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The profits from the cattle had gone into a property management trust account. That reserve fund would pay for the first stage of my development plan. From then on, future development would be paid for from the profits from the previous stage.
I had already purchased the two adjoining twelve-hundred-acre properties, each of which had river frontage and water pumping licences. All I had to do was sit on them until they were needed. In the meantime, I had stocked them and had employed an experienced cattleman to manage what was now a large grazing operation carrying one thousand breeders. The profits were substantial.
I loved nothing better than climbing aboard my favourite horse and giving the manager and his cowboys a hand during mustering time and with other property management tasks when needed. Sam used to enjoy it, too; right up until she became too busy with her career.
Looking at things from my current viewpoint, I was pleased I'd had the foresight to put the ownership of everything through a trust-owned company. Of course, I was disappointed that I was pleased. Locking Sam out of our financial windfalls was never my intention. In fact, until I'd first suspected her duplicity, I hadn't even considered it a possibility.
---oooBJSooo---
Although I had been academically advanced, I preferred working with my hands and had no desire to obtain a tertiary-level education. I was only seventeen when I finished year 12, and as I had been working in my father's building firm during school holidays since I was twelve, I started an apprenticeship under his tutelage. He was a master builder, and I envisaged following in his footsteps.
Unfortunately, he suffered a massive heart attack and died when I was just finishing my second year, and his business was sold. The new owner didn't have room for me in his apprenticeship package as he wanted to make way for his own son.
I ended up out of a job and started going off the rails - probably as a reaction to my father's death, as he and I had been very close. The local police sergeant, who had been a friend of my father, pulled me aside one day and suggested that I consider spending some time in one of the armed services before I ended up in prison.
"You're an adult now," he said. "It's about time you did some growing up. A bit of regimentation and discipline wouldn't do you any harm at this point in your life."
I took his advice and joined the Army. He was right. I became a man during the next six years.
After going through basic and Infantry training programs, I applied for a place in the Engineer Corps, where I completed my carpentry apprenticeship. With that out of the way, I then applied for a transfer to the Third Commando Regiment, which is where I spent the next four-and-a-half years. During that period, I deployed once to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan.
The sergeants in my Commando unit recognised that I was a skilled rifleman - I had been pretty good with a rifle and a skinning knife when I had been growing up, which is how I paid for my first car and supplemented my meagre apprentice's wage - and they mentioned it to my platoon commander. He passed the information on up the line, which resulted in me being sent off to sniper school.
I didn't turn out to be the best of the best, but I was acknowledged as the second-best of the best in my class. The best of the best had only beaten me by a poofteenth of a centimetre in our final round. He and I were good mates, so I didn't call for a shootout. As George Carlin said, "Don't sweat the petty things....".
Being a sniper doesn't mean you avoid doing all the other things involved with commando training, though, so I also learned the other skills required of a Special Forces soldier. A small part of that training came out in the underground carpark of the hotel at which the legal firm's end-of-year function had been held on that fateful Friday night.
As Fred Haig and Steve Warren had discovered, I shouldn't be underestimated simply because I was a lowly construction worker. That was a lesson Mr Nathan-fucking-Kingston and his cohort were also about to learn.
It surprised me that Sam hadn't warned him to tread warily. She knew I'd put in some Army time. But maybe, knowing my trade, she'd thought I'd spent my time rebuilding destroyed villages.
That was probably my fault. One of the things Sam and I didn't talk about was my wartime experience. They were reserved for those times when I got together with my comrades. As the saying goes: "You had to have been there".
Those who hadn't seen the elephant and heard the owl would never understand what it had been like. They would certainly never be able to understand why we laughed off so many close calls, like the time we watched as one of our patrol members high-stepped it across a clearing like a rugby player trying to avoid being tackled while a raghead was trying to cut him off at the knees with 7.62mm AK47 rounds. Or how that same raghead danced when he was hit with a series of three-round bursts fired by five of his target's comrades.
Tommy Jones, the raghead's target, received only a flesh wound as he dived behind cover that day. But he's been known as 'Prancer' ever since.
We weren't always out playing amongst the weeds, though. In my spare time, I covered a large part of my master builder's theory component and started working on my business degree through the Australian Defence Force Academy. At the end of my enlistment, the Department of Veteran Affairs - through their transition program - helped me find a local builder who took me on and helped me to acquire my Master Builder's certification. They also helped me with the post-service costs incurred while studying for my Bachelor of Business degree.
---oooBJSooo---
Perhaps Sam had forgotten about those achievements, although I don't know how she could. She'd been with me when I'd attended my university graduation ceremony. But then, I guess it's understandable. After all, what are business degrees and other qualifications when compared to a law degree?
That probably explains why, after opening an invitation to the Master Builder's Association's annual ball only a few months after celebrating our third wedding anniversary, she'd stuck it up on the refrigerator door with all the other bits and pieces of promotional garbage. It was only when, two weeks out from the event, I'd gone to the fridge-door library to retrieve a Chinese takeaway menu to order a meal that I'd seen the invitation half-hidden behind a magnetic business card for a local auto repair business.
When I asked her about it, she explained that, despite it being addressed to me, she'd opened it because she'd recognised it as an invitation to something. She said she thought it would be okay to open it so she could note it down on our joint activity calendar. After ordering dinner, I removed the invitation - which was extended to Mr Aaron Bourke BBus, MB and Mrs Samantha Bourke LLB - from its envelope and stuck it on the whiteboard beside the calendar. As I pinned it to the board, I noted that the square for Saturday, September twenty-sixth, 2015, was empty.
'So much for her noting it on our calendar,' I thought as I used a red, felt-tipped marker to fill in the details.
"I must have been distracted before I could write down the details," Sam responded when I asked her about it.
That was the day I realised that after only three years of what I had thought was a solid marriage, we were drifting apart. It was also the day I resolved to redouble my efforts to prevent that from happening. That proved harder than I would have imagined.
The discussion about the hidden invitation turned into an all-out brawl. For some reason, she saw my enquiry as an accusation, and that set the tone from then on. I'd only have to ask about something to do with her life or her increasingly busy work schedule, and it would be seen as some sort of inquisition.
It seemed that the more I tried to strengthen our bond with impromptu date nights, flowers and the offer of intimate weekends away, the more resistance I experienced.
But as the saying goes, 'love is blind'. I didn't see anything in her behaviour other than her being under extraordinary pressure at work. In hindsight, however - and in light of what I had learned from Helen Wheeler on the night of Sam's coming out - I realised that her behavioural changes dovetailed perfectly into when she became the exclusive property of her firm's managing partner. As her relationship with him gained in intensity, ours withered and died.
---oooBJSooo---
Of course, knowing what I now knew brought into question whether Sam had ever loved me. Or whether I had merely been chosen as a beard to hide behind while she indulged in - what had Helen Wheeler called it? - her 'bedroom climbing'?
Those thoughts had me wondering whether our first meeting had been as accidental as it seemed.
'No,' I reasoned. 'It's not possible.'
There had been no prior connection before she'd asked if she could share my table in an inner-city café. I was sitting sipping on a coffee while going over some paperwork I'd picked up from my lawyer a few minutes earlier, and she had decided to get out of her office for a few minutes to clear her head. It appeared we'd both chosen the worst possible time to decide we needed a cup of coffee, as the place was packed with office workers wanting their mid-morning caffeine fix.
Two coffees later, we had introduced ourselves and had exchanged business cards. We had also discovered that we shared a couple of similar interests, one of which, I learned, was an interest in theatre. Two days later, I called the lady I now knew to be Samantha Smithers-Browne - a junior associate at Moreton City Law - to see if she would be interested in joining me to see a Queensland Theatre Company production of Pygmalion.
Our relationship grew from there. While it hadn't been love at first sight, our feelings for each developed as we got to know each other better. Sure, we became lovers quite early in the piece, but while our lovemaking was both exciting and satisfying, that was only part of the package.
Nothing was said, but I was in no doubt that we were in an exclusive arrangement. Except for those occasions when she was assisting with an out-of-town case or attending a training seminar, Sam never gave me any indication that I wasn't the centre of her world. There were only a couple of occasions when we'd had to reschedule a date because she was caught up in work-related activities. I didn't see that as being in any way suspicious because I'd had to do the same thing a couple of times when a job was running behind, and I'd had to jump in to help out at the last minute.
With our lives seemingly in sync and our love for each other having developed to the stage where we hated parting, on the twenty-second of February, 2012, I asked Sam to marry me. That date was the anniversary of the day we'd first met. We were married on June second that same year and moved into Warragunya upon our return from our honeymoon.
---oooBJSooo---
Everything went smoothly for the first three years of our marriage, but the Master Builders Ball invitation thing alerted me to the fact that our lives were changing. Sam seemed to be developing the attitude that she had married beneath herself. She had been working for MCL for almost seven years by that time and had been promoted to senior associate. With her next step just around the corner, I was getting the impression that she was beginning to think that being married to a building contractor - irrespective of how successful he might be - might not look good on her resumé when she became a junior partner in her firm.
I guess the problem was that with every rung of the career ladder she climbed, the more focused she became on her own goals, resulting in the relegation of our goals to the bottom of the pile.
"You're being ridiculous," she'd said when I sat with her to discuss our priorities one night. "Sure, we're both busy. But we still make time for the important things in our lives, and we still love each other. Everything will settle down when I get past my next hurdle."
But thing's didn't settle down. Nor did the important things in our lives receive a higher priority. As soon as one hurdle had been overcome, a new one would appear on her horizon.
While I didn't realise it at the time, the 2015 Master Builders ball would be the last we'd attend together.
By the time the next one came around, we were barely communicating. She no longer showed an interest in my life and no longer shared anything about hers... except, that is, for one occasion in early 2016.
For the whole time I had known her, Sam had attended a training and team-building seminar in the first trimester of each year, which, for planning convenience, was scheduled to run from the last Saturday in March to the Sunday of the following week.
Two things concerned me about these seminars. The first was that she could never tell me in advance where she would be.
"Each seminar is held at a different mystery location," she explained when I'd first asked her about it. "And we don't know where that will be until we arrive".
My second concern was that the participants weren't allowed to take their phones with them. That meant they would be out of contact from when they boarded the bus on the Saturday of their departure until they returned nine days later.
This phone protocol differed from the other times she was away, which was when she was required to support a partner who was pleading a case in an out-of-town location. With one or two exceptions, those trips were scheduled well ahead and generally only lasted two or three days. Because they only came up once or twice each year, we could usually plan around them. More importantly, we could always remain in contact while she was away.
Unlike earlier years, when she would come home with stories about the new laws that had come into effect since their last seminar and case law they'd discussed - along with funny stories about failed attempts at building rope bridges and falling into creeks - Sam's exciting bring-home news from the twenty-sixteen seminar was that she had been given an upward and sideways movement in the firm.
"I've been reassigned," she said excitedly. "Instead of working under one of the junior partners, I'll now be working on one of the senior partner's teams. And not just any senior partner, either. I'll now be under the direction of Nathan Kingston, the managing partner. Isn't it exciting? I couldn't wait to get home to tell you about it."
"That sounds wonderful, Sweetheart," I responded, hoping I displayed more enthusiasm than I felt.
I had met Nathan Kingston several times when attending their firm's Christmas functions. He was a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties who stood about one hundred and eighty centimetres (6-foot) tall with a handsome face and a well-maintained athletic build. His wavy brown hair was greying at the temples, adding to his distinguished appearance. But it was his deep blue eyes that drew my attention. I could see him mesmerising an opposing counsel's witness in a courtroom before striking him or her like a snake striking its prey.
The trouble was that I could also imagine him doing the same thing with any woman who took his fancy. And the fact that Sam took his fancy was indisputable. I'd seen it in his eyes at the previous year's function. From what Sam had just told me, I suspected he was beginning to make a move on her.
Of course, I didn't know then that her sideways promotion was merely an escalation of what had been happening for some time. She had already taken the bait, and Kingston was now guiding her towards his boat. But he was a canny and patient fisherman, setting only a light drag on his reel.
By the time our fourth wedding anniversary came around on June second, 2016, Sam was working much longer hours than she had ever done in the past. Late nights and weekends had become the norm, and we were lucky to get through dinner that night without her falling asleep in her soup. There was certainly none of our usual anniversary night coital callisthenics afterwards. Not that that was surprising. In just a few short months, our usual sexual interaction had dwindled from frequent and robust to irregular and mundane.
As this was only our fourth anniversary, neither of us bought overly expensive gifts. I gave Sam a Mont Blanc Classique pen, which I thought would add to her professional image. And she gave me a Casablanca Theorema driving watch, which she said would look good on me when I finally got around to finishing my project Mustang. Neither gift was particularly personal, and the kisses we shared as we exchanged them were somewhat less than enthusiastic or loving.
I was away conducting a site inspection when the invitation to the 2016 Master Builders Association ball arrived in mid-August. Sam must have cleared the mailbox when she'd arrived home the previous night and, rather than opening it, had attached it to the kitchen whiteboard with a magnetic pin for me to find when I got back from my trip. After noting the date - September 24 - on the calendar, I repinned the invitation to the notice board so I'd know where to find it when needed.
---oooBJSooo---
It was six days out from the ball that I discovered that if I attended the ball, I would be doing so on my own.
With our interpersonal communications at a low ebb, I had developed the habit of checking our notice board when I came in from work each day. When I checked it on Wednesday, September twenty-first, I noticed that Sam had used a bright red marker to draw an asterisk in the square for Saturday, September twenty-fourth and had run a line through all the boxes for the remainder of the month. Turning to the next page, I saw that the line continued on to Sunday, October ninth, where she had drawn a second asterisk. Flicking back to the September page, I saw she had written the word 'CONFERENCE' in bold, capital letters above the line. It was obvious that she'd either entered it the previous night or after I'd headed off to work that morning.
'Shit!' I thought. 'Three days is not much notice. This must be on hell of a conference if it's going to keep her away from home for sixteen days.' I wondered how long this trip had been in the pipeline. More to the point, I wondered how long Sam had known she would be attending.
'This is going to be an interesting conversation,'.
"I'm sorry about the short notice," she answered when I asked her about it after she arrived home much later than usual that night. I felt she was hoping I would be in bed and fast asleep by then so she could put off addressing the elephant in the room. "But it was sprung on me at the last minute.
"Nathan thought it would be a good idea for me to attend as an observer, telling me it would prepare me for when I become a partner. I wasn't about to refuse the invitation with hints like that being thrown about." I didn't miss the use of her boss's given name. But then I supposed it was natural, considering she had been working closely with him for the past six months.
"Do you know where you'll be going this time?" I asked. "Or is it another of your mystery tours? I only ask because sixteen days seems more like a vacation than a seminar or conference. If I remember correctly, your bosses wouldn't let you take more than two weeks off for our honeymoon. I didn't say anything at the time, but I had to cancel a three-week Pacific cruise I'd been planning so we could fit in with their timetable."
