Hindsight is a wonderful thing...so is following your instincts. The latter is something I had much trouble in coming to trust as the year unfolded.

With hindsight, I often wonder whether I would have made the same decisions once we returned from Thailand. I occasionally wonder what my life would be like now had we never met the boys, I wonder what would have happened if I had never stayed in contact with them or how things would have transpired had I never have fallen for Lee not to mention whether our paths would have ever crossed with Ned again had I not been so persistent with having him come and stay with us. One thing I do know for certain is that had all of these things not occurred, all of our lives would be very different now... as these events have very much shaped our lives into what they are today. But don’t take my word for it...find out for yourself with the remainder of our story.

I’d like to say that the week that followed Ned’s arrival was just as normal and ordinary as any other but this was most certainly not the case at all. I should have followed my initial gut feeling I had the morning after Ned arrived as things were about to go terribly wrong.

As the days wore on, division in the house became common place. I’m not sure why this was but, nonetheless, it could be felt by all of us with the exception of Ned seeing as he knew no different. Kristy wasn’t herself and rightly so considering she was now living with somebody who she had feeling for, despite her protestations that this wasn’t the case seeing as though she had feelings for somebody else. It was also apparent that Ned had maintained his infatuation with Kristy. This being the case, the dynamics of the house were very different to what I was used to, let alone what I had envisaged when I had agreed to moving out and having Ned stay with us. Understandably, there was a lot of flirting going on between Kristy and Ned and we saw their relationship blossom before our eyes. Everybody could see it. In Ned’s defence, he made his intentions pretty clear when it came to Kristy. He would often tell me that he had known that there was something about her since he first laid eyes on her all that time ago in Koh Samui and that all these feelings he had come flooding back as soon as he laid eyes on her again when he arrived in Perth. All of this was very romantic and very sweet but there was the minor issue of Kristy having somebody else in her life...somebody who happened to be one of my best friends whom I had known all of my life. Basically, this put me in a very awkward situation as we had decided that it probably wasn’t a wise idea to let Ned know about Doug and vice versa. I’m not sure why we did this. Perhaps it was to keep the friendship between Ned and Doug amicable seeing as they got along really well or perhaps it was because neither Doug nor Kristy had made their relationship official – if it could have even been called a relationship. As I said, hindsight is a wonderful thing as we now realise that this was completely naive of us and that we should have expected disaster to ensue but for some reason we were hopeful that everything would turn out for the best and, not surprisingly, this wasn’t to be the case.

With Ned and Kristy’s relationship becoming more and more noticeable to us all, I became very disgruntled towards Kristy because of the situation she was inadvertently putting me in with both Ned and Doug. I didn’t like lying or covering for her. She never asked me to either. With Kristy being my best friend and as she was always like a little sister to me, I was constantly looking out for her and this situation was no different. I knew that the only way to keep the peace between everybody was to keep my head down and act as if I didn’t know what was going on. Kristy also confided in me with things; things that perhaps she shouldn’t have but in saying that, had she not have confided in me, I know our friendship would have been worse off. I think that with Kristy still trusting me and being able to honest with me, we at least kept our friendship free of lies. That’s how I saw it anyway even though, at times, I wish I had have been ignorant to what was transpiring right in front of my eyes. As I resented the situation more and more, I began retreating into myself again. Much like I had in the weeks that followed Nan’s death which lead me to another downward spiral. I don’t blame anybody for this but myself as I was very vulnerable at this time and I knew I had still not healed from Nan’s death – I had simply pushed it aside to make way for Ned’s arrival and a new adventure in our lives. With more time on my own and, as a result of that, more time to think, things went from bad to worse.

That wasn’t the only thing to go from bad to worse either. In the first week of Ned’s arrival, we decided to have a Thailand night. We thought we would order Thai food, drink some wine and watch the movie, The Beach. It was the Wednesday following Ned’s arrival so everything was still new and exciting and the divide in the house wasn’t quite as bad as what it developed to be. Rach, Kristy, myself and Ned all gathered around our new house and watched in awe as Maya Bay appeared on the screens before us and we each marvelled at how, in only a matter of months, we would all be there seeing it with our own eyes and what’s more, we’d be together. The whole evening was a lot of fun and we all ended up fairly drunk by the end of the night which wasn’t particularly surprising but the prospects of working the next day were not looking good considering we each nearly had to crawl our way into our beds. Rach bunked with me that night and when she came into my room, we were in fits of giggles – partly due to the alcohol but partly due to the flirtatious nature of Ned and Kristy throughout the evening. At some point during the night, whilst I was sleeping, Rach decided to get out of bed and go and sit with Ned and drink some more. The two of them ended up finishing a cask of wine together as well as all of our cigarettes. The next morning, I awoke to get ready for woke and found Rach passed out on the couch with the tv still blaring the theme song to the Beach. Ned was nowhere in sight so I presumed he was in bed. Reluctantly, I headed off to work, leaving in my wake, a houseful of my hungover, sleeping friends.

At about 10am that morning, I had a call from Kristy. She was hysterical. My first reaction was not to ask her what was wrong but to enviously blast her for not going to work. She didn’t answer me and instead declared that Ned had been in an accident. Alarmed, I asked her to explain what had happened. Ned had woken up in the morning and felt awful about the fact he had smoked all of our cigarettes the night before so he decided to do the right thing by going down to the deli and buying a packet to replace the ones he smoked. The deli is about 100 meters from our house; if not less. Instead of walking, Ned decided to take the car which Kristy had loaned him to use whilst he was staying with us. He hadn’t yet driven in Australia so he thought his first attempt should be something easy and so the deli was a good idea in his mind. He made it to the deli without any dramas and on the way back, as he was about to turn into our street, he did not see the car coming around the corner (which, in Ned’s defence, is a very bad corner) and he also had trouble with the indicators so when he turned, he collided with a car which had a child in it. The child was being taken to school by his mother. Due to the impact of the collision, the child bumped his head on the dashboard which caused a laceration. The mother, child and Ned freaked out at the sight of blood coming from the child’s head. An ambulance was called, as were the police and Ned was voluntarily taken to the local police station for questioning. Due to our big drinking session the night before, Ned blew over when it came to being breathalysed. He was now facing a fine, a court hearing, medical expenses for the child and damage to Kristy’s car. I was in shock, as, I think was Kristy. She told me that everybody was okay – including the child but that Ned could possibly be facing deportation. I told Kristy that this could have been possible and that I would check with some colleagues. She also told me that the parents weren’t going to press charges against Ned as they knew it was an accident. I still couldn’t believe it though: Ned hadn’t even been in Australia for a week and yet already he was in trouble and possibly facing being deported.

That night, when I got home, I talked to Ned about what had happened. Since the morning’s phone call from Kristy, they had found out that Kristy’s car was a write off which meant Ned was now in $3,000 worth of debt. He also had the ambulance bill to pay for the injured child which would be around $400 and he would undoubtedly have a court fine to pay that could be up to $5,000. Basically, Ned was looking at having his trip of a lifetime cut short by a decision he made in a split second – and a stupid one at that. Ned was obviously annoyed at himself and at the situation. He was also frustrated at the prospect of having no money and now being under immense pressure to find work. The task of finding work was also made harder due to the fact that he could no longer drive for the duration of his stay in Australia. Because of this incident, more tension was felt in the house. Whilst we felt for Ned, we all knew he was paying the price for his own actions and we had no trouble in saying so. We also weren’t impressed by the fact that already, Ned was joking on the phone to his friends back home about the accident.

As the days after the accident unravelled, Ned’s mood worsened and he became temperamental and negative. He would often go off on rants about how unfair life was or how things were now a complete a mess. I tried to keep him positive even though I was now dealing with familiar demons of my own as I began retreating into myself. I tried to reassure Ned that everything would be fine and that things would work out. I sat up with him night after night going through the papers to help find him a job. I told him that things could be worse, that he was still living the dream and that he just had to overcome this challenge that had been thrown his way. Truth be told, I felt sorry for Ned. I knew what it was like to have things not go your way. I probably knew that feeling better than most. Whilst Ned was somewhat alienated for that period by everybody I tried to stick by him and in doing so, he eventually found a job in reticulation and started to get a bit of hope back.

Meanwhile, with Ned’s outbursts becoming more and more frequent, as well as his rants and his frustration towards Kristy due to, as he saw it, her messing him around, I don’t think I was alone in questioning whether we had done the right thing in having Ned come out and stay with us. The question remained unsaid but it was clearly thought time and time again: just how well did we know this guy and did we really know what we were getting ourselves into? I think we chose never to air this question aloud with one another as saying it aloud somehow made it more real and we weren’t quite ready to deal with the consequences of our actions and whilst the question was out there, it remained unanswered which meant we still had time to right our wrong.

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I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for. Because it’s not where you go … its how you feel for a moment in your life. If you find that moment … it lasts forever.

I am going to read this afterwards when I am sat with a glass of wine and can take my time and savior it.

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Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

Well this is heating up, especially with Ned and the outbursts, I cannot wait for instalment 9

Ned does not seem quite as cute now

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Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

Haven't we all done things that could have turned out so wrong! Just not with quite such an effect but Ned's accident could have been a lot worse.

I wish it was a book and then I could have a sneaky look at the end to see what happens as waiting fo rthe next instalment is real torture.

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Alison

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It's Better to Burn Out than just to Fade Away!

This needs to be made into a movie, I suspect things are going to get a lot worse.
Cathy

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http://www.cathyandgarystravelpages.com