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Supreme Court of Western Australia

PERTH

October 15th

The tour operator is the prosecution’s second witness. I can tell by Mr Lowe’s second smug smile of the day that he thinks Tony Kowalski is rock solid. Mr Lowe takes his time, getting Mr Kowalski to explain in detail how he found me at the side of the road in a dishevelled state.

‘Yes, Ms Stone was extremely hot and bothered that afternoon,’ Tony Kowalski says. ‘Dehydrated, I thought it at the time. She smelled pretty bad too.’

I run my hands over my belly, smoothing my top. Thanks for that one, Tony. Nothing like the revelation of bad personal hygiene to turn the jury against me. Enthusiastically, Tony recounts the conversation we had in his tour van, his voice swelling with confidence as he speaks.

‘She said she was a gap-year student,’ he says. ‘And who am I to argue? I mean, she only looks like she’s fresh out of school, doesn’t she? Slip of a thing! Well, not now obviously!’

He describes taking me back to the hire car, how he filled up the car with his jerry can. He sounds pleased with himself, clearly thinking he was my white knight.

‘She didn’t say nothing about Tyler MacFarlane,’ he says to Mr Lowe. ‘Not once the whole time we were together.’

He glances over at me, and I hold his gaze.Together, Tony, really?

He looks away, back to Mr Lowe, and I resist the urge to smile. Not such an innocent gap-year student now, am I, Tony? You just didn’t look hard enough on the day, did you, just saw what you wanted?

Jodie begins her cross-examination gently, smiling at Tony Kowalski encouragingly.

‘I’m wondering, Mr Kowalski,’ she says, ‘did you ever think that Ms Stone might not have told you about Tyler MacFarlane because she didn’t want to get him into trouble? Because she didn’t want him to go back to prison? Ms Stone and Mr MacFarlane knew very well that he was breaking the conditions of his parole by their being together.’

‘Objection!’ Mr Lowe shouts.

Tony Kowalski shrugs.

Jodie’s good, I’ve got to hand it to her. She may even get me off. But the twelve people to my right are the real ones who decide. And do they believe my story? Do they think I’m a reliable narrator? And where’s your voice in all this, Ty? Have I rendered you dumb?

Louise MacFarlane will be a witness tomorrow. She’ll say that you never came home after you left on the fifteenth of February. She’ll say she knew there was something suspicious going on, even in those first few days after you were released from prison. She’ll say she saw me there, watching you. Mostly, though, what she will say will be her word against mine.

After her story, the blood-spatter expert and the lab techs will give evidence about your DNA found all over the car and at the den. Jodie said it’s that evidence we need to be most concerned about.

But there is someone else missing from the entrancesand the exits in this court, isn’t there, Ty? Are you as pleased as I am not to see her? Nobody except you and me knows about her. That teenage girl from the park. I never told anyone about her, not even Jodie or Mikael. I often wondered if she’d come forward of her own volition, especially after your photographs were shown on the evening news. She’s probably the only one who saw me take you that day. But maybe she was only a random girl, just like you’d told me. Maybe she didn’t know you at all and, more importantly, didn’t want her parents to know that she was buying your drugs.

‘Ms Stone…’

As I continue to stare blankly at the jury again, a prison officer at my side gestures for me to face the front. I look at Tony Kowalski, still getting grilled by Jodie. You know, Ty, I might win this. Will you be happy if I do? These days I’m finding it harder to tell what you might like. You’re still there in my head, of course—you’ve been part of me for so long, and I have such a sense of loyalty—but something is shifting inside. Because what if this is it, and you really are gone? Then Rhiannon might ask what it would feel like to take you out from that space in my brain, to move on. Am I ready? But if I’m locked in a cell for decades, will I be able to forget you?

Did you manage to forget me for a time?

You tried to.