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‘Maybe I’m concerned for you? After all, you haven’t known him as long as I have—you probably haven’t seen the dark side of his personality yet. Anyone who spent time in prison for rape and then had a wife who killed herself is bound to have psychological problems, wouldn’t you think?’
Rachel collapsed in the chair by the telephone. ‘What did you say?’ she whispered in agonised disbelief. ‘About his having been in prison?’
‘Oops. I suppose that’s something that never came up in your conversations. Of course, since he was charged as a minor the information is sealed by the records—so he would have no incentive to tell you, would he? I guess no man likes to admit to a new girlfriend that he served time for raping a fifteen-year-old…’
Rachel hardly heard the rest. Her hand was shaking so badly she dropped the receiver into the cradle and then staggered into the bathroom to be violently sick in the basin.
It couldn’t be true; it just couldn’t, she told her ghastly white face in the bathroom mirror. That would make everything he had told her—everything he was—everything that she loved—a lie!
She looked down at the ring on her finger and shuddered, pulling it off and letting it clatter onto the bathroom cabinet.
The sound of the key in the door of the apartment gave her no time to reorder her splintered thoughts. Nor did she give Matt any time to take her in his arms for their usual greeting.
‘Neville called. He said—I—Please, just tell me it’s not true?’ she pleaded, the instant he walked in the door.
‘What isn’t true?’ Matt asked warily, his eyes on her distraught face as she backed away from his embrace.
‘That when you were young you were arrested for raping a girl—a fifteen-year-old girl. That you went to prison for it?’ She put a hand over her mouth to hold in the choked sobs.
To her sick horror Matt didn’t leap in with an instant denial. His face was suddenly as white as hers. ‘Rachel, it’s not what it seems—’
‘What it seems? Don’t tell me how it seems—I just want to know if it’s true!’ she demanded hysterically.
‘Rachel, I was going to tell you—’
‘Is it true?’ She screamed. ‘It’s a simple enough question: were you or were you not charged with rape?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And you went to prison?’
‘Yes, I was remanded in custody, but—’
‘My God…’ Tears of shock and misery spurted out of her eyes. She felt as if she had been violated all over again. ‘My God, it’s all true…’
‘No! For God’s sake, Rachel, listen to me—I didn’t do it!’
He reached for her and she backed away, shaking her pounding head. ‘I believed you. Like a fool I believed all that stuff about you being a virgin,’ she said hysterically, ‘a man of honour. I fell in love with you and actually believed you…’
Blood darkened his face as he confronted her bewildered horror. ‘Then believe me now,’ he pleaded hoarsely. ‘You know I wouldn’t lie to you.’
She pressed her hands against her temples. What ghastly irony. Had she fallen in love with a man who had done to another young girl what had been done to her? ‘I don’t know—I can’t think. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I was afraid. I wanted you to get to know me first, so you wouldn’t have any doubts when I told you—so I took the coward’s way out…’ His desperation turned to a kind of tortured anger. ‘For God’s sake—I’m in love with you, Rachel, I would never do anything to hurt you! I know I made a mistake not telling you, but is your faith in me really so fragile? You really think I just pretended to be sexually inexperienced as part of some sick charade? Believe me—as God is my witness—I never committed any rape…’
‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ she choked, snatching up her purse. Nausea churned in her belly as she plunged for the door. Now he talked about being in love with her? Not in a moment of passion or tenderness, but hitting her with it while she was weak and wounded? And only after she had betrayed her own wretched vulnerability…
‘Rachel—’
‘No, I have to go. Don’t try to follow me—I have to be alone!’
She knew it was dangerous to drive her car in the state she was in, but she didn’t care—the homing instinct was paramount: the need to find a place of safety in which to lick her wounds.
Yet before she’d turned thankfully into her own driveway her shocked brain had begun to function again, feeding her the questions that she should have stayed to ask, separating fact from assumption, logical thought from unreasoning emotion.
Think! she urged herself. Follow the chain of evidence.
What had Neville actually said amongst all that sick innuendo about Matt’s ‘dark side’?
