Page 115

Supreme Court of Western Australia

PERTH

October 15th

Nick has finished telling the jury about me cutting him. He went over everything in intimate detail, made it sound worse than it was. He even said I chased him out of the flat with the knife at his back, that I screamed at him like a wild animal. I don’t remember that bit, if it ever happened. Perhaps Nick is a bit of an embellisher. I wonder whether he’s been boasting to his friends about his involvement with me. Or maybe he uses his story with me as a pick-up line, plays the wounded party with baby-blue eyes and a victim story.

I examine the jury. Do they believe him? There are six women in this jury of twelve: two older ones, four probably under forty. Maybe they approve of Nick’s looks: his smart suit, clean smile, clipped city-boy accent. Your voice is so different from his, strong and slow and resonant. Your voice is the heat to Nick’s cool English pitter-patter.

I watch Nick inhale deeply as he looks all around the courtroom, everywhere but at me. Is Mr Lowe about to reveal the piece of evidence Jodie warned me about? Nick shuffles from side to side while he waits. Soon enough, Mr Lowe asks for the next item of evidence to be displayed on the screen. A series of emails come up. I recognise them, of course. Mr Lowe aims at them with a red laser pointer.

‘You’re familiar with these emails, Mr Avery?’

‘I am.’

Mr Lowe zooms in, runs his red pointer over a few lines, then clears his throat and reads out the words for the jury:

I’ve recently had some bad medical news, and I’m thinking about going on a final, special trip…

An email from Rose, my sweet, sick client, the one I only ever wanted to help. I look over at the members of the jury as they struggle to see the connection between this email and the man in front of them. Mr Lowe carries on pointing at sentences.

I want to see something beautiful—something to reset me. I would value personal recommendations.

As he shifts back to Nick, forgetting to switch off his pointer as he turns, he blinds me for a moment.

‘Who is Rose? Do you know, Mr Avery?’ he asks. ‘What do you know about the person who wrote that email?’

‘I wrote that email,’ Nick says.

And here we are.

The betrayer.

The Judas.

It wasn’t enough for him to invent a whole new person to rat me out; he then had to go and take her from me too. As if there wasn’t enough loss in all this. And I liked Rose.

‘So, you were pretending to be this Rose character, Mr Avery, this so-called client of the defendant?’ asks Mr Lowe.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘These email exchanges occurred over several weeks, from January thirteenth until February twenty-first. Is that correct?’

‘It is.’

‘Why would you do that, Mr Avery?’

Nick rolls his shoulders slowly. Perhaps he can feel me glaring at him. Will he turn and look at me now? No doubt Mr Lowe has instructed him not to.Don’t be swayed by your feelings in the moment,he’ll have said, just like the lawyers told me all those years ago.Focus on the facts.

‘I did pretend to be a client called Rose, it’s true,’ says Nick. ‘Like I said before, I was intrigued by Kate Stone after that night, that morning. There was something…not quite right…I wanted to help her.’

He can’t resist it, a glance at me, a reddening of his cheeks. He’s getting flustered. Maybe there is something good hiding inside Nick, after all: a sliver of remorse.

Mr Lowe sighs, then looks at Nick with an expression that could be interpreted as concern. ‘Mr Avery, was it only intrigue you felt about Kate Stone?’

Nick frowns. ‘I, uh, I did feel something else. I was scared by Kate Stone, too.’

‘Scared?’ Mr Lowe’s voice is louder now.