The Darkest of Secrets by Kate Hewitt Page A

attitude towards his family was so different from the affable man she’d come to know and even to trust. Again she glimpsed a core of hard, unyielding iron underneath all that easygoing friendliness. ‘You sound rather heartless,’ she told him quietly.
    ‘ I sound heartless?’ Khalis gave a short laugh. ‘Good thing you never met my father.’
    Grace knew she could not explain to Khalis why his opinion of his father disquieted her so much. She had heard rumours of Balkri Tannous, the bribes he took, the kind of shady business he conducted. Why was she, in her own twisted way, trying to defend him?
    Because you still feel guilty. In need of forgiveness. Just like him.
    ‘How did you find out?’ she asked and Khalis did not pretend to misunderstand.
    ‘I was sixteen,’ he said quietly. ‘Home from school for the summer holidays. I went looking for my father, to tell him I’d won the mathematics prize that year.’ He lapsed into a silence and Grace knew he was remembering, saw the pain of that memory in the tautness of his face. ‘I found him in his study. He was on the telephone, and he waved for me to sit down. I couldn’t help but overhear him—not that he was trying to hide it. At first I didn’t understand. He said something about money, and asking for more, and I thought he was just talking about business. Then he said, “You know what to do if he resists. Make sure he feels it this time.” It sounded like something a school bully would say. I’d certainly heard such talk at school. But coming from my father—I couldn’t credit it. So much so that when he got off the telephone I asked him about it, almost as if it were a joke. “Papa,” I said, “it almost sounded like you were ordering someone to be beaten up!” My father gave me one hard look and then he said, “I was.”’
    Khalis said nothing more. He’d pulled the Jeep onto a flat stretch of beach and killed the engine, so the only sound was the crash of waves onto the shore and the distant raucous cry of gulls. ‘And what then?’ Grace asked, for she knew there was more.
    He lifted one shoulder in something close to a shrug. ‘I was shocked, of course. I don’t remember what I said—something stupid about it being wrong. My father came over to me and slapped my face. Hard.’ With a small smile he gestured to a tiny white scar on the corner of his mouth. ‘His ring.’
    ‘That’s terrible,’ Grace said quietly.
    ‘Oh, it’s not that terrible. I was sixteen, after all, almost a man. And he didn’t hit me again. But it was shocking to me because he’d never hit me before. I’d adored him, and he loved to be adored. Ammar had it much worse. My father didn’t pay much attention to me, although I always wanted him to. Until that day, when I realised just what kind of man he was.’
    ‘But you didn’t leave until you were twenty-one.’
    Khalis’s mouth tightened before he gave a hard smile. ‘No. I made justifications for his activities, you see. Excuses. It was only the one time. The person he was dealing with was difficult or corrupt. So many absurd excuses because I didn’t have the courage to just leave.’
    ‘You were young,’ Grace said softly. ‘And that’s easy to do.’
    ‘For a while, perhaps, but then it’s just wilful blindness. Even when I didn’t want to, I started noticing things. The way the servants shrank from him, the telephone conversations he had. And then I started doing a bit of digging—I went through his desk once when he was away on business. He hadn’t even locked his office—too arrogant to think his family would nose about. I probably saw enough in that one afternoon to put him in prison.’ He shook his head. ‘He helped rig an election in an island country that was desperately poor. My father lined his pockets and the people got poorer.’
    ‘What did you do then?’
    ‘Nothing.’ Khalis practically spat the word. ‘I was nineteen, about to start Cambridge, and I knew I