The New Girl: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist perfect for fans of Friend Request

Chapter Four

As I approach the entry doors to the apartment block, a pungent, spicy scent invades my nostrils. It’s probably coming from the sixth-floor apartment with the balcony directly above ours. The couple who live there are always cooking something exotic, in between screaming at each other and having noisy sex. But there’s something not quite right about this smell. It’s as though something has started to rot.

Holding a hand to my nose, I reach for the letter box to find it unlocked, the flap hanging from its hinges. Letters are scattered on the slate tiles below, one with a filmy, brown stain on the corner. Slick-skinned and weary from my walk, I’m thinking only of a cold shower, and it isn’t until I’ve gathered the mail, shut and locked the flap and taken the lift to the fifth floor that I stop to think. Why was the letter box unlocked? Cat and I never unlock it; it seems strange anyone bothered to open it in the first place seeing as the envelopes usually protrude from the slot.

A scruffy beige suitcase with a hole in the seam greets me as I enter the apartment. It sags sadly against the white hallway wall like a stain. Rachel arrived at seven-thirty this morning, deposited her belongings, and immediately rushed off to work. She didn’t bring much, as the room came furnished. So, all day today, the few items comprising Rachel Cummings’ worldly possessions have lain where they fell, awaiting her return.

Flicking on the kettle and glancing at the clock (five-oh-six!), I change my mind. Just a glass or two to end the day, I tell myself as I open the fridge, take out a bottle and slosh the remains of last night’s Pinot Grigio into a wine glass. There’s plenty more in the bar fridge in the laundry room, I’m sure. Leftovers from the party.

The wine is cool and crisp as it passes my lips and, after a couple more sips, the familiar warmth curls in my stomach like a cat settling in for the night. Humming a catchy tune I heard on the radio, I flip through the mail. An estate agent advertisement, the electricity bill and a letter, the one with the brown stain on it, addressed to someone named Sophia Gates. It’s the second time this person’s mail has arrived here; Sophia Gates must have been the previous tenant.

I toss the letter into the recycling, take a long pull of wine and then pause, rubbing a finger along my lips. I knew someone named Sophia once. Or Sophie, maybe. I think for a moment but my mind’s cloudy, and I can’t remember anyone specific. It’s probably no one important, yet I have that feeling I get at times, like I’m supposed to remember something but there’s a brick wall in my mind and my thoughts stop there. A blank space, as I’ve come to call it.

My wine’s nearly gone and no one’s home yet, so I top up my glass with a bottle from the laundry. I go to my room, sit at my desk and flip open my laptop. I check my email, trawl through my newsfeed. Without planning to, I google the name Sophia Gates. Images, Facebook pages and LinkedIn accounts pop up, but I don’t recognise anyone. I’m being stupid, paranoid as usual. It must just be a coincidence.

‘Any mail?’ Cat’s voice calls from the kitchen, startling me. I hadn’t heard the door.

‘On the coffee table!’ I tell her, gulping a mouthful before hiding the glass under the desk.

A moment later, Cat pops her head around the door frame, sleek black ponytail snaking over her shoulder. Her eyes are unusually bright, probably a result of her afternoon Pilates session. ‘Is this all?’ she asks, holding up the electricity bill.

‘Yes. Uh, and there was one for the previous tenant.’

Cat looks at me sharply. ‘Oh, where is it? Do you still have it?’

I shrug. Why is she so worried? ‘I just tossed it.’

Cat’s shoulders relax. ‘Okay. Good. I mean, I just couldn’t be bothered collecting them all and taking them down to the estate agent’s.’

I frown. ‘Cat, did we know anyone called Sophie? At school or something?’

She stares at me for a moment. Then, slowly, she shakes her head. ‘No. Not that I can remember.’

‘Are you sure?’

Cat shrugs. ‘I don’t remember everyone we went to school with, Mary. Look, I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you got around to making that appointment yet?’

‘Appointment?’

Cat gives me a meaningful look. ‘With the psychiatrist. The one Doctor Sarah referred you to. What’s his name … Doctor Chen? Doctor Chang?’

I worry my lower lip with my teeth, shake my head.

‘Mary.’ Cat clicks her tongue, glancing around the room as if looking for something. I imagine her eyes burning holes in the desk, spotting the wine glass hidden underneath.

‘It’s on my list, I swear.’

Cat eyeballs me with pursed lips, then releases a sigh that tells me she gives up. ‘Pizza for dinner?’

That coaxes a smile from me. ‘Obviously.’

As I sit, stealing sips of wine, drumming my fingers on the desk, I do the thing I always promise myself I won’t do, but then always do. It’s as though some invisible force is steering my hand. I type one letter and, as it does every time, the search engine remembers the sequence of words in an instant.

The articles pop up in the same order they’re always in.

Leads in murder investigation go cold.

Investigation meets dead end.

Murderer never found.

The same grainy black and white picture of his smiling, unsuspecting face stares out at me. And I wonder, for the hundredth time, if he ever saw it coming.

A breeze creeps in from the balcony door, fragrant with brine. Goosebumps rise on my arms; I shiver and close the browser window.

Chapter Five

24th November 2016

See? I’m keeping it up. I’ve promised myself I would. It seems, more often than not, I manage to break my promises to myself. But not this time.

I made it out on my walk today, so that’s something. And I’m writing – that’s another. But today was warm – too warm, thirty-four degrees – and in this kind of heat, I can’t escape that it’s officially ‘that time of year’ again. Decorations are up, songs are playing, adverts are plastered everywhere declaring joyfully that Christmas is coming! But, for me, they may as well be sounding doomsday signals.

When the weather starts to warm up, regular people get excited; they smile more, they go outdoors, they picnic on the beach. They dine al fresco – Mark loved that because it meant he could smoke. And, when it’s too hot, they chatter and browse and brunch in shopping malls, escaping the heat in air-conditioned comfort as they prepare for another family Christmas.

Seeing them reminds me of everything I’ve lost. As soon as I feel that change in the air, the crispness of spring sinking into the muggy heat of summer, the anxiety creeps in. Because Christmas is when it all happened.

So that’s where the benchmark has been set. Today I got out of bed, I took a walk, and now I’m writing in my journal. That’s my measure of success. I even left my phone on last night. It’s been an anxiety trigger lately, so I’ve kept it off during the night, holding my breath as I switch it on each morning, but there hasn’t been any news. No further updates about him from Aunty Anne, which is good. But I can’t help but feel it’s the calm before the storm.

I suppose I should write it all out here, although I’m not sure I have the strength or the energy to go over it all again. Thinking about those days – still so recent, but a lifetime ago as well – makes me break out in a cold sweat. Melbourne feels haunted; the streets, the apartment, the bars and cafés – I can’t picture any of them without remembering him. That’s why, when I left him, I had to leave the city, too.

Mark and I lived in Fitzroy North in a bright, spacious two-bedroom apartment a few blocks from busy Brunswick Street. I can still hear the raucous laughter from the streets below, feel the dizzying warmth of the sun slanting through the bedroom skylight in the morning, stirring me from groggy slumber, the pair of us waking to the inevitable hangover. The smell of Mark beside me in bed: tobacco, aftershave and sweat-slicked skin.

In the beginning, I loved it there; the noise, the excitement, the constant feeling that something was happening and that I had to be a part of it. And yet I was never fully part of anything, as I was tethered to my past, and to Mark.

A country girl at heart, I spent many summers on my parents’ prosperous vineyard estate, but, after they disappeared, the city became my adopted home. I had to escape somewhere, and those endless city nights, the frenzied crusade for pleasure, drowned out my dark thoughts. As I got caught up in my new world, the memory of those long, hot days in the vineyards picking grapes, my hair in golden braids, Mum and Dad drinking wine in the tasting parlour, grew fuzzy around the edges.

Mark never could have afforded the place we lived in, but I had my inheritance and my government disability payments, so I paid for both of us. I was only sixteen at the time, so everything had to be in Mark’s name. Aunty Anne took some convincing, but, bless her, for all her big talk, she could never quite bring herself to say no to her poor orphaned niece.

Mark was twenty-seven back then and, when we first met, he said I was too young for him. But I figured he didn’t really mean it; he thought that’s what he was supposed to say, because he was always staring at me. I felt like he was trying to see under my clothes. Sometimes there’d be a glint of something – possessiveness, I suspect now – but it didn’t occur to me to be frightened back then.

I met him at my group counselling session – the one I forced myself out of my self-made prison to attend. I was there for trauma-related anxiety and depression, following my parents’ disappearance, and he was there for drug addiction. That should have rung alarm bells, but, in a strange way, it’s like I was looking for exactly that – something new, something dangerous. Something to make me forget.

We weren’t in the same group, but I saw him standing alone under a street light during a break one evening, the tips of his eyelashes illuminated by the fluorescent glow, smoke rising above his head in a dirty-white cloud. It made me think of something from an old movie, something sinister yet romantic.

He greeted me with a nod and offered me a cigarette. We smoked in silence, but I could feel his eyes on me, awareness prickling over my skin. It was a stimulus and I craved distraction – any distraction. This became our routine until one night when he asked me if I wanted to hang out with him and his friends later and I said yes. I didn’t even hesitate. There was something in Mark. Something I was drawn to, that spoke to a need.

I found out he was moving to the city and needed a flatmate and, as I was desperate to move out from Aunty Anne’s, where I’d been since everything happened, and be somewhere new, I figured it was perfect timing. Doctor Sarah had been telling me to try new things, meet new people – and although I was scared, I wanted to try.

One sticky summer evening, just after my seventeenth birthday, we were lounging on beanbags in the new apartment watching fireworks explode over the city. Mark offered me a puff on the joint he was smoking and I was feeling depressed and bored, so I didn’t turn it down. We shared the joint and, as it was my first time, I was completely high after only a few puffs. I remember rolling around giggling, then starting to feel weird and tingly and then freaking out that someone was in the apartment.

Mark took me in his arms and spoke in soft, calm tones. His hands were stroking my hair and his breath was hot against my ear and then his lips were on my skin and soon we were kissing, our mouths fusing, hot and wet, his chest pressed against mine, his arms strong and hard under my hands. My mind kept whirring, wondering why it was happening, if it was because I was high, or was it Mark, and did this mean we’d end up together, or was it just because I was there?

I don’t remember wanting to sleep with him, but I must have, because he hated men who tricked girls into sex. It was okay, or so I thought. I remember him on top of me and feeling a sharp pain, over and over. Afterwards, he told me I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met and that he’d been holding back for ages because he thought I was too young. He’d been waiting for me to turn seventeen, because then, as his birthday wasn’t until later in the year, it was like it was only ten years between us, which was nothing, really. I was still trying to understand how things with Mark had gone so far so quickly; I couldn’t piece together the details. But I had got myself into it, and when he told me about his past – how his older brother had committed suicide when he was a kid, how at five years old he’d found him hanging in the shed – I was struck with all-consuming pity. I could see a deep sadness in him, something that spoke to my own pain. And he seemed to want to be together so intensely, I felt like I was already in too deep. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

We had fun together, for a while. Mark introduced me to vodka and the odd MDMA cap or line of coke, and it felt good. It was just the distraction I’d been looking for. It made me forget myself. I started not showing up for school and then dropping out completely. All I cared about was escaping – quieting my troubled mind with beautiful numbness.

We hadn’t been together long when Mark convinced me I didn’t need to keep seeing Doctor Sarah. ‘If I’m making you so happy,’ he’d say, ‘what do you need her for? Aren’t I enough?’

After I cancelled my last scheduled appointment, I didn’t go back to Doctor Sarah for nearly three years.

Looking back, it’s so easy to see what was coming. Mark could be anything he needed to be to control me. Attentive or distant. Complimentary or cruel. Cocky or meek. Playing the victim. It was dizzying, addictive. I convinced myself I didn’t want ‘safe’ or ‘predictable’ – who’d want that when you could have spontaneous and thrilling?

But it was exhausting, too. He was using me up, my energy, my sanity. Day by day, piece by piece.

Sometimes memories of the three years that followed come to me in sensory waves, transporting me back. One cool autumn evening, Mark and I drunkenly weaving our way home from the club, me swaying in heels, the weight of his arm on my shoulder. Losing my balance, the sound of glass splintering as I drop a bottle of wine. His breath, sour in my face, his voice snarling ‘stupid, clumsy bitch!’ Later, the crunch of his fist going through the plasterboard wall, the dull thwack of his knuckles on my temple. The bright white spots dancing, the crimson when I shut my eyes.

After a friend’s party, when I’d spoken to a guy too long, light shining in my face – a torch, he’s shining a torch on me. I’m naked, I’d been undressing when he stormed in, drunk and high. He’s waving the torch in my face, ‘You think you’re so fucking hot, don’t you? You think you’re better than me. Look at you, you fucking slut. Who’d want you?’ And the mirror gleaming, catching the light as he turns it towards me. I see my pale, stricken face, my exposed body, eyes full of fear. I don’t recognise myself.

Another night, on my knees in the hallway. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ he says as blood and mucus drip from my chin. I’ve been throwing up again. It’s bad this time. Alcohol poisoning, I think. His face is pinched and white, a mask of fury. ‘You’re as low as a dog. Only a dog would do something like that.’ And he points to the floor, where my blood has stained the cream carpet, as though I’ve deliberately soiled it.

The times like that, when he didn’t actually hit me, were the worst. I can see his eyes; hard, yet lit as if by sparks. My shame fuelling his perverse pleasure. It felt like I was being punished for something, but I never understood what. I must have done something to deserve it. That’s how I felt, and that’s what I ended up believing.

I was easy to blame, being as troubled and lost as I was. I figured bad things were meant to happen to me. There was something in me that beckoned them. And he helped me to believe it because, apparently, I was the one who started it. I don’t remember anything like that, although there was this one night – I can see myself now, ranting hysterically, hitting at his chest, screaming for him to stop. Stop doing drugs, stop lying, stop stealing from me, stop dealing, just STOP. And I was so, so loud, so out of my mind, that it scares me to remember myself that way.

And then there was That Night. The turning point. But I’m not ready to talk about that yet.

You’d think I’d remember where I got the worst of my injuries – a raised scar on my chest that looks like the work of a small blade – but I don’t. What I remember is the humiliation, the shame, the fear and isolation.

There are different forms of abuse, you see. Doctor Sarah says that kind of abuse, the psychological kind, can be more damaging than physical violence. It’s harder to see coming, can be so insidious, so incremental, that it’s easier to tell yourself you’re imagining it than it is to see what’s really happening.