No More Tomorrows (41 page)

They were always using and abusing their power, demanding cash, food, cigarettes or anything else that caught their eye. We had to give them cash to leave the block, in fact. And I was blatantly told to buy cartons of cigarettes for the guards so that I could get my mail, even though I paid a hefty fee to collect it anyway.

They’d come into my cell, pointing at my shopping or parcels, and screech: ‘I want! Gimme! Gimme!’ It was pathetic, but it wasn’t worth fighting. I’d usually give them what they wanted, although sometimes I’d rebelliously make them wait a few days. I lived in hope that one day they’d give something back or somehow come around, maybe let me play a bit of tennis. But I soon learnt to expect nothing back.

I felt they were always trying to beat me down, break my spirit and turn me into a zombie. I wasn’t going to let them; I might be physically caged, but my mind and spirit were free to fly. But they did something that really hurt me when they moved my friend Eddie to another jail. Eddie and I had become close – definitely nothing sexual, but he was a real support, helping to take the edge off my loneliness. They moved him before I was unlocked, so we didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. I felt so vulnerable, so frightened and alone. Eddie had been my rock. Now he was gone. I felt deeply depressed and didn’t eat for a couple of days, until Renae walked into my cell one afternoon with a bowl of vegetable soup she’d chopped up and cooked. It was such a nice gesture, as Renae didn’t cook. I ate it and realised I had to stop feeling sorry for myself.

All I had control over at this point were my emotions and my mind, but I’d even lose control of those during my down times. Sometimes I’d start to believe I had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I often felt so terribly vague, forgetful, my mind coddled and foggy as if I was losing my grip on reality. But I’d snap out of it and put it down to stress, trauma and my groundhog-day existence: nowhere to go, nothing to do, no mental stimulation, trapped in hell. I was trying desperately to stay positive, make the best of it, spend my time improving my character – learning to be patient, trying to help others as I watched the hurt and damage the bitchy gossip girls caused.

But as my second Christmas loomed, it was hard to keep my spirits up. I’d had a severe ear infection for weeks, with all my requests to go outside to a specialist refused. I had excruciating conjunctivitis in both eyes, and my longing to go home was agonising. On Christmas Eve, I lay on my mattress with tears pouring down my face as I visualised my mum running around her kitchen, preparing all the food, trifles and cheesecakes, as my little sister Mele frantically wrapped last-minute presents in the bedroom while outside someone cut the lawn in preparation for all the guests.

Mum would be wearing my white Haviana flip-flops, which she’d taken on her last visit to feel closer to her baby. I knew I would be on her mind almost every minute, even more than usual, and it hurt me that she’d be hurting. This was painful for us all. My family wasn’t physically locked up, but mentally and emotionally they were caged in here with me. We all thought I’d be home by Christmas 2004; then we thought I’d be home for my twenty-eighth birthday in July; then we thought I’d be home for this Christmas. But I was still here.

When I turned twenty-eight, I kept it quiet from the other prisoners. I didn’t want a fuss and a reminder of where I was. Only Dewi knew, and I asked her not to tell anyone. I spent it sitting alone under the banana trees at the back of the cells near the clothesline. My pool was unusable, a bit of useless plastic strewn on the ground after a girl had slashed it with a knife the day before. It was jail – there was no point getting upset. I improvised by using a bucket of water and ladle to sporadically splash water over myself to cool down in the scorching heat. I tried not to think too much about spending a birthday in prison. It was painful and also embarrassing. I ate some Japanese food that Merc had dropped off, although as it was Sunday we didn’t get to see each other.

But Christmas was a bit harder to ignore, as everyone tried to get into the Christmas spirit, even loudly singing Christmas carols in the cells. I couldn’t believe it when I heard a musical voice singing carols in English, endlessly, one after the other – almost every carol I knew. This sweet voice echoed around all our cells. I discovered it was Renae. She seemed to know all the words to all the carols, and she could really sing. (Maybe I should call Ron!) In the morning, all the girls in the cell went around to each other giving hugs, but I excused myself, not wanting to start the day in tears.

Many of the Bali Nine parents were in Bali for the trials and came in bearing armfuls of Christmas presents and food. I was invited to join a few groups but ended up just popping out to Scott Rush’s parents’ little party wearing my fake pink Chanel sunglasses to hide my red, infected eyes. They had brought decorations and had done a good job of making things feel Christmassy. In the afternoon, Dad, Merc, Wayan and the kids came in laden with food and presents. Merc had gone to so much trouble organising a feast of hams, chickens, rolls, chocolates and beer. She’d even organised little presents for me to give to the kids. We all tried to be upbeat, but the undertone was unmistakably pain. Having to lay out Christmas dinner on a filthy concrete floor in jail, with male prisoners staring at us through a window, wasn’t much of a celebration.

Back in the women’s block, Renae came into my cell and handed me a present: a new pair of sneakers. She didn’t like me skipping or exercising in my flip-flops. I gave her a big juicy steak and some mushrooms.

By New Year’s Eve, my eyes were better, but I had no hearing in my infected ear and was extremely worried about permanent deafness. I was living on painkillers but still couldn’t get out to see a specialist.

I wanted to end my most horrible year imaginable by fasting for forty-eight hours, thinking pure thoughts, and praying. My plan was to rid myself of the past year and start the new one with fresh body, mind and spirit. But I fell to temptation early, eating when I got really hungry and later having a couple of shots of arak, a potent Indonesian spirit.

The year before, I had a sleepover in Salma’s cell on New Year’s Eve for what I thought was going to be a bit of fun. It wasn’t. She didn’t speak much English and, to my embarrassment, refused to let the other two girls share a glass of beer with us. I was also stressed about girls in my cell rifling through all my things – which was exactly what they did.

This year we were told our monkey cages would be left open until midnight, a special treat that cost each cell 70,000 rupiah. But unsurprisingly they slammed us away at 5.30 p.m. Why did I expect anything else? I sat on my mattress, refusing to let my mind think about what my friends were doing. It hurt too much; it was better to block, suppress and stay numb.

A bit later, we heard a noise at the main door and were shocked to see that the guards had returned to unlock us. All the girls excitedly blew trumpets, set up a tape player in the sewing room and danced wildly. I did my usual, I watched. But it was good to be outside. I desperately missed standing underneath the night sky, looking up at the twinkling stars. This night the stars and moon were hidden behind clouds, but it was a beautiful feeling when raindrops started splashing on my skin and hair in the dark. By 9 p.m., we were back in our cages, and as I looked through the bars at the rain still falling, I realised how much I’d come to appreciate the preciousness of life . . . any life.

The next day, I decided to treat myself to a long shower and told all the girls to do what they needed to do in the shower room first. It was a self-indulgent half hour: washing my hair, putting a treatment in, shaving my legs and using a chocolate-ginger-coconut body scrub. As I was ladling water over myself to wash it off, I focused on the spit on the floor. It was disgusting. It was nothing new, but I’d never get used to it. I held my heart and told myself:
Not too much longer, Pelle, and you’ll be having a real shower. This year will be better, it will be!

‘The darkest hour is just before the dawn. Schapelle, that hour is now.’ I contemplated those words when someone wrote them to me. It was a good sentiment, but was this really the darkest time that I would experience on this awful journey? Or was there still more to come?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out the answer.

19

No Dawn

S
CHAPELLED: TO BE SCREWED
–
BRUTALLY
. U
RBAN ONLINE DICTIONARY OF SLANG

Police have seized photographs of Schapelle Corby with a man who has just been charged with marijuana smuggling. The alleged drug dealer is pictured alone with Corby in some photographs and with Corby and another couple in others. They were found during a recent police search of the alleged dealer’s home in South Australia. He was the target of a joint SA–Queensland police operation into a hydroponic marijuana smuggling ring allegedly operating between two states.

The photographs were taken before Corby was charged in October last year with importing 4.1 kg of marijuana into Bali in her body board bag . . . The chance discovery of the photos comes as Corby, 28, is preparing to appeal against her drug smuggling conviction and sentence . . . Balinese prosecutors are expected to seek access to the photographs seized by police in SA. They will want them to try to cast doubt on claims by Corby in her trial that she had no connection with drugs or drug dealers.

Herald Sun
, 10 December 2005

When Merc came in stressed and upset to tell me about this story, I was almost blasé. I shrugged it off; I was tired of the lies that I could do nothing about from in here. Being cut off from the outside world made me lose my reality compass. I didn’t fully understand how bad it was. I had no idea who was in the shots or when or where they were taken, but I knew I’d never knowingly been involved with any drug dealers.

Merc was asking me if I could remember ever being photographed with a guy in his forties, as a couple.

‘I’d never go out with a guy that old, Merc!’ I was more pissed off with this implication than anything else.

But poor Mum and Merc had a true perspective of the damage it was causing me as people across Australia read the Saturday-morning headlines. They both knew that public opinion was now in the balance – 90 per cent of Australians were no longer so sure of my innocence, no longer swept up in the hysteria of my trial, but more calmly asking, did she or didn’t she? Is Schapelle a drug dealer or a very unlucky traveller? People were seesawing, ready to be tipped either way. Then bang . . . a smoking gun, photographic proof of a drug past.

The Melbourne journalist who wrote the story had a red-hot scoop – even if the story was all wrong.

It made me look like a liar and a drug smuggler. But it was worse . . . much worse. It was an extremely crucial and sensitive time for me. I was in the middle of my last appeal when these headlines were splashed in newspapers right across Indonesia. The prosecutors were instantly clamouring for copies of the photos to use against me – as proof they’d been right all along. The Indonesian courts could still give me the death sentence.

My mum was beside herself, turning into a protective lioness, fighting to find the truth and protect her baby from this deadly journalistic beat-up. She and Merc started scrambling for answers, but as it was the weekend, they didn’t have much luck. They didn’t sleep; they spent every single hour of that stressful week end twisting their brains, trying to work out where those photos could possibly have been taken. They were dreaming up theories: maybe I’d been unwittingly snapped in the background of a restaurantor party, or maybe they were digitally mocked-up fakes.

Then, on Monday morning, Mum rang the journalist, quickly uncovering disturbing news.

First, he revealed that she was also in the photographs. Mumasked what she was wearing – hopeful it would be a clue to finding out when and where they were taken. But the reporter was hedging. ‘You look like you’re going out to dinner.’ She was baffled: ‘I don’t go out for dinner! What am I wearing?’ He couldn’t say. He didn’t know. He dropped his bombshell. He hadn’t actually
seen
the photos. It took a split second for Mum to absorb what she’d heard. Then she lost it.

‘How dare you! How dare you write this about my girl, when you haven’t even seen the photos?’

He promised to ‘fix’ it if he was wrong. But his story had already hit its mark. People believe what they read, they remember the bad stuff. How can you fix it? How do you undo a front-page story? Surely he should have checked his facts
before
it went to print, before he hurt me and my family.

Mum was fuming. ‘You’re bloody wrong!’ She hung up in disgust.

Her next call was to the South Australian Police. She spoke to a senior policeman on the investigation, who admitted that he’d been warned by his superiors to say nothing. Mum was desperate, hurting badly. She wouldn’t let him hang up. He didn’t. He had a heart. He also knew the truth . . . he knew that the story was all wrong. He didn’t want to lose his job, but he did want to help, so he spoke cryptically. ‘You’ll know where the photos were taken the instant you see them.’ Then it was like a game of verbal charades: he gave her clues, she put it together. It was her best chance yet of unravelling the truth.

‘There are other people in the shots,’ he hinted.