Lost Girls (36 page)

He told her to
lie on the bed and he was going to have a little feel inside that
place with his thing. She did not want him to do that, she knew now
it was a thing that only grown-ups did and she was still a little
girl. She had shaken her head and tried to say no. But he held her
down on the bed and put his body on top of hers and pushed and
pushed with his thing. She had started to cry, saying to stop, he
was really hurting, but he would not listen.

He just kept
pushing and pushing and it hurt more and more, until finally
something gave way and it went right inside her. Then he lay on top
of her pushing it in and out, over and over again, until suddenly
he gave a big shudder and lay still.

After, when he
got dressed, he told her she must never tell her parents about this
or they would both get into big trouble. She promised not to, she
did not know what else to say.

Then she fixed
him some dinner. He seemed in a hurry to go, even though she said
he should stay to say hello to her parents. They ate quickly and
she thought he would go after that. But, just as he was leaving, he
said he had changed his mind and could stay a bit longer.

He brought her
back up to her room, saying he wanted to try it out with her one
more time before he left. So he did it again. This time it did not
hurt quite so much. Soon he finished again with another big
shudder.

As he dressed
to go he said to her. “I thought I would have to wait another year
until you were ready. But, even though you are a year and a half
younger than your sister was when I first did it to her, you were
ready too and I really liked it with you. Soon you will learn to
like it too.”

Now she had a
glimpse of a terrible truth. She asked him, “What do you mean; you
did it to my sister?”

He said, “Last
time I was here, a couple days before she died, I took her for a
walk in the forest, down by the lake. When we got there, I made her
take her clothes off, just like with you. Then I made her lie down
on a blanket I brought and I did it with her the same as with
you.

“She was bigger
and stronger and tried to fight me off but I held her down until I
had finished. She was cross and crying afterwards saying I should
not have done that.

“I told her she
would soon get used to it and enjoy it, that we would do it lots
more times until she learned to like it as much as I did.

“She ran away
back to the house and I went back to the army base because I had to
leave that night. I was sad when I heard she had died as I would
not get the chance to do it with her anymore.

“But once I got
back from overseas I decided to come and visit you to see if you
were ready to try it too. It is lucky that I found you here all by
yourself so I did not have to wait to try it with you. You even
have her name now. So it is like one Cathy has gone away and I have
the second Cathy in her place, just as good as the first one.”

Cathy stood
looking at his gloating face. She could not understand how she had
ever liked him. Now she understood what had happened on that day,
that what he had done was the reason why her sister had died.

She felt white
hot rage towards him. Despite her small stature she screamed at
him. “Get out you murdering bastard. You raped my sister and she
killed herself. You did not care that she had died. The only thing
you cared about was doing the same to me as well. I will not tell
my parents because I could not bear for them to know. But you will
never touch my again, I promise you that.”

She ran to the
kitchen and got the biggest knife she could find and stood in the
corner waving at him lest he try to come near her again.

He looked at
her, shrugged, then got in the car and drove away. When he was gone
she felt so sick and disgusted with herself, even though she had
pretended she was happy to see her parents when they came home,
determined they should never know.

Cathy told Mark
how her life had drifted out of control after that, she had a
terrible secret that she could not tell anyone about and this man
had destroyed her childhood and her sister’s life. She was sure,
though she could not prove it, that her sister had gone off in the
night and flung herself into the water of the lake to wash away the
shame.

She did not
know if her sister had planned to kill herself or if she had
drowned by accident, but the end result was the same, he had
effectively murdered her and there was no way she could tell her
parents without destroying their lives as well.

All the time
she spoke, recounting this memory in intimate detail Mark had kept
his arm around her gently hugging her and running his fingers
lightly through her hair to comfort her as one would a child.

When she
finished there were no tears in her eyes, the burning rage remained
and yet she felt comforted. She told him then of the letter and how
she needed to escape.

He hugged her
tighter, saying, “If it will help I will go back to Adelaide and
take him for a drive. No one will ever see him after that and he
will never bother you again. I will put him where no one will ever
find him. That is what he deserves for what he did to you.”

She shook her
head. “It is enough that I have told someone. I have been trapped
with this secret for far too long.”

Then as she lay
beside him she told him of her life as a prostitute, selling her
body to men for money was the only way she knew to regain control,
until finally she needed to end that too. So now she had come to
Australia to start a new life.

When she had
finished she put his hand between her legs, holding it there and
saying. “I have never done this with a person I really liked. But I
am ready to try it with you.”

Mark shook his
head. “No, I would be lying if I said I do not want that with you.
But for now all that matters is that I am your friend. I would not
be your true friend if I took advantage of you in this place. You
have bared your soul and told me your most awful secret.

“Tonight I must
tell you something of me just as dark and see if you can still like
me the way I like you. I will tell you the story of Belle and how I
killed her with my own hand, and how, in doing so, I killed the
thing I most loved.”

That was it
really, the end of the story of Cathy.

Mark’s diary
told of their next night very briefly; them lying together in a
swag under the stars, him telling her the story of Belle and how he
had shot her, and of the awful grief and remorse which followed.
She had comforted him with her body, the way that only a woman
could, lovers at last, taking his pain inside herself and giving a
little healing in return.

The diary
recorded him telling her nothing about the other deaths he had
caused. That suggested that he had not told her of these, perhaps
he thought this was a truth too bad for even her to hear.

The story ended
with the words,

“I lay with her
under a starry desert sky and bared my soul, I spoke of Belle and
how I loved her, yet how I killed her, how that killing of what I
loved was now killing my soul. There was something in Cathy that
was like my Belle, it was a look, as if she saw into my soul and
judged me not.

“Cathy
comforted me as only a woman can, this woman whose soul was torn by
her own anguish. She took my body inside her own. I emptied my seed
within her and felt as if some part of the badness in my soul was
emptied too. She loved me with her body.

“As I held her
I was comforted. In some small measure I hope I gave her comfort
too though a part of me fears I betrayed our friendship by taking
what too many men had taken before.

“But, after,
she said this night it was different, she had given herself to me
with love, something she had never done before. I hope our shared
pleasure has given her healing. But a part of me knows fear for
her; fear I have added another layer to her pain by giving her my
pain to share.”

But after those
lines telling of them of lovers giving and returning love, Cathy
was gone. The only other time her name appeared was a brief mention
in a poem. It skipped a page on which he had drawn a picture of an
eagle in the sky and a dingo standing alone and proud on a ridge
top, mouth open and howling at the night sky.

Anne wondered
if it was symbolic of the eagle flying away and him, left alone yet
again, howling into the desolation.

The final entry
with her name was poetic and cryptic.

Cathy vanished
I know not where

I searched for
her and found only air

Perhaps she
has gone to a place in the sky

A place to
which only the eagles can fly

I hope I have
not harmed her

In my dreams I
have fear

That something
terrible has happened to her.

But where she
is now I have not any clue

In heaven or
hell, only God knows what is true

I wish her
well in this life or the next

I most wish to
hold her and again feel her breath

But still with
her leaving I have her wise words

I have started
again, Mark, so also must you

One day you
will find her, your own new queen

You will
travel with her to a place never seen

Would that
queen was me, perhaps in time it can be

But first I
must heal myself, mend my own broken soul

For a
beginning of this I thank you, my friend of all worlds

So Anne had a
detailed picture in part, three days of their trip in the diary, an
intimate and detailed account of what Cathy had told him of her own
rape and life as a prostitute. This story was so explicit that it
seemed as if, after she was gone, Mark had recorded every word as
she had spoken it, so as to tell others the story of the awfulness
done to a child.

After that
terrible tale that Cathy had told him of her own life the story had
jumped straight to the intimate account of the night when they
became lovers. It must have been a subsequent night, probably the
next night, but that was only a guess.

There was no
description of them leaving Coober Pedy on the morning after the
party, though others confirmed that they had, their holding hands
at breakfast, hugging their hosts and promising to come again, then
a last sight of them driving away towards Alice Springs.

There was no
clear record of them being in any other place. That final night did
not tell a story not about a physical place where they became
lovers, nor about the act itself. It was a story about an emotional
connection, a second part of their joint healing as she took his
body within her own and gave comfort to his soul’s pain. And, in a
strange way, it also seemed to be a closure to the story of Belle,
as if Mark saw something in this woman that was of the other, a
look and also a kind friendship. With her a truth was told and
accepted and that gave him a way forward.

But then the
Cathy, so alive and vibrant, had just vanished and all Anne held in
her hands to mark this passing was fragments of nothing.

Was she alive
of dead? The story gave no clue. Perhaps Mark had really not known.
After the tenderness of their few days together it was impossible
to believe he had set out to kill her. And yet she was gone, and
tragedy seemed to stalk all the companions of this man.

So it could be
so, that she was dead, but Anne was determined not to abandon this
one to the same lost fate as the others, a truly lost girl. She
lived in hope that she had just vanished somewhere to escape the
story she could never bring herself to tell her family.

This part also
told a deeply personal story of this girl, a story she told to only
one man in the confidence of a night together. Anne did not feel
she had Cathy’s permission to it share with others, even her own
family.

The year had
passed and a new year had begun.

Anne had
returned from her travels in October, having gone to America after
her holiday in the outback with David. She spent the final months
of the year cataloguing all her information and turning it into a
draft book called “Lost Girls”. By Christmas she had a good draft
with the editors for review. She felt in great need for a rest from
a gruelling year.

She had lived
an emotional roller coaster as she found out story after story,
small parts happy, but in totality a trail of appalling
tragedy.

She felt
profoundly sorry for all the girls and their wasted lives, Susan
especially. But for Susan’s chance meeting with Mark, that had
thrown her off the rails, her future had seemed so bright.

But most of all
she felt profound sympathy for the man at the centre, the man whose
own life had been a series of ever increasing horrors. In the end
he was the perpetrator as much as a victim and part of her felt it
was fitting that there was a closure with his death.

Having walked
so many miles in his shoes she could not find it in her to blame
him, despite his final remorseless murders. She just wished it
could have been otherwise, particularly before he had met
Susan.

She thought
that Vic’s Mum had got closest to the truth; Mark had lost a mother
and her love. It seemed that what had followed as he had gone
through so many relationships was an increasingly desperate and
demented search for another love, a new queen.

So many times
he could have found her but fate intervened. The final outcome, a
classic Shakespearian tragedy where the death of the villain was
preordained; but to get there he destroyed all that he touched.