Forget Her Name(95)

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.