The Girl Who Never : A twisted crime

by HC Michaels

  Perhaps she was better to dress as she was. Knee length trench coat, jeans, boots, and gloves. The only part of her visible was her eyes. She rummaged in her handbag for her sunglasses and slid them on.

  That was better. Now nobody could see her. She knew her eyes were where her sadness came spilling out of the black holes Logan had left in her soul. Her parents found it hard to look at her. They avoided eye contact in the same way she avoided human touch.

  She was getting a little better, no longer flinching when someone bumped her in the street, or a well-meaning friend kissed her cheek.

  That was why she was on the Tube. She wasn’t going anywhere. The purpose of the journey was the journey itself. To see if she could do something as normal as catching a train without freaking the fuck out.

  The attack had changed her profoundly. Actually, it was more than that. To say it changed her, gave the impression she was the same person, when she wasn’t. It was like she’d been born twice. Once in a London hospital and then again twenty-five years later in a Queensland hotel.

  The new Tessa was nervous, jumping when the toaster popped. She was suspicious, too, secretly ranking everyone she met on her own private potential rapist scale. Generally, the more normal someone looked, the higher up the scale they sat.

  But more than anything, she was angry. Her rage bubbled up and spewed out of her in waves at the most unexpected times. Only last month she’d yelled at a cashier for giving her the wrong change and her mother had to drag her from the store and slap her across the face.

  Not long before that she’d become so upset when her father asked if she was planning to get another job that her fury had frightened not just him, but herself. That was despite knowing he had her best interests in mind. She just couldn’t stop herself.

  She’d also screamed at Darcy when he asked her what she’d been wearing when she first met Logan at the marina. He deserved that screaming, though. What difference did it make what she’d been wearing? It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been naked, Logan had no right to do what he did.

  It felt like nobody understood what she’d been through and even though she knew it was impossible to expect this of them, it enraged her.

  Her shrink said she was transferring her anger at Logan to those around her. Maybe he was right. But there didn’t seem to be any solution to that. It wasn’t like she could march into prison and tell Logan what she thought of him. Well, she probably could, but she couldn’t imagine that would achieve much, other than her being locked up for scratching his eyes out with her fingernails.

  She hated him with the kind of force she hadn’t known possible before the attack. He’d taken everything from her. The reason she’d been born into this new person was because he’d murdered the old one. She felt as dead as Lena Markovic, except instead of her body floating face down and free in a pool, she was trapped inside hers still reeling from the injustice of it all.

  The train went around a bend, causing the man seated next to her to lean into her space, their bodies separated by the smallest of margins.

  She crushed herself against the window and concentrated on her breathing as she noted the man was wearing blue socks with his black leather shoes and had missed a small patch of bristles on his chin when he shaved. This made him imperfect and therefore only a three on the potential rapist scale. He was low risk. She didn’t need to be concerned.

  It was perfect men who weren’t to be trusted. Ones who flashed straight teeth with their smiles and told you what you wanted to hear. Ones who were six foot tall and blond and drugged women in hotels.

  After she’d run into Logan at the elevator, she’d gone to her room and slept, with full intention of standing him up. But she’d woken just before eight o’clock and felt guilty. He’d been so nice to her. It would be awful to make him wait and not show up. So, she’d had a shower, pulled on a simple black cotton maxi dress, and went down to the bar intending to have only one quick drink.

  But one drink had turned into three. Logan was so charming, asking her questions about herself like he really cared about the answers. She remembered how struck she’d been by how different he was to Tino.

  Struck wasn’t the right word. Sucked in might be better. Fooled. Manipulated.

  Tino was one hundred times the man Logan would ever be. A million times, perhaps. At least he was honest. He didn’t pretend to be interested in her for anything other than sex. Looking at it now, she had to give him credit for being so transparent.

  After her third gin and tonic, she remembered feeling overwhelmingly drunk and tired.

  The next thing she remembered was waking up tied to the bed. Hotel security footage shown at Logan’s trial had captured him leading her to her room and not leaving until well into the next day.

  He’d had his cap pulled down and a face mask on, but it was obvious it was him.

  The man with the blue socks stood and jostled through the crowd to get to the exit. A woman took his place beside Tessa. She was about fifty with curly hair and a rounded middle that spilled onto Tessa’s seat and pushed up against her.

  “Sorry,” the woman whispered, trying to shift away.

  “It’s not a problem,” said Tessa, smiling to hide her discomfort.

  It wasn’t really a problem, she reminded herself. This woman posed no threat. This was why she was on the Tube. She needed to be comfortable with this.

  Still, she shuffled a little closer to the window and regained a brief moment of personal space before sinking back into the seat and accepting the inevitable contact with the completely harmless woman beside her who was in no way similar to Logan in any way whatsoever.

  She hated that she thought about Logan so much. He didn’t deserve to occupy so much space in her head. Obsessing about him like this was akin to behaving like him.

  What she’d learned by attending every painful moment of his trial was that he’d been obsessed with someone, too. Not her. Not Lena.

  But with Tino, whose life he’d saved when his mother donated his cord as a newborn baby. Technically it was Logan’s mother who’d saved Tino’s life, but clearly Logan didn’t see it that way. He liked to take all the credit himself.

  His obsession began when he discovered Tino’s identity. Well, discovered was being kind. He’d illegally obtained the details by seducing a nurse at the cord bank and having her look the details up for him.

  That poor nurse had been called in as a witness at Logan’s trial, finding herself in all kinds of trouble herself. Tessa had noticed the people in the courtroom looking at her like she was foolish. But not Tessa. She understood how easy it was to be caught in Logan’s web. The nurse hadn’t been stupid. She’d been hopeful. A dreamer. A romantic who wanted to please her man, not understanding the cost of her actions would be her job as well as her heart.

  Logan clearly hadn’t understood the cost of any of his actions, either, when he had the nerve to plead not guilty. It was like a further assault that he’d not only committed such a heinous crime against her, but then he tried to deny it.

  He claimed to have never met Lena, saying he’d cut his foot by the side of the pool earlier that day. He was still trying to pin that crime on Tino. As for what he’d done to Tessa, he claimed that after having a drink in the bar, he’d gone back to her room where they got involved in a fantasy role play.

  Fantasy role play! Who the hell would fantasise about being drugged, raped, having their head bashed in and being left for dead?

  His defence was weak at best, with his lawyer painting a sad picture of his childhood to try to win the jury’s sympathy. Apparently when he was five years old, his mother had walked in on his father molesting his older sister. Instead of turning to the police, she turned to a bottle of gin. Or rather, several hundred bottles of gin over the following years, if you believed what was presented in court.

  As a result, the house Logan grew up in had sadness and neglect etched into its walls. This sob story failed to tug at Tessa’s heartstrings
. She didn’t care how Logan was raised, nothing gave him the right to do what he did to her.

  The whole thing was sick. Tessa had thought she was going to vomit all over the courtroom floor listening to it. To be raped by a stranger was one thing. But for Logan’s sister to be raped by a person who was supposed to have loved and cared for her was completely different. Both frightening and unforgivable acts that robbed you of your trust and power, but still…for your own father to do that to you! It was no wonder Logan’s sister had died years later from a drug overdose. No amount of chemicals in your system would be able to block out that kind of pain.

  Logan’s lawyer tried to explain that the reason Logan had wanted to find out who his cord was donated to was because he’d never been given any power over his own life. Even his cord—his DNA—had been given away without his consent. All he wanted was to know who it had gone to so he could feel like he had control over the situation.

  That was bullshit. Thousands of cords were donated every year and Tessa had never heard of anyone else complaining that they saved someone’s life without their consent. No normal person would have a problem with that.

  The prosecution had a far more believable explanation. Logan was short on cash and who better to extort it from than the person whose life he once saved. It really was as simple as that.

  He went to Sunshine Island and posed as a worker on one of the yachts, stopping to smile and chat when Carina and Roberto went for walks down at the marina as he assessed how much money they were worth and what would be the best way of getting his hands on it.

  Roberto gave evidence saying they’d regularly run into Logan. They thought he was a nice guy, not realising he was watching them, drooling over the fact that they owed him a huge favour.

  Logan had fleeced them for information about their children, with the prosecutor asserting that he wanted to make sure their family was torn apart properly. He’d tracked Tino down in Mykonos, and when he found out Tessa was heading to the same place, he decided this was his chance. Instead of telling Roberto and Carina about it, he asked them for a loan, using the money to buy a ticket to Greece where he set about making sure Tessa and Tino met. After sending Elvira the photograph that he was sure would be the final straw in their relationship, he returned to Sunshine Island to watch the fallout and take his place as Roberto and Carina’s rightful son—not before attacking the woman he’d met a few villas down from Tessa’s while he’d been spying on her one day.

  But then Carina had fallen down the stairs and everything quickly spun out of control.

  The prosecutor alleged that Lena’s attack was a crime of opportunity, but that Tessa’s had been premeditated. After watching Tino with Tessa, Logan had imagined himself with her. He didn’t want to just share Tino’s DNA. He wanted to be Tino, a man whose life had turned out to be more successful than his own.

  A shudder ran down Tessa’s spine and she stood, excusing herself as she squeezed past the other passengers. She needed to get off this stupid train. She wasn’t ready for it yet. She needed to go home and crawl beneath a blanket and sleep.

  Because when she was awake, she was faced with her one big mistake. If she’d listened to Elvira and stayed away from Tino she’d have been safe. Elvira had been so wrong about so many things, but she’d also been so very right.

  “After you.” An alarmingly attractive man stepped aside to let her pass.

  She nodded and hurried to the door, taking in a deep breath as she exited the train, resisting the urge to check if the man had followed her.

  Everything was going to be all right. The old Tessa may have died, but the new her was alive. She had the second chance that Lena didn’t. It’d be an insult to Lena to waste it.

  She hadn’t been able to complete the full train journey she’d planned, but she’d made it halfway. Next time she’d go further.

  She’d find her courage slowly. She’d start by replying to one of Elvira’s emails. She was being so kind, sending her weekly updates on Millie. It seemed like she was a different person, too, and her relationship with Millie was blossoming in a way Tessa could never have imagined. Somehow, knowing Millie had adapted to her new life took away some of the pain of missing her.

  Sadly, Elvira’s relationship with Paul had done the opposite to blossom. Elvira had told her only recently that they’d separated, but claimed they were still very close friends. Tessa wanted to ask more but hadn’t gathered the courage.

  She walked down the platform, pausing at an advertisement for a chocolate bar with a picture of an empty wrapper hovering over an image of the Bermuda Triangle. Warning: known to go missing under mysterious circumstances.

  She shook her head. That should be an ad for Australia, not a chocolate bar. Innocent travellers were swallowed whole. If they were lucky enough to find their way out, they were different people to the ones who’d arrived. The trick was to find a way to smile in the new life you were left with.

  There was no doubt it was going to take her a while, but she’d find her smile again. Nobody could take that from her. Just like Millie, she was going to adapt.

  That little girl had taught her so much. It seemed the lessons would continue long after they’d parted.

  She walked down the platform, stepping out into a rare ray of winter sunshine, and tilting her head towards the sky.

  “I’m alive,” she said.

  “Certainly looks like it,” said a man in a suit, placing a hand on her arm as he hurried past her smiling.

  The corners of her mouth twitched. It wasn’t until she’d stilled herself with a deep breath that she realised she hadn’t flinched when he touched her.

  Paul couldn’t say he was happy, but he was happier than he’d been in the dying months of his marriage. Or were they the dying years?

  If he was honest with himself, his marriage had died the moment Bianca was dragged from the pool with her lungs full of water.

  No relationship could survive that kind of grief, especially when he and Elvira dealt with it in such different ways.

  He poured some boiling water over a tea bag, cursing at his mother’s kettle. The steam always seemed to find a way to nip at his fingertips.

  He’d been living with her for six months now, having applied for a transfer to the Sydney office when it became clear his marriage had fallen apart beyond repair.

  He had intentions of finding a place of his own but living with his mum was working well for now—except for the kettle. And Fran popping in all the time. At least his mother’s knives weren’t as brutally sharp as Fran’s.

  Besides, he was hardly ever home, travelling back to Melbourne every other weekend to see Amelia.

  It probably would’ve made more sense to stay in Melbourne, but Sydney had seemed like an opportunity to make a clean break. If he stayed in Melbourne, he might be tempted to try to work things out with Elvira, because the truth was that he still loved her.

  There’d never be anyone else like her. She was the mother of his two beautiful girls and had travelled with him down the darkest road of his life. Despite the road ultimately taking them in different directions, it had made them into the people they were. Nobody else understood how it felt to lose Bianca. And nobody else loved Amelia in the way they both did.

  But if he hadn’t left her, then maybe that love he had for her would’ve turned into hate and he couldn’t bear that. Their marriage had been crumbling for a long time. There were so many things he hadn’t been honest about. He hadn’t even been able to tell her that his work had been sending him to Brisbane to manage a new client, for fear of setting her off. The mere mention of anything to do with Queensland was enough to spark hours of heated conversation about her parents. So, instead, it had been easier to tell her he was in Sydney. He didn’t think it made much difference to her where he was. Work was work. But he can see now how deceitful it was. If he couldn’t even tell his wife where he was on an innocent work trip, then what hope did he have of building any trust between them when it
came to things that really mattered.

  The first years of Amelia’s life had been surrounded by sadness. She deserved to be raised in a happy home and Elvira had a far greater chance of finding that happiness either on her own or with someone else. Someone who didn’t remind her of her grief every time she looked at him.

  He remained grateful to Tessa for sheltering Amelia from that when she was young. She’d never know how much of a positive impact she had on their lives. He wished he could tell her but was nervous about making contact.

  What could he say to her after what had happened? He was sick over the whole thing. Elvira had promised him she’d keep in touch with Tessa and for now he took comfort in that.

  If that Logan ever got released from prison, it was going to take all his willpower not to issue him the death sentence he deserved.

  He’d have to get in line though. Tessa’s brother had made his plans for Logan very clear more than once, although it was hard to tell if that was just talk. Some of Lena Markovic’s relatives he’d seen at the trial clearly also had their own plans. Her uncle was a frightening looking character who hadn’t taken his eyes off the back of Logan’s head as he muttered to himself.

  Logan wouldn’t be such a tough guy if he were left alone in the room with him.

  Paul knew their time in Sunshine Island had overwhelmingly been a disaster, but still he liked to think that a number of positives had come out of it as well.

  Amelia finally had the mother she deserved. Elvira was dealing with the loss of Bianca in a way that wasn’t making her implode. Tino had stopped running overseas to hide from his guilty feelings. And Roberto was making plans to return to Melbourne to forge a relationship with his granddaughter.

  As for him…he was feeling more optimistic about his future than he had in years. Instead of spending all his energy avoiding arguing with people, he was finally able to speak the truth.

  And the truth was that for all the misery he’d experienced in life, his future looked bright.