Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
She escorted me into the bathroom at knifepoint. Again, I looked around for a weapon. There were some razors in the cabinet. A small cup that held the toothbrushes. That was it. Holding the knife pointed towards me, she turned on the shower, which hung on the wall above the bathtub, with the other hand. When the water was hot and steam began to rise into the air, she ordered me to step into the bath. I stood beneath the scalding water and she handed me a bar of soap, told me to scrub. Sasha’s blood ran down my body in thin, pink rivulets.
‘Wash it all,’ Rachel said. ‘I want you clean. That’s it, wash off all the whore’s blood. I want all traces of her scrubbed from your skin.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, as I did what she commanded.
She looked at me like I was stupid. She shrugged.
‘Because I love you, Andrew.’
I looked around the bathroom. Rachel barred the door and there was no other way out, just a tiny window that had been painted shut years before. There weren’t any heavy objects in the room that I could smash it with. Even if I did smash the window, all I would be able to do was shout for help. By the time anyone heard me, Rachel would have stabbed me to death. There was already one body in the flat. If she was caught, she would do life for murder. It wouldn’t matter if there were two of us or one.
‘You killed them, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘Karen and Harold? And it was you who threw the acid at Kristi?’
‘The cleaner? No, that was nothing to do with me. A happy coincidence.’
‘But the others?’
Her face twisted into a glassy-eyed smile again. ‘Oh yes. You can thank me later.’
My only hope was that Rachel believed she loved me. The people she’d hurt so far had been the people around me. There was one little bright spot in this fucked-up, terrifying situation. Tilly must be OK. When Charlie said ‘Say goodbye to your sister,’ that was exactly what she meant. It wasn’t supposed to be a permanent goodbye.
I had been so wrong about Charlie. But I didn’t have time to think about that, because Rachel reached up and turned the shower off, pointing the knife at my face.
‘Into the bedroom,’ she said.
I got out of the shower, shivering and dripping, and Rachel jabbed the tip of the knife into my back, beside my spine. I gasped with pain and she said, ‘Oh for goodness sake.’
‘Rachel . . .’
‘Shut up, Andrew.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Please don’t make me lose my temper.’