Read Online A Mother's Story by Rosie Batty - Free Book Online

had become angry and irrational, had he returned to his usual rational self? But then life returned to normal, and soon I began to question whether I had remembered it properly – or if it had happened at all. But, somewhere deep inside, my doubt began to fester. A question began to take shape: how well did I really know this person?
    Weeks later, I took part in a protest march in the city with a friend. Greg came to collect me afterwards. In the car on the way home, he turned to me, apropos of nothing, and said: ‘Now then, McBatty, should we get married?’
    I thought he must be joking and just laughed in response. I was dumbstruck but still not entirely sure he was serious. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ was all I could manage in reply. We had only just rekindled our relationship, we had no security, he didn’t have a job – and I was starting to have worrying doubts about his behaviour and state of mind. And, besides, if he had been serious about proposing marriage, surely he would have had a ring and gone in for something a little more romantic than throwing thequestion at me as we drove home along the Dandenong Road. So I laughed it off and changed the subject.
    I don’t recall Greg being especially surprised by my answer or in any way disappointed. Later, however, I would learn he had been deeply wounded by my rejection, and it was something he would carry with him for a long time. During an access visit with Luke ten years later, he told Luke that I had laughed at him when he asked me to marry him. And I remember Luke berating me afterwards, saying how mean it was of me to react to his dad’s marriage proposal in that way. But at the time, and in context, it was the only feasible reaction.
    The morning of 11 September 2001 was something of a benchmark in our relationship, at least from my point of view. A friend phoned me in the middle of the night and told me to turn on the television. I watched, horrified, as the second of the World Trade Center towers came crumbling down in New York.
    I yelled at Greg to get out of bed and come and watch. But he ignored me, so I just sat alone in the dark watching the horror unfurl. Greg got up to get a glass of water at some point and saw me in front of the television, clearly upset, and he said, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Get to bed.’
    I just figured he hadn’t grasped what was going on. An hour or two later, as I went to bed, exhausted and upset at what I had just seen, I said to him, ‘Do you have any idea what’s just happened?’
    â€˜I don’t give a fuck,’ he said. ‘Just go to sleep. The Americans had it coming to them.’
    â€˜But that was someone’s mother, brother, father, sister,’ I replied. ‘And all they did was go to work. They didn’t deserve that.’
    He had no empathy or compassion for the victims. I went to work that day thinking, What are you? How could you not care?
    When I got home, he’d obviously registered how upset I was – and no doubt had taken cues from a day’s worth of news reports and seeing the world around him in a state of shock and mourning – so he made a few token comments about how awful it all was. But he didn’t mean it. He didn’t feel a thing. Not a single thing.
    And so I started to consciously distance myself from him. Knowing that, with Greg, knowledge was power and power meant control, I learned to drip-feed him information about my life. I was careful not to give too much away. He always wanted to know exactly how much money I was earning, and I made a point of remaining vague about it. Any information he gleaned about me, he would invariably use against me. It was better, I decided, to limit my exposure and vulnerability.
    Another red flag was raised not long after when Karena came to visit. Years previously, I had taken part in the Big Brother, Big Sister mentoring program, signing up to mentor a young person