Chapter Forty-Five
I raise my eyebrows. ‘How so?’
‘I told you about the postcard. I shouldn’t have done that. That’s what triggered this relapse, isn’t it? But I didn’t understand.’ Her voice rises, agonised. ‘I didn’t know. I knew you as Rachel. You came to visit us in Birmingham that time, remember? You made our lives miserable. But everyone was calling you Rachel in those days.’
‘I preferred Rachel.’ I shrug. ‘Still do.’
‘Then I was told you’d died, but Cat was okay. I thought that must be your younger sister, another cousin I’d never met. I mean, fuck, we live at the other end of the country practically, and I was only a little kid at the time.’ She’s flushed now, getting hysterical. ‘I had no idea what was going on. Someone should have told me. It wasn’t fair to keep it a secret.’
‘It was none of your business,’ my mother says coldly.
‘But if I’d known, I would never have mentioned the postcard. Not in a million years. Especially on her wedding day.’ Jasmine turns to me. ‘I mean, God, that must have been what started all this shit again. Otherwise why would you be tripping out like this so soon afterwards?’
‘Tripping out?’ I repeat, as icy as my mother but with my own special twist of crazed batshittery for added menace.
‘Flipping out, relapsing, whatever you want to call it.’
Jasmine is crying now, tears rolling down her cheeks. Tears of guilt and fear. She’s worried my parents will blame her, of course. That’s what this is really about. These are tears of self-protection. Just look at how unhappy I am about this; you can’t make matters worse by blaming me, it wouldn’t be fair. She’s so transparent, it’s embarrassing.
Jasmine sees me looking at her, coolly dissecting her behaviour, and almost shrieks. ‘You sent the postcard. You sent it to me. So it wasn’t my fault. It was yours.’
‘Jasmine,’ my mother says, a reprimand in her voice.
I let go of Dominic’s hand and keep staring at Jasmine, playing back those words in my head.
You sent the postcard. You sent it to me.
She’s right, of course. I must have sent her that postcard signed, so provocatively, Rachel. Except I have no memory of doing it. Surely I ought to remember?
Yet it’s the only logical explanation. Like the creepy eyeball in the snow globe. Nice touch that. I congratulate myself. I pinched the snow globe from the wooden chest on the landing, procured the eyeball and posted it to myself at work. Later, I cut up my own wedding dress – it made me look fat, anyway, so it was probably a good move – and sprinkled it with animal blood for dramatic effect, then went out to work as usual, being sure to leave the bathroom window open to make it look like an intruder got in. As for the cat noises and the footsteps in the cellar . . .
Well, the mind is a strange and unpredictable thing, never entirely under our control. That’s what I love about being me. The not-knowing part.
I didn’t know I was Rachel, after all. Not until I read my father’s notebook. Or rather, I forgot that I was also Rachel. Or rather, to be completely accurate, I was induced to forget. Brainwashing, some might call what they did to me at that specialist clinic in Switzerland. I don’t remember much of that either, to be fair. It’s all a blur of snow and white rooms and pills. Pills every day. And yoga therapy.
God, I’d forgotten about the yoga. How weird.
So yes, I did it all, I hold my hands up to that naughtiness. I masterminded my own relapse. Because I was sick of being goody-two-shoes Catherine, and wanted badass Rachel back in my life.
‘Sorry about that,’ I say. I pick up the wine bottle, my mouth suddenly dry. It’s empty, of course. ‘Shit. Out of wine. Did I do that?’
I place the bottle back on the kitchen worktop but somehow miss the edge. Or maybe I deliberately miss it. I can’t be sure which, afterwards. But it drops to the tiled kitchen floor, where of course it shatters.
Glass explodes across the floor.
Jasmine shrieks again. It’s almost a default setting with her, I’m beginning to suspect. Mum jumps hurriedly out of the way to avoid the glass shards. Dominic doesn’t move from my side.
My rock, I think drily.
Dad comes back into the kitchen and stares at the mess, then looks at me.
Oops.
‘Thank God. What did he say?’ Mum asks, sounding tearful herself now. ‘What did Doctor Holbern say?’
‘He’s not in England,’ my father says flatly. ‘He’s in the States.’
‘What?’
‘I know. Talk about bad timing.’ He opens the walk-in kitchen cupboard and reaches for a broom. I didn’t even realise he knew where the broom is kept. But maybe he and Kasia get kinky in the cupboard occasionally. Dirty bastard. ‘Dr Holbern flew out there for a Christmas skiing break, apparently. Some mountain cabin he keeps up in Vermont. He flies home the day after tomorrow. But his PA is going to email him, see what can be arranged for when he’s back. We may even be able to get Cat booked back into the specialist clinic in Switzerland. There’s been a change of management since she was there before, but they still accept private referrals, thank God.’ He starts sweeping up the glass with quick, impatient movements, then stops to look around at me again, breathing hard as though he’s been thinking about Kasia. I smile and his face tightens. ‘Meanwhile, his PA suggests we do what we did last time, as an interim measure.’
‘Which is?’ Dominic asks.
‘Take away everything she could use to harm herself, and lock her in her room. And try to get a doctor out to her, for an emergency prescription of antipsychotics.’
Dominic nods. ‘Leave that last part to me, I can make a call. And I’ll stay with her in the room. Keep her safe.’
The largest fragment of the broken bottle, the heavy glass base, is glinting at me, still wet with wine, right at my feet. Like an invitation nobody in my position could be expected to resist. And being me, I don’t see the need even to consider resisting.
I stoop to pick it up, and Dominic grabs at my arm.
‘Oh no you don’t.’ He twists my arm behind my back as I struggle. I could be wrong but it sounds almost like he’s laughing at me. ‘Please don’t fight me, darling. This is for your own good.’
‘That’s what they always say.’
‘Well, I’m not them. I’m your husband.’ His breath is warm on my neck, oddly reassuring. ‘And I can do this all night if necessary.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ I gasp.
So here we are again. Back to Rachel. Back to ground zero.
I laugh, throwing my head back, and enjoy my wrestling match with Dominic. It’s a bit one-sided though. He’s strong, and he knows what he’s doing; there’ll be no getting out of this arm lock. What was it my father wrote in his notebook?
I just wish we could have our lovely Cat back.
Not while I’m alive.