This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner Page B

down to the pub for tea. But, as the pressures of parenthood increased,
Rob and Cindy argued all the time, particularly about money. Robbie was never happy
in his job—not on the shire, not in the Jim’s Mowing franchise, not even at the Cumberland
Resort. King seemed to be describing a pair of ill-matched malcontents: a grumbling
husband, a demanding wife. In his opinion, they had got way ahead of themselves by
trying to build a $300,000 house on one wage. They had a habit, he had said in his
witness statement, of measuring themselves against what other people had. Farquharson
complained to King that Cindy was always buying things they couldn’t afford.
    ‘Cindy always wanted the best of everything for the house,’ said King. ‘She wanted
the best .’
    Hearing this, Farquharson glanced at his sisters and executed a veritable dance of
grinning and squinting and shoulder-squirming. Kerri Huntington returned a sardonic
nod.
    When the marriage ended, King went to see Farquharson at his dad’s place once a week
or so, ‘to comfort him, because we were mates. He was down. He was gloomy. He was
angry and upset of what had happened.’ One night Farquharson said to him, ‘Cindy’s
seeing someone else, the bitch.’ King did not tell him that he already knew this
from talk around town. Once, in a dark mood about the break-up, Farquharson spoke
to King about driving off a cliff or running his car into a tree.
    Again Farquharson swung his head towards his family in the public benches. He rolled
his eyes and twisted his mouth into a bitter smile, as if at an outrageous lie.
    ‘What did you say to that?’ asked Rapke.
    ‘I said,’ muttered King between hard lips, ‘“Don’t be stupid.”’
    A month or so after the Farquharsons parted, King was driving out of his street on
to the highway, heading west to the Winchelsea shops, when he saw Robbie sitting
in his white Commodore under a tree on the other side. He was looking straight ahead
in an easterly direction, down the road to Geelong. King made eye contact on his
way past, but kept going. Farquharson started his car and took off in the opposite
direction.
    When they ran into each other later that week, King asked him, ‘Was that you sitting
under a tree? What were you doing?’
    ‘I was thinking,’ replied Farquharson, ‘about lining a truck up.’
    King went home and reported this to his wife. They agreed that it was Robbie ‘talking
shit again’, and swept it under the carpet.
    …
    One Friday evening in the winter of 2005, a few months before Father’s Day, Mary
King asked her husband to drive to the fish-and-chip shop and bring home some hot
chips for tea. Lucy and Lachlan, their two youngest kids, went along for the ride.
King sent them into the shop to order, while he waited outside in the car.
    As it happened, Farquharson was in the shop with his three boys. He wandered out
and stood by King’s open window to chat. He seemed tired and down in the dumps. His
mood did not improve when Cindy Gambino drove up and parked. She walked past and
greeted the men by name. King spoke to her, but Farquharson would not. When Gambino
disappeared into the shop, King rebuked him for his rudeness.
    ‘You have to say hello. Come on, Robbie. You have to move on a bit.’
    ‘No, you don’t,’ said Farquharson. He was very angry. ‘Nobody does that to me and
gets away with it. That fucking car she’s driving, I paid $30,000 for it. She wanted
it, and they’re fucking driving it. Look what I’m driving—the fucking shit one. And
now it looks like she wants to marry that fucking dickhead. There’s no way I’m going to let him and her and the kids live together in my house, and I have to fucking
pay for it and also pay maintenance for the kids—no way.’
    ‘You have to move on,’ insisted King.
    Farquharson said, ‘How?’
    In the court, a tense pause. Rapke waited, squinting, face upturned. King shifted
from foot to foot. He stammered. With an effort of will, he