All of a sudden, rough hands are all over him; tearing away the bedclothes and trying to roll him at the shoulder. After a reflex scrambling for blankets, he awakes to a face close-up, the same blubbery, round face he’d seen before in his half-sleeping, but beetroot now with rage: gone the next moment, as his own face is engulfed in the pillow. Those rough hands crawl around his body, fingers prying and pulling. At last Alex finds his voice. Even through the stuffing it squeals out a piercing cry of protest.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s me!” he hears a voice shouting back. A sharp intake of breath follows, and deflates into a gasp.
And suddenly Alex is the one looking down at the figure on the bed. How could he have forgotten this moment? Waking from the blow to the face and staggering into this room, gripped by the dread of finding his twin trapped beneath that monstrous brute. Seeing him lying there, horribly raped, discovering the blood, mistaking the streaks of mud for something so much worse. And the love for his brother that came with that dread, surpassing any love he’d ever known; love that would have driven him willingly to kill or be killed. That love was the same selfless love he’s hearing now, and the same dread, bursting inconsolably from Daniel’s lips.
“No, no, no,” he cries out, the clarity dawning white-hot that Daniel must be made to understand. “It’s all a mistake. I haven’t been raped!”
But the words hit the air as nothing but gibberish. He struggles to free himself from the tangle of sheets and sit, and show it with his hands. But a second audience isn’t granted. The phone next door is already being torn from its cradle. A chain reaction is getting underway, the future being set in stone. People are about to get hurt. It doesn’t matter that Daniel’s words down the phone are totally incoherent; from the sheer desperation in the voice Alex knows that Gulnaz will immediately set out without question. For God’s sake let him rise from the bed and make it all stop. He knows only too well what will happen when she arrives. His mind has played it over and over a thousand times; he’d simply misunderstood where it fitted. Now he must stand ready to witness the unforgiveable act of violence against her, helplessly to bellow and howl and block his ears to the poor woman’s screams.