Page 156 of Deep Blue Sea

‘Is that why you’ve been keeping tabs on me, Adam? Come to Jersey, come dancing, come to Oxford, share your burden with me. You just wanted to know what I knew, what I had discovered in the investigation. I can’t believe I was so gullible.’ And I can’t believe I almost had sex with you, she added to herself. She just wanted to shower, to scrub him off her. She could still taste him in her mouth, feel his sweat on her hands, see a tiny spot of her lipstick on his ear lobe.

‘Rachel, don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, stepping forward. ‘What happened in Oxford happened because I like you, because I’m attracted to you.’

‘Save it,’ she snapped. ‘They are right about you. What they say in the papers, in the Denver boardroom. You are the playboy brother; it is all a game to you. And you’re everything a player should be: charming, handsome – and weak.’ She spat out the last word.

‘See it from my point of view, Rachel,’ he said, his voice pleading.

‘Oh, I do, Adam. I really do. And it isn’t pretty.’

She willed herself to think. Of course it looked bad that Adam had known all about Rheladrex. And whilst she could believe that his greed and his warped morals had made him want to stop Julian from pulling the drug off the market, he had neither the cold-heartedness nor the balls to do anything about it.

‘Just tell me: who else knows about the report?’

She knew the answer even before he had said it.

‘I gave a copy to Elizabeth,’ he said sheepishly. ‘She is in line to be CEO after all. She needs to know, she needs to be up to speed on all this if legal action starts against Rheladrex.’ He looked at Rachel curiously. ‘What’s wrong? Why shouldn’t I have told Elizabeth?’

She felt cold with fear. Images were flashing on to her retinas. Julian. Elizabeth. A coffin. Elizabeth sitting in the boss’s chair with a wintry, triumphant smile.

Adam grabbed her shoulders and shook her as if she were in a trance.

‘Rachel, tell me. What’s wrong?’

She shrugged him away violently. ‘Just go,’ she said, putting her hands up in front of her, wanting to block him out of sight.

‘All I did was read the report. All I did was tell Liz.’

‘That’s all,’ she said quietly, feeling so out of her depth, she thought she was about to drown.

58

Diana gripped her mother’s hand and looked anxiously at the blank screen to the side of her bed.

‘Just relax, my love,’ said the nurse as the sonographer busied herself with the equipment. ‘You won’t feel a thing and it will only take a few minutes.’

‘It’s going to be okay,’ said Sylvia, looking as nervous as her daughter felt.

As the technician inserted a wand-type instrument inside her, anxiety gripped Diana so severely she could hardly draw breath, but suddenly grainy black-and-white images began to appear on the little monitor.

‘Is that it?’ Diana whispered, although she couldn’t make anything out.

‘No, not yet,’ said the woman distractedly. ‘Just need to get our bearings.’

The door of the examining room opened, and Diana could see Rachel peering into the room. She locked eyes with her sister. There was so much at stake, so many questions, so many answers she didn’t want to hear.

‘There we go,’ said the sonographer. ‘I can see it. Just do a quick check of everything, take a few little measurements . . .’

She could feel Rachel by her side, stroking her shoulder. The sonographer looked up and smiled.

‘Would you like to see?’

Diana nodded. Her heart was thumping so hard, she wasn’t sure if the noise was coming from her own chest or the medical equipment. The woman turned the monitor towards her and then clicked a button, freezing the image in the centre of the screen.

‘See here?’ she said, pointing with her pen. ‘Can you see the curve of the spine? And here, the shape of the head?’

Diana gasped. She could – and were those tiny legs? The woman clicked the button and the picture started moving again. ‘Can you see baby moving?’ she said. ‘And right in the middle, there’s the heart beating.’

‘The heart?’ croaked Diana. Her baby? ‘So . . . so what does that mean? It’s an actual baby? It’s all right?’