The New Girl: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist perfect for fans of Friend Request
reeling, I turn to look at Cat. ‘He killed someone.’
27th November 2016
My mind slips back to that rainy night in late August. This time, there was no doubt that the blood was mine. I watched as the dark red droplets turned into pale streaks and washed away, and once I’d finished purging the contents of my stomach, I stood alone in the shower. The temperature was turned way up, stinging the fresh cut on my head, yet the shivering wouldn’t stop. I felt like I was standing at a crossroads, my fate dependent on the path I chose. Danger lay behind and ahead, and though it didn’t have a definite form, though I couldn’t quite identify it, I knew that somehow I’d choose the right path this time. I had to. My life depended on it.
I coaxed the chunks of vomit down the plughole with my foot and jammed my hand over the body-wash dispenser repeatedly. Amber liquid oozed onto the white tiles and turned to foam beneath the spray, filling the shower with the scent of artificial peach. I aimed the shower head at the foam until the last of the mess bubbled its way down the drain.
When the tiles were clean, I sank to my knees, letting the hot water pound against my back. I splayed my hands on the tiles, noting my grazed knuckles and tattered fingernails. The back of my head hurt. My back hurt. Everything hurt.
Through the drone and whine of the running shower, I could hear rhythmic thudding in the next room. A single crash, then a loud monosyllabic exclamation; I couldn’t make out the word.
He appeared through the fogged-up glass like a ghost. He looked different to me somehow, like the structure of him had changed, morphed. Maybe it was the residual chemicals in my system. Or maybe it was because something had changed.
‘What are we going to do with you, Mary?’ His voice was muffled, but I could hear the familiar sing-song tone in his voice. They were words that would haunt my dreams for months to follow.
After what he’d just done to me, I couldn’t bear to speak to him. I was cold under the hot spray, so cold. He stripped off his boxers and opened the shower screen, stepping inside. My body reacted, trembling furiously. And I knew. I knew a line had been crossed this time, that he’d done something that couldn’t be undone. Deep and cold in my bones, I knew that if I survived the night that I had to get out. There might not be another chance. If I didn’t go soon, I wasn’t going to get out of there alive.
I broke, then. I sobbed and sobbed, not from fear, astonishingly, and not with self-pity. I sobbed for us. For him. And he didn’t know what was coming, that we were breaking apart, that we’d already broken. That the end was near and it didn’t matter how bad he was, my skin would miss him, my brain and body would crave their fix and my heart would break a thousand times before it would heal. I cried for him, because I knew it would break him too. Because even monsters bleed.
He didn’t know why I cried or why he held me, but still he did it and it made it worse, this small act of kindness, if kindness is what it was. If such a person knows what kindness is. He held me, wet and naked and shivering, and rubbed his hand down my back, pushed my wet hair out of my face and kissed my forehead with finality – or was I imagining that? – and I didn’t know what he was thinking. I was too afraid to ask.
So I let him hold me and I cried and cried until my throat was raw, my voice hoarse. Because it didn’t matter what he’d done. I had loved him. I had given myself to him and he had squandered that gift, cheapened it, and what was all of it for? Our love, if that’s what it was, reduced to nothing. A drop in the ocean. A blip on the radar. A moment in time spent and lost and forgotten. Meaningless. Over.
And it was like I’d known it was coming. Was waiting for the moment when I’d know, for sure. This cold resolve, like steel in its certainty, took over. And the shivering stopped. The crying stopped. And we stood, not speaking, for what felt like eternity, with the white noise of water falling, and I don’t know if it was the shower or the rain outside the window, the roar of the ocean in the distance.
We were still for so long, I wondered if we were dead. But he sensed the change in me, felt the shift in my body. And then his hands slid up my back, cupped the base of my skull. Gently, so gently, until his fingers tightened and needles of pain shot down my spine. His thumbs lifted my chin and he whispered, his breath hot in my ear.
‘If you leave, I’ll kill you.’
My head’s pounding in time with my pulse as I stare at the peeling paint on the stark, white walls of the waiting room.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Cat’s words, spoken as I left the apartment this morning, reverberate in my mind. She thinks I should be talking to the psychiatrist Doctor Sarah referred me to. She thinks they’ll be able to help with my memories, ‘if they’re real’. She doesn’t believe me, I can tell. And now the doubts have crept in, stealing through the hangover haze, dulling the burn of determination.
My stomach feels like a washing machine. I should have eaten something, but I lacked the appetite. Of course I don’t want to do this. No one wants to have to do something like this. But what choice do I have? Knowing what he’s done, that he’s after me …
‘Miss Baker?’
I stand abruptly, like an officer called to attention. A twenty-something, slim female cop with fluffy, ash-blonde hair tucked under her cap beckons me from the doorway.
‘I’m Officer Dean. Come on through.’ She smiles at me, perhaps noticing my unease, and I jerk my lips upwards in a poor imitation.
The hallway is narrow and hot; I wipe the beads of sweat that materialise on my forehead with the back of my sleeve. At the end of the hall, Officer Dean opens a door and, inside, a black-haired man, mid to late thirties, sits behind a desk, a coffee cup pressed to his lips. He sets the cup down and nods in my direction.
‘Miss Baker. I’m Sergeant Moore. We spoke on the phone this morning.’
‘Yes, of course. Hello.’
He gestures to a seat and I sit as the female officer nods at both of us and leaves the room.
‘So, Miss Baker.’ The sergeant smiles, a vague, reflexive gesture. He has a chin dimple and a mole on his left cheek the size of a five-cent piece. ‘How can I help?’
My mind goes blank. I look from my lap to the sergeant’s face and back again, trying to think, trying to rein in the anxiety.
‘Take your time,’ Sergeant Moore says. ‘I have all day.’ I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. His expression doesn’t change.
My ears burn. I notice his gaze lowering and I wonder if I’ve overdressed. I felt a mess this morning, so I put more effort than usual into my make-up and clothing.
Moore taps his fingers on the notepad that lies open on the desk in front of him. ‘You wanted to talk to me about the Tom Forrester case, is that correct?’
I sit up straight, try to look him in the eye. ‘That’s right.’
‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’
I swallow thickly. Can I be sure of what I witnessed? Closing my eyes, I see Mark’s cold stare, fingers curled around the bloodied brick.
If you leave, I’ll kill you.
I glance at the notepad on the sergeant’s desk, but he’s moved his hand away. I take a breath. ‘I want to tell you that I witnessed … I … I saw my boyfriend kill