All Secrets Told

By Samantha Carter

Kate was born to a mother who had already shown signs of an abusive and cruel nature. Her grandmother unsuccessfully tried to keep her eldest granddaughter safe but when the new family emigrated to the other side of the world, young Kates fate was sealed.

As the eldest of a large family she knew it was her job to defend and protect her siblings, be the household slave and try to make her mother happy and her father notice her once in a while. Kates job ended when she was forced to marry a man she feared. Her siblings never forgave her for abandoning them; leaving them in the hands of a woman whose rages never ceased. . The die was cast for a life of abuse, fear and depression. The life of Cinderella the doormat.

The one thing that kept Kates indomitable spirit alive and safe was hope and a tiny sliver of self-respect that said she didnt deserve the life that she was living, even though she believed she had no choices. Kates survival strategy was to comply with their mothers demands and do all that was demanded of her, while expecting nothing of herself. After many years the strategy failed and Kate found herself down a rabbit hole of insanity. Her journey to free herself from depression and gain awareness had begun A journey to finally put her past to rest and to discover who she is .

Kate is soon to realize what courage really means when evil returns to terrorize her. She discovers that she has little time or energy for the one thing that she had previously given herself so freely to..fear ; so when physical pain threatens her very life, she rediscovers that her spirituality is, as always there to protect, heal and give her the strength to survive once again. Most of all Kate knows that the best that life has to offer can never be destroyed, no matter how hot the flames. This is a heroic journey of a woman who is betrayed, abused and abandoned; who meets the true tests of courage and self-belief and who finally reaches enlightenment to discover what love truly is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479729708

Book preview

PROLOGUE

October 1960

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild

Look upon this little child,

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

Amen

K ATE WORKS HARD to win the first prize — a much-coveted hanging wall plaque with the prayer written in gold script and a picture of Jesus in the right-hand corner. A picture that has proved his existence. A picture that said he is a kind man with vivid blue eyes and long, flowing, brown hair.

The Baptist Sunday School that Kate and her siblings are sent to every Sunday so that their mother and father can have some ‘well-earned peace’ from all of the naughtiness and which has said that anyone who bought the most number of kids to Sunday School over the next six weeks would win the prize. Kate is inspired. She could do this. She has been responsible for her brothers and sister since she can remember. Convincing the neighbourhood kids to come to Sunday School will be ‘a piece of cake’. By the time of the Sunday school, annual anniversary party comes around in late July, and she knows that she has a good chance. As she sits upright in the first row of the children’s section that sunny Sunday morning, Kate waits excitedly to hear her name called. She hasn’t dared to tell her parents of her mission. For the last six weeks, she has just thought about nothing but winning the plaque. Finally, Paster Tamihere in his purple and gold robes walks to the podium and starts calling the names of the finalists.

‘Jennifer Cannon has bought six new friends to join our community . . . Well done, Jennifer. Sandra Williams . . . good job, you have brought in nine new people, including your baby brother. I’m not sure if we can count him as a regular attendee as he is only six weeks old.’

Kate looks to her friend, who is blushing bright red and is about to cry as the congregation nods their approval.

‘Margaret Kathleen Giddings has brought us twelve new friends. She is the winner. Margaret, please come up here and receive your prize.’

Kate gulps as he says her whole name. She hates being called Margaret Kathleen. The kids at school say that Margaret Kathleen sounded like a nun’s name. Kate isn’t sure who and what are nuns but is sure it doesn’t sound good, so she tells them all that her real name is Kate; her granny always called her Kate. Confidently, she strides to the front of the church to what sounds like a thunderous applause. Kate knows that she has done something to be proud of and not even her parents can take this away.

‘To bring this number of new people to our congregation is exceptional, and you have earned our congratulations for a job well done.’ Pastor Tamihere bends down, ruffles her despised tight, curly, dark hair, and places the prize wrapped in gold paper and a big red bow into her hands. Kate takes the honoured reward carefully and returns to her seat. She holds her head high knowing that this is something that God himself has given her.

Kate keeps her precious prize safe under the bed she shares with her sister. She knows from previous experience that if Edith finds out about her success, then she would be accused of stealing or cheating and have it taken away from her.

One day, Kate finally finds the courage to hang the little plaque on the wall above her bed. It is her talisman and she believes it will love and protect her. Kate is convinced that if Jesus hears her say the words of the prayer, then Kate and her siblings would be safe from harm.

Obsessively, she recites the prayer to Jesus until one awful night when Kate was so tired from all of her responsibilities of the day, she forgets. And that is the night that the house burns down.

CHAPTER 1

Broken Promises

F OR MOST OF the morning, Kate has been digging in the small patch of earth underneath the kitchen window. Like so many times before, as soon as the moving van had departed, her first urge had been to plant a herb garden.

‘It’s just putting in some bits and pieces’, she told herself, ‘nothing wrong with that. If I’m going to eat properly now and take proper care of myself, then fresh herbs and veges are what’s needed.’

She knew in the depths of her soul that planting her herb garden was about a lot more than just eating right, but she really wasn’t in the mood for self-analysis. She’d had years of that. This was about a ‘new start’ and living the promise she had made to herself for as long as she could remember. A promise to be brave and walk many more than just the nine steps’. A promise Kate had broken many times before. The nine steps related to a story that Kate had heard years before. A story that had resonated with her, but only recently she had found the courage to put it into action.

Mohini was a regal white Bengal tiger that had lived for many years in a North American Zoo. For most of those years, her home was in an old lion house—a typical 9 × 9-metre cage with iron bars and a concrete floor. Mohini spent her days, pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters.

Eventually, the staff worked together to create a natural environment for her. Covering several acres, it had hills, running water, and a variety of vegetation. With great excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new home.

But it was too late. The tiger immediately found refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced until an area of 9 × 9 metres was worn bare of grass.

When Kate heard this story, she was terrified, knowing that she had become like Mohini. She realised that being rescued from circumstances with which she had struggled did not mean that she would immediately know freedom. Kate needed to take the path she had chosen with a different set of expectations that struggling would not set her free. Changing familiar patterns and recognising that the bars on the cage are imaginary would set her free. Freedom came by taking each day, one day at a time.

As she watched the removal van make its way slowly down the unsealed driveway narrowly missing the overhanging branches of the ghost gum, Kate was already making her list of supplies from the hardware store.

1.   Secateurs—not the cheap ones but a decent pair of Fiskars.

2.   Garden hose, one that doesn’t kink and with a reliable spray nozzle… no more duct tape.

3.   A spade, a proper one—one with a sharp edge that will break up this soil without having to resort to yelling and swearing.

4.   A little trowel.

5.   Gardening gloves.

6.   And, of course, herbs, lots and lots of sweet, fragrant and healthy herbs. basil, marjoram, all the mints for teas and baking, parsley, chives, rosemary, tarragon.

‘What else?’ Kate asks out loud, not expecting an answer.

From high in the eucalyptus tree, a corella responds with its high-pitched squawk. Kate looks up smiling. Corellas are her favourites: pretty, noisy, social, and unafraid.

‘What you are doing here all by yourself? You usually gather in swarms of 100 or so. Are you alone too? Have you too been chucked out of the family,’ she muses.

‘Oh yes, of course, lots and lots of lavender. I will put in the usual varieties plus some French culinary, just near the front door,’ she explains to the little white and yellow cockatoo now hovering in the tree above her, hoping that some crumbs will be forthcoming.

‘I will need it for lavender short bread. Hmmm. I just need to find lots of friends and neighbours to feed.’ She smiles to herself, remembering the smells of baking; one of her many passions.

Kate had found the house online. It was in a great location and described as a ‘log cabin’ in a bush setting, two acres of flat land, close to the village, tank water, two bedrooms plus study, one bathroom, and lock-up garage. Only $230 per week. Long-term tenancy required.

‘Perfect’ . . . she breathes as she wrote an email to the agent, requesting a viewing as soon as possible. Kate was most surprised when exactly twenty minutes later, she received a call from a very pleasant-sounding man offering to show her the property the next day.

‘Sassafras is only thirty minutes from East Link, and you know, they haven’t had a bush fire since Ash Wednesday nearly thirty years ago.’ He apparently feels the need to offer an explanation as an incentive in case there are any doubts in Kate’s mind.

‘That’s right,’ says Kate, suddenly considering that maybe Sassafras was overdue for another devastating firestorm. ‘Is it thirty years already?’

‘Just be positive,’ she sternly tells herself. ‘The rent is good. It sounds just lovely. Small enough for one and big enough for visitors and even though it’s more than thirty minutes to East Link and another forty to the city. It’s far enough away from Melbourne that he will probably never bother looking for me.’

As the wheels of her Ford Focus make small crunching sounds on the long driveway up to her new home, Kate has a surge of real peace and happiness that she hasn’t felt in a long time.

‘This is good,’ she tells herself. ‘You can do it. Maybe there is nothing in your past to confirm this, but you have come this far, have gathered what is yours, and now is the time to live the reality that you have dreamed of for more than thirty years. What can go wrong? . . . What indeed?’

The little patch of soil under the kitchen window is lush with newly planted herbs and a totally indulgent peony. Kate loves peonies with their huge, lush, rose-like blooms and imagines her dining room table covered with every colour and variety. As usual, she spent more than she wanted to, but what the hell, the insurance company finally paid her the four years’ salary for the permanent disability she had suffered at the hands of her employer. The rent is paid for eighteen months, and her home is full of boxes with new and well-loved treasures for her to unpack.

But the herbs have to come first. Standing gingerly upright, she half expects her back to spasm and falter but is pleasantly surprised that she feels nothing untoward. Her back has caused her lots of problems over the years, but despite the many warnings from the doctors that she would be wheelchair bound by the time she was forty, she is still standing and, in fact, digging. Kate attaches the bright green hose and spray nozzle together and with a satisfying click, the hose goes into the ‘thingy’ on the tap.

‘Here we go, easy-peasy, no probs’. The corella is keeping close, hoping that Kate will uncover a worm or maybe a snail. ‘Assembling a hose is not that hard at all. Well, maybe for a man, but easy for a woman, we know how things work.’ She giggles to the inquisitive little bird.

She turns around quickly half expecting Simon to have snuck up on her to take over with his unasked for advice and snide remarks. But he is nowhere to be seen. With a satisfying whoosh of water, she adjusts the nozzle to ‘shower’ and begins the nurturing process of her new life as her mind returns to the last herb garden she watered.

A time not so long ago when she was in doubt that her life would ever improve, that she would ever escape the hell of disappointment, shattered dreams, and unending boredom that she believed she was trapped in.

CHAPTER 2

Life on another Planet

I T IS A lovely sunny morning, the third day of summer, and Kate has had a really shitty night’s sleep. She has been sleeping in the spare room for months now, and it doesn’t get any easier. Each day, Kate tells herself to turn the room into a proper bedroom, with a new Doona, fresh new sheets, maybe a couple of semi expensive pillows and curtains, real curtains, and not those horrible vertical blinds, but she can’t seem to do it. Is it her rapidly failing belief that things will improve that is keeping her trapped?

‘I hope not,’ says Kate to herself. ‘I’m over all of that nonsense, and I am trying to stay with what’s real.’

Kate finally admits to herself that it is and will always be a spare room for visitors, guests, and so forth. ‘I have nowhere else to sleep at this time.’ She sighs. ‘I am hanging out to move into my own flat or apartment or house and, finally, put an end to this torture that my life continues to be.’

The spare room has become a kind of sanctuary where Kate doesn’t’ have to encounter him. A place where she can prevent herself from slipping back into the old habits. The habits that begin with ‘If only . . .’

The habits that have enabled and allowed the farce of a marriage to continue for thirty years. A marriage devoid of sexual contact and devoid of intimacy, except for the occasional peck on the cheek when his neediness arose . . . Nothing that resembled love or commitment.

So many ‘deal breakers’ occurred in this marriage but not once have the broken deals been acknowledged by either of them, and the only repercussions felt were by Kate. Behaviour’s that should have ended a marriage for any other ‘normal couple’ and are discussed briefly and unemotionally, excuses made and a decision to ‘move on’ put in place, with no acknowledgement of the pain and shattered dreams. Permission to stuff up again and again . . . granted.

Kate was adept and swift to fix the broken deals with ‘Band-Aids’ made up of false hope and determination. The Band-Aids promised that ‘If I do better, he will do better.’ The problem with Band-Aids, as Kate grew to realise, is that they lie, give false hopes, and break promises. They just cover the festering wound of a destroyed soul. They don’t deal with it, and they certainly don’t heal it. Grieving and healing her tortured life is Kate’s only priority now, and for that, she needs space and permission from herself to do it.

But she knows that the ‘sanctuary’ is also a ‘slap in the face’ that says, ‘This is what you have been reduced to—a hostage in your own home. You are a freeloader with no power to make decisions or even complain. You continue to be here because he wants you here. You must have a place of you own and a life of you own. Life on Planet Aspie is whatever Simon wants it to be. You don’t belong.’

The day that Kate discovered that Asperger’s was a condition on the autism spectrum and not something she could do anything about or had caused in any way was a life-defining moment for her. A day when her self-doubts took another look and questioned the behaviour of this man who professed to love her.

It was March 2005 and a world-renowned expert had just diagnosed Simon, her husband, of twenty-five years with Asperger’s. It was not only a day of discovery, but the beginning of a long and exhausting road to recovery for Kate.

Kate met Simon when she was six years into a state of desperation, huge guilt, and exasperating neediness. But it was also the beginning of her emotional maturity, a sense of freedom, and independence.

Kate had run from a world of physical and mental abuse, leaving behind three precious sons without a mother. Kate had come to believe that she was a person unworthy to call herself mother, wife, or even daughter. She had failed miserably in all the three roles and was now at the stage of trying to find who she was, and if she did fit anywhere on planet Earth. Unfortunately, Kate has stumbled onto Planet Aspie . . . a world of total self-absorption. Where the imitations of love and intimacy are all wrapped up in a pretty package of deceit.

Simon was all charm and good looks. He had come looking for Kate after his colleagues at the technology company where he worked had told him that they has just spotted, at the clients office, a ‘gorgeous chick’ with very long legs, sitting on a high stool and conversing intelligently. It was early days of information technology, and the company Kate worked for was installing their first automated computer system.

Simon arrived resplendent in a cream silk suit, stylishly cut hair, and an overblown ego. He immediately impressed Kate with his non-stop chatter, confidence, and apparent interest. Most of the ‘techtalk’ was all about him and his impressive resume. But he was, as Kate noted, actually speaking to her and appeared to be interested in more than the long legs and very short skirt. How wrong she was? After two confusing hours of a one-way discussion, he asked Kate out to dinner. Her neediness said, ‘Yes, please’. Kate’s knight in shining Armani had arrived, and she was hooked.

Their first date went well. Charming and attentive, he dropped Kate at her apartment door and explained that he was so important to the emerging technology that he was needed at work at all hours. Kate was to later find out that this was a double date and not in a good way.

Three months and quite a few nice dinners later, Simon asked Kate to come to his apartment so that he could cook for her. She arrived determined to find out if he really liked her or was maybe gay. So Kate dressed to kill in her tightest jeans and skimpiest top, and they had sex that night. The experience was okay, but later, after Kate showered and dressed, his true controlling nature appeared, and he angrily told her that ‘If she was to use his facilities, then he expected her to scrub the bath and shower thoroughly.’ Kate was so shocked, she couldn’t speak. Simon had gone from attentive and sexy to angry and abusive in a nanosecond. Kate had found the man of her nightmares . . . again.

Confused and bewildered, she hurriedly apologised for the horrible behaviour and made huge promises that she would never reoffend and proceeded to scrub his apartment from top to bottom. Somehow, this behaviour did not seem unusual as she willingly handed over any power and was back in a place she recognised—the land of abuse—of comfortable discomfort.

Kate had recently discovered a new life in a strange world of humming silence. A world that she had never experienced before. A place where she could decide things for herself. A world in which she had promised herself to never let the things that had happened to her, happen again. Kate thought she had found the tiniest sliver of a quiet peace. Six months later, Simon moved in with Kate and took total control of her tentative and newly discovered world. A peace that was soon to be shattered into millions of tiny bits that would take her to levels of pain and confusion and that would leave her broken but somehow not quite destroyed.

A drunken phone call from Simon on business in Hong Kong later that year turned out to be a proposal of sorts. Kate asked him to call