The Girl I Used to Be(58)

She blinked. “What? I am!”

The heat was rising now; I’d felt it simmering for years and all the time I’d tried to control it, to keep a lid on my feelings, but faced with her innocent expression, I couldn’t control myself. “Little Miss Perfect, always doing the right thing. That’s how you portray yourself, isn’t it?”

She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “Rachel, I have done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.”

I hardly heard her. I felt if I didn’t tell her then, I didn’t know what I’d do. “But you and I both know you have, don’t we?”

She was staring at me. I knew my cheeks were red, knew she was wary now. I could feel anticipation rising in me. It had been dampened down for so long and now I was going to set myself free.

“We both know exactly what you are,” I said. “What you’ve done. The question is, who else knows? Does Joe know, I wonder?”

She stared at me, her eyes boggling. She took a step back and I realized I was frightening her. Well, good.

“Did you tell him, Gemma? Do you tell him everything? Did you tell him what happened that night?” I gave her a hard, contemptuous look. “Or did you lie, just as you always do?”

She looked like she’d been slapped. “Are you saying that was my fault?”

“You and I both know the truth. That’s what you can’t stand, isn’t it? You can say what you like, but I know the truth.”

“The truth about what?” she yelled. “What your pervert husband has been doing to me?”

I flinched.

“You really know all that and you’ve the nerve to stand here talking to me?” she asked. “You realize I risk losing everything because of him?”

And then the heat was in my face and I couldn’t stop myself. Tears filled my eyes and I dashed them away. “It’s time you knew what it felt like,” I said. I felt like my heart was bursting. “To know what it feels like to lose everything.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she said. “You know nothing about me!”

She was such an idiot. “Oh I do, Gemma. I know everything.”

“So you know that your husband—your own husband—has been blackmailing me?” she said. “You know that?”

I shook my head. “You had that coming to you,” I said. “It’s what you deserve.” I drew myself up then and pushed my shoulders back. “And he hardly did anything anyway.” I moved away a little, my eyes still on hers. “Unlike you.”

“Unlike me?” she shrieked, as though she were blameless. “What have I done?”

I was cold now; the heat had left my face. Left my body. I could feel my hands shaking. “You’ve no idea, have you?” I said.

“What?”

I took a deep breath. “You’ve no idea who I am.”

“What?” she said again, and to be fair, she looked completely bewildered. “Of course I know who you are!”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’d always wondered if you knew.” I drew my shoulders back and looked her straight in the eye. “I’m Alex’s sister.”





FORTY-THREE


    GEMMA


Fifteen years ago

IT’S ODD THE dreams you have sometimes; they’re so powerful, so vivid, and yet the second you wake up, they vanish, no matter how hard you try to cling on to them. How does that happen? And other times the dreams morph into reality and you find you’re no longer dreaming. You’re living in a nightmare.

When I woke that night at the party, my body was heavy and exhausted. My head was buried deep into the pillows and the smell of laundry was so intense I had to lift my head up to breathe fresh air. As I opened my eyes all I could see was darkness and for a drunken moment I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered. This was Alex’s room. I’d fallen asleep here while the party was going on downstairs.

I thought I’d go to find Lauren and realized I couldn’t. The heaviness on my body wasn’t exhaustion. It wasn’t that I was too tired to move.

I couldn’t move.

Something was on top of me, weighing me down. Something heavy. I tried to take a breath and couldn’t. Then my legs were suddenly wide apart and something was moving inside me in hard, vicious stabs. I tried to turn but I couldn’t move. I wanted to shout but something was pressing down on my chest. I felt like I was being buried into the mattress, as though all of the air in my lungs had been pushed out of me.

My arms were dead by the side of me. I tried to move them, but couldn’t.

And then I heard the breathing. A rasping breath, hot on the back of my neck, just beside my ear. I wrenched my head away and the weight lifted slightly.

This time when I tried to turn the pressure lifted completely and I gasped in air. I struggled to sit up and a blanket was thrown over me, over my face. In the pitch black I heard someone moving around, then the sound of a zip. I tried to push the blanket off me but then another one was thrown on top of me and I was tangled up in them.

I was still drunk, still unable to think straight. Panicking, I tore at the blankets, but the room was dark and I couldn’t find a way out. And then I heard the bedroom door open and the landing light shone briefly in the room. I turned toward the light, ripping the blankets away from my head. In the second it took for the door to quietly shut again, I saw someone tall and dark-haired, wearing a T-shirt with The Coral on the back hurrying from the room.