Call Me Cruel Read Online Free Page A

together.
    One Friday night in 1999, they were in the club with two other people after closing time, having a drink while Dean counted the night’s takings. Suddenly a masked man wielding a pistol came in and pointed the gun at Kylie’s head. He yelled at Dean, ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pack the money in the bag, or she’s going to get it!’
    Dean gave the man the money and he left. Kylie was sure it was Robert McCann. She told the police of her suspicions, but there was insufficient evidence and he was never charged with the robbery. Carol says that after this Kylie became depressed, had counselling and left Dean. She went to live for a while with Louisa.
    Robert McCann continued to attack women and, like many abusers, to deny responsibility for his actions. In 2002 he was convicted of bashing and raping his flatmate, an Asian student. He proclaimed his innocence, and at his sentencing, when his record of violence during his marriage came up, he said, ‘I never deliberately set out to hurt or harm my wife.’ He accused Carol of behaving in a manner ‘that triggered off my behaviour’. He was sentenced to a jail term of at least four years and nine months.
    *
    After leaving Dean, Kylie started a relationship with a man named Ben in Victoria. Carol thinks she might have met him on the internet. Ben came up to meet the family, and it turned out he was from a big, religious family. Without warning, Kylie packed her bags and moved to Melbourne, where by December 2000 she’d got a flat by herself at Moonee Ponds and a job at Coles. She also did some work as a nurse’s assistant: she’d always been interested in helping people professionally and had done some volunteer work as an ambulance officer.
    Ben lived with his family not far from Kylie’s new home. Leanne thinks he was a Catholic and that Kylie might have become a Catholic for a while. Carol thought they were lovely people, but she didn’t think that Ben, who was interested in computers, was Kylie’s sort. One night Kylie went to a restaurant with Ben’s family and met Sean Labouchardiere. He was thirty years old, ten years older than her, a handsome man with blond hair, and had been in the navy for six years. Based in Sydney, he’d come to Melbourne to sit an examination for the police force, thinking he might like a change.
    They got talking and Sean gave Kylie a lift home from the restaurant, and the next day after he did the police exam he found her waiting for him. That night they watched some videos at her place. Sean returned to Sydney and Kylie started sending him five to ten text messages a day. She said her relationship was in trouble and asked Sean if he’d go out with her if she broke up with Ben. Sean would later learn that this was one of Kylie’s characteristics: she was great one for change but liked to plan her changes in advance. He agreed with her suggestion.
    He transferred to Melbourne and they began to see each other. She was loud, sometimes stroppy, while he was quiet. He liked the fact she was an easy-going woman with no airs and graces. She dressed in jeans or tracksuit pants, T-shirt or casual jacket, and enjoyed the classic Aussie bands from when she was growing up, Cold Chisel and INXS. She was a very organised person: she kept a diary and was always thinking about what she was going to do. He visited her at work at a nursing home and saw how well she got on with the patients.
    Their relationship was hugely important to Kylie because there were few people in her life. At first she had little to say about her family, and Sean gained the impression she was running away from some problem. She would ring her grandmother Louisa every week, but apart from that there was almost no contact. She had no friends in Melbourne and the couple spent most of their free time with Sean’s family.
    After a while, Kylie told him some of her background, how