Remembering Anita Cobby by Mark Morri

Author:Mark Morri [Morri, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2016-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

June–August 1986

Apart from confiding in his sister and a few good friends, John had kept most of his inner torment to himself. Now, meeting an old friend and ex-lover, he had found someone he could share his pain with.

‘John arrived and made his way to the pub and crashed while I worked. That night after my shift we talked and drank.’

As the booze flowed, so did John’s tears. ‘I guess that was the first time I really heard what had happened to him after Anita’s death. The moment he realised it was her on the radio in his car, his treatment by the cops, the funeral. The heroin trip. Going to the US and ending up in the looney bin.’

Leonie was struck by how bad John’s physical and mental state had become. He was a lot more damaged than she had imagined from his letters and odd phone call.

‘I guess my reaction was to want to care for him after going through that. Be his friend, support him, hopefully staying strong myself. The next day we walked around London and had a great day.’

For the first time since the murder, far from the manic scenes and frenzy of Sydney and the constant reminders of his life with Anita, John felt himself beginning to relax.

When I interviewed John for this book, I must confess that it made me uncomfortable to realise that he was with a woman so soon after Anita’s death. For years I had carried around this image of Anita and John as star-crossed lovers separated by events beyond their control, and imagined that after Anita’s death John would not have been able to be with anyone else for years. It worried me too that I was going to reveal this to the public in this book, and that readers might think less of John. As these thoughts ran through my head, I would admonish myself for being so judgemental.

When I raised the subject with John, he signalled that he wanted to hide nothing, and that this account was to be as truthful as he could make it. We had spent countless hours talking about those months immediately after Anita’s death and his state of mind at the time.

‘Leonie was my best friend and someone who saved me in a very dark moment,’ he told me.

Then something leaped out at me as I re-read my notes about his time with Leonie in London. She was pre-Anita, and by being with her, he was back in 1979 with a young love and Anita hadn’t been murdered at all. When I put my amateur psychoanalysis to John, he shrugged and said simply, ‘Maybe.’

Leonie comments, ‘He enjoyed the people that didn’t know him and his history; he could be the old him. Yet he relied on the people that knew it all, like me. Understandable, but not always easy.’

John moved into the pub with Leonie. He was leaning on his old girlfriend both physically and mentally. He was also desperate to keep his whereabouts secret from the press.

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