Mother Undone — Part Two
A Psychological Thriller That Explores the Dark Side of Motherhood
Please Note: This Part contains themes and topics that may be distressing to some readers, including family violence and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.
The Story so far:
Johanna, a woman haunted by guilt over the loss of her children, meets Kate at a therapy group for survivors. Despite Kate’s boldness and disregard for social norms, Johanna is drawn to her honesty and charisma. Their friendship deepens over coffee as they share their pasts and dreams for the future. Kate longs to be a successful writer and seeks Johanna’s feedback on her novel drafts. Johanna, a former journalist, reluctantly agrees to Kate’s request. Despite their differences, Johanna finds solace in Kate’s companionship and is ready to accept her offer of friendship…
TWO
One week later, I decided to give Kate a call. I picked up my phone, stared at it then put it down again.
What if Kate didn’t really expect me to call? What if she’d been caught up in the moment that day at coffee, sensing I was lonely and offering me the hand of friendship without meaning it? What if she saw my number and blocked it?
No, I was being paranoid. Kate sounded like she genuinely wanted to stay in touch. Besides, what could she say if I suggested meeting? No? That she was only joking?
I took a deep breath and punched Kate’s number into the keypad. She answered straight away.
“Yes?” Kate sounded breathless, rushed, the noise of traffic audible in the background.
I came straight to the point. “Hi Kate. It’s Johanna. There’s a movie I’ve been thinking of seeing.” I named it. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Johanna!” Kate said with a rush of warmth. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been thinking about you. I adore French films. I’d love to come and see it with you.”
And that’s how it started.
We saw the movie, loved it and laughed about it over coffee afterwards. Over the next couple of months, we caught up once a week after work, usually in the city at one of Kate’s favourite bars. One weekend I went to Kate’s place and we binge-watched Suits, only surfacing to prepare food and grab a few hours’ sleep on the floor. We discovered a mutual love of Monty Python and nineteen-eighties’ Dallas episodes. In a drunken moment, Kate even admitted to having a secret crush on JR Ewing. “It’s the power thing,” she confided.
I liked having a girlfriend. I liked hanging out and talking about everything and nothing. Our friendship wasn’t deep or made of the potent, tortured attachments of teenager days but Kate’s free spirit was addictive. I envied her. I dreaded and longed for her at the same time. She was my perfect antidote.
“How do you like your steak, Johanna?” Kate called from the kitchen.
It was a Thursday evening. Kate had invited me to her place for dinner. I took a sip of my gin and tonic. Perfect. I took another large sip and surveyed my surroundings. Everything was perfect. Kate’s living room seemed purpose-built to soothe and relax, from the plush sofa to the muted grey-blue walls to the oil burner glowing on a side table, scenting the air with orange, lavender and patchouli. These days, I felt more comfortable in Kate’s house than in my own.
Kate appeared at the doorway with her drink and plopped herself into a chair. “Did you hear me ask how you want your steak?”
“Sorry… I’m not used to anybody cooking for me. It’s a luxury. I’ll have it any way it comes.” I stretched out my legs and smiled across at Kate.
“Good. Then that’s how you’ll get it.” Kate sipped her cocktail then stared at me through narrowed eyes.
“What?”
“When are you going to invite me to come and see your house, Johanna? I’m a huge fan of old, heritage-listed cottages and I’d love to see how you’ve renovated it. Didn’t you mention it used to belong to your grandmother?”
I nodded. “She died about a year ago. I didn’t know the house even existed until my grandmother’s lawyer told me I’d inherited it.”
“Were you close to your grandmother?” Kate asked.
“No,” I sighed. “I didn’t like her at all, actually. She always had a nasty streak, but she got even worse when she went into the aged care home. Every time I visited her, she’d sit in her chair, twiddle her thumbs and make me read from the Deaths and Funerals pages so she could gloat over the deaths of friends and acquaintances and the fact that she was still alive. My mother didn’t like her either. I never saw them kiss or hold hands or show any signs of affection.”
Kate set her glass onto the table, her eyes serious. “Johanna… do you realise this is the first time you’ve told me something important about yourself and your family? I’m starting to feel our friendship is pretty one-sided because I’m the one doing all the talking.”
She was right. Our conversations usually revolved around Kate. But that’s the way I wanted it. Talking about myself might lead to conversations I wasn’t ready to have. Besides, I thought Kate liked being the centre of attention. I stared at my feet. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve tried to ask about you but, you’re always fobbing me off by changing the subject. You make me feel like I’m intruding… like I’m asking too many questions.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, still staring at my feet. “You’ve been good to me, Kate. I appreciate our friendship… really I do. If I was to confide in anyone, it would be you.”
Kate’s voice was gentle. “Don’t you think that time has come? Can’t you trust me? It’s obvious something terrible happened to you… but you can’t keep it locked inside forever. For God’s sake, talk to me… a problem shared is a problem halved and all that. Let me be a proper friend and help you… please.”
Was that when my resistance cracked? Since my arrival in Melbourne, I’d been holding myself together like a hastily-glued-together broken toy. But, lately, I’d felt my ‘bits’ getting loose again.
Kate was reaching out. Maybe I should too. I nodded slowly.
Kate smiled, a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight catching her eyes. They gleamed like molten gold.
She opened the bottle of wine and poured us both a glass.
THE MORNING HERALD: December 21, 2017
FATHER’S TRAGIC PLEA AS FIRE KILLS CHILDREN
Residents of a quiet neighbourhood in the eastern suburbs are in shock after a tragedy that claimed the lives of three children — Anna, 10, and 7- year-old twins, Thomas and James.
Suffering from severe smoke inhalation, Mr Stuart Fletcher, the children’s father, emerged from the burning house screaming, “My children, please help my children!”
Neighbour Dean Thornton ran over after hearing an explosion at 7.15pm. He said that Mr Fletcher was having great difficulty breathing but was concerned only for his trapped children.
“It was the most terrible thing I have ever experienced. I could hear those little children calling out for their father and their mother. There was absolutely nothing I could do.”
A Fire and Rescue unit was on the scene soon afterwards although Mr Thornton said it seemed to take forever before help arrived.
Mr Fletcher is in a stable condition in hospital.
Fire and police investigators are still searching for the cause of the fire. Police Superintendent Steven McColl said he would await a report from the scientific investigators before commenting.
Neighbour, Rhonda Marriott, said that Mr Fletcher was often seen in the front yard playing cricket with his sons, James and Thomas.
“He was a delightful father who loved his children and played all sorts of games with them whenever they came to stay.”
“It breaks my heart to realise that I’ll never see those little boys playing together with their father again.”
THE MORNING HERALD: February 2, 2018
LAST MOMENTS SPENT WITH CHILDREN BEFORE THEIR MURDERS
A mother has given a judge and jury a heart-rending account of the last moments she spent with her three children before her estranged husband set the rented house he was living in alight in what the prosecution allege was a deliberate act of murder.
Johanna Fletcher’s three young children Anna, 10 and twin sons Thomas and James, 7, died when they were trapped in a house fire while their father, Stuart Fletcher, 42, was out buying dinner for the children.
Mr Fletcher has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court to the murders of his children claiming it was a terrible accident over which he had no control.
Mrs Fletcher, 36, choked back tears in the witness box as she described saying goodbye to her children for the last time.
Mrs Fletcher told the court she had driven the children to Mr Fletcher’s house with a present for his 40th birthday. She said they spent about half an hour at the house and that she then asked the children if they wanted to stay for dinner with their father and he could bring them home afterwards.
“I just can’t believe that by trying to do the right thing, I left my children to die in that terrible fire.”
Mrs Fletcher said that she always thought Mr Fletcher had been a good father to their children — he always appeared loving and protective towards them.
“He didn’t fight me for custody of the children and, while I was aware that he resented me very badly after our separation, he didn’t take it out on the children.”
She told the court she never denied Mr Fletcher access to the children, but he never asked to have the children to stay very often and the children didn’t ask to stay with their father a lot.
The court also heard that Mr Fletcher often complained about making child maintenance payments.
THE MORNING HERALD: July 12, 2018
FATHER GETS MINIMUM 36 YEARS FOR FIRE DEATHS
A man found guilty of murdering his three children by setting the house they were living in on fire has been sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 36 years.
Stuart Fletcher was found guilty of deliberately killing his daughter Anna, 10 and twin sons Thomas and James aged 7.
The children died when they were trapped in their father’s house while Fletcher was out, allegedly picking up a pizza for dinner.
During the trial the children’s mother, Johanna Fletcher, wept openly.
Mr Fletcher shook his head as Justice Larry Hector told him he had planned the ‘worst possible crime’ and deliberately killed his innocent and vulnerable children.
Justice Hector told the court the children were subjected to a horrendous death as neighbours had heard them calling out for their father and mother as the flames destroyed the house.
Fletcher’s solicitor, Gordon O’Brien, maintained his client’s innocence and said he will be lodging an appeal on his behalf in due course.
“Despite the fact that it is hard to accept, this terrible incident was an accident. My client is understandably devastated and outraged at the verdict of the court.”
Fletcher will be in his seventies before he is eligible for parole”
January 2019
Why did you save me? I deserve to be dead.
That’s what I said when they took me away according to the paramedic in the ambulance.
I honestly can’t remember saying anything at all.
My only memory is the smooth, white skin on the insides of my wrists and the relief I’d decided to use pills instead of a razor; that I wasn’t sitting in a warm bath slicing into all that unblemished perfection and turning the water into wine. Pills are so much tidier, I’d thought at the time. But tidy doesn’t always work because I woke up later in hospital.
Light fingers rubbed something cool on the back of my hand. The acrid smell of rubbing alcohol, a sudden jab of pain. My eyes opened to dazzling white walls, harsh fluorescent lights and a middle-aged woman taping an IV cannula to my left hand.
“How long have I been here?” I croaked. My throat felt like it had been rubbed raw with a piece of sandpaper. I tried to sit up.
“Wait a minute until I connect you to the saline, Mrs Fletcher.” The nurse fed the tubing into the cannula and opened the line, before picking up the chart at the base of my bed and scribbling something with a pencil. “You’ve been here four days,” she said matter-of-factly, dropping the chart back into the slot and tucking the blanket around my feet. “Your neighbour found you and rang the police. The ambulance brought you here because St Michael’s is closest. You’re very lucky to be alive.”
Lucky?
The nurse stared at me, her eyes narrowed, like she could see what was really going on inside my head. For a second, I thought I saw reproach in her eyes and my heart gave a sudden, painful jump. But I must have been mistaken because she turned and left the room, her rubber soles squeaking on the polished, linoleum floor.
I closed my eyes feeling the cool rush of saline flowing through my veins flushing the last of the pills away. I sank down into the mattress, waiting for the soft, black shroud of unconsciousness to cover me again and mute the nightmares, the memories and the pain.
The only problem was that, this time, I knew I’d wake up.
To be continued…
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