The Aftermath Early 1990,
Without Prejudice
A bomb exploded in our family and extended family when Lauren drowned. Our world was never to be the same. How could it be ? We just went insane. It was beyond terrible. Marriages went to the wall, engagements, long term relationships. By the time we had the funeral one couple had busted up already and attended the funeral together but you could tell it was all over, and it was.
The girl that had been with Lauren at the time of her death disappeared, only to be seen in the August of 1990 at the Coroners inquest. That was the last we ever saw or heard from her, she never went back to Chandler High School from that day. She just went somewhere into the ether of the Dandenongs we heard. With her Mother, no longer was she living with her Father. The house where the girls disappeared from that night. Taking a fateful walk into the hot night. Straight to the Noble Park Pool.
He had been supposedly meant to be home to be with the two 12 year old girls, choosing instead to leave them alone and go to a pool hall. Lauren had stayed overnight with hm before and we were not concerned about Lauren misbehaving, she was a shy obedient child. Maybe too obedient in some ways. She simply stepped off the edge of the earth that night and went to another "place". She had no idea of danger, trusted the world to take care of her. Not thinking of dangers, she never did.
So the aftermath was beyond belief and the girls, Laurens sisters and I were in the eye of a hurricane without let up for years. We had help, we had support, we had people flooding us with sympathy and we couldn't take it all in. We just howled with anguish, we cried rivers of tears but the facts were immutable, unchangeable, no matter how we twisted or turned we were in agony. It didn't stop.
We had each other and Kyle and Mara, so we went on. We had expert counseling, it turned in to family counseling and I greedily sucked in every word they told me. I struggled to cope and thought many times of killing myself. But I had a Mother that had done that and there was no way I was letting my other girls down. Besides I was not ill as my Mum had been. I hadn't been through war trauma or had nervous breakdowns that required ECT which didn't work.
I was sane rational and not ill, but my very soul was damaged and I was never going to be the person I had been before she died. I asked my unfaithful cruel and violent husband to leave within months of Laurens death. I never wanted to see him again and I have had to see him sometimes but he knows why I hate him. He knows and one incident I will never ever speak of as it was so terrible as to be beyond belief.
There are some things that damage you forever, sights that fill your eyes to the brim with horror and injustice and you can never again "unsee" them. Besides he told me at six weeks after I was never to talk of her again and I just thought he was ridiculous. As if. But before he left in the April, he tells everyone it was his decision to leave us. It wasn't, we had just decided he was superfluous to our lives and no longer cared whether he lived or died. it was that simple.
Before he left there were five months of sheer hell. Yvette was seriously post natally depressed. Kyle only 2 weeks when she lost her Sister. Kyle's dad, Simon was just starting to do crime and speed then and Yvette was with him when he returned to his house around the corner. Sometimes we let her take Kyle and others we kept him close. I had a visit from a former sis in law and she was desperate. She had gone from normal to drug addicted nightmare within months of Laurens death. So had Simon.
Yvette stole our reps car out of the driveway and drove it to Narandera where Simon was on holiday with his family. Simon stole it as soon as she got there (she was convinced he was with another girl ) and rolled it, writing it off. We were in Tassie God knows why, mainly so Bob could gamble. We could talk of nothing, both of us locked into our silent hostilities. But then we went to cocktail party and he just blurted it out.
There is no greater conversation stopper than that your beloved daughter has just died in strange and tragic circumstances. People avoided us like the plague after that and all we wanted to do was go home. And then we got the phone call about the car and he went apeshit, understandably. he blamed Debbie as being the oldest at 19 and all the girls were thrown out of home and not allowed back. They slept homeless on the streets, some finding shelter with friends.
I went to Queensland with Laurens best friend Kerry and I cannot recall anything about that trip, now. I was there but I wasn't there. God knows where I was but i know I wasn't there. I see photos and can remember only the vaguest flash. I hated it then and I hate writing about it now, but I want my girls and grandkids to know their family history in a continuous way. Its my legacy to her, to nobility and truth and joy. All the joy apart from Kyle had been sucked out of our lives and it was like living in a barren wasteland of nothingness for so long. Years.
People don't realise and avoid you or some, the good some, will hold your hand as you sob in fear and rage and frustration and say nothing. Just hold you in mute shared agony. Everyone thought my ex was a terrific bloke if a little hot tempered.We had never told anyone of his awful rages and tantrums and hatreds of us. We were holding him back from his drive to the top, discarded for new friends who drank copiously and were also unfaithful and disloyal.
I could have forgiven him for the affairs, I also had had affairs, but it was the hatred of us I could take no more and mentally, physically and emotionally I let him go. He had a loud voice and would not talk but yell all the time. We were useless, were ruining his life and he kept lists about what we did wrong. 3 pages long.He would read them to us and rant at us for hours and when he was bad, we hid. We jumped up and changed the channel as soon as his GT would pull up in the driveway. Changing it to the NEWS or there would be loud bellowing.
His dinner would always be ready, he would walk through the door, Grunt in reply to my Hi, 20 years never a greeting. He was the same on the phone, he would just start talking,
"Where's the Cheque Book or similar."
He was obsessive, if I said I was going to the hairdressers he would find me by phone and not a mobile in those days, he would just ring every hairdresser in Parkmore till he found me.
He said the song "Every breath you take", by the Police was for me, and that we would be buried together, there was no question. And that if I ever left him I would get nothing, not the kids, not the house, not the car, not the furniture, he would spend a hundred thousand dollars to make sure I didn't get $10 and that was if he didn't kill me first. I was supposed to end up in the gutter.
Every day the emotional abuse is worse than the physical. He told me he fancied the bird in the office and she was one of Debbies friends mothers. He said she showed off her nipples in tight jumpers and that was for him. Of course. He said in front of me and his workers, who liked me and pretty much felt sorry for me that
"He could twiddle her nipples like tuning a radio", he was always seeing women going up the escalators with no knickers on, always. He was a sicko about stuff like that, calling women slutbags and worse.
He broke up an engagement once as he felt the woman was too independent and getting too close to me in friendship. He rang up the guy that had just asked her to get engaged and told him all this filth about her, untrue, but the engagement was busted up anyway, immediately. he was evil and sad and darkly jealous and obsessive. It was like he wanted to crawl inside me and never leave. he mocked my family, my friends were all sluts, naturally, no matter who. or bitches.
Every day it would be
"Are you stupid or something/"
Fat, lazy, dumb --- ha ha ha, bad Mother, bad wife, bad worker. I was bad at everything.
I tried to escape him so many times, driving to Qld with the girls, taking off in the middle of the night, shaking with fear and feeling like he was following me all the way there.
To be continued
A bomb exploded in our family and extended family when Lauren drowned. Our world was never to be the same. How could it be ? We just went insane. It was beyond terrible. Marriages went to the wall, engagements, long term relationships. By the time we had the funeral one couple had busted up already and attended the funeral together but you could tell it was all over, and it was.
The girl that had been with Lauren at the time of her death disappeared, only to be seen in the August of 1990 at the Coroners inquest. That was the last we ever saw or heard from her, she never went back to Chandler High School from that day. She just went somewhere into the ether of the Dandenongs we heard. With her Mother, no longer was she living with her Father. The house where the girls disappeared from that night. Taking a fateful walk into the hot night. Straight to the Noble Park Pool.
He had been supposedly meant to be home to be with the two 12 year old girls, choosing instead to leave them alone and go to a pool hall. Lauren had stayed overnight with hm before and we were not concerned about Lauren misbehaving, she was a shy obedient child. Maybe too obedient in some ways. She simply stepped off the edge of the earth that night and went to another "place". She had no idea of danger, trusted the world to take care of her. Not thinking of dangers, she never did.
So the aftermath was beyond belief and the girls, Laurens sisters and I were in the eye of a hurricane without let up for years. We had help, we had support, we had people flooding us with sympathy and we couldn't take it all in. We just howled with anguish, we cried rivers of tears but the facts were immutable, unchangeable, no matter how we twisted or turned we were in agony. It didn't stop.
We had each other and Kyle and Mara, so we went on. We had expert counseling, it turned in to family counseling and I greedily sucked in every word they told me. I struggled to cope and thought many times of killing myself. But I had a Mother that had done that and there was no way I was letting my other girls down. Besides I was not ill as my Mum had been. I hadn't been through war trauma or had nervous breakdowns that required ECT which didn't work.
I was sane rational and not ill, but my very soul was damaged and I was never going to be the person I had been before she died. I asked my unfaithful cruel and violent husband to leave within months of Laurens death. I never wanted to see him again and I have had to see him sometimes but he knows why I hate him. He knows and one incident I will never ever speak of as it was so terrible as to be beyond belief.
There are some things that damage you forever, sights that fill your eyes to the brim with horror and injustice and you can never again "unsee" them. Besides he told me at six weeks after I was never to talk of her again and I just thought he was ridiculous. As if. But before he left in the April, he tells everyone it was his decision to leave us. It wasn't, we had just decided he was superfluous to our lives and no longer cared whether he lived or died. it was that simple.
Before he left there were five months of sheer hell. Yvette was seriously post natally depressed. Kyle only 2 weeks when she lost her Sister. Kyle's dad, Simon was just starting to do crime and speed then and Yvette was with him when he returned to his house around the corner. Sometimes we let her take Kyle and others we kept him close. I had a visit from a former sis in law and she was desperate. She had gone from normal to drug addicted nightmare within months of Laurens death. So had Simon.
Yvette stole our reps car out of the driveway and drove it to Narandera where Simon was on holiday with his family. Simon stole it as soon as she got there (she was convinced he was with another girl ) and rolled it, writing it off. We were in Tassie God knows why, mainly so Bob could gamble. We could talk of nothing, both of us locked into our silent hostilities. But then we went to cocktail party and he just blurted it out.
There is no greater conversation stopper than that your beloved daughter has just died in strange and tragic circumstances. People avoided us like the plague after that and all we wanted to do was go home. And then we got the phone call about the car and he went apeshit, understandably. he blamed Debbie as being the oldest at 19 and all the girls were thrown out of home and not allowed back. They slept homeless on the streets, some finding shelter with friends.
I went to Queensland with Laurens best friend Kerry and I cannot recall anything about that trip, now. I was there but I wasn't there. God knows where I was but i know I wasn't there. I see photos and can remember only the vaguest flash. I hated it then and I hate writing about it now, but I want my girls and grandkids to know their family history in a continuous way. Its my legacy to her, to nobility and truth and joy. All the joy apart from Kyle had been sucked out of our lives and it was like living in a barren wasteland of nothingness for so long. Years.
People don't realise and avoid you or some, the good some, will hold your hand as you sob in fear and rage and frustration and say nothing. Just hold you in mute shared agony. Everyone thought my ex was a terrific bloke if a little hot tempered.We had never told anyone of his awful rages and tantrums and hatreds of us. We were holding him back from his drive to the top, discarded for new friends who drank copiously and were also unfaithful and disloyal.
I could have forgiven him for the affairs, I also had had affairs, but it was the hatred of us I could take no more and mentally, physically and emotionally I let him go. He had a loud voice and would not talk but yell all the time. We were useless, were ruining his life and he kept lists about what we did wrong. 3 pages long.He would read them to us and rant at us for hours and when he was bad, we hid. We jumped up and changed the channel as soon as his GT would pull up in the driveway. Changing it to the NEWS or there would be loud bellowing.
His dinner would always be ready, he would walk through the door, Grunt in reply to my Hi, 20 years never a greeting. He was the same on the phone, he would just start talking,
"Where's the Cheque Book or similar."
He was obsessive, if I said I was going to the hairdressers he would find me by phone and not a mobile in those days, he would just ring every hairdresser in Parkmore till he found me.
He said the song "Every breath you take", by the Police was for me, and that we would be buried together, there was no question. And that if I ever left him I would get nothing, not the kids, not the house, not the car, not the furniture, he would spend a hundred thousand dollars to make sure I didn't get $10 and that was if he didn't kill me first. I was supposed to end up in the gutter.
Every day the emotional abuse is worse than the physical. He told me he fancied the bird in the office and she was one of Debbies friends mothers. He said she showed off her nipples in tight jumpers and that was for him. Of course. He said in front of me and his workers, who liked me and pretty much felt sorry for me that
"He could twiddle her nipples like tuning a radio", he was always seeing women going up the escalators with no knickers on, always. He was a sicko about stuff like that, calling women slutbags and worse.
He broke up an engagement once as he felt the woman was too independent and getting too close to me in friendship. He rang up the guy that had just asked her to get engaged and told him all this filth about her, untrue, but the engagement was busted up anyway, immediately. he was evil and sad and darkly jealous and obsessive. It was like he wanted to crawl inside me and never leave. he mocked my family, my friends were all sluts, naturally, no matter who. or bitches.
Every day it would be
"Are you stupid or something/"
Fat, lazy, dumb --- ha ha ha, bad Mother, bad wife, bad worker. I was bad at everything.
I tried to escape him so many times, driving to Qld with the girls, taking off in the middle of the night, shaking with fear and feeling like he was following me all the way there.
To be continued
