Supreme Court of Western Australia
PERTH
October 15th
When Nick takes the stand, the stiffness in his shoulders and the angle of his body make it clear that he’s avoiding looking at me, which only makes me stare all the harder at him.
The Judas, the betrayer.
After insisting so many times that he wanted to get to know me, make something of us, care for me, it seems he was pretending the whole time. There are two pieces of evidence the prosecution will ask him to address, but which one will they start with?
I listen as he begins talking about me, telling the world who he thinks I am. It’s obvious from Mr Lowe’s questions that the prosecution is presenting me to the jury as a wild woman, full of furious rage and burning for revenge. Like Jodie, the prosecution team have been using my original diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome for their case, but in their version I’m not a victim, far from it. I’m a perpetrator, damaged yet dangerous. A madwoman getting her own back.
‘It’s all understandable, given her tragic circumstances,’ Nick tells the jury. ‘But just because she had a tough past, doesn’t make it right, what she did, all the crimes she committed, the pain she inflicted on a man only trying to get his life back together…’
And I wonder, Ty, when did you and Nick team up together?
‘No man deserves her treatment,’ Nick says.
There was a push to televise the case, you know. That’s how big the story of you and me has become. Or always was, I guess. That’s how much people care. Even without the livestream, we are on the news most nights, photos of you and me beamed into other people’s living rooms once again.
Do you like that photo they’re using of you? Younger and beautiful, such a handsome antihero. Their favourite picture of me is my schoolgirl shot from ten years ago. Sweet, blameless Gemma Toombs. The public never want to forget her.
‘It’s fine if they use that old shot,’ Mikael said, when he saw me wincing at it. ‘It actually helps you. Makes people remember your innocence.’
Now, in this trial, I notice Jodie is also playing on every bit of sympathy people felt for the innocent, impressionable schoolgirl. How affected I was by the experience, how changed, how blameless I was then and still am. Interestingly, she has said that you were also a victim. In her opening statement, she told the jury you werechewed out by the system, not too bright when it came to life choices, impressionable.I’m not sure you’d like that being said about you, but I don’t deny there’s truth there. Strange, isn’t it, that it wasn’t until the end that I saw you in this way: weak and vulnerable, too. Ten years ago, I thought you were strong, in control, unbeatable. You were my whole world, once.
‘All they wanted,’ Jodie told the jury, ‘was to live out on the land they both loved, with the person they thought theyloved, the person their individual life circumstances led them to believe they loved.’
Is that the truth?
I close my eyes to get rid of an image of the two of us at the waterhole, me touching your back, you holding my waist, so close. I scratch the skin of my arms and remind myself I am here, in this courtroom. The zoning out is happening too easily now. I try to focus.
Mr Lowe has an expression of compassion as he listens to Nick’s testimony, an expression likely put on for the jury because there’s nothing much to feel sorry for when it comes to Nick. And what exactly is the Judas saying now? I try to pay attention as he recounts how we met online and how I was different from the other girls he found on the dating app. It’s not long before he gets to that night, the last night we were together, and then the morning after, when it all went wrong.
‘I was trying to be nice, give her a chance,’ he says. ‘I was going to get us breakfast! But when I looked for her keys to get out of the flat, I found a letter from Hakea Prison about the release of Tyler MacFarlane, and I wondered who that was. Wondered what this girl I was seeing had to do with him.’
‘What was the defendant’s general state of mind that morning, would you say?’ Mr Lowe asks.
‘Different,’ says Nick. ‘I’d never seen her so happy, at first.’
I try not to cringe as he tells the jury about the roleplay the night before.
‘I went along with it for her,’ he says. ‘Even though I didn’t particularly want to. She wanted me to becomesomeone else. Become likehim.’
I look down at the table, pick at the skin around my nails. He’s right, I had wanted that. But Nick is lying when he says he didn’t enjoy it. Anyway, he wasn’t like you, not at all. I can see that now.
‘And when did you start to put it all together?’ Mr Lowe asks. ‘That the name on the letter—Gemma Toombs—was also the woman you were seeing?’
‘I didn’t know what it meant,’ the Judas says. ‘Not at first. I thought the letter related to a family member. I didn’t know her real name then. But I saw the prison logo, and…’
‘And you were curious…?’ Mr Lowe prods.
‘Sure.’
‘Because here was the girl you liked, maybe loved, and she had a secret, something she didn’t want you to see?’
Jodie stands. ‘Leading question, Your Honour.’