The New Girl

by Ingrid Alexandra

  Silence. Then the click of a lighter as Rachel lights a cigarette. I didn’t even know she smoked. ‘I don’t know. I think so.’

  I close my eyes, see the image of Mark’s face gushing blood. I can’t think about it, can’t think about what she did. I was wrong. Wrong about everything.

  ‘We have to call the police.’

  ‘I’d rather die.’ Rachel looks fierce. She inhales aggressively on her cigarette, stares out into the distance. For a second it’s like I don’t know her, have never seen her before.

  ‘Can I have one of those?’

  Rachel hands me the cigarettes and I pull one out with shaking fingers, flick the lighter several times before it ignites.

  As I cough on the first drag, something occurs to me. ‘Why’d you bring a bag?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That bag, why’d you bring it?’

  Rachel shrugs. She’s not jittery anymore, though she’s eyeing me warily. She puffs on her cigarette, sips her drink. ‘To carry the bat and stuff.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ The sharpness of my voice startles me. ‘You knew we were coming here. That’s why. What else is in there?’

  Rachel sighs. ‘Just some supplies. A few clothes, toothbrushes. Booze.’ She gives me a weak smile.

  ‘You planned this. You …’ I bite back the ugly, unfathomable words. You killed Mark.

  ‘He was going to hurt you. I couldn’t let him do that.’ Rachel flicks her cigarette butt over the railing. ‘Don’t think he wouldn’t have killed you if he had the chance. Like he tried to kill me.’

  ‘He what?’

  Rachel snorts. ‘Getting hit by that car was no accident. He wanted to make sure I didn’t get to you before he did.’

  I shake my head. What she’s saying sounds crazy, but what part of all this was ever sane? I don’t know what to believe anymore.

  ‘Why are we here?’ Somehow, as I ask, I know I already have the answer.

  Rachel gives me a sad smile. She takes our cups into the kitchen. When she returns, they are both full.

  There’s a chunk missing from the rotting balcony railing, as if something has fallen through it. Beyond it, in the distance, something bobs on the water’s surface. That’s our beach, over there, across the water. I can see the fish and chip shop, can just make out the abandoned houseboat, the one with blank eyes that stare at me as I pass.

  Our very own boat, a voice says in my mind. We can spend nights there in summer, take it to the cabin on holidays. So much quicker than driving or the train. And so much fun!

  My heart pounds. Now I see it, caught on the edge of one of the broken rails, red and white and fluttering in the wind. Police tape.

  I pull hard on the cigarette, my head spinning. I close my eyes as my body shakes. ‘Oh my God.’

  Rachel puts a hand on my arm. ‘It had to happen this way.’

  The Christmas tree. The unfinished kitchen island. The rickety wooden deck. The houseboat.

  I whirl around, stare hard at the bricks littering the kitchen floor. They were redoing the cabin. Renovating. ‘We’ll build a kitchen island, fix up the deck.’ There were arguments about the patio furniture, the colour of the lounge-room walls. I was here. I was here that Christmas with my parents.

  A strange sound, like a whimper, fills the air. It takes a moment before I realise it’s me.

  White Christmas playing on the television in the background. The clink of ice in glasses. Shouting. Me on the floor, hands over my head, crying. My mother’s voice.

  ‘What did you do to her? What did you do to our baby?’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Someone is speaking to me. I blink and see Rachel’s face come into focus. There’s a pain in my chest, making it hard to breathe. My head is thick with sleep, my mouth pasty like I’ve eaten chalk.

  Rachel is smiling sadly as she brushes a strand of hair from my face. ‘You’ve had a shock. You needed some rest.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You were feeling tired, so I took you to bed. I brought clean sheets and everything.’

  I look around. I’m in a small bedroom, as run-down as the rest of the house – damp and dusty, sagging walls, nothing but an old vanity dresser with a broken mirror and the bed I’m in.

  ‘I just passed out?’

  Rachel looks sheepish. ‘I knew it would be a shock, coming here. I gave you some of your meds. In your drink. I thought it would help.’

  I look at the girl sitting on the edge of the bed, her skin smooth as glass, those kitten-round eyes in her childlike face. This girl killed Mark. She drugged me. She knew about this place and planned to bring me here.

  She’s insane.

  Under the covers, I reach for my pocket and realise I’m no longer wearing my hoodie. My phone and alarm are gone. Fuck. I glance at the door. Somehow I know it opens to the hall, which leads to the living room. I could probably make it from here to the front door in ten seconds.

  ‘Rest some more,’ Rachel says. ‘There’s no toilet paper and I didn’t have room for much food. There’s a little shop around the corner – thought I might pop in before it shuts. You’re okay to stay here, aren’t you? It’ll be safe. I won’t be long – ten minutes, tops.’

  When I find my voice, it comes out in a croak. ‘Okay.’ I rest my head back on the lumpy pillow, close my eyes until I hear her stand, walk down the hall, open and close the front door.

  I throw back the covers and stand so fast my head spins. My eyes dart around the room and land on my hoodie hanging on the back of the door. Thank God. I grab it, plunge my hands into the pockets. There’s no phone, but there’s something else – something small, hard and familiar, buried deep. Rachel must have missed it. I grab the alarm and shove it in the pocket of my jeans.

  I’m about to run for the door when I see the rucksack, fallen over on its side, contents spilling out. Bold letters catch my eye – a name written in bold, black text. Sylvia Baker.

  I know I should go as Rachel will be back any minute, but I crouch down and snatch up the newspaper.

  A tragic Christmas for the Baker family.

  My eyes skin the column of writing and pick out the words: Sylvia Baker kills husband Alan Baker, then herself, in a murder-suicide.

  Blood pulses in my ears.

  I scroll further down: Teenage daughter sexually abused by father.

  My heart stops. The world goes quiet.

  What did you do to our baby?

  With a strangled sob, I drop to my knees.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been kneeling. The room has grown dark. It can’t have been too long; Rachel’s not back.

  I remember now. I remember it all.

  All those nights. The fear. The shame. The secrets.

  That Christmas. The screaming. Wood splintering. The splash. Then another. Silence.

  I have to get out of here.

  But why did she bring you here? a voice asks.

  I need to leave. Run. Alert the police.

  What does she know that you don’t?

  I grab the rucksack and turn it upside down. A large notebook, some clothes and a hip flask tumble out. There’s something else in there, bulky and heavy. I shake the bag and a pair of red shoes hit the floor. Clunk, clunk.

  I’m shaking uncontrollably. It was her. She took the shoes. Why?

  I grab the notebook and flip it open. I’m assaulted by photographs. Tens of them, hundreds, in varying sizes and shapes, some cut from magazines, some from school yearbooks, some taken as recently as last week.

  All of them are of me.

  Hands trembling, I turn the pages. There are photos of me sunbathing as a teenager on the beach. Me on the balcony in the Fitzroy apartment. One of me sleeping in the Sydney flat. Me posing with Megan Keeler in our school uniforms, lips pushed forward in a duck pout – she’s printed it from Facebook. Several of me and Mark: one of us kissing, one of me naked, sprawled prone on the bed. One of me wearing the fli
msy silk dress and red shoes I was wearing That Night. How did she get hold of these?

  I turn the page and the room grows darker still. Newspaper and magazine articles about my parents – their careers, their vineyard estate, their achievements, their failures. Paedophilia rumours, divorce rumours. Murder. Suicide.

  I pull out a newspaper clipping which is coffee-stained, its edges worn. Alan and Sylvia Baker: MISSING. Last seen at family holiday cabin on the NSW central coast. I squint at the pixelated photo. It’s this cabin. My parents were last seen here. My chest is tight. Rachel knew this all along? It’s hard to breathe. Yet I can’t stop looking.

  There are more pictures of me, and some of Rachel. A page torn from my school yearbook. There’s me, coming first in the cross-country marathon. And Rachel – it’s her, I can tell – in the choir photo, blonde hair cut short with a crooked fringe, grainy in black and white, barely recognisable. How did I not know we went to school together?

  I find a few clippings on the Tom Forrester case wedged between the pages. Murderer never found underlined in red pen like blood stains. Angry red lines slash an ‘x’ through Tom’s face, as though he’s a mistake in an essay.

  There’s the other half of the photo I found near Cat’s door. Me smiling, one eye squinting, my left arm visible as I’m angling the camera above us. I think of the ugly word scrawled across the back of the photo. Slut. It was Rachel who wrote that, not Cat.

  Another photo – a recent one of Mark kissing a girl who I think, at first, is me. But it isn’t.

  It’s Rachel.

  ‘Fuck.’ I run an unsteady hand over my face. It’s too much. My parents, Mark, this. ‘What the fuck. What the fuck?’

  Something compels me to keep looking. There are photos of me and Rachel. Some of us stuck together from different photos. Our faces, cut in half, spliced together. Rachel’s head on my body. One word scrawled above her head, over and over and over.

  Sophie.

  Sophie.

  Run, Sophie.

  It was her. It was Rachel all along.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I can’t swallow. Can hardly breathe. I’ve reached the end of the scrapbook but there’s still more … a couple of lined A4 pages folded in half at the back of the book.

  I unfold them with trembling fingers. There’s a date scribbled – 7.12.16, a week ago – at the top of the page, the writing ill-formed and messy, as if written in a hurry. It looks like a letter – though it’s not addressed to anyone. Either way, I know it’s meant for me.

  You’ll find out if I’m not careful. And it’s not like I don’t want you to – eventually, of course. I don’t want there to be secrets between us. We’ve had more than our share of lies and we both deserve better than that. But I didn’t want you to find out like this. This wasn’t how I planned it.

  I wasn’t going to tell you about me and Mark. I didn’t think it was necessary, but I know better now. You need to know everything, from beginning to end. No secrets. No lies.

  I’ve fucked up so badly. I should have known. In fact, I did know, but I did it anyway. Why? Why? I could ask myself that question a million times and still never truly understand. All I know is I loved you too much, if that makes any sense at all, and even though I know better than I did before, even though I know you’re not someone to envy but someone to pity, I couldn’t help it. All those years of yearning … when the chance came to pretend, to be you for just a second … it was too irresistible. It was a mistake, and I regret it – I promise you I do. The only consolation is that I learned things about you. And about him. Enough to figure out what needs to be done.

  I want to explain; I want you to understand, though I have no excuse. It first happened at that dingy place you went to together sometimes, usually on Wednesdays when it was less crowded. The underground place with the neon pink light above the door and nothing else to mark its existence. It was easy to follow you in, and I did it often – the lights were so low in there, dim-lit like a brothel. Yes, that’s right, I would know – with those cheap red beehive-shaped candle holders on every table and hundreds of old black and white postcards tacked to the walls. You’d order those tiny $7 pizzas that came out on scratched wooden paddles – a red wine for you, Jack Daniels for him, and I’d sit in a corner, pretend to wait for someone and watch. Just to make sure you were okay, I’d tell myself, but of course it went a bit further than that. Proven by what I did one night when he showed up there alone.

  I didn’t know what he was like back then. I swear it. Not the extent of it anyway. Of course I didn’t, or I’d never have done what I did. My visits never went further than a bit of eavesdropping in the beginning, and things seemed okay then. Like I said, I was checking on you. Ever since what happened to your parents, that diagnosis that Doctor Sarah gave you (I booked an appointment with her a couple of times, lifted some info off that dinosaur of a laptop of hers afterwards. She really needs to put a password on it), I figured it was my job to look out for you. Not like fucking condescending Cat, or your well-meaning but useless aunt. What the fuck have they ever done for you? Pretend everything is fucking fine? Never let you talk about shit, never let you figure out the truth so you can properly heal?

  I don’t blame Doctor Sarah. At least, not fully. You were getting better for a while, making progress – everyone could see that. But something must have happened because you stopped going to see her, and that’s when things spiralled out of control. Not all at once but slowly, slowly, until the old you was almost gone. Was it him? Did he stop you going back? Stop you from being the real you and facing the real facts? It must have been – because he wanted to keep you. And for that to happen, for him to keep you compliant, he had to keep you blind.

  He’s good, I’ll give him that. Not at sex – too rough, and not in a good way. But controlling enough that it’s exciting, at least. You know what I mean, of course. (Or was it different with you?) Rough enough that it feels like you’re being properly fucked. But that’s where the good points end, and there’s only so much mindless jackhammer sex you can take before it gets boring. He’s too inconsiderate, too sloppy. After trying to impress the first few times, he shirks the pretence, caves in to his selfishness.

  But it was exciting that first time. I’m sorry, admitting it is terrible, but it’s a relief, too. Like I said, I don’t want there to be secrets between us. So, the truth: it was exciting, thrilling to be in the bed where you slept, to smell you on the sheets. I could pretend. I could pretend I had everything, that I lived in this flash apartment, that I had a bank account full of money, that I was loved by this dark and sexy man who was nailing me into the bed.

  But things are rarely how they seem and he didn’t turn out to be that great, did he? The sex was crap, wasn’t it? Let’s call a spade a spade. Someone who doesn’t give a fuck about others, who can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes – what chance have they got at being good at something as intimate as sex? He’s better at the mind-fucking. He puts more time into that and invests more energy, because it serves a purpose. Serves him. With the sex? He’d already got what he wanted.

  I suppose it started when I’d ask questions about you. Maybe it made him question himself, to consider for a moment what he was doing to you (if he has any shame, that is). Maybe he was just bugged by my questions. Who knows? But once he’d let the mask slip it never took much to set him off, did it?

  It wasn’t the physical stuff that was the worst thing. It was the psychological abuse – the way he made me feel. That’s the ultimate control, isn’t it? Grinding someone down until their self-worth is dust. Until they believe those carefully constructed lies. And one of the best tools? Turning it all around on you. Blame and shame. You don’t realise how easy it is until it happens to you. It’s so subtle you don’t even notice it’s happening. You already think you’re shit, so someone pointing it out gently, making it sound like concern – well, you just lap it right up. And once that pattern’s in place, the more obvious stuff
can be glossed over with excuses, undermining your memory of it. ‘You were so fucked up you can’t remember what happened.’ ‘You were the one throwing punches.’ ‘I wouldn’t have done it if you weren’t flirting with that bartender.’ ‘Maybe next time you’ll know not to get me so worked up.’ ‘I was jealous because I love you so much.’

  And of course it worked wonders on me, because I’m riddled with shame. Me with even more cause than you, after what I’d done. And didn’t he get away with shit once he figured out he could point out what I was doing to you – I was a whore, of course, never mind that he was the cheater. Gaslighting. Google it; the fucker is textbook.

  But while people like that might be cunning, they’re not smart. If they were smart, they’d be decent people and live a decent life. Live with some fucking self-respect. Nope. People like him are missing part of their brain or something – they’d rather waste time figuring out how to wrought the system than earn an honest living.

  See, the idiot gave me a heads-up. The way he spoke about you, like you were some puppet he could control – it was sickening. This one night, high as fuck, he told me everything. With this shit-eating grin on his face like he was proud of it. Like I was supposed to be on board with his scheme to use you up and spit you out. Like I was supposed to think he was clever.

  That sob story about his brother killing himself? I’m sure he told it to you, too. Yeah, that’s a line. Don’t get me wrong, his brother did top himself. And Mark found him. I googled it – it was in the paper that year, so his story checks out. But that’s his MO. That’s how he gets girls into bed. Players’ handbook 101, right? I feel so pathetic that I bought it. And, along with it, all the bullshit that was somehow excusable because he had this one bad thing happen to him. We all have bad things happen to us at some point, don’t we? And we don’t use it to manipulate others to get what we want. We don’t use it to excuse our shitty behaviour. He’s a coward and a liar and a cheat and I hate him as much as I ever hated my foster father.