Of course she did. She couldn’t know that he was driven by something more basic, more fundamental. The need of a child for his father.
So tell her, he told herself. Tell her the truth.
Except he had never admitted that to anyone. To the wider world, even to his closest family, it was something he held close. Only Jalila had ever sensed the root of his obsession with work.
Delphi’s eyes were like fierce dark flames.
‘Yes—yes, I do. I think you have to be on top of the podium, and that’s what this is really about. Not me...not us.’
With an effort, he kept calm. ‘I’m trying to save our marriage, Delphi.’
Her mouth trembled. ‘No, what you’re doing is telling someone who got bitten by a shark not to worry about going back into the water.’
He took a step closer. ‘Aren’t you the one who told me that sharks are the most misunderstood animals in the oceans...possibly the planet?’
She stared at him; he saw that her whole body was trembling now.
‘Try telling that to someone who’s been bitten by one. Look, I know this is hard for you to accept, but you can’t win this one. There’s nothing to save. You just proved that by answering that phone call.’
‘You can’t give up on nine...nearly ten months of marriage because of one four-minute phone call,’ he protested.
‘I’m not. I’m walking away from something that doesn’t work. We don’t work together, Omar. We don’t want the same things. We can’t be what each other needs. You just don’t want to admit it. You don’t want to admit that we failed because you don’t know what it feels like to fail, to not be good enough.’
Something serrated scraped inside him at the flatness in her voice and he felt a flicker of panic. Or was it another emotion? He seemed to be spilling over with them right now.
‘How can you say that after last night?’
‘I’m saying it because of last night. Standing at the edge of an abyss is not the sign of a happy marriage, Omar.’
Her face was pale, and he could see the walls that had tumbled last night were back up—just as high and wide as before. ‘Me coming here was never about saving our marriage. You wanted me to talk to you, and that’s what happened, and now we’re done.’
‘That’s not all that happened. You cried, and I held you, and if I hadn’t stopped it, we would have made love.’
‘And what if we had?’ Her brown eyes were wide with frustration now. ‘Do you think that would have changed anything? It’s just chemistry, Omar. Or nostalgia. It’s meaningless.’
She turned swiftly away and began leading the horse towards the gate. He swore under his breath and stalked after her. Using her arm and her momentum, he drew her in hard and fast against his body. He watched the anger in her eyes darken, saw her pulse accelerate in her neck.
‘You think this is meaningless?’ He felt the wind on his neck, but he didn’t care. He only cared about proving her wrong. His hand slid over her collarbone and he felt her breath shiver. ‘That you can get this anywhere? With any man?’
He felt a pang of jealousy—the same as he’d felt when he had seen her first wearing that dress.
‘No, I don’t.’ She pulled away. ‘But it’s not enough.’ Her voice sounded like the sand blowing across their feet. ‘There has to be more.’
‘We have more. We ride. We eat. We laugh. We talk.’
‘We talked once.’
A gust of wind blew across the sand school. ‘It’s a start.’
Delphi shook her head. ‘No, it’s the end, Omar...’
Her voice petered out and she stared past him, her forehead creasing into a triangle of confusion.
‘What?’ He frowned.
‘Where have the mountains gone?’
Now he was confused. He turned—and felt his stomach turn to stone. She was right: the mountains had disappeared. In their place was a huge, rolling russet-coloured cloud, as wide as the horizon, filling the sky.