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

       Chapter Seven

      26th November 2016

       I woke up covered in blood.

       That is the one thing I’m sure of, the one memory that has survived. But the events leading up to it are fragmented, uncertain. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real and what I’ve imagined since. And that’s what frightens me. The not knowing.

       I said I’d write about the turning point. I’m ready now. It’s been on my mind, little things throughout the day triggering memories, beckoning me to dive into those murky pools to see what lies beneath. When it starts to get dark, when the sound of the waves travels faster in the thin night air, it sounds like they’re whispering to me. Telling stories from the past. Like what happened That Night.

       Mark and I were at a party several months ago. We’d moved just south of the city – Mark’s decision, of course – to an apartment in Black Rock, two streets from the beach. Some rich friend of his, a skinny, drug-addled insurance manager none too ambiguously nicknamed Dealer Dan, was hosting a party in his penthouse apartment overlooking Brighton Beach. To the untrained eye, Mark looked like he had something to celebrate. But I knew better. From the speed at which his stress levels had peaked, I could guess how bad it was – and the deeper the debt, the bigger the blowout.

       Mark was on top form that night, high on coke and a cocktail of whatever else, looking for trouble. I’d taken shelter in the bathroom to clear my head after he disappeared without explanation. A line of coke had sent my head spinning in the worst way; that had never happened before, and at one point I was sure I was going to pass out.

       That’s when my memory gets sketchy. I remember looking at my face in the mirror, seeing irises nearly engulfed by pupils that seemed to pulse as I stared. My face was out of focus, my skin blotchy, unnaturally pale. Someone knocked on the door and, when I turned my head, I saw stars, and then I threw up in the sink until there was red behind my eyelids.

       In search of Mark, I followed some people who were making their way down to the beach. But I don’t remember how I got there – there’s another of those blank spaces. Next thing I knew, I was by the shore. There were houses nearby, and I could hear people in the distance. I think they must have been running into the water; I remember silhouettes against a street light, squeals and laughter, and the rumble of the ocean.

       I don’t know what happened after that; I must have passed out. Sometimes there are snippets, like the sound of someone yelling, or maybe screaming, a face peering down at me, the ocean whispering its secrets. But mostly, it’s blank.

       When I came to, Mark was standing over me shouting, hands gesturing wildly, his eyes crazed and gleaming. He was staring at me, at something near my stomach, but I didn’t know why, and a coil of panic tightened in my gut. When I looked down, all I could see was blood.

       It was a while before my senses returned to me. The white noise in my head cleared and I could hear Mark ranting about something, some eight ball I’d supposedly been carrying for him. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he found the drugs in my purse, wrapped me up in his coat and dragged me to the car. As far as we know, no one saw us.

       Later, I stood naked in our laundry, my arms crossed over my chest, shivering with disgust and fear as I watched Mark pile our clothes into the washing machine. As he switched it on and it slowly filled up with water, I knew in my bones that the blood turning the soap suds pink wasn’t mine.

       Whose it was, and how it got there, I’ll never know.

       Once I’d washed myself clean, I lay in our bed, awaiting the inevitable. But it never came. Mark paced the hall – I could see his shadow, hear his drunken muttering above the roar and hiss of the sea. But then he went silent and, not long after, I could hear rattling snores in the living room. He didn’t come to bed, which was strange. I knew my bag was packed and waiting for me if I needed it. But I started having second thoughts.

       The next day we heard the news that a guy had been found dead at Dealer Dan’s party. An unemployed twenty-eight-year-old man named Tom Forrester, known to police for drug dealing and petty theft. It was shocking to find out someone had died at a party we attended, possibly while we were there, but I didn’t know the guy so I wasn’t too cut up about it.

       It wasn’t until Mark started acting strangely that I began to worry. We’d talked about it once we had sobered up, and Mark had convinced me we had nothing to do with whatever had gone on. The guy was found bludgeoned to death. They think it was a brick, even though they never found the murder weapon. Pretty gruesome. If he was a drug dealer, the most likely scenario was that his death was related to money or drugs. Which was what they ended up suspecting anyway, even though the murderer was never caught. The fact I couldn’t ignore then, and that haunts me now when I trawl through those old newspaper articles, is that Mark had recently lost a lot of money and – I suspected – was dealing drugs again.

      Everyone who was at the party was questioned. We waited for days, for weeks, for the cops to arrive, but they never did. We couldn’t guess why, but we considered ourselves lucky.

       The blood. Neither of us could account for it. I racked my brain trying to remember details. If I’d seen anything that night, it could have helped with the investigation. I knew I’d headed towards the beach and passed out. I know I woke up with a bump on the back of my head and some bruises on my arms, but nothing more serious than my usual drunken mishaps. Though Mark had been missing and I couldn’t vouch for where he’d been, he told me he was down the road scoring from a mate and, as that was usually the case when he was MIA, I hoped it was the truth.

       Mark’s story was that he’d come looking for me after meeting his mate, and that he’d asked around but no one knew where I was. Apparently he saw some guy passed out but thought nothing of it because ‘it was a drug party, for fuck’s sake’. So he went looking down by the beach and found me semi-conscious in a nearby side street. Covered in someone else’s blood. Why was I there? What had happened to me?

       He convinced me we had nothing to do with the guy’s death, that it probably wasn’t even the guy he saw. He said I should keep my mouth shut about the blood. It was probably mine, he said, even though there wasn’t more than a scratch on my body. It was on him too, I remember that much, but he claimed it came from me, when he’d carried me to the car. He said that maybe I’d thrown it up or something. It would be stupid to say anything about it, he told me.

       I knew he wasn’t saying these things to protect me, like he claimed. He had enough of a record to get in some serious trouble if it was dredged up, so he was protecting himself from further involvement with the police.

       I tried not to think about what it meant that Mark would just leave someone in a state like that. The guy was unconscious. Maybe Mark didn’t see the blood – or maybe it wasn’t