17. The Butterfly Effect
The relationship between Andrew Spencer and Kelly O’Neil was a long distance one.
He, in Sydney. She, in Melbourne. They commuted as frequently as they could; she more often than he due to the fact that her income was higher and could afford the air fares. Andrew had caught a handful of overnight buses over time, flown occasionally, and spent much of the start of their relationship figuring out how to budget for this. They had met when Kelly had come to Sydney for a wedding on the Saturday, and had been with various members of the bridal party in Circular Quay the night before. It was at a newly established bar that Kelly met Andrew, Andy to his mates, and they got along well. There was instant chemistry and attraction.
There was almost equal disappointment when it was established that she was from the southern capital. But they exchanged numbers anyhow, and since Andy hadn’t felt such a connection with anyone to this degree in a long time, he decided that he’d call, and do what he could to make it work. Kelly was doubtful of the merits of a long distance relationship, but was happy when he called the following Tuesday. The conversations were long and easy, and they both ignored the rotating dollar signs that came with such calls, the five quick beeps at the start of the call that signified STD calls, and their expense.
They met in the early Autumn of 1987, and saw each other on fifteen separate occasions before Kelly decided that Andy was the one. She was going to make the big effort, relocate her life, move in with him, hopefully get married and have babies with him. He called her on the morning that she was set to fly out, on the Sunday in August. They spoke on the phone, but it wasn’t like it usually was. Kelly was frazzled, stressed about the move, and quick to get annoyed at small provocations. Andy thought nothing of it. The last of the boxes had been dispatched, and her finer things had been carefully wrapped in newspapers lying around, old copies of The Age and such. The final treasures were carefully wrapped in the pages of a copy of The Sydney Morning Herald that Andy had brought with him earlier in the year, and had somehow left behind the door of the bathroom. There were a few pages remaining, she flicked through them, saw nothing of note, and binned the remainder. She did the seventh and final check later that evening, in preparation for her cab to pick her up and take her to the airport for her 10.30pm Ansett flight to Sydney, the last of the evening. She’d arrive in Sydney around midnight, tired and stressed, but happy to be there, finally, with Andy waiting to meet her, and their life to begin.
The cab arrived, she got in, bade a mental farewell to her Fairfield unit, and was on her way. Shortly before she arrived far too early at the airport, in the suburb of Clifton Hill – not far from Fairfield – a 19-year-old former Australian Army officer cadet named Julian Knight opened fire on Hoddle Street, killing seven people, and seriously injuring 19 others. Details were sketchy at the airport on the TVs in the airport bar, it just looked awful, but little information was coming to light as she boarded her plane, which flew directly to Sydney, landed on time, to a beaming and happy Andy waiting for her.
At the same time, in suburban Chatswood, a 12-year-old boy was being taught by his mother how to iron a shirt. He was always keen to learn new things. His life was unexceptional at this point.
For Kelly and Andy, there were some struggles, some hardships, and moments where it almost didn’t work. But they persevered. Six months later, in January, at the same Circular Quay bar where they first met, Andy got down on one knee, and proposed to Kelly. She started crying happy tears, gleefully accepted his offer, and they were married nine months later. One year after their intimate nuptials, they welcomed Kasey into the world. She was six pounds, three ounces heavy, perfectly healthy and beautiful to look at. As she grew from being a beautiful baby, to a beautiful toddler, and a beautiful child, Andy occasionally reflected on how it was that his ordinary DNA could be somehow matched with Kelly’s impressive DNA to create something so stunning. She was the apple of his eye. Kelly was ever so proud of little Kasey, fawning and beaming with pride whenever their little girl was on the receiving end of compliments from people, often strangers, old ladies in shopping malls, about what a beautiful child they had. When the mother of one of Kasey’s kindergarten classmates suggested that Kasey could have a future in modelling, Kelly initially scoffed. She raised it that evening with Andy, who was instantly dismissive of the idea, having always had a kind of seething contempt for models: the type of beauty who never would give a normal bloke like him a second look. But Kelly looked into it further, and knowing that she could be present, and exercise caution when required, Kasey would be OK. Andy relented and gave his own OK, secretly proud that his own flesh and blood would be so regarded as to have her modelling professionally at a young age. The money wouldn’t go astray either, interest rates were high and that mortgage wasn’t going away any time soon.
A career that began with kiddie clothing mail out shoots took off rapidly. She was in constant demand, and having never gone through an ‘awkward’ phase, was never burdened by a low self-opinion. She graced the cover of Dolly magazine at 16, was in Cosmopolitan and Cleo before too long, and transferred from print to TV with little fuss or effort. She was featured in a McDonald’s ad, a Coke ad and a Nissan ad. Mostly for summer, Christmas, end of year campaigns that made the most of her sunny, blonde ‘Aussie girl’ countenance. As Andy and Kelly were smart, devoted and practical parents, they had raised her to not take too much of it seriously; they ensured she was well educated, well grounded, and well aware of the fact that fall-back professions and skills were necessary. She was a sweet kid who became a good-natured, happy young woman.
Her career trajectory took her to the next level, LA, the year she was 20, which was 2010. Her agency had a bunch of work lined up for her, as well as some potential auditions for pilot season; either way, it was time to leave the nest. Andy and Kelly bade her a tearful farewell at Sydney airport; Kasey flew to LA and was gainfully employed three days and seventeen hours later.
Part of the deal was to show up at events, be seen; be noticed. She went to a party for a random cable network sponsored by an up-and-coming vodka brand. She posed for photographs in front of the brand marquee. Inside the event, there were many faces she recognised, including the Australian actor she remembered from an event in Sydney, similar to this one, only a year earlier. He was attractive, but married as far as she could remember. At this event, he was alone, and looked like he hadn’t slept in a while. With a vodka martini in hand, she walked over to him to reintroduce herself. He seemed sad, but friendly. They spoke for a while; she was excited about being in the States. He nodded and smiled appreciatively, talking about how they show he was on was featured on the network for whom this party was thrown. The room became abuzz when Paris Hilton walked in, so whatever they were speaking about got drowned out by the paparazzi furore. They sat in a booth together, and the actor spoke in reserved tones about how his wife had recently left him. He was putting up a brave front, and Kasey felt nothing but sympathy for him. She could almost feel his sorrow in her chest; he had, perhaps, the saddest eyes she had ever seen. At one point, he mustered every last ounce of his strength, masculinity and acting talent to prevent a single tear from escaping his eyes. Kasey noticed this, and felt an unending desire to comfort him, to help him through this, to kiss him, to make him feel better.
She was undeniably beautiful, and the actor was taken by her sincerity and the warmth and familiarity of a girl from the Sydney suburbs. He put it to her softly that he’d love to leave with her, and rested his hand on the top of hers.
She felt warmth and compassion in his touch. She felt she trusted him. She decided then and there to throw caution to the wind, and left the party with him, even though technically being at the party was work, and a networking opportunity. Her agent wouldn’t be too impressed if she knew Kasey was leaving so early, but would be slightly more impressed when she found out with whom she was leaving.
They went back to his place, where they stood on his balcony overlooking a small ravine in the Hollywood Hills. He kissed her, she responded in kind, and that night they made love. The next morning, she left, thinking perhaps it might have been a mistake to sleep with him the night she met him, but he was a nice guy, and it felt good. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do, and she didn’t really want to start a relationship so soon after arriving, even with someone as well-known as him. The actor reflected on the encounter as having been like a tonic; she was beautiful, and self-assured, and lovely to be around. He was in nowhere near ready to move on having just been left by his wife, but this one moment, unlike the others, spoke to him on a different level. He felt better than he had done for a long time. Perhaps the day was not going to be another bad one after all.
But … there are consequences. And as the butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, a tropical storm tears through a Philippine fishing village several weeks later.
The last remnants of that copy of The Sydney Morning Herald that Kelly was using to wrap those last few treasures had a story in it this time, a story about a talented, intelligent 12-year-old who was on a mission to get re-admitted to his school after being suspended for reasons he claimed were unfair. This kid, it turns out, used the expression, ‘… of his own volition’, an expression Andy occasionally used. It annoyed Kelly. It sounded pretentious. She finished reading the article, and it annoyed her some more. The type of person who lives in Sydney and uses words like ‘volition’ annoyed her. Was this typical of Sydney people that even pre-teen boys are so pretentious? The stresses of an interstate move were getting to her, and this was just one more thing on the list. She decided that she needed a better mindset, so rather than wander through the flat, she left it and went for a walk; a long contemplative walk around her suburb. She got to the level crossing near Fairfield station, which just began to descend as she arrived. The clanging of the bells and the flashing red lights pierced her skull and made her even more resentful of Andy and the fact that she was making the move to Sydney, and he was not making the move to Melbourne.
It was then that she decided that she wasn’t going to go. She would cancel her ticket, call the removalists and get them to bring her stuff back. She’d get the lease that she had sub-let to her colleague Jeanette back without a problem, and if Andy had a problem with it, he’d be free to move to Melbourne. They could start a life here together, she’d be fine with that. But as the train passed, the lights stopped flashing and the bell ceased its incessant ringing, the impracticalities of all that became clear. She could, and would be sensible. She loved Andy, she really did. She wanted to move to Sydney to be with him. She liked Sydney, had the prospect of a new, interesting job on the horizon, and the whole thing was exciting. Becoming momentarily belligerent about it, only to recover her earlier, clearer head had her infused with more energy, to the point where she jogged home. She returned home, sweaty and flustered. She showered. She calmed herself. The call to the cab company to book her trip to Tullamarine later that evening was made, but fifteen minutes later than it was supposed to be. When the cab pulled up, it was late, due to traffic, and Kelly was impatient, and curt with the driver. She said in no uncertain terms that he needed to get to the airport quicker, because she didn’t want to miss her flight. It was the last one of the evening.
There were road works on Bell Street in Preston, so the driver decided to drive to the freeway entry on Brunswick Road instead. But then he made a wrong turn after being in the ‘left turn only’ lane near Queens Parade, and ended up on Hoddle Street outside Clifton Hill train station. And it was at that exact time that Julian Knight began to open fire, and the third bullet from his Ruger rifle pierced the glass of the taxi’s rear passenger window, and into Kelly’s throat. And the last thought that entered her mind was ‘I just swallowed a bug’, except it wasn’t a bug, as the bullet passed through her neck vertebrae, severing the vital connective tissue, and she died in the back seat of that taxi right then and there. She had neglected to confirm her flight booking by phone, as was custom, and the 10:30pm Ansett flight took off without her, and at midnight, Andy was left waiting, and wondering why she wasn’t on the flight when it landed. He checked with the Ansett staff, she never boarded the flight. Her home phone rang out from the pay phone he used at the terminal, and again when he got home. And it was only the next day after a sleepless, frustrated, angry, worried night did the full horror of what happened become clear to him, and he fell into a deep, unending despair. He would emerge from it close to three years later, his life forever altered, his state of mourning perpetual, his heart irreparably broken.
In a house in Chatswood the next day, as the Curtin family was eating breakfast, the news on radio 2UE reported in horrifying detail what would come to be known as the Hoddle Street Massacre. And the 12 year old boy who the previous night – bereft of the intellectual curiosity that comes from already knowing how to iron a shirt – went to bed feeling extraordinarily sad after initial reports began to come in to the Ten Eyewitness newsroom, reflected on how he remembered the Hoddle Street Massacre when it was new. And how it was perplexing that history was repeating itself, but only to him. But he didn’t notice that the death toll was eight people at the hands of Julian Knight, as opposed to seven, when it happened the first time. He hadn’t remembered the specific numbers. And he didn’t pay it much heed. He was having a very difficult evening, followed a very difficult night. He did not sleep. The next morning was likewise, incredibly difficult for him.
Because Kelly O’Neil got annoyed by a single word in an old newspaper that was never originally printed that way. She was never meant to re-think her plans as a result of it, only to come to her senses. She was supposed to have been in an earlier cab. She never got to Sydney. And she never moved in with Andrew Spencer. And they never married. And they never had their beautiful baby Kasey, who never grew up, and never graced various magazine covers, was never in TV ads selling cars and Coca-Colas and franchise hamburgers. Kasey Spencer never moved to LA to pursue her modelling career, never went to the Starz/Semaphore Vodka party. She never met Michael Curtin. He never kissed her on his balcony. They never made love, and never tenderly parted company the next day. Michael never knew the small but significant respite from his post-relationship gloom that a moment of sexually chemical simpatico generated.
He never contemplated that it was the one encounter that formed a stop-gap to his emotional demise. It was the one spherical unit of cognitive matter holding the levee back. The moment that Julian Knight squeezed his trigger finger, that sphere vanished from his mind; without it, the avalanche of negative thoughts and experiences was not held back. The memory of Kasey, vague as it was, disappeared. Their encounter ceased to happen, and it was this encounter which would no longer keep his sense of self from plummeting beyond repair.
And as his father Clive rubbed his temples listening to the horrors of what had transpired in Clifton Hill the evening before, Michael felt an overwhelming thick fog of depression and helplessness which had been looming the previous night. He felt it cover him completely and infect his very soul, to his last blood cell.
It was Monday, 10 August 1987.