Bali 9: The Untold Story by Madonna King, Cindy Wockner Read Free Book Online Page A

hadn’t seemed that difficult, looking back now, but this time things had gone wrong. She and Martin Stephens had thought they’d made it, even shaking hands and congratulating themselves. But then things had turned. Someone had appeared. Everything had gone so fast, but time didn’t seem to move. And now there was no way out.
    So Renae Lawrence, a million miles away from Wallsend, tore the ring off the top of a soft-drink can and set about ending it all. It was her third—but would not be her last—desperate cry for help but, as in previous times, someone came to her aid. She had been saved each time, someone hearing her silent appeals for assistance.
    This time it was a jail doctor able to prescribe a drug that promised to lift her mood. The black storm cloud which had hovered so ominously lifted, at least for a few weeks, then it came racing towards her again. The sadness descended with it. The desolation came back just as strongly. She was surrounded by black. Lost. Wounded. She had been set up and needed to tell the world. She was a victim.
    Renae’s life began to spiral out of control—really out of control—about the time her relationship broke down. She felt as though she didn’t belong anywhere, and so she started the search to fit in again. She renewed contact with her father for the first time in many years. It was tentative at first, with both treading warily, but all the harsh words, accusations and counter-accusations seemed to vanish quickly. At least, on the surface. Renae told one of her friends that she felt her father was still unwilling to accept her lifestyle; that she found him harsh and uncompromising. But to Bob and Jenny she seemed to be pleased to be back on speaking terms.
    They couldn’t help seeing the change in her, however. She had disappeared from their lives close to a decade ago, when she was eighteen. She was now nearing thirty and so much had happened in between. She’d gone from being a child to an adult; from a thin adolescent to a stocky woman. Her clothes were different and so was her hair.
    There was so much water under the bridge, on both sides. And neither Bob or Jenny—nor Renae, it seemed—wanted to travel too far down that road. Renae had stayed in contact with her mother and stepfather throughout the years and now Bob was just happy to have her back. Happiness was still eluding Renae though. She felt aimless, the only constant in her life her beloved border collie, Buffy. But even Buffy was unable to live with her after Renae was forced to bunker down with a friend.
    At every turn there seemed to be a challenge for the young woman who had struggled through her childhood and adolescence. Now, with the masterful benefit of hindsight, friends and family can see that this period was a turning point in Renae’s life—the hills higher than they seemed at the time, the journey more difficult than she made out. She continued to see both sides of her family and stayed in contact with her ex-lover’s children, whom she continued to share an easy relationship with, even taking them out on occasion. She still worked hard too, turning up on time for her casual job at the Sydney Cricket Ground whenever she was rostered and going about it like a model employee. But no one really knew what happened during the in-between times, who she was mixing with and what she was doing. No one appeared to know what was happening inside Renae’s head. No one. And so she was left to herself, although everyone who loves her now wishes that they had looked for signs—her occasional disappearances for a few days, for example. Or the clues that appeared not long before she left Australia for the last time. On one occasion she was with her father, who remembers a call she took on her mobile telephone. She sounded frightened and apprehensive, determined for him to not hear. She was trying to find excuses why she could not travel to Sydney that afternoon. Someone had been trying to force her, Bob