Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

  Kate told Natalie that Phoebe wanted to be cremated. She loved the ocean, and a service by the sea might be appropriate. ‘And of course, it must be beautiful. We’re thinking big baskets of white flowers.’ Sue joined the discussion and supported the idea.

  Natalie felt sick. She wasn’t ready to discuss her daughter’s funeral with strangers. She asked Kate to stop. She’d come to see Ant, but he wasn’t going to talk to her today.

  Len had spoken to Dr Cohen outside Ant’s bedroom. Dr Cohen had expressed the opinion that Ant’s extreme grief was ‘not normal’. In my experience, though, people have all sorts of ways of expressing grief, some of which can seem very strange to outsiders. According to Len, the doctor had hypnotised Ant and had told Len that in his opinion, Ant’s reaction and behaviour was ‘that of a guilty man’. But guilty of what? Did he blame himself for the relationship problems that led to this terrible event?

  In the living room, Natalie stood up and said she wanted to go home. ‘I’m not ready to talk about these things,’ she said. ‘I’m still in shock.’

  Afterwards, she was furious. She’d felt compelled to go to see Ant, to try to comfort him and find out more about how Phoebe died, but after making a big emotional effort to get there, she’d been confronted by a room full of strangers who wanted to make plans for a funeral, and Ant had refused to see her. She was angry, she told me later, because she’d had to deal with ‘all the emotional shit of identifying Phoebe’s body’, unlike Ant, who was ‘surrounded by a barrier of minders and totally protected’. She thought it was pretty weak that he hadn’t made any attempt to come and see her.

  When she got home, she sent him a text asking to see him as soon as possible.

  ‘I knew his mother would get the message,’ Natalie told me later, ‘but I wanted to ask him to contact me when he felt up to seeing me alone.’

  Sue Owen replied inviting Natalie and Jeannette, with whom Ant had quite a good relationship, to visit at 4 p.m. on Monday 6 December. Natalie replied that she’d come alone. She told me that she planned to ask Ant some questions.

  *

  On Monday at 4 p.m., Natalie arrived to find Ant’s mother, father, and stepmother in the apartment, which threw her a bit, as she’d expected to be seeing Ant alone. The doors to the balcony were thrown wide open, and there was music playing. Ant was sitting on the couch beside Felicity, and Natalie was invited to sit beside him on the other side.

  She carefully placed her handbag beside her on the coffee table.

  Natalie felt uncomfortable throughout the meeting for several reasons. First, in her handbag was a micro-recorder, which had been suggested by her father, Lorne Campbell, who believed there were inconsistencies in Ant’s account and feared that this meeting might be her only opportunity to ask him for his version of events. With the noise from St Kilda Road and the music, Natalie felt the recorder was unlikely to be picking up any of the conversation. As if he’d guessed, George Hampel remained on the far side of the room and said little.

  Natalie told me later that she also felt awkward because Ant wouldn’t look at her while they spoke, so she found herself talking to the side of his head. This had never happened between them before.

  Ant spent much of the visit crying. He launched straight into talking about how close they’d been, assuring Natalie that he’d never have given up on Phoebe, even if her bouts of depression made it impossible to have children. Natalie told me later this talk of having babies was complete news to her.

  Then Ant turned to Phoebe’s alcohol problem, which he called ‘the monster’. He told Natalie that Phoebe had been out late on Monday night with ‘that fuckwit Bren … I’ve already told him what I think’.

  Next morning, he said, she didn’t go to work but returned to the apartment after he’d left for the day. She went out again late in the afternoon. When Ant returned home, she wasn’t there, and he texted one of her friends to see where she was. (That text was sent at 6.25 p.m.)

  Ant said that Phoebe had come home later that night, fallen into bed and gone to sleep. The next morning, she was still asleep when he left. He came back in the middle of the morning, when he woke her and asked where she’d been the night before. She said she’d taken ecstasy. This deeply concerned Ant, he said, because he knew the drug would leave her feeling even lower than usual. She was asleep again by the time he left on Wednesday morning.

  He thought he took Phoebe’s iPhone to be repaired that morning, as it hadn’t been holding a charge. He said she’d lost her old Nokia while she was out on Tuesday night, so she didn’t have a mobile. He told several people that on the day she died, he’d phoned her repeatedly on the landline but didn’t get an answer. The confusion about the dates regarding the iPhone would later occupy an inordinate amount of police time.

  Natalie wanted to know more about where Phoebe had been found and how her death had occurred, but Ant told her that he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He said she should ask the Coroner. He just wanted to remember her peacefully asleep with her eye mask on.

  There was a lot of discussion about Phoebe’s ‘battle with the light and dark’, and about how committed she was to trying to get well, leaving notes for herself and seeking counselling. Ant was convinced it wasn’t the Phoebe they had all known and loved who did this to punish anyone, it was just ‘the monster’ that had taken hold of her. He said a doctor he’d seen the day before had told him, ‘If alcohol was invented today, it would be illegal.’

  Natalie tried to move the conversation to the funeral. She suggested that after the cremation, which is what Phoebe had said she wanted, they hold a wake or remembrance gathering for everyone at Natalie’s house in Clifton Hill, where Phoebe had lived for several years and still loved to visit.

  Ant poured cold water on the idea, saying, ‘You won’t fit them in, Nat.’ He suggested there might need to be two ceremonies, as the people Phoebe had known in his world wouldn’t fit into the Clifton Hill house. Natalie then made her longest speech of the afternoon, juggling the tea she’d been given and refusing biscuits.

  She said that she agreed with several of Ant’s wishes, but she pointed out that she and Len had a 23-year involvement with Phoebe before she met Ant. Her daughter had led a very different life then. ‘It is sometimes difficult to cross those two lives within one person,’ Natalie said, ‘and it may well be that we will have to have two separate ways of saying goodbye to her.’ She suggested that they discuss what should happen with Phoebe’s ashes later.

  ‘And while I am here,’ she concluded, ‘I think I would like to collect her belongings.’

  The response gave her a shock. Felicity said, ‘I think that’s up to Ant, isn’t it?’

  Ant looked Natalie squarely in the eye and told her that he held a power of attorney for Phoebe. Because of that, he had control over her things and how she was farewelled.

  Natalie was stunned. ‘I understand that we all have strong ideas about what we want for her,’ she said, ‘but the power of attorney … why is that? How has that come about?’

  Felicity Hampel explained that because Phoebe and Ant had been living in a de facto relationship, it had the same weight as a marriage and ‘so, legally, Ant is the next of kin and he has control’.

  When Natalie told me of Felicity’s response, it seemed to me that she was conflating two different issues. Ant may have had a power of attorney during Phoebe’s lifetime, although none of Phoebe’s family was aware of its existence, but a power of attorney lapses when the person bestowing it dies, and from then on the executor, if there is one, takes over. The segue from the mention of power of attorney to the issue of the de facto partner’s rights may have been unintentional, a parent seeking to offer support, but it stiffened Natalie’s resistance, because she didn’t believe that Phoebe’s relationship with Ant should give him more claim than her parents.

  Mentally struggling with those issues, Natalie
tried to concentrate as the next half-hour of discussion swung to and fro about the farewell — when and where it should take place, somewhere green and beautiful, somewhere by the sea, on a hillside overlooking the sea, a venue that would hold a big crowd but would be available so close to Christmas, who was flying in to attend, who had photos and who would prepare a slideshow, who would officiate, on and on it went.

  Ant broke in, sobbing, ‘I’ve never loved someone so much. I never, never would have given up.’

  He again spoke of Phoebe’s depression, and said she’d suddenly started drinking in the morning after a bender. He said she did that on Thursday as well. He’d found a glass of what looked like soft drink, but when he sniffed it, he could smell vodka.

  Natalie said that she’d spoken with Phoebe several times when she said she was separating from Ant.

  Ant disputed the claim that they’d separated. ‘She was never thrown out … she would leave,’ he said. ‘She’d go on these benders and tell herself she didn’t deserve me and I’d be better off without her … and that’s what she did all her life … she packed her bag … ran away.’

  Natalie said, ‘So for her, it was a separation.’

  Ant reassured her that all was good each time Phoebe came back. They’d resolve to beat the ‘monster’ and he’d promised never to leave her.

  He said that her final night had been ‘lovely’. They were booked to travel to Europe later that month, and they’d discussed their plans. He said Phoebe was excited about spending Christmas in Paris.

  Natalie had her doubts about this. Phoebe had told almost everyone in the family that she was worried about the trip because of the problems in her relationship with Ant. Would they be able to put up with being constantly together, and what would happen if they fell out? Phoebe feared being in that situation in a foreign country with no money.

  Ant said that on that last night, he gave her a bath and cooked dinner, then she peacefully fell asleep.

  He began to cry again, ‘Nothing makes any sense …’

  Natalie was feeling very stressed herself. She got up to leave. ‘I know. Bless you. I should go and leave you. Don’t worry about us, OK? Look after yourself. I’ll be in touch.’

  She left with quiet assurances from the family that they’d let her know of any arrangements.

  Natalie felt the meeting had been wasted. She hadn’t achieved anything. Two ceremonies, uncertain venue, no dates for cremation or memorial service, no decisions about who was doing what. She was functioning on automatic but she seemed out of control.

  And she hadn’t been able to take any of Phoebe’s things. What was this power of attorney? Felicity knew the law, so she must have been right. Would Natalie need a lawyer? Surely not.

  In the hall, she reached into her bag to turn off the recorder. She later discovered that the recording was reasonably clear in spite of the music and open doors. Lorne arranged to have it professionally transcribed.

  CHAPTER 4

  PHOEBE

  Phoebe was a beautiful, healthy, strong baby.

  The Handsjuks are a lovely-looking family, but their looks belie the difficulties they’ve experienced over the years. They remind me of the famous quote from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Len, in his fifties, is tall and handsome, Natalie is petite and youthfully pretty, and the two boys are modishly good-looking young men.

  Len and Natalie met through Jeannette, who was working as a receptionist at Len’s surgery. She introduced them, and it was a love match. Len was in private practice as a psychiatrist, and Natalie was working as a veterinary nurse in Hawthorn. Phoebe, their first child, was born by emergency caesarean early on the morning of 9 May 1986, in the Chinese year of the tiger. Natalie called her daughter the Tiger Cub. Tom and Nikolai followed in 1988 and 1992.

  Phoebe lived with her family in Richmond and attended the Sophia Mundi Steiner school in Abbotsford. Her brothers followed her through Sophia Mundi, where they both finished Year 12. The school followed the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and social reformer, who developed a holistic system of education aimed at promoting each child’s own unique qualities. Steiner philosophy aims to balance the faculties of thinking, feeling, and will. There’s great emphasis on teaching through the arts, so all subjects are enlivened by painting, modelling, sculpture, speech, poetry, music, drama, movement, eurhythmics, and other artistic activities.

  The first Steiner school was established in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919 for the children of workers at the sponsoring Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. Steiner schools became very popular in the 1960s and ’70s, when they spread throughout the world. They have a strong appeal to free-spirited parents. I was considering sending my own sons to a Steiner school instead of a state school in Sydney years ago, but pragmatism and finances prevailed.

  Phoebe’s mystical and creative personality was well suited to a Steiner education. She drew and painted, wrote poetry, kept a journal all her life, and was open to all new experiences, good and not so good. Her mother remembers, ‘She was a wild child and enjoyed the rich fantasy world of her own imagination. She was physically active as a young girl and loved natural spaces, wild places, and especially the ocean.’ Phoebe had an almost insatiable appetite for socialising. She was popular at school and loved her friends.

  After she died, a friend from Sophia Mundi wrote a message on her memorial page recalling that Phoebe had been her buddy on her first day at the school:

  I remember her walking up to greet me with a rose. I remember saying that I was really scared to start school, and she told me that I had nothing to be afraid of; that I had amazing things to look forward to and that it’s OK to be a little scared sometimes. She actually took my hand and walked me upstairs and right to my desk and said she wouldn’t leave until she saw me smile … She was absolutely beautiful.

  Phoebe was athletic and a fast runner. Her mother remembers how, when someone fouled her during a basketball game, she’d suddenly rise to a different level of play, speeding unstoppably from one end of the court to the other. Afterwards, the parents of other players would ask, ‘What got into Phoebe? Why doesn’t she play like that all the time?’ But it was because someone had done her a wrong.

  She had a very close relationship with her grandmother, Jeannette Campbell. When Phoebe was 13, she decided that Jeannette should officially become her godmother, and this was confirmed by a ceremony at their family home.

  In 2000, Jeannette and Phoebe became closer than ever after Jeannette went back to study, which meant she often stayed at Len and Natalie’s house. ‘Phoebe and I would talk about anything and everything,’ Jeannette says.

  She was there when Phoebe began experiencing the ups and downs of adolescence. ‘She started to become quite hormonal around this time, which contributed to her serious mood swings and perhaps at times her erratic behaviour. She was very difficult to manage, but people would write it off as just one of Phoebe’s moods. She was incurably romantic, intuitive, and very sensitive. She was also incredibly stubborn and had a very strong sense of justice.’

  Jeannette was aware that Phoebe sometimes drank alcohol without parental supervision. ‘I didn’t believe it was a problem back then,’ she says.

  In her mid-teens, Phoebe began hanging out with the ‘wrong crowd’, as her grandmother puts it. She had a group of girlfriends who lived in Kew, all attractive and well-educated girls from good families, who started experimenting with speed, ecstasy, marijuana, and alcohol. Phoebe admitted to Jeannette that she was taking recreational drugs, but she didn’t go into the details.

  Around this time, Phoebe started her lifelong friendship with Alice Jagger, who was also attending Sophia Mundi. Alice was smitten with Phoebe’s beauty, her mysteriousness, and her wild sense of adventure. ‘You could never own Phoebe,’ Alice told me. ‘She could ne
ver be kept by someone. She was a “floater” — she drifted in and out of people’s lives at her own will. She probably used people a bit. She wanted to be mysterious.’

  Alice describes herself as more of a ‘nester’ and says she acted as a source of stability for Phoebe. ‘She spent a lot of time at my family home. She was like family. But never tied down.’

  Their friend Julie’s mother kept a close eye on the group of friends. To make sure she could keep watch over Julie, her mother ‘created a “safe house” under her house,’ Alice said. She added, ‘Truthfully, it was probably the safest place Phoebe ever spent time in for her whole life.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because she could be herself, no pretences, no guys fawning over her, no family problems.’

  One of the girls had been entered in a modelling competition conducted by teen magazine Dolly in the local shopping centre, so several of the others entered as well. Julie won first prize, a lucrative modelling contract with an international agency, which was what drew teenage girls to enter the competition. Julie later went on to become an international model. Phoebe was runner-up.

  This event acknowledging her beauty brought Phoebe no joy. She wasn’t happy with her good looks. She felt people were often attracted to her because of her appearance rather than for who she was. As she got older, she tended to avoid going out in groups where there were a lot of strangers, as she found their attention stressful. If she did go to parties, she’d drink to overcome her inhibitions.

  Alice says, ‘Phoebe put a spell on boys. She was gorgeous! If she put the tiniest bit of effort into her appearance, she had men and boys dropping at her feet. I took her to a party once where five guys fell at her feet in half an hour. It was fascinating to watch but not all that good for her friends, as you’d go to a party with her and end up on your own. She always did that to me!’