Fiction featuring Care Experience
The Other Wife
Michael Robotham 2018
2018
There are two Care Experienced characters in The Other Wife. There’s the woman who shows up when Joe O’Loughlin’s father is in hospital, claiming to be his wife. Turns out the respectable doctor, William O’Loughlin, has 2 families: the one Joe is a member of and a secret one with Olivia. Olivia has lived in England since she was 13 (she’s from Romania) and her tennis coach cum guardian raped her repeatedly.
Apart from the ruckus around her marriage with the paedophile tennis coach, Olivia’s adult life has been a mostly quiet one.
Olivia is in contrast to 23-year-old Micah Beauchamp, who was raised in kinship care, sexually abused by a neighbour for 7 years and then at age 13 set that neighbour’s house on fire (another vigilante!) for which, of course, he was punished by 3 months in detention. The paedophile lost fingers in the fire but there’s no indication he was state sanctioned for the abuse.
Micah is out of control but then so is his best mate, Ewan, Olivia’s son from her marriage to the paedophile who was raised by Olivia and the good doctor.
The above are suspects in the attempted murder of William O’Loughlin but it took some fine upstanding non-Care Experienced citizens to carry that out.