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 put a hand behind my head and tilted it upwards, put something on my tongue. Before I could spit it out, she poured water into my mouth from a plastic bottle and the pill slipped down my throat.
‘What was that?’ I said, gasping, water running onto my neck. The rest of my body was still damp, cold.
‘Just something to relax you.’
‘Rachel, come on. Why don’t you uncuff me? We can talk about everything.’
She shook her head. ‘Later. When I’ve finished.’
‘Finished what?’
She leaned over me and I saw that she was wearing something familiar. It was a helmet – the same helmet Mr Makkawi had worn when he’d performed my eye operation. It looked a little like an old-fashioned miner’s helmet, a brilliant light attached to the front.
‘Rachel, why are you wearing that?’ I could barely speak. On top of everything else, the sight of the helmet had brought back memories of the pain of the eye examinations I’d undergone. The awful torture as they shone brilliant lights into my eyes, the veins filling my vision like bloody corals, the horror of being trapped, my eyes forced open, the laser they used for the follow-up surgery causing the nerves in my eyes to scream, like when a dentist pokes a nerve in a tooth.
She didn’t reply. Instead she took a couple of small objects from her holdall.
‘You know, Rachel isn’t really my name,’ she said. ‘But I like it. Makes me feel pretty.’ She spoke in a strange sing-song voice.
A deep shudder went through my core as I realised what she was holding.
Eye clamps.
‘No, please, Rachel, please don’t . . .’
She ignored me. ‘Did you know I worked at Moorfields for a while? Fascinating place. I took this helmet when I left. That’s where I first saw you, when I realised that we should be together. You were coming out of your operation. You were unconscious. You looked so beautiful, like an angel lying there. I looked up your details. One of the other nurses told me that you’d told her about your sister, that she was in a wheelchair. You told her that she was looking for a personal assistant. It seemed like fate. What better way for me to get close to you, to watch you.’ She wagged her finger at me. ‘Though I was disappointed you didn’t visit more often.’