He told her that she had been a naughty child and that she would have to be spanked. He ordered her to bring him the hairbrush on his dressing table, then took her across his knees, her long legs stretched out across the cushions. He paddled her furiously, her bottom burning like fire until she couldn’t stand it any more. She whimpered and pleaded for him to stop, but he seemed possessed. Suddenly, he ripped the pinafore off her and ordered her to pull off her panties.

But instead of mounting her, he gave her a large solid gold phallus, realistically carved down to the smallest detail.

That was her initiation into what it meant to be Abdul Sa’ad’s concubine, she reflected, grimly fingering the edge of the letter-opener.

Night after night he sent for her, each night more bizarre than the last. It was like mating with a demon and she breathed great sighs of relief whenever she learned that he would be away in Riyadh or Bahrain on business.

Lately, that had been happening more often. In fact, she would be with him tonight for the first time in days. Often his phone would ring at odd times, and yesterday the courtyard filled with armed men making a great racket, who just as suddenly disappeared. Something was up and when she asked Nasir the eunuch what was happening, he clutched his bald head in his hands and exclaimed that the Master was in a terrible mood. Then he reminded himself that politics were not a woman’s concern and shooed her away.

She checked the handbag one more time, although she had gone over its contents a dozen times. In it she had a skirt and blouse, the letter-opener and the keys to one of the Mercedes, which she had filched from Abdul Sa’ad’s pocket. He had made a fuss about it when he missed the keys and her heart pounded at the thought that he might suspect her. In the end, one of the servants found a spare set of keys. Kelly distracted him with kisses and he just shrugged and forgot about it.

Under the guise of her education, she had asked Fatma, her unofficial teacher, to show her a map, and had planned an escape route. Kelly figured that she could head east on the road towards the oil fields, near the coast around Dhahran. Where there were oil fields, there were bound to be American workers and she hoped they would help her to get away. All she had to do was murder Abdul Sa’ad so he couldn’t stop her, sneak past the guard to the courtyard and steal the car. In her mind, it was easy. Just a few minutes and she would be free.