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Authors: Rosie Batty
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wasnât answering her phone, and so I told my cousin to start cooking lunch without me while I went to check on her. I got to her house and saw her cat sitting in the front window. I knocked on the door and received no reply. I went around to her bedroom window and smelled something bad. My stomach sank. I had a bad feeling.
I got on the phone to my friends Carri and David, who also knew Karena. They came straight over. The cat inside the window seemed agitated, desperate to get out or for us to get in. We called the police, who arrived soon after and climbed into Karenaâs apartment through the roof. They found her decomposing body in the bedroom. She had been there for fivedays â dead from a combination of prescription drugs. She was twenty-three years old.
The police let us into the house, not saying what they had found. The smell was overwhelming. At first, I thought it was the kitty litter tray, but a police officer sat us down and broke the news. As we sat there, trying to take it all in, Karenaâs mobile phone started ringing. It was her mother, phoning to wish her daughter Merry Christmas. I told her Karena was dead and she started screaming hysterically. In a state of shock myself, all I remember thinking was, my cousin has come here on holiday and I have left her at my home cooking Christmas lunch.
The police wanted someone to identify the body, and I thought, I cannot desert her now. So the practical side of me kicked in and I walked into the bedroom. In the end, when something bad like that is happening, you donât want pussyfooting around and mealy-mouthed language. You donât want people sugar-coating things. You just want facts, so you can make decisions. If she was dead, I needed to see it, identify the body and get on with dealing with the consequences.
I went back home, deeply shaken. But I didnât want to have the day ruined for my cousin. Later that evening, we went to a friendâs house for Christmas dinner. We were all really sad and in shock, but it was Christmas day and I was determined to maintain the plans weâd made.
I spent the next couple of days phoning all the people in Karenaâs address book to break the news to them. I spent a lot of time on the phone with her mum, who, despite her obvious shortcomings as a mother, was nevertheless devastated by the death of her child. It was not my place to judge her mother. I had known Karena for ten years and she had loved her mum, even if she had never recovered from being rejected by her.
Between Karenaâs death and her funeral, I travelled to Sydney with my cousin and we did the Harbour Bridge climb. My pregnancy was starting to show, but it hadnât slowed me down. And I had never been one for histrionics. My template in life when confronted with tragedy had been to push down the sadness, draw on my reserves of country English stoicism and do what must be done. It didnât mean I wasnât devastated at my loss or profoundly sad for the waste of a young life. It simply meant I was going to mourn Karenaâs death in my own, private way. In the meantime, I would honour my obligations to a cousin who had travelled all the way from the UK to visit me. So I put my head down and got on with it.
At the funeral, I was determined to be the peace broker between Karenaâs mother and those, including youth workers and foster carers, who had taken in Karena and had nothing but contempt for her mum. I stood in the funeral parlour, staring at the coffin and feeling an overwhelming desire to howl: to scream at the gods at the senselessness of it all. But I held it in. I had a pregnancy to concentrate on and a baby on the way.
7
12 February 2014, around midday
In a boarding house in Frankston South, 16 kilometres from Tyabb, Greg is in his room, packing almost all of his belongings into a black backpack. Leaving behind the sparsely furnished room that had been his temporary home, he visits the kitchen of
I got on the phone to my friends Carri and David, who also knew Karena. They came straight over. The cat inside the window seemed agitated, desperate to get out or for us to get in. We called the police, who arrived soon after and climbed into Karenaâs apartment through the roof. They found her decomposing body in the bedroom. She had been there for fivedays â dead from a combination of prescription drugs. She was twenty-three years old.
The police let us into the house, not saying what they had found. The smell was overwhelming. At first, I thought it was the kitty litter tray, but a police officer sat us down and broke the news. As we sat there, trying to take it all in, Karenaâs mobile phone started ringing. It was her mother, phoning to wish her daughter Merry Christmas. I told her Karena was dead and she started screaming hysterically. In a state of shock myself, all I remember thinking was, my cousin has come here on holiday and I have left her at my home cooking Christmas lunch.
The police wanted someone to identify the body, and I thought, I cannot desert her now. So the practical side of me kicked in and I walked into the bedroom. In the end, when something bad like that is happening, you donât want pussyfooting around and mealy-mouthed language. You donât want people sugar-coating things. You just want facts, so you can make decisions. If she was dead, I needed to see it, identify the body and get on with dealing with the consequences.
I went back home, deeply shaken. But I didnât want to have the day ruined for my cousin. Later that evening, we went to a friendâs house for Christmas dinner. We were all really sad and in shock, but it was Christmas day and I was determined to maintain the plans weâd made.
I spent the next couple of days phoning all the people in Karenaâs address book to break the news to them. I spent a lot of time on the phone with her mum, who, despite her obvious shortcomings as a mother, was nevertheless devastated by the death of her child. It was not my place to judge her mother. I had known Karena for ten years and she had loved her mum, even if she had never recovered from being rejected by her.
Between Karenaâs death and her funeral, I travelled to Sydney with my cousin and we did the Harbour Bridge climb. My pregnancy was starting to show, but it hadnât slowed me down. And I had never been one for histrionics. My template in life when confronted with tragedy had been to push down the sadness, draw on my reserves of country English stoicism and do what must be done. It didnât mean I wasnât devastated at my loss or profoundly sad for the waste of a young life. It simply meant I was going to mourn Karenaâs death in my own, private way. In the meantime, I would honour my obligations to a cousin who had travelled all the way from the UK to visit me. So I put my head down and got on with it.
At the funeral, I was determined to be the peace broker between Karenaâs mother and those, including youth workers and foster carers, who had taken in Karena and had nothing but contempt for her mum. I stood in the funeral parlour, staring at the coffin and feeling an overwhelming desire to howl: to scream at the gods at the senselessness of it all. But I held it in. I had a pregnancy to concentrate on and a baby on the way.
7
12 February 2014, around midday
In a boarding house in Frankston South, 16 kilometres from Tyabb, Greg is in his room, packing almost all of his belongings into a black backpack. Leaving behind the sparsely furnished room that had been his temporary home, he visits the kitchen of
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