He stepped back. 'I expect you'd like to clean up. Use my bathroom, please.''

     'Thank you, Mister John, but I...'

     ' Use my bathroom, Carol.'

     'Thank you, Mister John.'

     'There's a bottle of Dettol in the cabinet. Put a capful in your bath water.'

     I don't know what came over me to say what I said next. I think I was deliberately defying Mister John. I was sure he knew what I was about to tell him, but knowing is one thing and having your nose rubbed in it is something else. Mister John worked at the Embassy. If he decided he could not ignore what I said, I could not complain. In any case, I said it. 'And I am only twenty. The law says maids must be twenty-five. They would find out that my passport is forged. They would deport me for that, too. And I have not yet finished paying the man who supplied it to me.'

     Now Mister John looked really sad. But he said nothing.

     Mister John said he would eat at the Embassy that night. I think he was looking to save me work because I know he had planned to have dinner at home. I had bought a fillet of hammour, the local fish, to cook for him. But he often ate at the Embassy – that was where he worked, after all – and that was what he said he would do that night. Before he left, he asked me to bring him a Coke from the fridge.

     When I put it in front of him, he said, 'Perhaps you should think of wearing a headscarf.'

     'This is not Saudi Arabia,' I said. I don't know why the suggestion should have angered me, but it did. Mister John appeared not to have noticed.

     'No,' he said. 'This is not Saudi Arabia.'

     'Lots of Emirati girls don't wear headscarves.'

     'That is true.'

     'And they wear shorter skirts than I do. And shorts, sometimes.'

     'Yes, Carol, they do.'

     'And bikinis. And no-one bothers them. And I am not a Moslem. Most Malay Chinese are Christian, and that is what I am.'

     'I know that, Carol.'

     I began to cry. I had never cried in front of Mister John before, and now I had done it twice in one day. I screwed a tissue into my eyes.

***

     Some girls behave like prostitutes and never get caught out. I had been a good girl all my twenty years, and what had happened to me had not been my fault, and it happened only once, and yet I was going to have a child. After three months, I could not deny it to myself.

     'What will you do?' Mister John wanted to know. He had taken no action over my forged passport. My situation was very common – a lot of maids, especially among the Filipinas, were only fifteen or so – and I'm sure he knew that. Everyone knew it.

     I said, 'I am a Catholic, Mister John.'

     'Of course.'

     'I think you are not a Catholic, Mister John.'

     'No, Carol, I am not. I am an Episcopalian, if I am anything.'

     'Everyone is something, Mister John. If we are not something, the world makes us something.'

     He did not reply.

     'If I had been Episcopalian,' I said, 'then perhaps I could get rid of this child. But if I had been American I think I would not have been raped in the first place.'

     'I can understand your being bitter, Carol.'

     'I am not bitter. I am accepting my situation. I have to go home, because if I have a child here, a single woman, they will say I am a prostitute and they will deport me. So I have to go home. Where I will be disgraced, me and my family. And where I have still not sent enough money to pay for my passport.'

     'I am sorry.'

     'I am sorry, too, Mister John.'

***

     After dinner that night, Mister John drank whisky. A large Chivas on the rocks. Then he had another. That was unusual for Mister John. Usually he did not drink alcohol when he was alone. He said it was good to give his liver a rest. But that night he drank Chivas Regal.

     He came into the kitchen where I was putting dishes into the dishwasher. The latest glass of ice and whisky was still in his hand. 'Carol,' he said. 'I have an idea.'

     The idea was simple. It took my breath away. I said "Yes".

***

     I sometimes met my friends, the other maids, those who were allowed out and not confined to their employers' homes except when they had to go with their mistresses to carry heavy shopping. We did not choose the cheaper places because they were cheaper, but because our mistresses would not wish us to take refreshment in the places they used themselves, or their children. I had no mistress, but most maids were not so lucky.

     I had decided not to tell them my news, but of course they knew. Mister John had told colleagues and friends that he was to be married. He had not mentioned the baby, but people are not stupid. And people talk in front of their maids.

     'You're up the spout,' said Pena. 'Aren't you? You've got yourself pregnant and he's stupid enough to make an honest woman of you, you little whore. I bet you did it deliberately.'

     'Leave her alone,' said Maria. Maria was from the same village as me. She had been in the UAE two years longer and her forged passport was paid for. Now she was sending money home to her family, as we all hoped to do. 'You're only jealous,' Maria said.

     She was right, of course. Pena was jealous. We all knew people who had got a Westerner or a rich Arab to marry them and it was true that the Malay and Indonesian girls were the worst. You would see them with their husbands, always smiling, their little pot bellies beginning to show because they no longer felt the need to look after themselves. If they found themselves in a shop or hotel or restaurant where the person serving them was from their country, God help that shop assistant or maid or waitress. "Look at me," the married one's look would say. "I made it. I've caught one. In this precarious world, I never have to worry again. But you do."

     We all hated those women.

     But in my case it wasn't like that.

     'Jealous?' Pena said. 'What has she caught? A man of fifty who never married before. You think that is a good catch? I would not take her man at any price. He is a fool. He has been caught by a tart.'

***

     Maria worked in a house not far from mine and we always walked home together. This time, we had much to talk about. Or I did, at least.

     'She heard that from her employer's wife,' I said. 'That is what the Westerners are saying about me. That I have trapped Mister John by conceiving his child.'

     'Don't worry about what Pena says.'

     'It isn't true,' I said.

     'Of course it isn't. He loves you. I don't doubt it.'

     I caught Maria by the arm so that she had to stop walking. 'No. I mean it really isn't true.'

     'I know that.'

     'Maria. The baby is not Mister John's.'

     Her eyes grew big big. 'Does he know that?'

     'How can he not? He has never lain with me.'

     'But…'

     'It is true, Maria.' I could see she did not believe me. I told her the truth. I told her what the three Arabs had done to me.

     'But…but then why does he want to marry you?'

     'I think he is sorry for me. I think he feels bad for me. I think he wants to save me.'

     She took a while to understand what I was telling her. When she had taken it in, she said,     'Oh, Carol. You are so lucky. What a good man he must be.'

     'He says he knows I don't love him. He is marrying me so that I will be American and not have to go home. He says he does not expect me to sleep with him when we are husband and wife. He says one day I will meet someone I do love and when that happens he will let me divorce him so that I can be with that man.'

     'Oh, Carol.' I knew she was happy for me. I knew also that she was wishing she could meet someone who would do for her what Mister John was doing for me. Marry her so that she could have a passport that was real and worth having and then leave her be and let her go. There were tears in her eyes.

***

     Mister John arranged the wedding. He said it should be quick, which I could not argue with. He offered to use his influence to get visas for my family but I did not want them there. My mother would upbraid my new husband for sleeping with me before we were married, and me for letting him, and I was not prepared to allow that. Mister John had a sister in Oregon and he sent tickets for her and her husband.

     A week later, we were man and wife.

     It was a strange ceremony for me. It took place in a chapel in the Embassy, which was another thing my mother would have objected to, although we did have a Catholic priest. The night before, there was a party in our house (how quickly I came to think of it as "our house") on the Corniche to which John's sister Phyllis (I had to stop calling him "Mister John", which was hard at first) and her husband Wayne came, with John's colleagues from work and many friends. Although a lot of these last were Moslem, the evening was far from abstemious. I would not like to count the number of empty bottles our new maid (yes! We had a new maid – a Filipina, sent by a different agency from the one that had supplied me) had to clear away afterwards.

     After the wedding itself, the Consul gave me my new American passport in my new name. Carol Meredith. I slipped it into my bag. Had I begun to stare at it, I do not think I could ever have stopped.

     That evening we had a small dinner party at the Emirates Palace with only Phyllis and Wayne. I do not like the Emirates Palace. People spend a King's ransom to stay there and I do not know why. I did not want my husband to waste his money like that. I meant to be a good wife to him, taking care of his money as though it were my own. I did not want to be one of these gold-diggers I have mentioned.

     When the dinner was over, John's driver took Phyllis and Wayne back to our house and we went upstairs to the suite John had reserved for us that night. We needed a guide – a Persian woman in a coat of gold brocade – to show us the way to our room or we should never have found it. That is the ridiculous size of the thing.

     Why were we staying in this vulgar place when we had a perfectly nice home of our own? We never discussed it, and so I could not explain to John that it was not needful. I understood, though he did not say so, that he did not want his family to know that there were now two master bedrooms set aside in his house – one for him and one for me. His sister and her husband had to leave for America the very next day and so would not see the arrangements for themselves.

     If he had touched on it, I could have told him I did not intend to live that way.

     And, in any case, we could have stayed somewhere else, the Rotana Beach or Le Meridien. They are a quarter of the Emirates Palace's price and nice nice.

     Well, perhaps Le Meridien would not have been a good idea.

     When we reached our suite, I kissed him. That was immodest, but I do not think he would have done it himself. I said, 'You are the most wonderful man I have ever met. Thank you.'

     He smiled. It was a fond smile and I knew he had not married me out of pity only. He liked me.

     Then we went each to our own room, to sleep. Or so he thought. I undressed and took my shower. Then I put on the pale blue robe that was one of the many things John had insisted on buying for my new life. The baby showed clearly through the silk.

     And then I went from my bedroom, through the sitting room and into his. He was already in bed, reading. I knew that he slept naked because I had never washed any night things of his, and so it was. He looked surprised at my entrance.

     I had prepared my little speech, but still I delivered it with timidity. 'Husband,' I said. 'You have done a wonderful thing today. You have given me the three most precious gifts I have ever received.'

     He put his book down. 'Three?' he asked.

     'My new passport. The return of my honor. And yourself.'

     I could see that he did not know what to say, and so I spoke for him. 'I know the things you said. But, if you will have me, I wish to be your wife. Properly.'