She tightened her lips then smiled to herself as she imagined her sister Izzy’s reaction to such lip-tightening.
‘Beware, the quiet one is ready to erupt,’ Izzy would have said, and usually laughter would have followed, because Lila wouldn’t have erupted.
But Izzy wasn’t here to laugh her out of it. Izzy was thousands of miles away with a new husband and a new father for her daughter...
And she, Lila, was on her own.
Her fingers crept up to touch the locket, shaking it as if she might be able to hear the tiny grains of sand the kind young woman at the University International Day had put into it for her.
Though not pink sand...
She knew there’d been pink sand once...
The man, Dr—Sheikh—al Askeba, was in the vehicle with her now, not close, for the seat was wide enough for four people, but she could feel his presence as a vibrant energy in the air.
‘How did you know to come here? To Karuba? Had your parents told you of it?’ he asked, and Lila turned to stare at him—or at his strong profile for he looked not at her but straight ahead, as if someone else might have spoken.
She shook her head.
‘I just kept looking,’ she said quietly, remembering the dozens of times when something that had seemed like a lead had turned to nothing.
‘But with your parents dead how did you know what to look for?’
Now he turned to her, and she saw the question echoed in his eyes. Not an idle question then, not small talk. This man wanted to know, and she guessed that when he wanted something he usually got it.
‘I didn’t, not really, but sometimes I would hear a note or phrase of music and it would hurt me here.’ She pressed her fist against her chest. ‘Or I would see something, a design, a colour, that brought my mother’s face to mind. I grew up in a small country town so I had to wait until I went to the city to go to university before I could really start looking. But then, with studies and exams...’
‘So, it’s only recently you discovered something about Karuba?’
Lila smiled.
‘You could say that,’ she told him, remembering the joy of that particular day. ‘From time to time I gave up, then something would remind me and I’d be off again. Two days before I emailed to apply for a job at the hospital here, I heard about an International Student Day at a nearby university.’
‘And you went along, listening for a scrap of music, seeking a design, a pattern?’
‘You make it sound like a plan,’ she said, suddenly wanting him to understand. ‘But it was never that, just a—a search, I suppose, a first clue that might lead somewhere else. You see, when the accident happened, the police tried for many months to identify my parents—to find out who they were and where they were from, looking for family for me, I suppose. But all they found were dead ends.’
He nodded as if he understood, but all doctors could do the understanding nod so she didn’t put much stock in it.
But when he asked, ‘And this last time you looked?’ his voice was deepened by emotion, as if he actually understood.
Lila smiled with the sheer joy of remembering.
‘There were stalls everywhere, but I could hear the music and I followed it. And at one stall, beneath a big tree, I saw a small wooden box with a patterned silver inlay.’
She paused, emotion catching at her throat again.
‘Something in the pattern...I mean, I’d seen many boxes over the years but this one took me straight back to my mother, to the little box she had always kept close. Her sand box, she called it. I touched it and the girl—the student—handed it to me.’
‘So you asked where it was from?’
Lila nodded.
‘At first I couldn’t speak, I just held it, felt its warmth, felt my mother’s hand on it, my hand on hers. But then I realised that I had the name of the country where my mother might have been born. I had my first real clue.’
HE SHOULD HAVE let her go, seen her safely to the hospital and forgotten the Ta’wiz, pretended it was just a locket—such things were sold all over the world, like amulets and chains with women’s names written in Arabic, pretty tokens and jewellery, rather than sacred objects.
He should forget the laughing Nalini of his youth, and the problems of his people. He should let this woman do her job, serve her twelve months’ contract and depart.
From all he’d heard as he’d chased up her references, she was an excellent paediatrician—what more could he ask of her?
But glancing sideways at her as she sat, bolt upright, her head turned to look out the window, her shining dark hair in a loose plait down her back, he knew he could no more have pretended she was just a doctor than he could have walked naked through the shopping mall.
In fact, the second would probably have been easier, because he would have debased only himself, while ignoring this woman’s sudden presence in his country would have been...
Traitorous?
He wanted to talk to her, to ask her more, to hear that soft husky voice, but anger at her treatment—deserved anger—was emanating from that straight back.
Until they reached the wide, ceremonial road that led straight to the palace gates.
‘Oh, but they’re gum trees,’ she cried, turning back to look at him, her face alight with surprise and delight. ‘Eucalypts—from home!’
And several things clicked into place in Tariq’s head.
First was the confirmation that she was beautiful. Not blindingly attractive as Nalini had been, but with a quiet radiance that shone when she smiled.
And secondly, the trees!
Australia!
Two years after Nalini had disappeared, a gift of two hundred eucalypt seedlings had arrived at the palace, packed in boxes in a container, sender unknown. The only clue had been a picture of an avenue of such trees and his father had taken it that they were meant to be planted on the approach to the palace.
Had his father suspected they were a gift from the runaway that he had had the trees tended with more care than new-born babies?
Now they grew straight and tall, and had brought a smile to the face of the newcomer.
A smile so like her mother’s it touched something in his chest...
Should he explain—about the disappearance of Nalini, about the trees arriving?
No, it would be too much too soon, although living in the palace she’d hear the gossip soon enough, even if it was close to three decades old.
Although he could explain the trees.
‘They were a gift, sent unexpectedly to my father, and he planted them along here.’
That would do for now.
She smiled at him.
‘They look great. They obviously like it here. Where I grew up was on the coast and although we had sand, we had rain as well so the trees grew tall and strong. Can you smell them? Smell the scent of the oil? Sometimes at night it filled the air, and especially after being in the city it would tell me I was home.’
‘The desert air is like that,’ Tariq told her. ‘Cities seem to confuse our sense of smell, but once we’re out of them it comes back to us, familiar as the sound of the wind blowing sand across the dunes, or the feel of