by David Murray
Financially, Gerard and Allison were stretched to breaking point. One day in March 2012, their cleaner, Deb Metcalfe, arrived at their Brookfield home to find Allison upset.
‘She said, “Deb, I need to talk to you. After today, I can’t have you back any more. Gerard has told me I can’t have any help any more.”’
The weekly cleaning visits cost $100 for four hours and Allison explained to Metcalfe she and Gerard could no longer afford it. Allison became teary and kept apologising.
Metcalfe told her she understood and not to be worried.
Fifteen minutes
Allison was sitting in the Relationships Australia waiting room lost in her own thoughts when counsellor Carmel Ritchie called her in for her appointment. Ritchie, a former teacher with more than a decade’s experience working with troubled couples, had a standard routine with new clients, where she would run through the ground rules and gather some basic information. She called it her ‘housekeeping’. She went through these basic steps with Allison in their session at Spring Hill, central Brisbane, shortly after midday on Tuesday 27 March 2012.
Ritchie, wanting a snapshot of her new client in her own words, gave her 60 seconds to answer three questions: ‘Who are you, what are your hobbies and what is something you’re good at?’
Ritchie made notes as Allison mapped out that she was a mother of three girls aged ten and under; worked with her husband, Gerard, in a real estate agency four days a week; previously lived in the UK; was a ballet dancer, high achiever, spoke two languages (the others had dropped off over the years) and had studied psychology at university. Allison added that on her honeymoon, she’d suffered a severe reaction to Lariam anti-malarial tablets, which resulted in chronic depression and psychotic episodes and she had been on and off depression medication ever since. She had suffered panic attacks during pregnancy, and her husband’s attitude was ‘get over it’. During her second pregnancy, she saw psychiatrist Dr Tom George and started on Zoloft. For the past three years, she said, Gerard had been having an affair.
Quickly, Ritchie plotted this information on a genogram – a diagram showing Allison’s family relationships and history. The next task she set for Allison was to define the problem she was there to talk about, a word at a time, or at most a sentence.
Allison answered: ‘I feel inadequate. Not good enough. Believe I let it happen. Gerard’s way is the right way. Gerard had an affair for the last three years. Parenting, Gerard criticises me. Fear that one day he will leave me.’
When Ritchie invited her to explain her expectations, or what she hoped to achieve from counselling, Allison nominated: ‘Work on me. Sort lots of issues. Parenting.’
When Ritchie asked her why she made the appointment, Allison volunteered more about Gerard’s affair: how she’d found out seven months earlier, on a date she would never forget – 14 September 2011. The affair began years earlier, on another date etched in her memory, 27 August 2008, four days after their 11th wedding anniversary, she said. Describing herself as a conflict avoider, Allison said she had summoned the courage to confront Gerard as soon as she found out. Some things had changed and Gerard was now honest and took responsibility, but blamed her depression for some of it.
Allison told the counsellor of the earlier occasion, on their wedding anniversary, when she had asked Gerard what was wrong with them. Gerard had said he wanted to leave. ‘I put it down to a mid-life crisis,’ she said.
Allison gave a snapshot of her relationship with Gerard. He was an accountant and was the responsible one, she told the counsellor. He looked after his parents. They’d met in 1995 and married in 1997. They’d had their three girls in ’01, ’03 and ’06. She’d been a Japanese interpreter. She had been engaged to a diving instructor.
Turning the tables, Allison asked Ritchie if she’d heard of the four temperaments. Ritchie responded that she knew it was a theory about four personality types: sanguine – pleasure seeking and sociable; choleric – ambitious and leader-like; melancholic – analytical and literal; and phlegmatic – relaxed and thoughtful.
Nodding, Allison told the counsellor that Gerard was a choleric personality, that he had high expectations of the children and of her. Her mum had a similar choleric personality type, she said. So too did Gerard’s mistress, Toni McHugh, she added.
The session was coming to a close, and Ritchie had only scratched the surface. Although Allison had started the session saying she wanted to improve herself, it was clear her husband’s affair was an open wound. Ritchie said if Allison wanted, she could bring Gerard along to a future consultation, where she would talk to him for the first half of the session and then see them both together. Allison told the counsellor she didn’t think Gerard would agree but booked in another appointment for three weeks later before she left.
In her case notes, the counsellor summed up the conversation. Among the key points, she wrote that Gerard didn’t understand Allison’s depression. She highlighted the fact that he’d told Allison it was all in her mind and to ‘get over it’. Allison felt unloved and unappreciated. Gerard told Allison she was not the girl he married. Allison too felt Gerard had changed, adopting a ‘look after myself’ attitude.
‘Allison is a gentle conflict avoider who has said yes too many times in the relationship,’ Ritchie wrote.
When Allison walked out of the session, she had a spring in her step. She liked Ritchie, plus now she had something to strive for. It might have been against the odds, but she was going to try to get Gerard to the next counselling session.
That same day, Toni McHugh fired off an email to Bruce Overland, Gerard’s alias. She wanted the secrecy and games over. She wanted him to live with her.
‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do for a place? It would be so much easier,’ she wrote, ‘if you did just move in with me. She can get her own place and the week you have the children you move back to the house. Ie the kids don’t move for the moment. She doesn’t need to know where you’re staying! Sorry it’s up to you to work out and I shouldn’t interfere. I’m sorry.’
Gerard reassured Toni in an email on 3 April 2012 – a week after Allison’s counselling session – that he was sticking to his plan to leave his wife.
‘I have given you a commitment,’ he wrote, ‘and I intend to stick to it – I will be separated by 1 July. In the mean time, it doesn’t seem to be helping either of us to be snatching brief moments I love you.’
Toni, fiery as always, rolled her eyes privately; thought, believe it when I see it, and kept the pressure up.
On 11 April 2012, Gerard tried to calm his lover; they’d had a heated conversation. He swore that, this time, his marriage was over. He also used the special initials they had for each other – ‘GG’ for gorgeous girl, ‘GM’ for gorgeous man; ‘This is agony for me too. I love you. I’m sorry you hung up on me. It sounded like you were getting very angry. I love you GG. Leave things to me now. I love you. GM.’
Meanwhile, on Monday 16 April – the final week of her life – Allison was back to see Carmel Ritchie. But this time she went to Ritchie’s Kenmore office, and she wasn’t alone.
‘I think she was very pleased to introduce me to Gerard. She was smiling,’ Ritchie later told a court.
Gerard followed Ritchie into the consultation room on his own, at the counsellor’s request. Allison waited, barely believing she’d convinced Gerard to come along. Behind the closed door, Ritchie took the standard personal snapshot. Gerard said almost nothing about himself personally, preferring to define himself by his achievements. He outlined his roles in the school P & C and local chamber of commerce.
‘For Gerard, his image in the community is very important. He believes he is a valuable member of society,’ Ritchie wrote in her notes once the session had concluded.
Ritchie asked Gerard about his marriage, and scribbled down his response: ‘Allison does not trust me. She questions me. She says yes when she means no.’
Gerard told the counsellor he was there
because his wife wanted him to be there, but he didn’t think it would help. He wanted to build a future with Allison but the past had to be left in the past. Discussing the affair was an unhelpful regression.
Ritchie roundly disagreed: ‘He wants to get on with his life. Wipe it clean,’ Ritchie wrote. ‘He needs to accept that seven or eight months is very early days yet and to steel himself for the long haul.’
Ritchie put it to Gerard that ignoring his wife’s feelings was no solution: ‘I spoke about the fact he did have to sit and listen to Allison’s feelings about the affair,’ Ritchie said later. ‘I told him that he can’t put this in the past because for Allison the past is very much in the present.’
Gerard was convinced rehashing everything was a step backwards. ‘Isn’t that regression? Isn’t that living in the past?’
Ritchie persisted, and eventually Gerard stopped arguing with her. It wasn’t as if he had intended to put his cards on the table with the counsellor anyway. He hadn’t mentioned that he had resumed his affair and promised to leave his wife by 1 July. And he didn’t particularly want to be questioned closely either.
Now Ritchie presented him with a plan that would allow Allison to work through her feelings. Every second night, for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, Allison would be given free rein to vent to Gerard with all the things she was keeping bottled up. The talks had a time limit because emotions would be high. Gerard’s role was simply to listen. This was Allison’s time. And he absolutely must not be defensive. At the end of these short bursts, his response was to be limited to expressing remorse, if that was how he felt. Reluctantly, Gerard agreed.
Ritchie walked out of the room to get Allison. Her talk with Gerard had gone overtime, taking up most of the hour booking, and the counsellor was worried Allison would be upset.
Instead, Allison’s face immediately lit up with a big smile. ‘I’m over the moon you have spent this time with him,’ Allison said.
The two women went back into the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Ritchie noticed something unspoken pass between Gerard and Allison. A look on his face. Moments later, Allison’s smile was gone and she seemed on edge.
Ritchie explained what Gerard had agreed to. Fifteen minutes, where Allison could say and ask whatever she wanted.
Final hours
Thursday 19 April 2012
5 pm
Allison opened the door to the hair salon and silently took a seat in front of one of the mirrors. She had a cold she hadn’t been able to shake for a week. Her nose was runny and eyes watery. But there was only one thing on her mind: Gerard.
For years he let her take the blame for their distance, yet he was at fault all along. To call it an affair was putting it too lightly. It had lasted longer than some marriages. When she finally found out, three years after it began, he blamed her depression. When she made tentative steps to resume a sexual relationship with Gerard he had laughed at her underwear. Told her she smelled. Whatever she had done, she didn’t deserve this.
Now that the counsellor had given Allison a licence to grill Gerard about the affair for 15 minutes every second night, she was making the most of every session. The questions were jotted down in her journal so she wouldn’t forget; it was as if she were a journalist preparing to crack a difficult interview.
Since seeing the counsellor on Monday, she had been interrogating Gerard and planning the questions to ask him in the future. When he took his lover, Toni McHugh, to the movies, did they travel separately? What did they see? Did they have dinner as well? Weren’t they scared of being seen? Did they kiss and hug? Were the car seats down when they had sex or were they up? Did they lie in each other’s arms afterwards? How many times?
Even though it sickened her, she couldn’t stop. She needed to know every detail.
It had been seven months since she found out. Gerard immediately ended the affair. She’d put everything she had into saving the marriage but inside she was furious. So often she’d copped criticism for shutting down instead of confronting a problem. Not this time. There was still so much more Gerard had to account for, and Allison had another barrage of questions ready for that night. As she ran through the list in her mind, she barely noticed stylist Monique Waymouth appear behind her.
‘Okay, let’s put in some foils,’ Waymouth said, reaching for Allison’s hair.
There was no response. Waymouth thought it was the afternoon peak-hour traffic streaming past the salon that was distracting her customer.
Gerard’s phone was growing hot against his ear. Not long after Allison left the office for the hairdressers, he was on to Toni. He had to grab his moments when he could. But it wasn’t just the overworked mobile phone that was beginning to hurt his ear. On the other end of the line, Toni was going ballistic.
He had been the bearer of bad news. His wife would be at the Real Estate Institute of Queensland’s property management conference the next day. Gerard’s problem – one of many – was that Toni was attending the same conference. The annual event was on at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, and Allison was going with Kate Rankin from the office.
This was Toni’s worst nightmare, and what made it all the more infuriating was that Gerard had left it until now – the day before – to tell her. Toni was apoplectic.
‘When were you going to tell me this?’ she demanded. ‘I only just found out. I’m sorry,’ he squirmed.
All of the disappointments Gerard had inflicted on her, too many to count, came flooding back to McHugh. He had done this to her too many times.
‘I feel sick. How can you put us in this situation?’ she gasped.
Both of them were married with children when it started. Toni had left her relationship. Left for him. In return, he gave her excuses, promises and stolen moments.
Gerard always said they would be together properly one day. He would come to her unconditionally. He just never delivered. He needed a push, Toni thought. So she gave it to him: What on earth is going on, she demanded? Would Allison still work at the real estate office when he left her?
‘No. I intend to sell the business,’ Gerard said.
Toni had heard it all before. She wanted specifics. ‘What’s going to come first? Do you sell the business or are you going to leave your wife?’ she pressed.
‘I’m going to leave my wife,’ he said.
‘Does Allison know about this?’
‘No, she doesn’t.’
The conference would be a disaster. Allison would be upset; she was already upset. Besides, Toni was always being told Gerard couldn’t afford to leave his wife. So why was he wasting money on conferences? Toni insisted that Gerard tell Allison that she too would be at the conference in the morning. ‘She deserves to know,’ Toni said.
There was no reply.
As usual, Gerard was trying to live in two worlds at once. While on the phone to Toni, he drove to the shops and back to buy what was needed to make dinner for his daughters. Then he headed for his parents’ home at Kenmore. When he arrived, the girls were in the pool.
On the other end of the line, Toni could hear one of Gerard’s daughters trying to get his attention. Gerard’s long-suffering mistress had listened to enough. She told him she’d call the next day and hung up. She wasn’t backing out of the conference. Gerard was simply going to have to sort it out.
A long time had passed since Gerard had told Allison, on their wedding anniversary in 2010 that their marriage was as good as over. When he looked her in the eyes and said slowly and clearly: ‘I don’t love you any more.’ It was not a hot flash of anger, but a clinical statement of fact. He was amazed when Allison just didn’t get it. The first thing she did was run off for yet more counselling.
Even the counsellor saw that the marriage was a lost cause. Somehow, Gerard had surrounded himself with ferociously determined women. Toni was being every bit as demanding. Both Allison and Toni were intent on exposing his every private thought.
Allison had turned the heat up on him a
hundredfold since the counselling session. He knew she was going to interrogate him again tonight. Now he had the conference mess to clean up as well. Everywhere he turned, there was another fire to put out.
Allison had become an expert over the years at bottling up her emotions. Even with her closest friends, she was selective about what she revealed. She didn’t want them to think less of her or, more likely, persuade her to leave her philandering husband. Some of her friends thought she and Gerard were a great couple. If only they knew.
Most people had no idea how she really felt. Outwardly, there were few signs anything was amiss. She worked hard to project an air of calm. But one thing gave her away. The small chink in her armour was her silence. When she was angry, she retreated into a mental cave to hide.
‘A busy day?’ asked Waymouth, wrapping foil around Allison’s locks.
‘Oh, yeah,’ shrugged Allison, killing off the small talk.
Nothing seemed to be going her way. Even the salon couldn’t get her hair right lately. This was her third time here in the past two weeks for a colour. She had been coming here for years, but her usual stylist was on holidays. Why now, when she had somewhere important to go?
Tomorrow was a big day. The property conference would put her in the same room as hundreds of Gerard’s business colleagues. Some, maybe plenty, would know about the affair. They would know his lover, Toni, too; she was, after all, in the same game. Allison wanted to hold her head high.
Long before she found out about the affair, she had tried everything to turn the marriage around. ‘I don’t want to be alone,’ she had written in her journal. ‘I am afraid of being alone and lonely. Maybe because I think I can’t handle it. I am afraid of failing – failing in my marriage and what people will think.’
In the past, when Allison had set her mind on something, she would make it happen. Now, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. The night before, when Allison turned to her journal, the penny had suddenly dropped: ‘Had so many opportunities to tell me – let me believe it was all my fault. I was at your mercy. Forced me to bow to you. Think that’s where you wanted me,’ she wrote.
