“I put it to this court that Senior Constable Lozza Bianchi in fact developed an instant and vehement dislike for Martin Cresswell-Smith. I propose she even had something of a vendetta against him right from day one. Because of her own history. Ms. Bianchi in her past capacity as a homicide detective has demonstrated a predilection to irrational anger and extreme violence, and I put it to this court that she had an agenda. A bias. And she should have been removed from the case. It was not a fair or clean investigation.” His gaze swings back to Lozza.
“And it wasn’t your only error on this case, was it, Senior Constable Bianchi? You also delivered a package of contraband drugs to the Cresswell-Smith home, did you not?”
Melody Watts, the reporter from the Sydney nightly news, now surges to her feet. She makes for the door, bows her head to the coat of arms behind the judge, and quickly exits the courtroom. I can picture her going out to talk into the camera on the stairs.
I imagine Lozza’s little adopted daughter hearing the news about her angry-cop-mother at school.
THEN
ELLIE
Over one year ago, November 1. Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.
Willow sat opposite me in her living room with her endless view over the sea. Except the view was covered in clouds. Rivulets of rain squiggled down the windows, and I could hear the thud and boom of the waves on the rocks below. Occasionally a glob of foam would shoot up into the sky and waft down to settle like frothy snow on the spiky shrubs outside.
I’d come for two things. Martin had taken my cell phone, and I wanted to hire a PI to follow him, so I needed to use someone’s phone or computer to find one. And I wanted off-the-books help quitting the drugs. Willow had said she was a trained therapist. I did not, however, want to tell her about the abuse. It was still too overwhelming. Private.
“What happened out on the boat, Ellie?” she asked.
“I . . . I’m not exactly sure.”
“You don’t remember?”
Shame was a vise around my throat. I wrung my hands. “I . . . I’ve got blank spaces in my memory.”
She watched my hands as I spoke. I tried to hold them still.
It had been raining for two days, and I’d been holed up in my bed most of the time—my memory playing devious tricks with my recall of the events that had led to Martin striking me. He’d left for work early on both days and taken my phone so I couldn’t call anyone. He said it was until I was in a better position not to embarrass myself. I had no vehicle, so I couldn’t drive away. I felt humiliated. Demeaned. I kept replaying in a loop the horrified faces of all those onlookers at the boat launch. They’d all watched me clamber over the side of the boat and fall into the water, then stagger drunkenly off over the lawn while Martin yelled after me. Everyone had seen the blood, the empties in the boat—bottles I didn’t remember putting there.
The first day after Martin assaulted me, I took painkillers and more meds. Lots more pills. Yesterday I’d flushed nearly all my pills down the toilet. The only way for me to figure my way out of this situation would be with a clear head. I also wanted proof Martin was having an affair with Rabz. Physical proof I could use. Photographs taken by a PI.
Her eyes, intense, bored into mine. The trained therapist in her was seeing through me to something deeper.
“Why?” she asked. “Why the blank spaces?”
“I need to figure that out,” I said. “Yes, I take lorazepam. Yes, I like my wine. But this feels . . . like something more unusual, and the only way I can get to the bottom of it is to start with a drug-free, booze-free, clear head. Because then if I continue experiencing these spells, I’ll know it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
I cleared my throat. I knew what she was doing—asking all the questions so I’d come out with it myself. I was a therapy veteran.
“Like . . . he, my husband, might be drugging me.”
She blinked. “Are you serious?”
I cringed. I was fearful of articulating this because it seemed absurd. It underscored the fact that I could be clinically paranoid, that I really could be losing my mind. I rubbed the back of my hand. She continued to watch carefully my every little body movement. I stopped.
“El? Talk to me.”
I glanced down at my hands and bit the bullet. “Maybe . . . The thing is, I . . . I’m beginning to think I’ve been duped. Conned. I’m beginning to think Martin married me for my money because I’m a Hartley.” I looked up slowly. “I think he’s gaslighting me. Maybe even drugging me.”
“Do you really believe this?”
I inhaled deeply. “I’ve been lying in bed for two days going over it all. Rehashing the weird little things I might have overlooked during our intense courtship.”
Like the doppelgänger incident.
Like how he wasn’t registered at the Hartley Hotel when I went to return the cuff links.
Like the way he’d disappear until I grew desperate to see him, then suddenly reappear and say he needed me to make a decision at once and then he’d sweep me away on some trip.
Like the orange Subaru outside my apartment.
The way he isolated me, brought me here, far away from everything I knew . . . the way he terrorized me with the fishing trip even though he knew all about my past and my mental vulnerabilities.
“It’s like he was one Martin before he got the funding for the Agnes Marina project, and a completely different Martin after. He no longer needs
