No More Tomorrows (8 page)

Back in Australia, Dad had bought a two-storey duplex on the Gold Coast as an investment, and I moved in upstairs with my brother Michael. Merc, Wayan and their two little kids, Wayan and Nyeleigh, lived downstairs. So, just like old times, we were all together again, which put me back in my comfort zone after Japan.

Life moved along happily. I was working a couple of jobs – one in the ANA Hotel galleria and another tour-guiding Japanese people – and after about a year I had a new boyfriend, Shannon. He’s had his share of unwanted publicity since my arrest, with a couple of photos of us stirring debate. I know about this because Merc brought in the articles, which showed what people said looked like a joint in an ashtray. It was a Marlboro Light. Although I’m anti dope-smoking, I do smoke cigarettes occasionally, and it was my cigarette in that ashtray.

Our relationship lasted about two years, before Shannon and I both realised it wasn’t quite right. I was single for eighteen months before coming to Bali.

Growing up, I always loved playing with make-up, doing facials and all those girly things. So, as I was still just doing odd jobs at this point, Mum suggested that maybe I should study to become a beautician. I agreed and began a year-long course in 2003. I had one unit to finish when Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

For ages he’d complained of lower-back pain, and he’d been told by his doctor to take a course of antibiotics and stop drinking beer for a week or two. The doctor diagnosed it as a urinary tract infection. When they finally gave him the proper tests, Dad was told he had six months to live, as not only did he have prostate cancer but it had also spread to his bones. He got a second opinion and that doctor was more optimistic, telling him he could maybe go on for a few more years.

At first, Merc and the kids moved in with Dad, on his land up north, but it got too difficult for her and she was spending too much time away from Wayan. We organised a nurse to check on Dad every couple of days, but one day she found him collapsed at home. I decided that it was time for me to look after my dad, just like he’d always looked after me. I drove up in my old Toyota Corolla and brought him back to the Gold Coast to live with me in 2004.

Merc’s father-in-law had also had cancer and had died recently in Bali. So in July of that fateful year, she and Wayan went to Bali for five months, planning to be home by Christmas. It meant that Wayan could spend some time with his little brother and that their kids could get a taste of Balinese culture before little Wayan started school in Australia the following year.

Merc was determined that her kids would have a good education and wanted them to be schooled in Australia. Merc and Wayan had argued over it, as both wanted to live in their own country – the age-old problem with international relationships – but eventually they agreed it would be Australia.

The idea for a group of us to go to Bali that October to help Merc celebrate turning thirty wasn’t a spontaneous hit. She was a bit depressed by the whole idea of leaving her twenties behind, but, as a few friends talked about coming over for a party, she gradually warmed to the idea. In the end, about sixteen of us were going to be there for the big night. It would turn out to be a bigger night than any of us had expected.

4

Bali Bound

L
IFE DIDN
’
T GIVE ME ANY WARNING THAT IT WAS ABOUT
to take a radical turn. The normality of my existence gave me no clue as to what lay ahead. Now those simple happy days are just a relic of another life: a surreal memory.

Two nights before I flew to Bali, I was sitting and talking with Dad, enjoying a beer as I glued the ripped plastic on the top of my boogie board. I’d spent the day cleaning the house and stocking the fridge so that Dad would be OK for the two weeks I’d be gone.

The night before I flew to Bali was just as normal. I slept in a bed with my little sister Mele, while my travelling buddies Katrina, Ally and brother James were in the other beds. We were all staying at Mum’s, as she was just twenty-five minutes from the airport and we had a 6 a.m. flight.

‘I believe the seven months I have been in prison is severe enough punishment for not putting locks on my bags,’ I said to the judge sat my trial. It wasn’t a crime, but it was dangerously foolish not to lock my bags. I sure know that now, but it’s a bit late. I can’t believe that on the morning of the flight, I actually mocked Katrina for putting locks on her bag.

It was the joke of the morning when we noticed Katrina, the virgin traveller, had carefully put locks on her suitcase but had already lost her key. We thought it was hysterical – our nervous little travelling mate. I was the one making a big deal. ‘What are you doing?’ I teased. ‘You don’t need to lock your bag; you’re only going to Bali! And you’ve lost your key anyway! Ha ha ha!’

How I’ve eaten those words.

At the airport, Ally, Katrina and I checked our bags in under my name, as I’d booked our flights. We were told to take the boogie board up to the oversized-luggage counter. Meanwhile, James was checking in at another desk with Mum, as she’d bought his ticket separately after he decided to come along at the last minute.

We all went together to check in the boogie board. Then Mum said, ‘Quick, quick, a photo!’ and took a snap of the four of us, right beside the counter where my fate had just been sealed. I had no idea this snap would come to represent my last hours of freedom, my last hours as a carefree young girl. I felt so relaxed and happy. It was easy to smile for the camera.

I hadn’t wanted to fly via Sydney, but all the direct flights had been fully booked. I’d waited until the last minute to confirm our flight, hoping that seats on a direct one would come up, but none did. If it annoyed me at the time that we each had to pay an extra couple of hundred dollars for the privilege of wasting three and a half hours in transit, now it really pisses me off. I believe that if I’d flown direct, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.

During the flight from Sydney, I sat next to Ally, and we were pretty merry after having a couple of beers in the international terminal and then a few more on the plane. Feeling tipsy, I think we spent most of the six-hour flight laughing at nothing. I hadn’t been to Bali since meeting up with Mum there in mid-2000 on my way back from Japan, and I’d never flown overseas with my good friends before. I was well into the holiday spirit.

So as we got off the plane at Ngurah Rai Airport at about 3.30 p.m., I had no sense of foreboding that within minutes my life as I knew it would be finished, for good.

I walked over to the baggage carousel and collected my suitcase but couldn’t see my boogie-board bag. A second or two later, I spotted it on the ground several metres away and went to pick it up. The little handle I normally used to carry it had been cut.
Nasty people, who’d do that?
I wondered, grabbing it by a shoulder strap on the other side. Ally saw me struggling with all my bags – my boogie board, my suitcase and my little blue carry-on bag – and sang out to James, ‘Go help your sister!’ He did, dragging the boogie board along with his own stuff to the customs counter. Ally and Katrina had already gone through without having their bags checked and were waiting for us.

James put his suitcase up onto the counter first and opened it for inspection. The customs officer might have been a bit shocked to see that James’s case was crammed full of tuna tins. He’s super-healthy and into body sculpting, and he never leaves home without a supply of protein-filled tuna. But the officer just zipped it backup. He then pointed to the boogie-board bag and asked James, ‘Is that yours?’

I was in high spirits, oblivious to being seconds away from my life turning to hell. I cheerfully picked the bag up off the floor and placed it on the counter, saying, ‘No, no, it’s mine. Here you go . . .’ Almost in the same movement I went to unzip the bag. He didn’t ask me to; I just did it. It all happened fast, as I had nothing to hide.

I noticed that the two zips were done up in the middle, which surprised me, because I always did them up to the left side. Any bag with two zippers I always did up to the side, never in the middle. Pedantic, but that’s me. So I thought,
Oh, that’s strange
. But like all the slightly odd things that happened, I didn’t think too much about it at the time. After all, this bag only had my flippers and boogie board in it. It didn’t even cross my mind that someone might have actually put something
into
the bag.

I may have paused momentarily when I noticed the zips, but things were still moving quickly. Then time stopped dead.

As I opened my boogie-board bag, I was struck by the sight of something I knew I hadn’t put in there.
Whoa!
I reeled back slightly. My heart stopped. I knew what it looked like but wasn’t sure. I shot a look at the customs officer to see if he’d seen it, too. I couldn’t tell. In a panic, in shock, I shut it fast. The unmistakable smell of marijuana flew up and hit me in the face. My hands started to tremble; I couldn’t breathe. What was happening? I knew it wasn’t mine, but I also knew it was now my problem. It flashed through my mind that this was just like a scene from a movie: a bad movie.

I looked at the customs officer again. His smile was unreadable. I still didn’t know if he’d seen it or smelt it. Either way, I knew I was in trouble: this stuff was not mine and if I did get through customs, whoever owned the drugs would be coming to get them from me somehow. My heart was pounding; my head was feeling light. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know what was going on.

A man in a uniform suddenly appeared very close beside me. He exchanged smirks with the customs officer and then just murmured, ‘Ahhhh.’

I felt like I was going to faint. Everything had become surreal. The room was spinning.

Still smirking, the customs officer went to open my bag. I was petrified. I’d seen it, it wasn’t mine, but who the hell was going to believe me now?

Panicking, I watched the customs officer move to our side of the counter. He pointed at the bag and said to James, ‘You carry this to the office.’

James looked lost and confused.

I felt like throwing up, but I instinctively wanted to keep my little brother out of it. I knew it had nothing to do with him. I had just told these people that it was my bag. It was my bag, so my problem. I’d also had a lot of experience communicating with people whose English was poor and could usually get the drift of what they were trying to say, whereas I knew James would struggle. So I said, ‘This is
my
boogie-board bag – I’ll carry it. Why does my brother have to carry it?’

‘He carry it, not you, you stay here.’

It was the first of many fights I’ve lost . . . and keep losing.

They made James carry it to the customs office, even though they knew it was mine. I had just claimed ownership of it, I had just opened it, and my name was clearly written on the tag hanging off the side of the bag. They didn’t even ask me to follow. I was free to go. Standing there alone with my suitcase, with no customs officers around me, I was free to follow the Exit signs and walk out the front door. I’d been dismissed. I could very easily have gone outside to Ally and Katrina and taken our hotel pick-up bus and left.

But I didn’t. I didn’t even think to leave. They had my little brother, and whatever was in that bag, whatever had happened, whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with James or me. I figured I’d just have to go into that room, make it clear to the officers that the dope wasn’t ours, and then James, Ally, Katrina and I could leave in the hotel bus together.

By this time, my two friends were outside in the Bali heat. I spotted Katrina through a glass wall, patiently sitting on her suitcase, waiting to start her holiday. I then found Ally and, through my tears, told her the news and asked her to wait. She went to pick up James’s and my suitcases to take them outside. They’d been left sitting at the customs counter and, bizarrely, mine hadn’t even been searched.

Then I ran to the room where James was being held and froze in the doorway. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

My boogie board lay on a table and on top was the now infamous clear plastic bag. It was unbelievable. The bag was as big as my board and as thick as a pillow. This wasn’t happening. I felt faint and leant on the doorframe for support.

Tears slid down my cheeks as I silently watched the frantic activity inside the room. I felt detached from the world around me. It was chaos. People were racing in and out, touching, looking, smelling, pointing and laughing. The room was electric. People weretalking loudly and animatedly on their mobile phones, looking at me and laughing, looking at James and laughing. Lots of them were coming in with little black plastic bags and taking chunks of it. It was a feeding frenzy. There was a lot of loud, excited chatter, and it appeared almost like they were having a party. It was obviously a very happy afternoon for these people.

James and I were the only people not moving. We were like bewildered statues, frozen by shock and fear in the middle of this crazed activity. He was sitting on a chair. I was standing near the door. Occasionally, we exchanged looks but didn’t say a word. We were too shocked for words.

But it was as if we weren’t there. No one said anything to us. No one questioned us or interrogated us. The only reason I was sure I wasn’t invisible was because people kept laughing in my face.