sticky with ice cream, fell asleep in the car with his head against Khaled’s shoulder.
‘He’s taken to you,’ Lucy said quietly, watching the two of them, her heart constricting at the sight.
Khaled smiled down at his son. ‘I’m glad.’
‘So am I,’ Lucy admitted, and Khaled glanced up at her, his eyes gleaming.
‘Are you?’
Lucy looked away, unable to meet that compelling golden gaze, a gaze that seemed to dive right inside her and clutch at her heart. ‘Yes. Sam deserves to know you…and you deserve to know him.’
They didn’t speak again until the car pulled up in front of Lucy’s house, and she instinctively reached for Sam.
‘I’ll take him.’ Sam was still slumped against Khaled, and he put his arms around him, ready to scoop him up.
‘Are