The red passport

In 2005 I married an English man who I believed to be my soulmate. The night we married he 'changed' and became quite diabolical. I realised I had made a terrible mistake immediately. But I had resigned from my job, which was professional - and to this day the best job I had ever had, in order to be close to his child and ex partner with whom he shared custody with. My seven year old son, my new husband and I moved 800km then, with my life possessions on a removal truck to this isolated coastal place where my new husband also worked, two months after the marriage - as planned. The year that followed was sheer hell. He psychologically and physically abused me, quitting his job (as a child therapist for mental health services) almost as soon as I transferred my life. I had a full time job teaching prearranged and for nearly a year I saw it through. The year in many ways was remarkable; a remarkable series of horrors as my new husband showed his true character. To make matters worse he had misplaced his English passport, meaning he was unable to renew his work visa. This required a trip later that year to Immigration in a city 300 km away from where we lived. There we dealt with an elderly immigration officer who held a thick 'file' on my husband; he showed great concern towards me and my young son and the situation we found ourselves in. My Husband continued to laze around at home 'making music', smoking, while I worked and enduring increasing abuse but isolated completely in a 'foreign' town. Countless times my son and I ran from him, staying in motels, but he continuously found us, and wormed his way back to our broken marriage, in which I fully supported him. Until my brother suddenly returned to New Zealand from seven years in Australia. He took on a farm managers job and offered me a place to move to with my son, and if my husband actually wanted to work, my brother said, there would be cash work for him. We packed our necessary possessions into my car, and headed South, almost 1000km South. In this new environment my husband became powerless and my brother stepped into the familial protective role. My husband's resentment increased as he was now far from his son and ex partner and the games they had played. My Brother took my son (his young nephew) to my parents for the weekend and my husband within hours of us being alone, assaulted me. I called police and they drove down the rural dirt roads to the southernmost part of New Zealand where we both were now, and arrested us both (my husband accused me of 'pushing him'. The police interviewed us both, taking him into custody and releasing me as my story was the truthful one. My husband was charged with Make Assaults Female. Several terrible, embarrassing, emotionally exhausting weeks passed as they held him and he awaited trial. My brother employed me to make a video of his farming project, my son and I stayed on. I applied for a job teaching at a small country school with a schoolhouse and I was successful. My husband was charged and confined in custody as he had no visa to be in the country and now a criminal conviction. One day during those few weeks if limbo, driving down those isolated country lanes back from the supermarket with my son I pulled into my brothers' driveway on the farm and a car pulled up. It was the elderly immigration officer we'd met many months prior, at the international airport over 600kms away. 'I just happened to be in the neighbourhood' he told me, as he looked at me with an expression in his eyes which said infinitely more... I made him a cup of tea and we talked.... Your husband is being held in the mens' prison (in the city 600km away) he told me. We would remove him from New Zealand, but as he has no passport due to losing it, we are between a rock and a hard place he told me. 'However' if you can think of where the passport is... His voice trailed off, as we both knew it was hopeless, 'Here's my mobile number' he told me. 'He will be in the next plane home.' Weeks past. The new school year began. My son and I moved to the school house with the contents of the car we had moved down with, as all of my furniture remained in a storage unit 1000km away in that terrible place we'd fled 3 months prior. Finally I made the series of calls, arranging a transporter to being the contents of the container to us in our new home at the other end of the country. It was time to start afresh. Once the load arrived I set to unpacking. I was horrified during unpacking to find so many letters and personal effects of my husband amongst it and I set to destroying much of this to 'burn' memories of him and the lives of my son and I he had so nearly destroyed. I made a bonfire in the paddock and literally broke fire laws as I burned a mountain of papers, old clothes, bills (he'd left me financially devastated too) night began to fall and I was down to the last armload. I noticed a trail of pink tarot cards falling between my back door and the bonfire which a well meaning friend had given me back in my youth. I reached down to pick these up and as darkness fell I reached for the last pink backed tarot card. Only it wasn't pink. It was red. I picked it up. It was a British passport. Lying there in the flickering glow of my bonfire. To this day I can't get my head around the moment or what followed. Shaking I opened it and instantly reached for my cellphone making the call to the elderly immigration officer. I've just actually retired he told me, but don't you worry. This is fate' he said simply, 'I will have him on the next plane home'. 24 hours later my husband, escorted by two policeman was removed from New Zealand. To this day this experience is beyond my comprehension. The nature of these isolated communities 1000km apart, the missing passport searched for with obsessive efforts by me in our past home, 1000 kms North, and it lying on that lonely rural lawn - not even a neighbour living within 4 km, defies logic.