Chapter 11

Carolyn

That Thelma bitch even took the family car with her, then destroyed that to boot. I don't suppose you can blame her for destroying the car and getting herself killed ... but poor old Henry. The girls got over the loss pretty quickly, really, so did Henry after the money debacle, so I think she may have well and truly burnt her bridges with all and sundry, as unlikely as it is that that was unintentional; the woman was simply a perverted bitch. I wouldn't have done her with someone else's tongue, and I was famous for not being fussy. Boy, am I fussy now. Those photos of Deborah were cute though; Lordy-God-All-Mighty, is Our woman gorgeous ... no bias here.

The station answers a local complaint a week later from people around the corner from us, on the main road Carrington St, because someone left a clapped out old low cc piece of shit motorbike in the gutter outside their place. The rego, under a man's name, lead to a house in Yarrawonga Park near Toronto, where there's no one home and hasn't been for quite a while, according to my spies, by the state it's in. The house belongs to a man who's thought by his neighbours deceased, and the house derelict, the low cc, ex Post Office Delivery bike, is out of rego and doesn't belong to the woman who had been seen riding it, but to the man; according to the neighbours anyway. The police break in expecting foul play and the electricity is off so what little food is in the fridge is also off. The place hasn't been lived in for weeks but it had been lived in.

After a careful search, they open a computer hidden in a wardrobe under some man's soiled clothing and Thelma Michaels had selfies of her naked body all through it, ditto of the woman who lived here and was the suspect. Inside were many altered photos of that woman inserted into porn pictures taken from the web and it had an attached USB prepaid modem which was out of credit. Her Facebook Page is registered under one name, the same as in the Michaels', that scooter under another, the man's, and the computer itself was eventually discovered to be from a batch stolen months before in Adelaide, of all places.

The Photoshop programme she had is a burnt copy, the original registered to the name of a man in Brisbane who's been in gaol for ten years for aggravated rape of a child. The original copy is not on site and all that leaves our Sydney computer branch flummoxed. After questioning, the prisoner in his final year in custody recognises the girl as his daughter, who's one of the reasons for which he's inside. She must have bought it under his name, burnt a copy and then sold the original as new, as he hadn't seen her for more that twelve years and it was a burnt copy of the current version. By all accounts from the Queensland cops, he's shattered, and he is still saying he never touched her as a kid. They're beginning to believe him as she was a nutcase of the highest order but hold little sympathy as he did molest his neighbour's almost infant daughter, which he had admitted to.

The woman's Facebook picture has been altered to make her look younger and more attractive. There's a fake birth certificate hidden under a loose floorboard beside a box of stolen credit card details. I think the uniform, a Charlestown based newbie there for the experience with time on his hands, who found that shit, should get a fuckin' medal. I'm told he heard an odd squeak when the remainder of the sheets of particle-board flooring were as solid as concrete. They remove more boards and also discover a skeleton, gender as yet unknown, and a putrefying female body wrapped in plastic. Methinks they should do a blood test on old Thelma, as she was a corpse waiting to happen ... but aint we all? Maybe someone hadn't thought of the timing between the given dosage and the effects prior to the final outcome. That's my take, anyway. I spoke to the Boss who told me to go back on maternity leave and not to butt into operational matters, then took the idea himself and ran with it ... the prick!

The death of Thelma Michaels then began being viewed as murder because, as well as the high levels of alcohol in her system, she had been given a massive overdose of a barbiturate and another massive dosage of a drug they named sildenafil, whatever the hell that is, and the then unknown woman also had a huge dose of that one, just not as large as Thelma's. Henry told me, not Graham, as it embarrasses Henry to discuss it with another bloke, that sex with Thel had been difficult for her for a long time as she was always dry and any penetration had been painful. I doubt the excuses she used were real but just excuses, as she knew her husband was considerate enough not to subject her to any unwanted attentions.

It ends up with Henry receiving all his money back and almost immediately, a simple reversal of transaction, she being still his wife on the removal from a shared and common account. Anna and Tobi are living with us permanently now with a payment from Centrelink: for having Tobi, who's officially with us under protective custody, her father's trial isn't due for another three months and we've a petition in to adopt her: where Anna's become a very large payment to us as she's permanently disabled and under twenty four hour care (one night Deborah and I'll have to take a turn at night shift, but those pooie nappies of hers; oh yuck!) and Penny's staying with us, with Henry's enthusiastic endorsement, because her father can't give her the supervision a child of her age needs; I chuckle at that as she's supervised very closely all night. One could say intimately. Penny's decided no matter what her father wants he isn't going to keep her as sexually satisfied as we are, but she's the last person on earth who's going to tell her father that.

Henry insists on paying a weekly payment for the kids and for the fact he now eats dinner at our place most every other night. With that he now interacts with his daughters far more than he ever did before, in fact goes out of his way to do so and he and Penny have become very close. Prior to all this he admits as a parent he does have a lot to be desired, but now ... I'd like a father like he is now; attentive without being intrusive and extremely affectionate. We're just letting it happen and encouraging the relationship wherever we can. Graham is absolutely stoked how well they're getting on and how well his friend has recovered from his wife's betrayal and death. I think dying is probably the best thing Thel ever did for him and their family, strangely enough. I think my Mum should take notes.

To my mind, I think Our Man believes, in his heart of hearts, death is what his mother deserved, maybe deserves.

Deborah

Now we're settled, Mum got in touch with me as she wants to begin our marriage preparations. (Hint, hint she nudges my elbow.) I talk it over with Our Woman as I refuse to get married unless she's up there with us. Carolyn doesn't want to go through the stress of a wedding until after our baby's born and I go along with that, completely. We ask Graham when he wants to get married, he says yesterday but not without Carolyn. That makes it unanimous; that is with everyone but Mum. She looks pointedly at me for weight gain each time she sees me, and every time all she sees is little old tiny me. It cracks me up how obvious she is. Every time Dad sees me he asks after Graham and Carolyn, as he accepts us totally as a family and occasionally drops over for a beer, or three with Graham. My two used to both be in that with the old piss pot but She quit drinking after discovering she was pregnant and He now only drinks to be sociable. For some reason Dad can't envision me drinking or having sex as I'll always be his five year old, Daddy's little girl. They're call them blinders; race horses also wear them. His aren't as obvious as horses and he's one of the few things My woman is jealous of me about.

Graham's way too busy at work and now he's finished his first year of university, (he's such a very clever man, three month's early for fuck sake to end first year) he's no longer getting those afternoons off and he's working regularly on weekends being the company trouble-shooter and overall supervisor. His own boss now consults with him on every contract, and he has to sign off on each one before it becomes legally accepted on the company books. That's his boss's solution to the ever growing complexity of every new work contract they win. He used to use only a solicitor to check them, who could only check their legality, where Graham also makes sure it's possible to do what they ask. There are multiple reasons why a company employs a casual employment company to do work, which is usually their organisation's bread and butter.

As an example, Our Man describes it thus when His women had blank expressions on their faces after he told us:

A company wants to make a massive concrete pour and to have it completed within a certain time yet not wanting to employ more than z number of concreters to do it. That's usually due to the cost of permanent labour, their own staff having already refused their employer's ridiculous expectations due the price they had to agree to, to achieve the contract. The solicitor says it is a legal agreement, only yet to be signed, but Graham pronounces that may be true, but to do the job in that time limit will require 3z concreters or they'll need to work five times as long as the contract has demanded, to do the job.

The hiring company spits the dummy and goes to the opposition whose office and sales team is without someone like Graham and the job's never completed because there isn't enough concreters employed and the site staff walk off the job after being expected to work more than twenty four hour shifts.

They're lucky in a way because after getting well into the project, a well experienced worker in their site team checked out the complete job requirements, the same as Graham does, and calls everything off before the first agg* truck is sent from the plant but after all the reinforcing steel had been tied and dug into place. Graham signs him up a week later as a site supervisor for Graham's company and the rest of his team follows him over there. The company only controls them when on a job, otherwise they can go wherever they wish. It's well recognised fault in the system of not using permanent labour, albeit cheaper in the long run.

* Some unnecessary education you probably didn't require. For those not understanding the term agg truck, which most call a concrete truck (remember that explosion in Myth Busters): concrete in the civil engineering industry is known as a dried composite, as there's no such thing as 'a' product named concrete, which is a mixture of different materials. Each pour is designated at a specific consistency of different parts, sand sources and type, blue metal (aggregate) gauge, cement types, moisture content, Bycol added, fly-ash, etc. etc. (He lost His Women at blue metal). It all depends on what load the dried product will carry, how long it's needed to cure for, a la site conditions, the site and environment it must work under, such as underwater or road surfacing etc., and many other variations on which your author is not an expert. Go out and get yourself a Civil Engineering Degree and you can come back and tell me all about it. I'll be the one hiding under the bed.

mthommotoo

That job is completed over a year later at almost ten times as much as the main contractor wanted to pay using teams from interstate as no one locally or within this State will work for the main contractor any more as the instigator of the original problem his subby had to find a way out of. As Graham told his boss, for ten times the original contracted price we would not only have done it but in half the time requested.

It's gone around the building and civil engineering companies; you don't cross Shortarse Guilford, head honcho at Eziemploy Day Labour, as companies go bankrupt without his agreement to the details, and all the best teams are controlled by him. He's so highly respected even the company's opposition simply accept his pronouncements as facts. After all the years I've known him, I've never known the man to lie.

All I did was explain it as Our Man did to His Women under the misapprehension that we're intelligent, cognitive, rational, creatures; be blowed if I'd know! All I know is, though he's called out at weird hours, he's actually working way fewer hours than he did as a contract labourer at an obscene fixed monthly income. We're rolling in the plastic shit.

Graham

It's been a bitch of a frustrating day out the backside of Fuckwallop, Nowheresville, and I'm presently half-way between the overblown Maitland Airport and Maitland Hospital roundabout on the way home. Home! I began fantasising having three women's arms around me about one this arvo when the husband asked his final, why and then his wife, who wasn't previously interested in hearing what I had to say, then began asking all the same questions. All about a slab for a house, it turned out in a different State, they were thinking about putting down, after they buy the property, if they do, as all they have seen are Google Images of the bare block of land. Before I left she mentioned to her old man the next quoting contractor is due tomorrow about one. I'll iterate where this all began as I'm presently half-way between the overblown Maitland Airport and Maitland Hospital roundabout on the way home, a marked cop car pulls me over, and on its roof is a repeating electronic strip sign which said SHORTARSE FOLLOW ME; in red.