My chest feels so tight, I can scarcely breathe, and it’s as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room.
It can’t be true, it can’t. They’re just messing with me again – they have to be. I try to stay calm and think rationally, tell myself this is all part of the same malicious game Dr Cousins and Janine have been playing with Greg, Ella, Daniel and me for the past six months.
‘You’re lying,’ I say, searching Dr Cousins’ face (noticing that her eyes aren’t electric blue any more, they’re brown), then Janine’s, willing them both to say, ‘Yes, OK, we’re lying, but we had you fooled there, didn’t we, ha ha.’ But they don’t.
I glance at Greg, whose face is deathly pale, like he’s about to be sick. I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking he’s slept with his own daughter. I should tell him now, the other secret I kept from him. I lied to him before because at that point neither of us had any idea that Dr Cousins and Amber were one and the same person, and I couldn’t bear to hurt him any more. Not when he’d just found out about my affair. That was bad enough. But something stops me from speaking up now. I’m still in disbelief, I guess. Too busy studying Dr Cousins’ face.
How can my own daughter have fooled me all this time? How did I not recognize her? Surely a mother knows her own child, despite the passage of time? Is this yet another failing of mine?
Her expression is steadfast. ‘I am your daughter, Heidi. The daughter you had with your lover, Nate, my mother’s husband, your husband’s friend…’
My eyes flit to Greg, who should of course feel relieved. As should I, knowing that he no longer thinks he’s slept with his own child. But the flip side to this is that I’ve hurt him even more. He’s realized I’ve told him another lie. Led him to believe he was Heidi’s father all this time, when he wasn’t. Led him to mourn someone who wasn’t his own flesh and blood. Heidi is Nate’s, that’s what the DNA sample proved. And that’s how we justified carrying on our affair: we were bound to one another through Heidi. That’s what we told each other.
I look at Freya. Could she really be Heidi?
She is still talking. ‘…the one whose phone call you prioritized over making sure I was safe. The one you fucked at your own wedding, in the same room where you slept with your new husband.’
She is blonde, but back then, Heidi had dark curly hair, darker than Nate’s. She reads my mind, touches her hair, says, ‘Dyed, can’t you tell?’
‘Your eyes,’ I murmur.
‘I wore contact lenses for you and Daniel.’ She looks at Greg. ‘Au naturel for you and Ella, though.’
‘How do I know you’re telling me the truth?’ I say.
She looks at me and grins. If this is my child, she’s been primed to hate me. ‘You know it’s me. You’re my mother, of course you know your own child when you see her.’
I take a step closer, try to reach out and touch her, but she pulls away.
‘Back off, Christine. We may have the same blood running through our veins, but as far as I’m concerned, she’s my real mother.’
She and Janine exchange arrogant smiles, and then Janine speaks. ‘You should be so proud, knowing what a beautiful, smart woman your daughter has turned into. You know, she had a bit of a wobble recently, was finding our project a bit tough going, but I calmed her down, made her believe in herself, the way only a mother can.’
‘How can you say all that? You’ve brainwashed her into hating me, you’ve turned her against me.’
‘No, you did that yourself.’
‘How could Nate have gone along with this? Is that why he killed himself? The guilt ate him up?’ I study Janine’s body language and see no hint of remorse for her husband’s suicide. Her quest for revenge must have driven him to it, but if this bothers her, she shows no sign of it.
‘Who knows?’ she shrugs. ‘Yes, maybe it was the guilt. Guilt for having an affair with you, the reason why I took Heidi in the first place. Deep down, he knew it was all his and your doing. And the lying bastard couldn’t deal with that.’
I see no trace of the woman who once worshipped the ground Nate walked on.
‘Tell me, Janine, did you even shed a tear when he died?’
I watch her closely, but if she did cry, she doesn’t want anyone else to know. Chin up, she says defiantly, ‘To be honest, it was a relief to be rid of him. That way, there was no chance of him interfering with the next stage of my plan.’
‘So taking Heidi, watching me suffer all these years, was just the tip of the iceberg? Tell me, did you always plan to bring her home one day? Once she was grown and brainwashed into hating me enough to want to destroy me and my family forever? Is she even a psychiatrist?’
‘Yes, that was always my plan. Nate knew that, and so did Heidi. And what better time than the year she turned twenty-five? But Heidi understood. I didn’t force her. She wanted the same. Didn’t you, darling?’
‘Yes,’ Heidi says. ‘And no, I’m not a psychiatrist – bit young for that – but I am very interested in the human mind.’ She pauses, then looks at Greg. ‘I knew you’d snoop around in my study if I told you it was out of bounds. That was always the plan, and you were so predictable.’
Greg looks crestfallen, and I shiver at her deception, at what my daughter has become. Although it’s a futile exercise, I have to at least try and make her believe how much I loved her back then. That I’d have done anything to get her back – that if there’d been any indication at all that she was still alive I’d have given my life to have her returned to us safe and sound. I say all this, tell her how much I loved her from the moment she was born, just as I did when I thought she was Dr Cousins. But it makes no difference. Janine has had the advantage of years spent grooming her for this day, while I haven’t set eyes on my child since she was a toddler. I am nothing to her, I realize that now, and nothing I say is going to change that.
‘And you used Miranda to get to us? Why?’
Heidi and Janine share another chilling grin. Then I listen in horror as my daughter explains what I already suspected.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ Greg, who’s been quiet since learning he’s not Heidi’s father, suddenly pipes up. ‘I’m calling the police, Janine. You’re going to prison.’
‘Do what you must. But just hear me out: if you have me arrested, everything will come out in the press. Chrissy’s affair, your affair with Heidi, your children’s incestuous affairs with their half-sibling. It’ll all come out, and think what that will do to Ella and Daniel. They won’t be able to leave the house for shame. Their lives will be destroyed, I’ll make sure of that.’
Greg looks fit to burst. His face is red and taut, and I worry he’s on the verge of having a heart attack. We lock eyes, and I know he hates me, but right now he’s also feeling what I’m feeling. Torn. The last thing we want is to inflict more damage on our children. And not for one second do I doubt Janine’s threat to make their sex lives public.
Just then, at the mention of my other children, I realize I’ve not checked my messages to see if Ella’s OK, and how things went at Daniel’s. I retrieve my phone from my handbag and am shocked to find I have six texts and two voicemails from Ella. I look at Greg and he reads my mind. My hand is shaking as I open the first text.
I can’t help myself; I scream, ‘No!’ suddenly seeing stars.
‘What is it, Chrissy?’ I vaguely hear Greg say as he comes rushing over.
I tell him.
‘Jesus Christ, no,’ he cries, glaring at Heidi and Janine who, for the first time, look rattled. ‘Which hospital?’
‘UCH.’
‘I’m going over, now.’
‘Wait!’ I say, going through Ella’s texts. I daren’t listen to her voicemails, I can’t bear to hear my daughter’s tortured voice. ‘I haven’t read her latest text.’
I get to the last one, and this time my knees do cave and I fall to the floor.
‘Chrissy?’ I hear Greg say.
I can barely get the words out. ‘Dan’s in a coma. Ella says the doctors don’t expect him to recover.’