the daughter who lived just across town and who, he now learnt, was a lesbian. He found her sexual preference pretty hard to take—not because he considered himself homophobic, but because he couldn’t remember her showing any interest in females previously. He’d even gone on and on about the boy down at the smash repairs shop and she’d turned red with embarrassment, and he’d never had any reason tosuspect that he would not one day have a son-in-law and possibly even a handful of grandchildren. But he’d learnt quickly—because word travels fast in a place like Wallsend—that she had shacked up with her girlfriend and started a whole new life. And it was clear that she did not want any contact with her father or stepmother.
‘Jen kept saying she’d come around,’ says Bob. ‘I found it hard at first, and then I thought, she has her life to lead. I didn’t contact her either—not while she lived with her [Tracie].’
Like so many parents, Bob and Jenny didn’t like Renae’s choice of partner—who wants to stay out of the public eye—and they made it pretty clear that while their daughter was welcome in their home, her friend was not. They might acknowledge that their daughter now shared a life with someone, but that didn’t mean they were required to befriend the woman, or welcome her into their home. But that just served to push Renae further away.
Renae had been given a choice: her past life, where she was told what to do and when to do it; or a shiny new life in which she made her own decisions and was treated as an equal partner. It was an easy choice: Renae chose her partner, and, despite Wallsend being a small place, she severed all contact with her father and stepmother. She no longer visited Bob’s parents either, and that really grated on him, as Renae was their only granddaughter. He could understand that their estrangement meant that she would no longer grace hishome, but he couldn’t understand why she would take that out on his parents. It showed a lack of respect, and that was not how he had brought her up.
The years came and went. So did family birthdays, anniversaries and get-togethers. Bob felt as though he’d lost his only child—but Renae was looking to the future, not the past. At least, until late 2004, when her relationship with Tracie, the basis for her future, came crashing to the ground. The break-up, friends say, meant that Renae lost her partner, her three young friends whom she saw as family, and her future.
She wanted to die. She needed to stop feeling like this. So, with no half measures, Renae Lawrence took a big handful of tablets and set off to a piece of deserted bushland up the road.
VII
Life in the Spotlight
S ix months later, Renae Lawrence wanted to shut out life again. This time she was in an Indonesian police cell on suspicion of drug smuggling, crammed in her hot, stinky prison with no way out. And pills weren’t so easy to access. So Renae plotted another way to end it all: she pulled the small ring off the top of a soft-drink can and then, wielding it as a blunt weapon, she set about slashing her wrists. Once. And again.
Like the time in high school when she wanted to dull the pain, and the time she tried to block out the world after her relationship breakdown, Renae couldn’t fathom the way ahead. She didn’t know what to do or how to do it. The pain was unbearable; the agony seeped throughout her body. She knew her future was now proscribed by a tough Indonesian legal system that wanted to crush the flourishing drug trade. Itloathed traffickers and she now stood accused as one of them. She couldn’t go on.
Last time she had got away with it. Last time, in October 2004—according to information she provided early to police—she had tricked the sniffer dogs in Indonesia, sitting uncomfortably with heroin packed to her body for what seemed like a lifetime, and passed the vigilant Customs staff at Sydney’s international airport. Perhaps it
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni