Is This My Beautiful Life?

by Jessica Rowe

  The ringmaster who had got us all together was the terrifying but oh-so-charming Sam Chisholm. He had me under his spell that night, recounting stories of superstars, billionaires and television. Most recently he had been working for Rupert Murdoch in Britain, where he had transformed BSkyB into a money-making venture for the media baron. In the eighties Sam had created the sparkling star system for the Nine Network by making household names of Ray Martin, Mike Walsh, Jana Wendt, Liz Hayes and Don Burke. He transformed Channel Nine into the number one television network during his time as managing director from 1976 to 1990. He famously coined the phrase ‘winners have parties, losers have meetings’. Sam was now back at Nine as the acting chief executive after the abrupt departure of David Gyngell in May 2005. His brief was to find a new CEO and return the gloss and glamour to the Nine Network.

  His gracious wife, Sue, kept our glasses of Cristal champagne full and made sure I was introduced to everyone. I tried to keep a check on how much I was drinking. I had never tasted Cristal before and it was tempting to quaff the heavenly bubbles too quickly. Two glasses had already taken the jittery edge off my nerves, but I wanted to keep my wits about me tonight and not end up slurring my words in front of this group. What was I doing in the middle of this stellar cast? Sam had called to invite Peter and me to dinner after we had filmed a mental health campaign. I was flattered to be in the company of a man who was famous for making stars in Australian television. I was still working at the Ten Network so there wasn’t a job offer that night. But my ego entertained the idea that perhaps Sam would turn me into a star.

  I had been reading news for Channel Ten for a decade. It was a job that I enjoyed, but after ten years in the role I was getting restless and ready for a change. I have always been a risk-taker. But was I ready to risk my stable, safe job and leap into the television big league? What do you think I wished for on the eve of my birthday?

  Six months later I resigned from my job at Channel Ten. My contract was due to expire on 31 December 2005 and over that month I weighed up a new job offer from Sam Chisholm to co-host Today on Channel Nine. Peter and I were holidaying down on the South Coast when I decided it was time for a change. Peter was less sure that I should take the risk. He was already working for 60 Minutes and worried that the both of us would be working for the same organisation. I’ve always been more inclined to leap into the unknown. My ego couldn’t resist such an opportunity and it was now my turn to be in the limelight.

  On 18 December I phoned Ten boss, Grant Blackley, to tell him of my resignation. He was disappointed but he respected my decision. I believed I was now free to sign a new deal with the Nine Network, which I did later that afternoon. I also phoned my close colleagues at Ten and they all told me they already knew of my resignation and wished me all the best.

  I was therefore shocked to be served with legal documents through the front bars of our security door the next day.

  ‘Ms Rowe, I’m under instruction to serve you with these legal papers.’

  ‘No, no, I won’t take them.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you won’t take them, I can just leave them here on the front steps. I’m just doing my job, sorry.’

  Taking the papers from the neatly suited man, I started dry-retching as I read: ‘Channel Ten will be suing Jessica Rowe for breach of contract …’

  Christmas was just two days away and in 2005 Sydney was enduring one of its hottest Decembers on record. Despite the air conditioning in my solicitor’s office, the humidity left me stuck on his upholstered chair. I peeled myself off it for the unpleasant walk across town to meet with our barrister in his book-lined chambers. From there, seven of us walked together to the Supreme Court, with Peter and I leading the way. Flanking us were my wonderful solicitor, Joydeep Hor, and his two paralegals, followed by my wigged and robed barrister and his junior counsel. The streets we walked along were deserted, indeed the whole city was strangely quiet as everyone else had begun their summer holidays. While the rest of Sydney cooled down at the beach, we were sweating in our suits on the concrete footpath.

  What a bizarre experience to be on the other side of the cameras. For years I had introduced numerous court stories and watched families walk the gauntlet of television cameras and journalists. Depending on the story I might feel sympathy or disgust for those in the report, registering emotions but in a disconnected, superior way. The walk to court that morning was a harsh lesson: I felt terrified, exposed and out of control. My fate, my future, was no longer mine but in the hands of competing legal minds.

  While we waited for the traffic lights to change I spotted camera crews running towards us. I recognised the faces of the Channel Ten cameraman and sound assistants. Lindsay, who I had known for years, gave me a sympathetic smile before he pushed the record button on his camera.

  ‘Jessica, how are you feeling this morning?’ asked Amber, a reporter I knew well.

  ‘Peter, this must be difficult for you,’ said Ally, a young woman who worked at Channel Nine.

  We had been advised not to say anything so I just kept walking, a steely look on my face and Peter tightly clutching my sweaty hand. But a closer look would reveal how wobbly I was under my clenched jaw and carefully chosen outfit. Head held high in my grey organza Zimmerman dress and matching jacket, I was in a state of high anxiety behind my carefully constructed facade. Only that morning, before court, I had received a call from the clinic explaining to Peter and me that our latest IVF attempt had failed. I was not pregnant. It had already been nine long months of disappointment.

  There was no time to mourn the loss of our embryo yet as I had a public fight on my hands with my former employers. And I wasn’t going to give up, not yet. Peter again squeezed my hand as I focused on walking up the steep courtroom steps. My legs felt shaky but I did not want to stumble in front of the cameras as I made my way up towards the entrance of the Supreme Court under the silver coat of arms of New South Wales.

  Stilnox, caffeine and adrenaline got me through those insane six weeks. Cystic acne erupted on my cheeks, chin, neck and back from a combination of stress, leftover IVF hormones and humidity. A darling friend of mine, Nikki, who was a make-up artist, would come to my house early each morning to hide those ugly, painful blemishes with pancake-thick concealer. The paste-like foundation kept me glued together because I was determined to present an immaculate image. Now was not the time to fall apart as I had to show my new bosses that I was strong, capable and worthy of their investment.

  My middle sister, Harriet, and her husband, Tim, were both solicitors, so they guided me through the maze of legal argument and procedure. During that stifling summer, from just before Christmas and all through January, there were three court proceedings. Network Ten claimed I had breached my contract and were intent on stopping me from starting my new job at Channel Nine, arguing that I had to give them 26 weeks’ notice. This part of the proceedings took seven days. I listened to evidence from my former bosses, feeling outraged by their blasé recollection of events around my fate.

  Sam Chisholm would ring me most evenings after I had met with the lawyers and give me a pep talk. I needed all the motivation I could get as I felt I had flown too close to the sun, wanted too much and that my fabulous new career was now in ashes. My favourite piece of advice from him, ‘As Napoleon said, when you’re faced with boldness, be bolder.’

  And I needed to draw on all my boldness and bravery when it was my turn to be cross examined. I remember locking eyes with Justice Carolyn Simpson as I took my oath. Seated in the packed courtroom were Peter, my mother and step-father, my Dad and my step-mum, my two sisters and brother-in-law as well as journalists and Nine’s legal team. Taking deep breaths, I listened carefully to the questions from Ten’s barrister. My answers were calm and collected, and my voice sounded strong, even though my legs shook behind the witness box.

  Two days later, Justice Simpson handed down her judgement, ruling that my two year deal would expire on 31 December. She dismissed
Ten’s argument that my contract was open-ended and that I needed to give 26 weeks’ notice. ‘The dispute between the parties involves one simply stated question—what is the expiration date of the contract. In my opinion, the answer is equally simple, derived from the terms of the contract itself, and favours the defendant.’

  Justice Simpson also ordered Ten to pay my legal costs. She said Ten would have been in ‘no doubt’ that I was considering leaving, given I had requested new opportunities and refused an offer to replace Bert Newton as host of Good Morning Australia. When the verdict was read out, I turned and embraced Peter, thinking the stress and anxiety were now behind us.

  But Network Ten appealed the Supreme Court decision and took me to the New South Wales Court of Appeal, the highest court in the state. Three judges unanimously dismissed the appeal with costs to be paid by Ten.

  The legal bill totalled six hundred thousand dollars.

  I won’t bother going into the intricate legal arguments, which make my head spin even now, but I would not wish such an experience on my worst enemy. I don’t believe my former employers wanted to keep me at the network. They simply used their court actions against me to try to make a wider commercial point to their competitors. The new chief executive officer of Ten, Grant Blackley, had just started in his role and my feeling was that he wanted to show the market that he meant business.

  Personally, I was gutted to be used as a pawn; my integrity and professionalism were at the heart of who I was and how I had built my career. I also learnt the awful lesson that loyalty in the workplace is a myth, and regardless of how you conduct yourself there is a risk you will be used as collateral if the company believes it’s in their commercial interest. But there was a bright side: I discovered how tough I really was in the eye of the storm.

  After the final court decision, Peter and I were beaming as we walked out of the court hand in hand, my family by our side. Wiping humidity from my cheeks, I looked up past the silver skyscrapers and finally felt excited about the future that awaited me. I couldn’t wait to start at the Today program in eight days’ time.

  My family, legal team, Peter and I walked past the Channel Seven studios at Martin Place, which were just around the corner from the court building. The lump in my throat from sheer relief got bigger when the journalists and producers in the Seven newsroom stood to give us an ovation through the glass windows. Things could only get better—or so I thought.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Smiling, I tried to ignore the scratchy sanitary pads rubbing against my armpits. Mum had the ingenious suggestion of using them to absorb the copious amounts of perspiration I was producing. Unfortunately it wasn’t working very well, but at least the watercolour print style of my wraparound dress didn’t make the sweat stains too obvious. I just had to keep my arms firmly down by my sides and concentrate on each interview. Resisting my impulse to look too far ahead, I tried to focus on each segment of the show. I laughed while chatting with Bert Newton and later Dame Edna, our star guests that morning. Three hours later I could finally exhale: my first Today show was over. Feeling all eyes on me, I thought I had done okay.

  Sam Chisholm rang me afterwards. ‘A triumph, an absolute triumph,’ he said. I breathed out a little more. Hopefully he could see I had been worth the effort and the court battle. It had to be plain sailing from now on, didn’t it?

  Peter and I decided to have a break from the IVF to give me a chance to focus on my new job. After a couple of months I was ready to find that bubble of hope within me again and we cautiously began another cycle of treatment. The smell of the fresh alcohol swab cleared my nose as I readied to rub it over a small patch of skin on my stomach. Quickly, I pinched a small fold of flesh between my thumb and forefinger and pushed down on the needle to let the hormone flood into my bloodstream. Squeezing my eyes shut, I imagined the drug fuelling the follicles in my ovaries. In an ideal world the follicles, which is the sac of fluid surrounding each egg, would multiply. So the more follicles, the more eggs. If the egg matured, the alchemy of magic, medicine and miracle would bring me one step closer to having a baby.

  Everywhere I looked there were babies. Mums nestling their newborns in slings wrapped across their chests, twins in strollers, mobs of mothers pushing their prams along the footpath while I stepped into the gutter to get around them or to get to the barista at my local cafe. ‘Baby on board’ stickers were on the back of every car that stopped in front of me at traffic lights. Even worse were the stickers of a mother, father, baby and dog. Wickedly, I was tempted to drag my keys across the paint of family wagons with those white stick-figure images stuck on the back window. Begone with your smug stickers! Stop flaunting your breeding abilities in my face!

  My hackles were already up when I spotted more of these stickers one Saturday morning. Peter and I were driving back from the clinic after having another blood test to check how my hormones were responding to the medication. My hormone levels still weren’t right and I was flattened by the latest setback; the delay didn’t fit in with the carefully crossed out dates and strategic stars I had written using my ‘lucky’ red texta in my diary. Stupidly, instead of relying on my guaranteed mood lifter of soft-centred strawberry cream chocolates and going back to bed, we stuck to our plans.

  ‘Can’t we just cancel? Can’t you ring and tell them I’m sick?’ I complained, glaring at the smiling stick figures on the car in front.

  ‘But you’re not sick! We told them we’re coming.’ Peter’s insistence on not letting people down meant there was no escape from Marissa’s first birthday party that morning. Normally I loved the decency of my husband, and we often joked about him being my PA as I was hopeless at returning phone calls and sticking to plans. However, this morning I was in no mood for jokes or first birthday parties, no matter how sweet Marissa was.

  The frantic jumping castle, melted chocolate crackles and polite conversation did nothing to help my mood.

  ‘Hurry up, you two,’ joked one of the party guests as the conversation inevitably turned to baby-making. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  I wanted to scream, ‘I’m on IVF and I don’t know if I can be a mum. I have just come from having a blood test to see if my body is responding to the hormones I’m pumping through my body. Don’t tell me how wonderful it is to be a mother! And don’t you dare complain about how tired you are.’ I wanted to tear the pink princess jumping castle apart and tell the women what they could do with their sleeping routines, controlled crying and pram debates. As I listened to them I made a promise never to bore people with endless stories of my children. I would never whinge, complain or find it difficult once I had my precious child. I would know how hard fought it had been to have a baby. Didn’t these mothers realise how lucky they were? My raw anger took me by surprise. Usually calm and considerate, now I was ready to rip people’s heads off. The hormones I was flooding myself with had turned me into the Incredible Hulkess.

  Every couple of days I had an appointment with Di, my nurse at the clinic. Yet another needle would pierce my skin to take blood and check my hormone levels. It was satisfying to write down these appointments, one small thing I could document and control. During the two weeks of hormone treatment I had regular blood tests and ultrasounds to see how my follicles were responding to the fertility drugs. Towards the end of that time, Di told me that the ultrasound was looking good. As she pointed out the black and grey images I imagined that my follicles looked like fine seaweed, delicate tips enfolding round, shadowy seeds. My eggs were ripe and ready. I just had to give myself a large injection before bed that night to trigger my eggs out of their mermaid home. I was excited about having a general anaesthetic; an operation was something else I could mark down in my diary.

  The next morning at the clinic Dr Tierney told me once again to have positive thoughts as she prepared to remove a batch of eggs from my hopefully jam-packed ovaries. I stared at the needle as it slid into my wrist, embracing the oblivion that sped through my veins. Desperate to h
ave time-out, to hand responsibility over to the experts, I let go. I wanted relief and obliteration.

  It didn’t last long, and in my next conscious moment I was lying in recovery on a narrow surgical bed, struggling to bring my right hand to my blurry eyes. I needed to know what my plumped-up fallopian tubes had delivered to me this cycle. Written in thin black biro on a torn piece of masking tape stuck on the top of my hand were two words: eight eggs. It was the third time I had woken up in this recovery ward and I felt safe hidden behind the blue curtains pulled around my metal bed. I recognised the familiar stirring of hope, excitement, dread and desperation as I stared at the cream-coloured tape. The number written there held my hopes for a family, eight more chances to create a new soul. Eight chances for the scientists to inject my husband’s sperm into my ageing eggs. I slipped down the oxygen mask that still covered my face and pressed the scrappy masking tape to my lips: please let it be this time.

  At ten past ten the next morning, my mobile rang. It was Liza from the laboratory. ‘You’re doing well. Six of your eggs have fertilised. We’ll ring you again tomorrow and let you know how they’re going.’

  ‘Oh thank you—that’s wonderful news.’