Tagan's Child (58 page)

I stepped into
the Ramian sunshine and welcomed the sun on my skin. I’d definitely
turned a few shades darker since I’d been coming here. I told
people back home it was tanning lotion if they asked. I followed
the path down to the palace and the inner gates swung open after I
had barely paused. I was a regular visitor these days and no longer
needed to announce my arrival. I used one of the side entrances
into the palace and said hello to one of the butlers, who always
had a ready smile as we passed each other. There was no sign of
Toby or his grandparents. I decided to go for a swim and changed
into a bikini in my room. My body was now tanned and toned and I no
longer felt self-conscious wearing one. I slipped a robe over the
top.

The palace was
quiet as I made my way to the pool.

“Graatcha
Fala,” I said to a young maid carrying a tea tray.

“Graatcha,” she
replied. I was trying to learn some Ramian but it was a slow,
painful process.

I hung my robe
on a hook and dived smoothly into the pool. As I swam I thought
about Bennie and wondered whether she would ever be able to move on
from Matt. He never showed any signs he wanted to settle down and
it made me so angry the way he strung her along. If only she could
meet someone who appreciated her for the amazing person she was.
Maybe at some point I would feel ready to go out with her. We could
go to some swanky restaurants or bars in London and have some fun,
she might just meet someone decent. Who knows? Maybe I might even
meet someone. An image of Ahran flashed through my mind and a surge
of pain swept up from my stomach to my chest. Dammit, I had done
pretty well over the last couple of weeks, I hadn’t allowed any
thoughts of him to breach my defences.

I put my head
down and stabbed my right hand into the water whipping my left arm
over as I upped the tempo of my front crawl. I lost count of the
number of lengths I swam and eventually pulled myself up out of the
water. I sat on the edge of the pool and my lungs burnt as I waited
for my breathing to return to normal. That was the most strenuous
swimming session I’d done for a while but it had worked, the
barriers were firmly back in place and I had returned to my usual
plane of non-feeling. I got up and pulled my robe on and left the
pool rubbing my hair with a towel. I wasn’t sure what time it was.
The King and Queen didn’t know I was coming today and could be out
for the whole day. Oh well, I’d brought my Kindle it would give me
a chance to catch up on some reading.

I turned the
corner and nearly bumped into him. He put his hand out to steady
me. I looked up into his face and it felt like the whole world
stopped when our eyes met.

“Sophie?” he
said, sounding just as shocked as I was.

I took a step
backwards and pulled the front of my robe together. It had come
apart when we had nearly collided and I felt exposed.

My eyes
continued to disobey as they devoured his beautiful features. I’d
not allowed myself to dwell on that face for any more than a split
second over the preceding weeks, but now it was like the feast
after the famine and I greedily reacquainted myself with every
glorious inch of it.

“Ahran,” I
whispered.

He looked
completely shell-shocked. He also looked slightly thinner in the
face but just as heart-stoppingly attractive as I remembered, no in
fact more so, my memory had not done him justice.

“I’m sorry. I
came earlier than I had planned. Bennie’s dad fell ill and their
anniversary lunch was cancelled,” I babbled. He looked confused. “I
wasn’t supposed to come until tomorrow but seeing as Bennie didn’t
need me I thought I’d come here…” my voice trailed off. His look of
confusion was quickly replaced by something more deadpan. I should
have been happy he wasn’t pleased to see me, it made it easier to
accept the decision I had made.

“Don’t mind me,
once I’ve finished what I am doing I’ll be gone,” he said
flatly.

He looked as if
he would rather be anywhere else but here.

“Sophie you’re
early.” Both our heads snapped round, neither of us had heard the
King and Queen approaching, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the King shot
Ahran an apologetic look.

“What a nice
surprise,” Leylana said, moving forward to give me a hug. I was
pretty confident Ahran didn’t share her sentiment.

“I’m sorry I
didn’t mean to interrupt your plans, the lunch I was going to was
cancelled,” I explained.

“Not at all,
it’s lovely to see you.” Her eyes were bright with anticipation and
she seemed more than happy to find me here at the same time as
Ahran.

“Auntie
Sophie!” Toby came running in and skidded past his grandparents to
give me a hug.

“You didn’t say
you were coming today.”

“I know, I
thought I’d surprise you,” I said, seriously beginning to regret my
decision.

“This is so
cool,” he said, looking from me to Ahran and back to me.

“Don’t get too
excited Toby, I will be leaving shortly,” Ahran said, making it
perfectly clear he had no intention of staying.

“But you said
you would be here all afternoon,” Toby responded in a whiny
voice.

“I know, but
something has come up.”

I had a strong
suspicion that something was me.

“No, don’t go
Ahran. Stay. Grammour is looking forward to seeing you,” Leylana
protested.

“Grammour is
Halsan’s mother,” she explained for my benefit. “She is arriving
this afternoon. We hadn’t been expecting her until we received a
call yesterday to say she was passing through on her way back from
Ralsala. She does a lot of travelling and we very rarely get to see
her.” Leylana looked satisfied she had such a good reason to detain
Ahran.

Such was the
strength of Ahran’s desire to leave, he looked as if he was about
to argue with her. “Excellent,” she said, not giving him the chance
to back out. “How lovely for us all to be together. She hasn’t met
Toby yet,” she said cheerfully. Ahran’s face was like thunder. She
seemed to ignore it, looking rather happy that her little scheme
had worked.

“I didn’t know
Toby had a great-grandmother,” I confessed. At one stage he didn’t
have any grandparents and now there seemed to be a plethora of
them.

“Oh yes, she is
a keen Floreena,” she struggled for the word in English and looked
to her husband for assistance. He looked at her blankly.

“Botanist,”
Ahran said.

“Botanist,”
Leylana repeated. “She travels everywhere on her expeditions and
has some of the biggest private collections of plants in
Ramia.”

“She sounds a
very interesting lady.” I sneaked another look at Ahran who stood
rigidly next to me, not looking in the least bit happy he had been
expertly railroaded into staying by Leylana.

“If you’ll
excuse me, I’m just going to get changed,” I said, looking down at
my robe. I needed the excuse to get away from Ahran and prepare
myself for an afternoon in his company.

I gave the King
and Queen a nod and left them all. I forced myself to walk to my
room even though my instinct was to run like a bat out of hell. I
closed the door behind me and leant against it, fighting the urge
to hyperventilate. Oh my God. I had been totally unprepared for
seeing him. It was inevitable I was going to run into him at some
point, I couldn’t avoid him forever, but I hadn’t expected to see
him so soon. My heart was beating so wildly I thought I was about
to have a heart attack. The strength of my reaction to him
surprised me. I thought that after my decision to move on I was
beginning to do just that, but seeing him again had unlocked
everything I had tried so hard to wall up and I stood there feeling
utterly confused. I tried to dredge up all the reasons why Ahran
and I could never work but the counterarguments popped into my head
with such clarity it was as if Leylana was speaking them directly
through an earpiece that had miraculously appeared in my ear.

Number one. He
had caused my sister’s death. Leylana’s words came back to me.
‘Sophie, try and put yourself in his shoes, he has spent the last
year punishing himself for what had happened to Katie, the mother
of his cousin’s child, how could he possibly tell her sister that
he had caused her death?’ Acceptance gives you strength, peace and
serenity, had I not read that somewhere? And with acceptance comes
forgiveness. Could I not accept what had happened and forgive him?
Did I want to hold that bitter resentment and let it eat away at me
depriving me of my own happiness for the rest of my life?

Number two. He
had lied and kept number one from me. Could I have really owned up
to something like that, like I had expected him to? We all had the
instinct to protect ourselves and I wondered if I had been in
Ahran’s shoes would I really have been able to confess?

Number three.
We lived universes apart. Hadn’t I just spent the last few weeks
travelling backwards and forwards without a second thought feeling
as at home in Ramia as I did in Hatherley? I’d proved to myself
that by accepting one world I didn’t have to reject the other.

Number four. We
would never be able to have children together. This was a difficult
one. I did have Toby and if I was never able to have my own child,
at least I had come as close as anyone could to feeling what it was
like to be a mother.

And as I stood
there each of my objections dissolved away like ripples after a
pebble thrown into a pond, one minute they were there, the next
they were gone. Was I really going to spend the rest of my life
alone wondering what could have happened if I had just taken a leap
of faith? No one else seemed to live their lives fearful of what
lay ahead. And then it occurred to me; no one else, on this planet
or any other, had any guarantees about where their life was heading
so why did I expect them? Katie was dead and by an unfortunate
twist of fate Ahran had played some part in her death, I couldn’t
change either of those facts but what I could change was my
attitude to them. Since Katie’s death I had lived in fear. She
hadn’t lived her life like that. She accepted what life threw at
her and made the best of it. I was pretty certain she would be
mortified if she knew I was sabotaging my own future because of
what had happened to her. Not only that, but I was punishing Ahran
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had no control
over what happened that night and yet I was making him suffer. Who
was I to think that it was my place to punish him? From everything
Leylana had told me he had already done a pretty good job of that
himself.

I stood there
leaning against the door and experienced a moment of clarity that I
had never felt before. Not only were there no guarantees in life
but without forgiveness there is no future. Who knew whether my
life would end as abruptly as Katie’s or whether I would live to be
a hundred? One thing was for sure, it would be a long pitiable
waste of a life if I spent it punishing someone for something that
had been out of their control and denying myself the only person I
had ever loved.

I closed my
eyes and pictured Ahran. It was a joyous relief to finally allow
myself to feel what I really felt for him, pure, unadulterated love
and for a few moments I bathed in the feeling.

I opened my
eyes. Of course there was the small problem that he had looked at
me earlier like I was the last person in the world he wanted to
see. What if he no longer felt the same about me? Would that be my
divine retribution? Had I finally come to terms with my demons only
to realise that the man I loved no longer wanted me?

It would be
cruel providence.

I sighed and
pushed myself away from the door. Well, I could try and win him
back or die trying. I felt shaky and feverish at the prospect. I
didn’t have anything in my bag that was remotely appropriate for
recapturing a man’s heart so I walked over to the wardrobe and
opened the doors. There were a number of new dresses and outfits
hanging up. I had the sneaking suspicion Leylana had planned for
this very occasion. I smiled. She really was like my fairy god
mother.

I looked
through the beautiful clothes and found an aquamarine maxi-dress. I
laid it on the bed and rough dried my hair. I couldn’t remember the
last time I’d had it cut and it hung in waves almost to the centre
of my back. I slipped the dress over my head and stood in front of
the mirror. I didn’t look like me. I was leaner than I had been the
last time Ahran had seen me, but I hadn’t completely lost my
curves. The colour of the dress set off my eyes and complimented my
tan. My arms were toned and my hair had been lightened by the sun
to the colour of spun gold. My heart was still pounding in my
chest. Not bad, Little Miss Earthling, I thought to myself. Isn’t
that what Talina had called me? For some reason I no longer saw her
as a threat. I don’t know why I felt so light-hearted all of a
sudden when this could all go so horribly wrong.

I sat down at
the dressing table and carefully applied my make-up. I slipped on a
pair of flat silver sandals with delicate straps that wrapped
around my ankles. By the time I had finished, the light-hearted
feeling was beginning to wane and I was starting to feel sick. Come
on Sophie, don’t bottle it now! I made my way to the door, took a
deep breath and closed the door behind me.

I went back to
the drawing room but there was nobody there. Where were they all? I
went to the dining room but there was nobody there either, except
one of the maids who was laying the table for dinner. She looked up
as I walked in. I raised my hands and gesticulated. “Where is
everyone?” She stared at me blankly for a second and then realised
what I meant. She put down the cutlery tray she was holding and
beckoned me to follow.