by Jane Holland
He takes a step towards me and I fear he’s going to kill me.
I reach out blindly, scrabbling about, and find one of my shoes. I throw it at him, but it just bounces off his thigh.
‘Felicity had gone out to train at the leisure centre that evening. She often trained late, then walked home.’ He glances back at the woman on the bed, and his eyes well with tears. ‘She was a promising swimmer. Regional champion. There was talk of her working towards Olympic selection.’ His voice cracks. ‘Until you came round the corner too fast, and lost control.’
‘Me?’
‘It was raining. The Jag skidded, mounted the pavement.’ His voice becomes a howl as he stalks towards me, and I can tell he means to do me harm. ‘She was crushed against a wall. She didn’t stand a chance.’
I start to crawl away on hands and knees, but Dominic follows close behind. Grabs me by my short hair, dragging me back to my feet.
‘You ran away, you bitch!’ he spits out. ‘You left my sister for dead. Felicity can’t even breathe on her own. She’s brain damaged. She’s been in a coma ever since the accident.’
‘No!’ I can barely hear my own voice through the buzz of angry wasps in my head. ‘No!’
‘What you did ruined my family. My mum killed herself soon after the accident. She couldn’t handle it. My dad eventually drank himself to death two years ago. Felicity’s father refused to visit her, but he always was a useless bastard. Then he died too. Now I’m the only one left to care about her . . .’ Dominic’s voice is like a knife in my ear, his breath hot on the back of my neck. ‘All I’ve been able to think about since it happened is revenge, and how to get it.’
‘I don’t remember,’ I tell him frantically, struggling to be free. ‘Please, I don’t remember.’
‘You should have gone to prison. You should have been punished.’
‘But I’m telling you, I don’t remember any of this. I don’t understand. You . . . you said your parents died in a house fire.’
‘I lied.’ His voice is merciless. He seizes my wrists as I claw at the air, dragging my hands painfully down behind my back. ‘But no more than you, Rachel.’
‘Maybe you’re lying now. If you’re telling the truth, why does nobody know what I did? Why wasn’t I sent to . . . to prison, or a remand centre?’
‘Because it was all hushed up, of course. Clever old Robert pulled some strings. His diplomatic contacts, I suppose. I was too young at the time to understand why you hadn’t been punished for your crime.’ Dominic releases my wrists, twisting me round to face him. He looks almost insane, his eyes wild, his face darkly flushed. ‘Beyond the law, my dad used to say. Not your fault, just your psychosis. You weren’t well, the doctors said.’ He laughs viciously. ‘Dad didn’t believe that any more than I did, but he accepted it in the end. It was the only way he could come to terms with what had happened to our Felicity.’
The sickness builds in me, and looking at Dominic only makes it worse. I try to bury my face in my hands, but he won’t let me.
‘The judge who oversaw the case insisted you got proper treatment,’ he continues in that harsh, unrelenting way. ‘So your parents flew you off to that fucking specialist clinic in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the doctors told us Felicity’s brain damage meant that keeping her alive was useless. They were poised to pull the plug. My dad said he’d go to the papers with the story, embarrass your family. So your father’s money paid for this . . .’ He drags me back towards the bed, forcing me to look at his sister. ‘This living death.’
‘I was a child!’
‘You’re not a child now.’
‘Dominic—’
‘Shut up!’ He shakes me like I’m a rag doll, my head rattling. ‘You don’t get to say my name ever again, do you understand? We’re strangers, and don’t you ever forget it.’
I cover my mouth, holding back the sickness.
‘I married Catherine, not you,’ he says. ‘They fixed you at that clinic, Rachel. They made you whole again. But nobody will ever be able to fix my sister.’
‘So why marry me, for God’s sake?’
‘Because you had to be punished. You couldn’t be allowed to walk away from this. My parents were blinded by Robert’s money. His promise of round-the-clock private nursing, the newest experimental treatments, all in return for our silence . . . But none of it worked. My sister never woke up, and she never will.’ He sounds like he hates me. ‘I always knew Rachel was still inside you, just under your skin. All I had to do was strip back those layers, one by one, until you were mad, until you became Rachel again.’ From behind, his hands come round my throat, squeezing hard enough to throttle me. ‘And then your life would be ruined too.’
His grip tightens about my throat, and I struggle helplessly against his strength. I stare down at the pale young woman in the bed, my vision blurring.
‘When my dad died, I decided to get closer to you,’ he says next to my ear, his voice hoarse. ‘It was so easy to pull the wool over your parents’ eyes. Everyone called me Nick as a child, and I have a different surname to Felicity. At first, I only wanted to hurt you, to get some revenge for Felicity. But it was so easy to seduce you. Laughably easy. It was as if you wanted it too. As though you were desperate to be punished.’
His hands slacken off, and he turns me to face him. I’m choking, gasping for air. Bending his head towards mine, his face suffused with hatred, Dominic finds my lips, crushing them with his mouth. I feel his control, his fury. When he raises his head, we’re both breathless.
‘Then I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. Just like that.’ His voice sneers at me. ‘That was when I knew.’
I stare up at him, my lips barely able to form the words, ‘Knew . . . what?’
‘That you and I were meant to be.’ His gaze locks with mine, our faces close. ‘I knew then that the universe was on my side. Because this is karma. Don’t you see? Deep down, you needed to become Rachel again, to be shown what you’d done to my sister. And so you let me into your life.’
He releases me and I stagger backwards, trembling and clasping my throat, amazed that I’m alive. That he hasn’t strangled me.
That’s when I realise the truth. Dominic is not going to kill me. He was never planning to kill me. Instead, he’s done something far worse. He’s opened a door that can never be shut again. A door into the dark, twisted depths of my own psyche.
‘Rachel?’ he says, taking a step towards me.
But I moan incoherently and back away, shaking my head.
I’m not Rachel.
There is no Rachel. No evil sister.
I’m not Cat either. Not anymore. How can I ever be Cat again, now that I’ve met Rachel face-to-face and been told what she did?
He’s watching me. He knows what’s happening to me. And he doesn’t care.
I can feel everything inside me starting to crack, to collapse under the strain of that one horrifying glimpse. But I can’t let him see that. I can’t let him win.
‘D-does Louise know?’ I’m stammering again. Somehow I can’t bear the thought of her knowing what I’ve done. Knowing and lying about it to my face. Louise is probably the only person in the world that I might call a friend – and mean it. ‘Does she know about Felicity? What I did to her?’
‘No,’ he says huskily.
I’m relieved, though I hate him seeing it. Hurriedly, I change the subject.
‘B-but what about my father? Why didn’t he try to stop you marrying me?’
‘He would have done, if he’d known. But I was careful never to discuss my family with anyone who might come into contact with you. Not having the same surname helped. And my aunt and uncle were well briefed not to mention Felicity at the wedding. I told them I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.’ Dominic grimaces. ‘It hurt, having to airbrush her name out of my life for the past couple of years. But it was worth it. Robert didn’t get suspicious until after I sent you the snow globe. I think that was when he began to guess the truth
, or something close to it.’
I glance at the door, wondering if I can distract him when Trudi arrives with our tea. Long enough to escape the house, at least.
‘I don’t understand how you even got hold of the snow globe.’
His smile chills me. He moves between me and the door, as if he can read my mind. ‘Kasia let me into the house. I told her some lie, said I was there to collect something you’d left behind. Then it was a simple matter of finding an object from your childhood that I could use to’ – he pauses as though searching for the right word – ‘unbalance you.’
‘Well, it worked.’
‘Of course. The eyeball was a nasty touch. Just right for a nasty piece of work like you. I wanted you to know you were being watched.’
I shiver.
‘Destroying your wedding dress wasn’t easy. The stench of pig blood. I started to think I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But then I visited Felicity again, and just seeing her in this bed . . . it gave me the strength I needed to see it through. It made me more determined than ever to punish you. To get Rachel back.’
‘You sent Jasmine the postcard?’
Dominic nods.
‘And wrote my name on the wall beside the hangman game.’
‘And in your old paperback romances in the chest,’ he says softly, ‘where I knew you would be bound to find them. Just a touch here, a change there, and you were halfway back into madness. It was so simple; it was almost laughable.’
I’m frowning now. ‘But Rachel’s signature on those sheets at the food bank . . .’ I begin.
‘I went to see Sharon,’ he says. ‘Pretended I needed her advice about a wedding present for you. She let me wait in her office while she dealt with a query. I saw the sheets on her desk . . .’
I remember what Petra had said to him outside the food bank. That he’d discussed my ‘problems’ with her and Sharon. ‘So that’s what Petra meant,’ I whisper. ‘I thought you must have spoken to her at the wedding. But you’d been there before.’ I can hear faint noises from outside the door. Is that Trudi returning with the tea? Discreetly, I edge closer to the door. ‘What else did you do? Did you put a cat in the cellar?’
‘It wasn’t a real cat, just a recording taken from the Internet. I hid down in the cellar and played it back at top volume on my phone.’ His smile is grim. ‘Kasia nearly caught me sneaking back into the house that morning; I had to hide in the utility room until she’d finished cleaning downstairs. But it was vital to get you into the cellar. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the idea of rescuing a trapped cat.’
‘Why did you need me in the cellar?’
‘Apart from wanting to lock you down there forever, you mean?’ he asks, his tone vehement. ‘While I was helping to clear out “Rachel’s” bedroom before we moved in, I took a load of old furniture down to the cellar. That’s when I saw the old filing cabinet. Finding your dad’s journal in there was a godsend. I thought about planting it somewhere in the house for you to find. But I couldn’t risk Robert finding it himself. So I tried to lead you to it without being too obvious.’ He pauses, an odd expression on his face. ‘Not a brilliant plan, in the end. I didn’t mean you to get hurt.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’
His face hardens. ‘But all my little mind games made Robert suspicious. So he hired Wainwright to find out more about me.’
I stare, my full attention back on him. ‘Dad hired him?’
‘Of course, who else? I didn’t realise I was being followed until after we got back from our honeymoon. I was a bit slow there. Then one night I gave Wainwright the slip, doubled back and followed him to his office. That’s when I realised he was a private detective.’ He makes a face. ‘I had to stop visiting Felicity after that. I knew it was only a matter of time before he worked out my connection to her.’
‘So you did kill Wainwright?’
Dominic laughs. ‘Nothing so dramatic. It happened exactly like I told the police that night. Wainwright was knocked under the train in the crush, pure and simple.’ He shrugs. ‘Or maybe he realised I’d sussed him, and panicked, and that’s why he lost his footing. I guess we’ll never know for sure. For what it’s worth though, I’m sorry he died.’
I don’t believe him, and my eyes tell him that.
‘I’m not like you, Rachel,’ he points out, his tone cutting. ‘I’m not a stone-cold killer.’
I look away from him, back at Felicity’s pale face. Her shrunken figure in the bed. The pumps work steadily, the electronic beeps continue, her chest rises and falls, her face still and composed. She is growing older every day without having lived.
‘I’m not a killer,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t even remember hitting her with the Jag. I don’t remember any of it.’
But that’s not true.
And he knows it. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
I see bright lights dazzling me. A car coming towards me. I taste fear in my mouth. The sickening sideways wrench of a car too powerful for me to control.
I throw up my arm, hiding my face from those lights. ‘Please . . . !’
‘Back when you were still Catherine, you told me what Rachel did to some unfortunate cat. Tormented it cruelly, gouged out its eyes.’
‘No.’
‘Only it wasn’t a flesh-and-blood cat, was it?’ His voice nags at me, implacable. ‘It wasn’t even a metaphor for yourself, for Cat.’
‘No.’
‘It was a car with the figurine of a big cat on the bonnet.’
‘No, I told you—’
‘It was your father’s classic Jag, the one you drove into my sister, leaving her here in this bed, with no idea who she is or what happened to her.’ He stares at me furiously. ‘Rather like you, shutting off completely from Rachel after the accident. Reinventing her as your big bad sister. The sister nobody talks about. Only I’ve found a way to bring her back, haven’t I?’ His smile is worse than his threats. ‘And now you’ll never be rid of her again. Rachel’s here to stay and she’s going to pay for what she did.’
He reaches for me again, but I jerk away.
‘Wait, wait,’ I say urgently. ‘Does Dad ever come here?’ My voice is high-pitched, unrecognisable. ‘You said he pays for all this. Does he visit her too?’
‘Robert Bates doesn’t give a damn about Felicity,’ Dominic tells me. ‘He pays for her care because of a deal he made with my dad. A financial arrangement that kept all the embarrassing details out of the papers, and let my dad hope she might recover one day. But she’ll never recover, and my dad’s dead now.’ He swallows, suddenly paling. ‘It’s time to let her go. Turn off these machines. Then your dad will be free of it. But you never will be, Rachel.’ His voice hardens again. ‘I’m going to make sure of that.’
‘So you’re reading to her, are you?’
He looks blank. ‘I don’t read to Felicity, no. I talk to her, and bring flowers, and play her music. The music she used to love as a teen.’
I point to the book on the bedside cabinet. ‘Then what’s that?’
‘Nurse Trudi, perhaps. Or one of the other nurses who come in to look after her.’
I slip round the bed and pick up the book, Through the Looking-Glass.
He’s instantly furious again, chasing after me. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He grabs my arm. ‘Get away from her.’
‘It’s not one of the nurses who left this,’ I say huskily, and show him the flyleaf, where my name is written. My other name. I read aloud, ‘To Catherine, on your twelfth birthday, love Daddy.’ I give a harsh laugh and close the book. ‘One of his little acts of rebellion when I was going through my Rachel phase. Daddy hated calling me Rachel, even though he knew it made me even crazier when he didn’t. I threw the book out of my bedroom window that morning when I saw which name he’d used. He ran outside in the rain to rescue it. In his slippers.’
Dominic stares down at the book, momentarily speechless, then says slowly, ‘I don’t understand.’
A
deep voice asks, ‘Don’t you?’ from the doorway.
We both turn.
I start in surprise and horror, tears springing to my eyes. Dominic does not release me, his hand squeezing my wrist even harder.
Dad watches us, filling the doorway with his tall figure. ‘Hello, Rachel,’ he says, then looks at the woman in the bed, his voice softening. ‘Hello, Felicity.’
‘Daddy,’ I gasp.
‘Get away from my daughter,’ he tells Dominic, a steely note in his voice.
Dominic hesitates, his face tense, still grasping my wrist.
‘I know who you really are, Nick,’ Dad continues icily. ‘I’ve known for some time, thanks to Wainwright.’
Dominic’s eyes widen at the use of his childhood name.
‘I didn’t want to precipitate a crisis with Cat, so I said nothing. But that horse has well and truly bolted. So your little charade here is finished.’ Dad pauses, his face a mask of cold authority. ‘If you stay away from Cat, I won’t pursue this any further. But if you persist, I will intervene, don’t think I won’t. I doubt the police will believe you weren’t involved in Wainwright’s death, for instance.’
Dominic says nothing, but I can feel his sudden stillness.
‘I’m sorry for what happened to Felicity. It was a terrible tragedy, a talented young life cut short.’ Dad glances towards the woman in the bed, a sudden throb of emotion in his voice. ‘Yes, I come here sometimes to sit and read to her. And ask her to forgive me. Though I’ve never been able to forgive myself.’
I stare at him. ‘For what?’
‘For not managing your condition better. And for not being a stricter parent at times. Perhaps if I hadn’t let you have your way so often . . .’ He shakes his head, then looks at Dominic, a significant edge to his voice. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my daughter. Do we understand each other?’
Dominic hesitates, then nods silently.
‘Good, I’m glad.’ Behind my father, I can see Nurse Trudi hanging about in the hallway, peering over his shoulder with a curious expression. Dad lowers his voice, choosing his words carefully as though aware of this unwanted audience. ‘Because none of us will come out of this unscathed if you decide to go public. You’ve had your revenge. You’ve turned Cat back into Rachel. Don’t make things any worse than they already are.’
