Eleanor packed quickly, though not carelessly. She selected items that mattered: jewellery swathed in soft cloth, shoes arranged carefully, and the watch she had set aside because Faisal preferred she wear something more striking on her wrist. She passed over the dresses that were worn for photographs and took instead the coat she had purchased for herself years earlier, before Dubai, before him.
The apartment already carried the quiet weight of abandonment.
Faisal had arranged a driver as was his habit. For hair appointments, for errands, for anything she might need. Efficiency hidden under the mask of care. When the driver held the door open she didn't protest.
"Airport, please," she instructed him.
The driver glanced at her reflection in the mirror, his surprise clear before he nodded and merged into traffic. He remained silent.
In the back seat, cool leather pressed against her bare arms. The city streamed past the windows in sharp lines of glass and concrete, heat rising from the streets.
Only once the car was in motion did something shift in her chest. It was not relief, but something gentler. Permission.
She watched Dubai recede behind them – towers piercing the sky, palm trees lining the verges, billboards advertising beauty and endless stability – and her thoughts turned to London. To Notting Hill, and the flat she had bought after the divorce. A place that endured even when she pretended she had no need of it.
I'll figure it out later, she told herself. For now, that was enough. It didn't matter that she didn't have any credit cards or money. She would charm her way to a seat on the plane. She just needed to go. To feel free. To have autonomy.
The road's steady hum carried her backward through time.
She had always been beautiful and had learned to use her beauty early.
By her eleventh year, her body began to change in ways she could not name, only feel. She noticed the glances before she grasped their meaning: boys at school lingering near her, men's eyes settling on her like warm light. Even some teachers looked at her this way.
She learned fast what drew people close.
A smile held just a moment longer. Laughter for jokes that weren't even funny. A slight tilt of her head. She liked how faces transformed when she did these things – how they brightened, softened, fixed on her completely. It made her feel seen, worthy, idolised.
She signed up for everything: after-school clubs, art projects, any chance to stay late and be useful, be good. She told herself she enjoyed responsibility, that she was mature for her age.
At eleven and twelve, she had no sense of the dangers of men. Only for reward. Attention felt like safety. Approval felt like shelter. She had learned this early, in a house where silence meant staying safe and being noticed, even for a moment, could stoke the flames of her father's anger.
The driver changed lanes and the city began to thin. Eleanor's hands clenched in her lap.
Now, from the distance of years, she understood. She understood the looks, the invitations hidden in praise, how some men confused her eagerness to please with willingness. She had not been clever. She had been a child adapting to the world as she found it.
Eleanor did not see when the driver missed the turn for the airport.
The road was smooth, the car steady, and her mind was far away – sliding back through versions of herself she had carefully folded and stored away. The airport waited ahead, she assumed, certain and inevitable. She trusted in this as she had trusted in so many things.
At thirteen, she was already skilled at making herself impressive.
Her design teacher, Mr Davidson, was the first to take notice, or perhaps simply the first who did not try to hide his interest. He praised her eye for colour, the steadiness of her hands, how she seemed to understand form by instinct alone. Gifted, he'd called her. But not when others were around, only when they were alone.
"You're ready for things the others aren't," he told her one afternoon. "Special techniques, better materials. I can give you access to equipment they wouldn't know how to use."
She stayed behind during breaks, then after school. It felt like being chosen – a familiar warmth she believed she needed. The workshop was peaceful when empty, and she liked how the silence felt like it belonged to her alone.
His hands moved around her before she learned to recognise what they were doing. On her shoulder as he leaned to look at her work. At her waist when he guided her closer to the table. They lingered, always, but never long enough to feel definitively wrong. She told herself she was imagining it, that she was too sensitive, that this was simply how attention felt.
He kept her later each time. Just until your piece is ready, he would say.
The first time he touched her hair she froze – not because it felt wrong, but because it felt significant. When his fingers brushed her cheek he smiled as if handling something fragile and precious.
"I can see in your eyes," he said quietly one afternoon, his voice low in the empty room. "The pain you carry inside you."
Her heart raced and her eyes opened wide. No one had ever spoken those words to her before.
She thought he understood her completely. That this was what being seen was – not noticing how she smiled or behaved, but recognising the pain and fear beneath. The tight flutter in her stomach, she decided, must mean she was falling in love.
She was thirteen years old.
The car slowed as it turned, but Eleanor did not lift her gaze. Outside, the city had shifted almost without her noticing – less glass, more concrete, the road narrowing into something less familiar – yet she remained in that workshop, standing perfectly still while a man in his thirties decided when she would be ready for more.
She had believed him. Believed this was special, that she was special. She had not known she was being prepared for something else entirely.
The driver adjusted his grip on the wheel and continued forward, away from the airport, while Eleanor sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap, lost in a memory that had never truly let go of her.
The car came to a stop.
Eleanor realised something was amiss only when movement ceased entirely. She looked up, disoriented, to find a skyscraper rising before them – its glass façade darkened by shadow, standing at the city's edge. No planes were visible, no signage marked a terminal, no signs of people travelling anywhere.
The driver got out and opened her door.
"Why aren't we at the airport?" she asked, her voice thin and already braced for what would come.
He did not reply, only nodded toward the building's entrance.
She looked where he indicated and saw Faisal stood there.
His expression was flat and clearly displeased. Not angry enough to raise his voice, never kind enough to offer comfort. Simply annoyed, like a man whose plans had been interrupted.
Something inside her crumbled.
She felt like a small child caught holding something she should not have, caught wanting what she was not allowed to take. Her body moved before her mind could act, stepping out of the car and moving toward him.
Before she could speak, he reached for her handbag, opening it with ease. His fingers moved swiftly through her things until they found her passport. He did not look at her as he slipped it into his jacket pocket.
Then he pushed her away from him.
Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to make her stumble. To humiliate her.
"I'll see you tonight," he said, turning away before she could respond.
She stood there for a moment, stunned, as heat pressed in from every side. Then she returned to the car, tears spilling over before she could stop them, her breathing uneven and childlike.
The driver closed the door and pulled away from the building.
This time Eleanor paid attention to the direction they took.
They drove back to her apartment building in complete silence. She did not wipe her face; there was no point in pretending any longer. The car stopped, the door opened, and she stepped out to walk inside without looking back.
Up in the lift, down the corridor, into the apartment.
The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.
She stood there for a long time, her handbag feeling lighter than it was, her chest aching with the truth she had been avoiding all along.
She belonged to Faisal.
And there was nothing she could do to change it.