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.