I hate the way he says my name with such deliberate emphasis. As if he’s contrasting me with Cat. My pale shadow. The person I no longer want to be, according to Dr Holbern’s philosophy.
‘I don’t have a clue,’ I say. For once, I don’t know how to play this. I want to scream at him to take me home, but I don’t quite dare. Not when he’s looking at me with such an accusing expression, as if I’ve done something dreadful. Only I have no idea what. ‘Why don’t you tell me what this is about, Dom? Who is she?’
He strokes a finger down the woman’s cheek, gazing at her with real tenderness. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is Felicity.’
I frown. ‘Felicity? Sorry, is that name supposed to mean something to me? Because it’s not ringing any bells.’ I stare at the woman. ‘Who exactly is Felicity?’
‘My half-sister.’
‘Your half-sister.’
‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Same mum, different dads.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say again, frowning. ‘You told me you didn’t have any close family still living.’
‘I lied.’
I’m nauseous again. My head buzzes oddly, like there’s a wasp in there, beating against the inside of my head, desperate to be free.
‘Look at her, Rachel,’ he says, and studies his half-sister. ‘Felicity wasn’t just my half-sister. She was my best friend too. We were so close growing up, she always knew what I was thinking. Like she was inside my head. And her laugh . . . God, it was so bubbly, so infectious, you couldn’t hear it and not laugh too. We all loved her madly. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.’ His voice chokes. ‘How much I’ll always miss her.’
I stare at my feet. My high heels are pinching, so I kick them off. The plastic sheet is cool under my feet.
‘Look at her,’ he says through gritted teeth.
‘I’ve looked.’ I shrug. ‘So she’s your half-sister. So what?’
‘Do you recognise her?’
‘No.’ I chew at my fingernail, pretending to be bored now, impatient to leave this vile place. ‘I’m hungry. Can’t we eat yet?’ I bite off a jagged sliver of nail and spit it out like a ten-year-old. ‘Come on, let’s go. I hate the smell of this place.’
‘Don’t you even want to know what happened to her? Why Felicity is here?’ Dominic grabs my wrist and yanks me closer to the bed, his voice angry. ‘Why these machines are the only thing keeping her alive?’
The wasp in my head buzzes violently. Suddenly, I feel like retching.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Liar!’
I don’t see his hand come up until it’s too late. He knocks me backwards with one blow, a slap across my face that leaves me breathless and shocked, staring up at him from the floor.
‘You should want to know,’ he yells, ‘because you did this to her!’
Stunned, I cup my throbbing cheek.
‘Years ago, you lied your way out of taking responsibility for what happened to her. But this is where the lies stop.’ He stands over me, his face dark with emotion. ‘Fuck! I thought that once you were Rachel again, you’d remember for sure.’
‘Remember what?’
‘A wet night. Your dad’s car. He’d left his keys on the kitchen table.’ His eyes are like slits. ‘You took them. Stole the car. Even though you were only a kid, even though you had no idea how to drive.’ His voice thickens, furious. ‘The car was a classic Jaguar. Big, sleek, powerful. Automatic transmission. A lethal weapon in the wrong hands.’
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.’