by Wendy James
Chip turned to me, his voice weary. “That’s the thing. It’s not something new. And she’s not saying it. This is old news, apparently. You really should’ve told Hal about it, Suze. He might’ve been able to prepare for it somehow. It’s too late now, even if this stuff isn’t going to be admissible.”
“What stuff?”
“It’s that bloody website, 180Degrees. They’ve dug up some dirt on you from the eighties. It’s like they’ve got some sort of vendetta.”
“What kind of dirt?”
“Filthy dirty dirt.” He tried to smile, to make it into a joke. “You clearly had a more interesting youth than I did.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about—” I began.
And then, suddenly, I did.
By the time I was in my late teens, I had everything any girl could possibly want. At sixteen I had scored, with very little effort—I’d just done a screen test on a whim—a plum role on what was destined to become one of Australia’s best-loved soaps. On screen I was Gypsy, the show’s sweetheart: a girl-next-door surfie chick, an integral part of a loving but chaotic family, a close-knit surfing community. In real life I was living the teenage dream. With Mary permanently AWOL and Nan and Pop too old to have much of an impact on my decisions, I was independent in a way that most of my peers weren’t. More importantly, I had money. I was also famous. I may not have been Kylie—I’d never learned to sing, and my hair wouldn’t take a perm—but I was the next best thing. Smart, but not scarily so, dark-skinned and doe-eyed and not too “up myself,” I was everybody’s daughter, sister, best friend, and girlfriend—a Mediterranean Gidget without the bangs.
I floated through life, not giving too much, taking what I wanted, imagining that I somehow deserved all I’d got—the success, the admiration, the occasional trip up the red carpet, the cameras flashing—and thinking, too, that I had power, over men, over the world, over my future. And I thought, silly young thing that I was, that the power was real, that it actually meant something, that it would last.
What I didn’t have at that age was anyone to guide me. My grandparents had done their best to raise me, but they were bewildered by the way my life had turned out. They’d already had their hearts broken by my mother, and they’d had to work hard to hide their disappointment—and their fear—when it looked as if I was going to be swallowed up by that same world. I knew that, despite all the clear evidence of my success, they’d never stopped being afraid that eventually I was going to go off the rails, too.
And eventually, inevitably, off the rails I went, although my derailment certainly wasn’t as tragic, or as long-lasting, as my mother’s. Thankfully my grandparents didn’t have to witness any of it, not that I would have been inclined to modify my behavior for them. Pop had died and Nan’s once-sharp mind had begun to fade and she’d moved into an old people’s home, her connection to reality rapidly diminishing.
By the mid-1990s, Beachlife had been running for almost a decade and the storylines were getting stale, the ratings beginning to lose momentum. Like the Titanic, once damaged, these big soaps tended to sink rapidly. First we lost a few of the biggest stars, most moving on to other soaps, the big screen. In all my years on the show, I’d been complacent about my future prospects. My agent hadn’t worried either. So when management decided to kill me off in a bid to up the ratings, I was shocked and unmoored. There was a requisite fifteen minutes of public sadness over my tragic “death,” but once I’d made my exit from the show, I was no longer a hot property. Although I was pretty and talented, I was limited—too well known, not well enough trained, and not, it had to be said, all that ambitious. My agent was apologetic—there was nothing going—my identity, my signature looks, were so tied up with the show, and with being Gypsy . . . It was over, and unlike Kylie, I had no plan B.
And I clearly needed a plan B. I wasn’t by any means a spendthrift, but apart from buying the apartment in Bondi with a deposit large enough to leave me with only a minuscule mortgage, I was broke. A small fortune could easily trickle through your fingers when you bought whatever clothes or food or cars or holidays you desired, with no thought for a future that might be leaner.
Until then my private life had been relatively tame, as far as soapie starlets go. There had been no sordid scandals, no love triangles or lesbian affairs to cover up. I wasn’t big on partying or clubbing; the only red-carpet affairs I attended were the ones management told me to go to.
I’d had two serious boyfriends. The first was the lovely, and as it turned out extremely gay, Sebastián Mendes (although he stayed in the closet until the beginning of the new century). He played Mick, my surf lifesaver love interest on the show. Seb and I were an item for a few years and lived together for almost twelve months, with the blessing of the studio. We had a great time, and though I imagined I was in love for a short while, it was an easy relationship, without any intensity—just two mates having fun.
My second serious relationship—when my own star was at its peak—was with one of the film editors, Dylan Menzies. Dylan was older, and though he was extremely good-looking in a slightly sinister way, nobody would ever describe him as lovely. He was sharp, slick, ambitious, opportunistic. He ran with what my nan would have called a fast crowd—clubbers and druggies, low-level crims—in a world that I knew existed but had somehow avoided. We broke up after a tempestuous yearlong relationship—his penchant for drugs and other women too much of a challenge to my own innate conservatism.
It’d been a year or so since our breakup when I bumped into him at a club. It was a few weeks after I finished on the show, there was no work on the horizon, and my bank balance—and sense of self-worth—was rapidly dwindling. He’d persuaded me to go to a party at Edward Levant’s waterfront mansion. I knew of Levant, and though everyone who was anyone knew Levant, I’d never actually met him. A millionaire back when the term meant something, he was a constant presence on the fringes of the film scene. No one (in the pre-Underbelly world) seemed to know much about him, where he’d come from, what he did, or why he had money. There were all sorts of rumors—that he was the head of an international drug syndicate, that he sold arms, that he dealt in human trafficking—but no one seemed to care. We were young, we were having fun, and people like Levant provided money, glamour, a place to be seen, and people to be seen with, and that was all that mattered.
According to Dylan, Levant wanted to get into the film industry. He was looking to invest, perhaps head a production company, and Dylan thought there might be an opportunity there for me. And as there didn’t seem to be anything else looming on my horizon, how could I resist?
I met up with Dylan at a nightclub in Darlinghurst and had a few drinks. Very uncharacteristically, I was coked up, too. “For fuck’s sake, Suzannah,” Dylan had sighed, only half joking, when I’d initially declined, “you can’t turn up to Eddie Levant’s place straight. You’ll get us thrown out.”
So I had shared a line, or maybe two, and when the taxi set us down outside the imposing stone gates of Levant’s Point Piper mansion, my inhibitions were pretty loose. And by the time I’d had a few glasses of Bollinger and shared a line or two more with a couple whose names I never bothered to ask, they were nonexistent.
The following day, I woke up on the floor of a holding cell at Kings Cross police station, having been arrested after a police raid at Levant’s. I had no memory of what I’d actually been doing when the shit hit the fan the night before. It was only when my agent bailed me out that afternoon that I found out what had gone on. Apparently when the police descended, I’d been in the basement, where our host kept a fine assortment of bondage gear, appropriately dressed (or undressed, depending on your perspective) and ready to play house.
It hadn’t been a huge thing in the press at the time—there’d been some much bigger names at Levant’s that night. A couple of supermodels and visiting American actors had been among those arrested, and naturally the tabloids had focused on them. But I had been lis
ted among those charged, and though it hadn’t exactly harmed my already floundering career, it hadn’t helped either. The charges against me were dropped the following day, and by the next week, the affair was nothing more than yesterday’s fish-and-chip wrapping. My career had more or less ground to a halt soon after, though that had nothing to do with the arrest.
On the advice of my agent, who was refreshingly, if brutally honest, I’d decided to pursue an ordinary life. I enrolled in an arts degree, majored in English and drama, then did my high school teaching diploma. And life, as my agent had assured me it would, had gone on.
I’d met Stephen in my first year of teaching, married him the following year, and a little less than twelve months later, Stella had arrived. I can remember laughing with Steve about my single criminal escapade, and that was probably the last time I’d ever mentioned it. In fact it was probably the last time I’d thought about it; far bigger and harder things had happened to me since.
I put off looking for the story until Chip had gone. He grunted his goodbye, not quite meeting my eye. Mary was in one of her compliant moods, happily entranced by the morning cartoons. The dogs were lying in a sliver of pale sunlight on the veranda, enjoying their brief respite from Mary’s attentions. I made myself a coffee, then sat at the table with my laptop and googled my name. I had to scroll down a little to find the 180Degrees link, which gave me some hope. Clearly the story hadn’t gone viral. Yet.
KIDNAPPER’S S&M PAST
Ellie Canning’s female alleged abductor, Suzannah “Gypsy” Wells, arrested in Sydney raid in nineties. Connections with drug lord Eddie Levant revealed.
I scanned the story. While it was surprisingly light on outrageous innuendo, it somewhat less surprisingly failed to mention the fact that the charges had been dropped. There was some background on Eddie Levant—his underworld connections, his 2005 conviction for money laundering—and then the history of my alleged part in Ellie’s abduction was related again. Though no links between the two events were made explicit, they didn’t need to be. The damage had been done.
The story was accompanied by another photo—one that I’d never seen before—taken at Edward Levant’s party. It hadn’t appeared at the time; I really had been small fry, not worth the newsprint. I didn’t recall posing for the shot, but then I didn’t remember much about the night in question at all. The picture was so hazy, so out of focus, that I suspected I wasn’t even the intended subject. Still, it was recognizably me—a much younger and thinner version, maybe, but indisputably me. I looked more silly than threatening, dressed in what looked like costume-party bondage gear—a leather belt and shiny chaps, a whip in one hand, plastic handcuffs in the other. I was topless—another detail I’d somehow forgotten—and in a gesture typical of the confusing times we were living through, some puritan at this absurd scandal rag had felt compelled to cover my pert little breasts with a black modesty strip.
The following day, there was more. Again, it was on 180Degrees, and again it was the sort of story that no reputable newspaper would dare touch.
EXCLUSIVE: SUZANNAH WELLS’S INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP WITH STUDENT REVEALED
A former student at an elite NSW private school has told 180Degrees that Suzannah Wells, the Enfield Wash drama teacher charged with the abduction of 18-year-old Ellie Canning, was forced to resign from her teaching position in 2015 after developing an inappropriate relationship with one of her senior students.
The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that Wells was forced to resign from Manning College after complaints were made by the girl’s parents. “There were rumors flying about that they’d had a lesbian relationship, but it was all kept really hush-hush. No one could really work it out.” While both the girl and her parents have refused to comment, it is possible that Wells may have been grooming the girl as a potential surrogate.
After her departure from Manning College, Wells worked as a substitute teacher in Sydney. In 2018 she took up a full-time position at Enfield Wash High School.
Even with the distance of years, I still couldn’t see what I’d done wrong when it came to Taylor Abbott. Or locate the precise moment I’d overstepped. Or why I’d been chosen to be the scapegoat for her failure. Taylor Abbott had come to Manning College from a boarding school in Sydney. I hadn’t been told the full story, but there were rumors that she’d been asked to leave the school for one of the usual reasons: drugs, boys, or booze, or a combination of all three.
It was true that I’d encouraged her in class, given her good marks for her performances. She was good, a natural. But she was in no way favored, a teacher’s pet. She was far too spiky, too cool for that.
New senior students were assigned a teacher for the first term, which meant weekly meetings, and I’d been made her mentor. These meetings were conducted in a classroom—in my case, the drama room—at lunchtime, the door left open, as it must be when you’re alone with a student. The meetings were never what you would call private. There’d be other students in and out, other teachers, sometimes a bunch of kids queued outside, waiting to use the room for rehearsals. These meetings were always brief, always quite formal, the mentor’s job circumscribed—a matter of box-ticking, really. Was she settling in? Was she having any difficulties with any of her subjects? With other students? Staff? With course content? I was just there to answer any of her concerns—but as far as I was aware, and as far as she let on, Taylor was settling in well enough.
I’d met the girl outside school just once, by chance, at a café. Taylor had been there alone, waiting for a friend, she said, and I was on my way out, but I sat down at her invitation and chatted for a few minutes. We discussed school, the timing of assignments, her logbooks. I remember saying something encouraging about her proposal for her individual performance piece for her final exam—she’d decided to do a monologue from a modern adaptation of Medea. It was a little bold, perhaps, more confronting than the usual student fare, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle.
About halfway through the year, things changed. Taylor began to miss classes, and she turned up once or twice very obviously hungover, sometimes drunk or stoned. She failed to hand in several assignments, missed an assessable performance. I tried to talk to her, but she brushed me aside. When I finally informed the head of the department, she told me that Taylor was in danger of failing not only drama but most of her other subjects, too. Mandatory work wasn’t being completed; she was disruptive in class. Her attendance was only sporadic. She wouldn’t get the marks she needed for university; indeed, it was unlikely she’d receive any leaving qualifications at all.
Eventually the situation reached a crisis point, and her parents had to be informed. She was failing every subject by this time, but her downward trajectory in drama, where for a short time she had been coming top of the year, had been the most profound.
When the complaint came, shockingly out of the blue, her parents were gunning for me. I was accused of breach of care and additionally of inappropriate behavior, of attempting to establish an inappropriate relationship, whatever that meant. The accusation was ludicrous, dismissed in private by the head of school and all the staff, by everyone who knew me. But the girl’s parents had money and clout. They would take it no further, they said, if I left the school. They had done their research; they knew who I was and knew my background. I’d been up-front about the arrest when I applied for the job—it had been a youthful indiscretion, the panel had agreed, and not one that was likely to be repeated. And it would in no way color my behavior with the students. The head and numerous teachers came to my defense when the allegations were made, but ultimately it was a board decision. The board was naturally more concerned with the reputation of the school than with the truth or the well-being of staff, and I was asked to resign. It wasn’t a sacking—that was made very clear. I was offered a reasonable, in fact generous, package—six months’ salary, additional superannuation—ensuring I’d go quietly. They gave me a stellar reference; I signed a nondisclos
ure agreement and took a few months off to nurse my wounded pride. I moved back to Sydney and worked as a temp until Mary turned up like a bad penny and the job in Enfield Wash came along.
The piece on 180Degrees insinuated that the girl at Manning College had a fortuitous escape, that I’d obviously had my eye on her as a possible surrogate—that it was a near miss for her. I genuinely enjoyed teaching teenage girls, but when I looked at them—their clear eyes, their not-quite-formed faces—what I saw wasn’t a potential breeder of a longed-for child, but my own child, my own daughter, who would have been a teenager then, had she lived.
Sometimes it was impossible not to allow the fantasy, to imagine my own girl at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—miraculously, gloriously, incandescently alive.
This time I’d seen the piece before Hal and rang to alert him. And this time he wasn’t surprised—I’d told him the story yesterday, when he’d asked whether there was anything else in my past that might provide a headline.
“Twenty, even ten years ago, it wouldn’t have been an issue,” he sighed. “Sub judice actually meant something. But it’s a new world. These online outlets don’t let a minor thing like the law get in their way.” Like the Levant article, there was little we could do in the way of damage control. “We could try and sue them, but even though that arsehole Hemara lives in Australia, the site registration is impossible to determine. There’s nothing we can do. If the case goes to court, we can ask that the jury refrain from taking any of these stories into account . . .”
“But can’t we just tell them the truth—maybe get the head in to tell them what really happened?”
“I suppose we could get her in as a character witness if it comes to that, but we can’t address this specific allegation. We just have to hope that no one in the jury has heard about it.”
“But it’s not true. There was a girl, and there was an accusation, but I only resigned to make it all go away. If it’d been true, I’d have been charged. And I certainly wouldn’t still be teaching. Doesn’t the truth matter?”