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 snapped the clamps onto my eyes, forcing them open. I stared at her face, tried to turn my head, but she grabbed my chin and forced me to look at her. Tears pooled in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. She dabbed them away with a tissue. The hard metal of the clamps dug into my eye sockets, the pressure intense, like someone pushing the end of a spoon into my eye. I tried to kick with my legs, but Rachel straddled me, leather on my bare skin, pinning me down.
‘When I got Fraser to push you down those steps, I was hoping you would break your back. I was very disappointed. I thought, if I could get you to have an accident, I could be your personal assistant. I could look after you. We’d be together all the time.’ She licked her lips. ‘But that didn’t work. Fraser . . . what a fuck-up he is.’
‘Rachel . . .’
She ignored me. ‘This will be better than a broken back, though. I don’t really want you paralysed, Andrew, because then you wouldn’t be able to make love to me.’ She leant forward and kissed me on the lips. She ran her knuckles over my shrunken penis. ‘So beautiful. I could look at you all day. Soon, I will be able to look at you all day.’
She pulled a gag out of her holdall and strapped it around my mouth.
‘Don’t want you screaming and bringing the neighbours running, do we?’
She held up a scalpel.
‘When you’re blind, you’ll need someone to care for you. It’s going to be wonderful, living together. And it’s perfect because you won’t be able to look at any other women ever again.’
She raised the scalpel and held it above my left eye. ‘I’m the last thing you’ll ever see, Andrew. My face will be imprinted in your memory forever.’
She brought the blade towards my eye and I started screaming into my gag.
Forty-one
Forty-one
There is a fine membrane that covers the surface of the eye, called the conjunctiva. This membrane protects the sclera, or the white part of the eye. I knew this from staring at a poster in a waiting room at Moorfields. Iris, retina, pupil, cornea, optic nerve. These words tumbled through my brain at lightning speed, on rapid repeat—
iris, retina, pupil, cornea, optic nerve
—as I screamed and begged for Rachel to stop, screaming abuse, begging for mercy—
iris, retina, pupil, cornea, optic nerve
—every noise I made muffled by the gag in my mouth, the neighbours so close but oblivious to what was happening to me—
iris, retina, pupil, cornea, optic nerve