IT WAS the longest day.
All Georgie wanted to do was throw herself on the bed, curl up into a ball, hide and grieve and cry and mourn, but there was Azizah to think of.
Azizah, who hated the bottle that wasn’t her mum, who wasn’t used to the bonier arms of her aunt and cried through the afternoon and long, long into the evening.
Georgie had been pacing the floor with her and had finally sat in the family lounge, where Felicity often did, and Azizah had at last given in, taking the bottle she hated and almost, almost falling asleep, until Ibrahim returned from a visit to the army barracks. It wasn’t just her heart that leapt at the sound of him. Hassan, the prince first in line, did too. He came pounding down the corridor to greet his brother.
‘You should have consulted me!’ Hassan was furious. Georgie could hear them arguing as she sat in the lounge. When Ibrahim had returned she had wanted to flee, but the baby had just been settling and she’d sat as the argument had spilled into the living room. ‘You should have spoken with me before closing the airports.’
‘You were with your wife and son,’ Ibrahim pointed out. ‘You are needed there. I am more than capable of dealing with this.’
‘You have closed the airports, cancelled surgery.’
‘Excuse me,’ Georgie said, and perhaps it was poor form to interrupt two princes when the country was in crisis, but the palace was big enough for them to take their argument elsewhere and a restless Azizah was just closing her eyes. ‘She’s almost asleep.’
‘Then take her to the nursery,’ Ibrahim snapped, and it was face him or flee. As Hassan took the phone from a worried maid, Georgie chose to face him, turned her blue eyes on him and refused not to meet his gaze.
‘Hard day at the office, darling?’ she said in a voice that was sweet but laced with acid. ‘Should I make the children disappear?’
‘Just you,’ Ibrahim hissed, because it was hell seeing her and not being able to have her, hell having dared to almost love her and then to find out what she had done. ‘I wish you would disappear.’
‘It is our father.’ Hassan handed him the phone. ‘It is you he wishes to speak to.’
And now would have been an ideal time to leave, to slip away, as Ibrahim wished she would, except Georgie wanted to hear, wanted to be there, even if he’d rather she wasn’t.
She could hear the king’s angry voice even from across the lounge, and though Hassan was pacing, Ibrahim was calm, his voice firm when he responded to his father.
‘I took advice,’ was his curt response, but when that clearly didn’t appease his father, he elaborated. ‘I took advice from experts. You have known about this for days apparently and did little.’ She could see a pulse leaping in his neck. It was the only indication of his inner turmoil as he stood up to the king. ‘The priority is the people,’ he interrupted, ‘not your flight schedule and certainly not Hassan’s ego. His mind is on his newborn son, where it should be, where it can be, because there is another prince more than capable of stepping in. I have spoken with our soldiers, and the army is to open a field hospital to the west. Flights will remain grounded till we are happy this virus is contained. If you move for an exemption from the flight ban, if you feel I am not capable, then of course you must return,’ Ibrahim said, and then his voice rose slightly in warning. ‘And if you do, I will hand the reins back to you.’ For a second his eyes flicked to Georgie. ‘And I will leave Zaraq on your incoming plane.’
‘You—’ he spoke to Hassan when the call had concluded ‘—either take over completely or leave it to me. I am not ringing the hospital and waiting while they pull you from the nursery to make my decisions.’ He eyed his brother. ‘What is it to be?’
‘The people need—’
‘The people need strong leadership,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Which I am more than capable of providing. If you think otherwise, I suggest you ring Jamal and tell her a helicopter is taking you out to the west tomorrow, as is my schedule, to see first hand how this illness has affected our people.’ He did not relent, he did not appease, he was direct and he was brutal. ‘And perhaps you should check with the pediatrician. We have all been immunized, of course, and if that proves ineffective there are anti-virals, but I would check if they want you in contact with a premature newborn.’
Georgie watched as Hassan paled.
‘So what is it to be?’ Ibrahim pushed. ‘Because if I’m not needed I’m heading for the casino.’ And he would, Georgie knew. He’d head too to another woman, any woman. He was angry and she had provoked it.
‘You have my full support,’ Hassan said. ‘And I thank you for stepping in. I am going to visit my wife and son.’
He nodded goodnight to Georgie and a now sleeping Azizah and finally they were alone.
‘That was low,’ Georgie said.
‘That was common sense.’ Ibrahim snapped. ‘I don’t care how safe it is, how effective the immunisation is, if it were my newborn…’ And he looked at where Georgie sat holding a baby, and he was black with anger, because that morning he had almost envisaged it, not a wife and a baby but a future with someone who was not a stranger to his heart. The role of prince and a return to the desert had seemed manageable with her by his side. ‘I have to work.’ He turned to go, but she called him.
‘Can we please talk, Ibrahim?
‘I don’t wish to talk to you.’
‘Please.’ Georgie said. ‘It was something that happened a long time ago, something—’
‘That cannot be undone,’ Ibrahim interrupted.
‘When did you become so perfect?’ Georgie asked. ‘I don’t get why everything has to change.’
‘Because it has.’
‘It was a few weeks,’ Georgie said. ‘I was nineteen. It was hell at home and I’d lost my job when I got sick again…’ She tumbled out words when he didn’t respond immediately, argued her case while she still had a chance. ‘I thought he was nice.’
‘So you married him because he was nice.’
‘There are worse reasons. He was older, he seemed safe, but I see now that he was a drunk like my father. I see now I just ran straight to the same thing.’
‘You think that makes it better. That you tossed everything away for some middle-aged drunk.’
‘It was ages ago,’ Georgie said. ‘I know it’s frowned on here but in London—’
‘I am a royal prince!’ Ibrahim struggled to keep his voice down, for the sake of the baby.
‘Not when you’re there.’ And she watched lines mar his forehead, his hand going up to his face in a gesture of frustration. He was saving her from herself and that she didn’t understand. He thought of his mother, sitting by the phone, waiting. Of a life married to a man who could not always be there, who had children scattered by both geography and allegiance, and he must not, Ibrahim told himself, do that to Georgie. So instead he did as his brother had suggested, said words that would leave her in no doubt.
‘I’m a royal prince,’ Ibrahim said again. ‘Which means…’ He swallowed before continuing, but she didn’t see it, just heard his low, even voice as he very clearly stated his case. ‘I don’t have to deal in damaged goods.’ If she hadn’t been holding Azizah Georgie would have stood and slapped him, but instead her eyes left his face and she sat holding the baby for comfort, holding her sweet, warm body as she chilled inside. ‘The bride that will be chosen for me will know what is expected. A bride fit for my side is not found outside nightclubs with a smorgasbord of contraception and her divorce papers in her bedside drawer. If you want me to look you up in London, if you’re bored one night—’
‘Never!’
‘Then…’ Ibrahim shrugged ‘…we’re done.’
‘You’re a bastard.’
‘When I choose to be.’ Ibrahim shrugged again. He heard her shocked silence and little Azizah start to whimper.
‘Would you do as you suggested earlier and disappear with the baby?’ Ibrahim said. ‘I’ve got a country to run.’