The house was dark and quiet when she got home, with no furious Sidharth waiting at the front door this time, just echoing silence as she made her way upstairs and back into the spare bedroom. After a hot shower, she collapsed into bed and didn't stir until the following morning, when she woke to bright sunlight. Shehnaaz sat up in confusion as she tried to get her bearings and realised that she wasn't in the spare bedroom anymore.
A quick glance around confirmed that she was back in the master suit and a glance down at the empty space beside her confirmed that Sidharth had indeed slept beside her. Shehnaaz peeked down at herself and was relieved to note that she still had on the t-shirt she had worn to bed.
Shehnaaz checked the clock and groaned when she realised that she had slept to nearly ten in the morning. Pushing the tumbled mass of her hair out of her face, she got up and was alarmed when the room started spinning wildly around her. She stumbled a couple of steps before reaching for the headboard of the bed and steadying herself.
She frowned slightly as she
tried to recall the last time she had had a decent meal... definitely not the previous day's breakfast, which had come back up after that overheard phone call, or lunch which had been spoiled by Sidharth appearance at Hamza and Humera's place and dinner had been a non-event. Even though Hamza and Humera had urged her to eat the night before, Shehnaaz just could not stomach the thought of food after the day she'd had!
Saturday had been much of the same; all she'd had to eat was popcorn at the movies.
Now Shehnaaz was paying the price for all those missed meals.
Heading for the shower she decided to treat herself to a decent brunch. Monday was the housekeeper's day off and they had no other live-in staff so Shehnaaz had the house to herself. She was looking forward to just spending the day on her own, trying to figure out what her next move would be.
Shehnaaz couldn't leave him and it seemed that he couldn't leave her. So what now? Sighing she decided to switch off her brain until after she'd eaten lest she lose her appetite again.
Less than an hour later she was dry-heaving over the commode in the downstairs guest bathroom. Just the smell of eggs had been enough to set her off. After her stomach stopped revolting, Shehnaaz stumbled out onto the patio, as far away from the nauseating smell of cooked food as she could possibly get and sank down onto a chaise longue overlooking the huge infinity swimming pool.
"No..." Shehnaaz whispered staring blindly at the edge of the pool. "No no no no... no... please Allah! No..."
Shehnaaz buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth slightly. Her system was just off-kilter because of the gut-wrenching events of the last forty-eight hours. Naturally she'd feel nauseous after not eating in so long. It was all perfectly logical... she was simply overreacting.
Shehnaaz couldn't be this unlucky, not after finally making some kind of progress in achieving independence from this marriage. She tried to remember when her last period had been but she had been under a lot of stress lately and her period had been affected so that was not the most reliable way to gauge anything. Shehnaaz got up slowly and was relieved when the movement didn't upset her equilibrium, heading toward the kitchen, she braced herself for a fresh onslaught of nausea but thankfully her stomach stayed as steady as a rock.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she headed toward the stove and picked up the pan, averting her eyes as she deposited the congealed mess that would have been her meal, into the waste disposal unit. Shehnaaz settled on black tea and dry toast instead determinedly putting her irrational fear of pregnancy out of her head.
After finishing the unappetizing meal, she headed for the bright, sunny attic which she had transformed into a workroom and put on some music while she immersed herself in her work. She so often lost herself up here, loving the serenity that usually came over her when she was working but today she just couldn't concentrate. Shehnaaz had an image in her mind, knew what she wanted but she just couldn't put it down on paper. She sat in front of her drawing board, staring at the fifth blank sheet of paper in half an hour, resting her elbow on the tilted board and her delicate chin in one hand as she stared at the paper and willed the image into existence.
