Perfect Victim

by Megan Norris

  I don’t know how often I’ll keep writing these journals. I’m surprised by the energy it takes from me.

  Maundy Thursday

  Dear Rachel,

  I must apologise for yet another unfinished letter. I do try to keep my letter-writing time to you private, but one of your sisters came in and I am conscious that I must not favour writing letters to you over their company. I love you all equally.

  I have been reading a great deal since my last day at work. This is good for me. I hadn’t read properly in two months because my spirit felt bound up by the stresses of work. I’ve just finished reading The Reader by Bernard Schlink. One passage was about someone finding a grave where a funeral ceremony was being held. It described tall, bare trees between old gravestones, and a cemetery gardener or an old woman with a watering can and gardening shears. That is how I am, a woman with a watering can and gardening shears. I shall be for the rest of my life.

  I have always felt that a cemetery has a subculture all of its own. One is thrown into another world. Surreal. Grieving parents and visitors become a new race. We exist with our memories, with our watering cans and gardening shears, we exist with our jam jars, vases and fresh flowers. Dead blooms remain at headstones alongside headstones freshened with new ones. No one would ever dream of removing another’s dead flowers, because those dead flowers represent personal contact with their loved ones. But I will spray the roses near your grave with insecticide to prevent blackspot and mildew. I will water other people’s roses for them on hot days and in my absence I hope they do the same for you.

  And may God have forgiveness for my grieving heart in wishing accountability on Caroline.

  It’s a scary time ahead of us.

  9 May 2000

  My darling Rachel,

  I was saying to your dad last night that time has stood still. You could just as easily walk through the door and it could be the same day you went missing. Your presence is still that real.

  Ashleigh-Rose has been extremely distressed lately because she is scared of forgetting you. ‘That’s one reason why we have put more photographs of Rachel up in the house,’ I said. It’s not that easy, though. She says she has forgotten what you sound like.

  One of the big magazines has contacted us and we have agreed that Megan Norris can write your story – our story. It’s not the story of your death or the trial, rather it’s about you, your place in the family and how the family is redefining itself without its magnet. She will also ask Ashleigh-Rose how she feels and include Heather as well. She will write a story over the next few weeks and it will be printed the week the trial finishes. Megan seems very sensitive.

  I am walking every day, Rachel.

  Love, Mum.

  Midnight, 14 May 2000

  My darling daughter Rachel,

  It is ten minutes to Mothers’ Day and I grieve for you as I did that first hour we were told of your death. No mother should experience the murder of a beloved child. You didn’t die, you were murdered.

  I was trying to explain to your sisters today how I can forgive the part of Caroline that is the baby she was born. I can have compassion and feel sadness for her as she was twenty-one years ago, but I shall always feel anger for the adult Caroline who murdered you. I can forgive the baby Caroline but I cannot forgive the woman Caroline. And I ask God to forgive the woman.

  29 May 2000

  Dear Rachel,

  Your cousin Tom was fifteen yesterday. I remember the deep-thinking Tom said at your funeral, ‘Well, Aunty Elizabeth, I thought I had an answer for everything. But I haven’t got one for this.’ I could not ring him up and wish him happy fifteenth birthday. Ben is sixteen. Lindsay must surely be fifteen – no, I think she’s sixteen now. It’s not fair, Rachel. Those three cousins, Ben, Tom and Lindsay were all younger than you. And now you have stood still and they have caught up.

  Ashleigh-Rose will be thirteen soon, so she’ll only be two years younger than you. But this is not fair because you were nearly four when she was born. And now I am thankful for those first four precious years shared alone with you. My darling baby, I miss you so very much.

  31 May 2000

  I rang a friend yesterday. It was good to have a chat but her conversation hovered around you and details of the coming trial. Not that I am in a position to tell her anything, only what had been in the papers.

  The problem with friends who haven’t seen or heard from us in a while is that they want to talk about you, and although I haven’t got a problem with that, I can’t help feeling that they go away and all they are thinking is, she can’t stop talking about Rachel. Your dad said either way we can’t win. If we talk about you all the time it’s, ‘Oh dear, look at them, you think they would move on …’ and if we don’t talk about you it’s, ‘Isn’t it terrible, they can’t bear to talk about her.’

  My friend was saying how dreadful it must be for us and how she couldn’t even imagine what it must be like, but at the same time how dreadful this must be for the parents of the girl accused of your murder. I said to my friend, just imagine if it had been her little girl who had been murdered. The phone went silent for a moment. It is an unbearable, yet lived-with tragedy.

  Your dad and I feel this continuing need to defend your character. It’s like … Gee, Rachel was murdered. What had she done to make Caroline murder her? It makes me sick that people who don’t know you are prepared to make generalisations about you. Your friends and colleagues and old friends know exactly what you were all about and knew there was absolutely nothing you had done to create this madness.

  Caroline acted selfishly and out of pure evil. I heard tonight there had been a fire at Deer Park Women’s Prison and that four prisoners had been injured. I thought, well, I hope it is not Caroline because I want her to stand trial and accept responsibility for what she did. I don’t want anything to delay the trial.

  3 June 2000

  Even though I accept that you are dead, I cannot accept that you don’t exist. Somewhere – somehow – you exist …

  Perhaps if we had known you were only going to live for fifteen years we might not have driven you to all those ballet classes and dance concerts and ballets. And if we hadn’t let your free spirit develop into the wonderful person you were at your death, you wouldn’t have been you. The sad irony is, if you had grown up to be someone else, then Caroline may not have murdered you. Once again I am falling into the well of ifs – and how deep is that well?

  So then, we cannot change our past but we can rewrite our future. We only ever have one chance of rewriting our future and that is in the present. Caroline could have chosen not to kill you – even at the final moment – she could have rewritten her future. The future can take many paths but the past is only ever the one path.

  The future is a matter of choice.

  10 June 2000

  My beloved Rachel,

  We did not clothe you for your burial. Your abandoned body lay there at Kilmore to be taken by police and dissected. We were not given the opportunity to embrace you. To gently dress you in lace knickers and lay your last concert dress across you.

  Police advised us not to view your body. It had been decomposing in a shallow grave for nearly ten days. Neither could we view your body because of security for the trial. Rights become the rights of the convicted. The victim’s family loses its rights in favour of the protection of the killer of their child. That is how it feels. Feelings cannot be denied.

  Rachel, we were gutless. You were ours and we, above all others, should have had the courage to face your changed body. It was you.

  My God, Rachel, forgive me, my darling. Forgive us …

  1 July 2000

  I have been reading Heaven Eyes by David Almond …

  Rachel, you were brave. You taught your friends to dream. You flapped your wings and flew.

  19 July 2000

  Paul Ross rang today to say he had been thinking of us and to tell us that the prosecuting barrister will be Jeremy Rapke. Pa
ul said if he was to have any preference for a barrister it would probably have been him. We won’t hear for another month about witnesses.

  Last night your father and I both had disturbing dreams. I dreamt I was sobbing uncontrollably about you – constantly – throughout the dream, without rest. This seemed to be mixed up with some science fiction drama. I was sobbing, in this fictitious setting, about your murder.

  Your father dreamt he was collapsing with a panic attack. He couldn’t move his legs and he eventually died. He said he did not remember you being a part of the dream.

  However, about a week ago, maybe not even that, I dreamt I knew you were dead but I asked this weird photographer if he had any photographs of you – while you were living. He had been a snooping photographer and showed me photographs of myself, topless. He said he did have photos of you but showed me instead a video of you while you were younger – about eight years old. I then became part of the video. You were wearing the pastel-coloured mauve, pink and green striped sundress that I didn’t particularly like but you loved, and you were always wearing it. Then you were running upstairs to meet me as I was running downstairs to meet you, and we hugged and hugged. It was like I was there with you and the hugging felt physical. The dream then jumped to you running across darkened roof tops, jumping from chimney top to chimney top until you were out of view …

  I had morning tea with my boss today. Even though I’m not working any more I like to keep in touch. I was browsing in the shop afterwards when a customer of mine came and said how sorry she was for me when she heard. She had been overseas. This was happening at least once a day when I was working, and was one reason why I needed to leave work. I still have a problem with the fact that I went back to work so soon after your death. It was too soon and I still feel guilty about it. It seems disrespectful.

  I have told Paul Ross that after the trial we feel we should see the forensic photographs of you. I said to him I know he isn’t a social worker but would appreciate his support in this. I also discussed the need to go into the unit where you were murdered. It feels like we have not really had much involvement with what happened to you after your discovery, nor involvement with what the police know, because of the coming trial. We are sure there is still more we do not know about.

  24 July 2000

  I imagine your happy face near me. I can grab out to empty space and draw into my breast treasured memories. I remember you so strongly I find it despairing you cannot simply walk through the door and sit on the bed with me.

  I still sleep with your little white cotton Bloch top. Can this ever end? You were so real. So alive. Now you are the invisible Rachel. Humankind writes tales about invisible men. Spirits are the living invisible, presences of those once living in flesh. To become invisible, must one die? The wind is invisible but it makes its presence felt. It’s a force not to be disregarded. Neither then should we disregard people’s departed souls.

  I love you, Rach.

  Love, Mum.

  (Now, as I review these letters in February 2001, and I read ‘Neither then should we disregard people’s departed souls,’ I should like to add a warning for Caroline: ‘Beware, Caroline, beware of Rachel.’ But such terror would be beyond Rachel’s nature to even think of.

  Caroline does not need Rachel to haunt her. Caroline’s actions will haunt her themselves. So Caroline, if you feel haunted by Rachel, it is not Rachel who haunts you – but your own evil deeds.)

  Friday, 28 July 2000

  Dear Rachel,

  We had an interesting night on Wednesday night.

  Unfortunately Ashleigh-Rose had been ratty about homework. She was just beginning to settle into it, and Heather was painting her salt-dough masterpieces, when someone came to the front door.

  ‘I’m looking for a household full of people,’ I heard a deep man’s voice say. ‘Does an Elizabeth Barber live here?’

  A six-foot-plus-tall, two-foot-wide policeman stood there on our veranda.

  Your dad invited him in and said, ‘We’ve been subpoenaed as witnesses to the trial.’

  ‘Who has?’ I asked, looking at Ashleigh-Rose’s ashen face.

  ‘You, Ashleigh-Rose, and me,’ said your dad.

  Heather was sitting very quietly at the table, continuing to paint, ignoring the large policeman standing near by. She could see the very official-looking documents, with the stamp from the Prosecutor’s Office on them, that the policeman had brought with him. And she could see the five dollars attached for travelling expenses.

  I noticed the policeman’s gun at his hip and looked at his shoulders and at his blue leather jacket – Victoria Police. He looked like a big cuddly bear, very friendly looking. And he was very kind, particularly when he realised how young Ashleigh-Rose was and how nervous your father was at the prospect of being a witness. His name was Senior Constable Neil Tilley.

  He said that even though we had been subpoenaed it didn’t necessarily mean we were going to be called. This would be confirmed two or three days before the trial. He went on to explain the process to Ashleigh-Rose, saying that at her tender age if she was called it would probably be possible for her to be questioned on a video link-up. He said to all of us that if we didn’t understand any particular question we were asked at the trial then we should not answer it until the question had been repeated or clarified. He said it is sometimes a good idea to close your eyes. He said to Ashleigh-Rose that sometimes the defence counsel will try to convince you, for instance, that perhaps the colour of someone’s clothing was purple and not red, but if you remember it being red, you must say red. He suggested we visit the Supreme Court before the trial, maybe call the court network people and sit in on another trial just for a little while to see how witnesses were questioned. Nobody can hurt you, he said to Ashleigh-Rose.

  Later I commended the caring attitude of this senior constable to the assistant commissioner whom I met at a ‘Missing Persons In Suspicious Circumstances’ meeting.

  After he left (and meanwhile Heather had disappeared into another part of the house) we went back to the living room. Ashleigh-Rose sat down and sobbed. She didn’t just cry. She sobbed. And she trembled. ‘I just wanted to go to the trial,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be a part of it.’

  ‘It’s all getting very real,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to go to the trial if you don’t want to, apart from being called as a witness and then we’ll look into that video link-up possibility.’

  Rachel, Ashleigh-Rose was adamant. ‘I want to go to the trial. I want to hear everything. I just didn’t want to be a witness.’ Ashleigh-Rose was eleven when you were murdered. Now she’s thirteen.

  She was upset like this for about twenty minutes, when we heard Heather’s serious little voice say, ‘I didn’t get five dollars.’ We stopped and laughed …

  29 July 2000

  Your grave looked so lovely today, Rachel. The grass was mown and the white pansies in the terracotta pots were in full bloom against the grey granite of your headstone. I thought of you, nine feet down. So far from reach – so sad.

  There is no fear in the aftermath of death. I mean your decomposed body – your bones. I don’t feel apprehension on seeing the forensic photographs of your body. In fact I would like to see them before the trial.

  I said to your dad yesterday that all of this – the trial, being subpoenaed, the magazine article – all this seems removed from you. Official and important, but not a part of you. You died – no, correction – you were murdered, nearly one and a half years ago and yet this still goes on. Until the trial has finished your burial has not been completed.

  3 August 2000

  Your cousin Tamzin rang tonight from Coffs Harbour. She spoke to all of us for about two and a half hours. She said that during the committal hearing it seemed to her as though Caroline was writing down addresses of witnesses. I had forgotten addresses of witnesses were given out in court. There is absolutely no way I will allow that.

  We will be going to the court ne
twork at the Supreme Court on 17 August and I have begun to think about a Victim Impact Statement.

  12 August 2000

  Caroline has been so wicked, so wicked. She needs to stay in prison for a very long time. I don’t want to face the reality that one day she will be wandering around free …

  15 August 2000

  Rachel, I’ve just realised that apart from our friend David, who calls in once a fortnight, and the man I reported, who still seems to call in about every eight weeks – apart from them, my friends seem to have abandoned me. Even some members of my own family find coming to the house too difficult. Memories. This is why I see myself as a social leper. Your dad reckons that’s the wrong expression but I cannot think of another one to adequately describe how I feel.

  Through all of this I have been thankful for your Granny Susan who is there for me. I can talk to her about you, Rachel. Nanny Joy is also there for me but I cannot speak freely with her because she becomes too distressed, and then this distresses me. For instance, last night when I looked at a video of you dancing I really needed to speak to Mum. I rang her up but I couldn’t tell her I had been crying. I thought of ringing Grandad Ivan, but like Mum, I feel the need to be careful when I speak to him as well. I don’t want to upset them further. I thought of ringing Robbie but at 5.30 in the afternoon she would have been busy with her children. I do feel isolated, Rachel, and some people may say I am drowning in self-pity. But, Rachel, I miss you so much.

  Ashleigh-Rose has a friend whose sister turned seventeen on the weekend. She went to her party. In four weeks time you would have turned seventeen. I would have a very excited seventeen-year-old, and what’s more I wouldn’t be fearful for my new teenager …

  2 a.m., 26 September 2000