Forget Her Name(93)

‘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.