Over a two-Coke lunch, Dening, 58, filled in the details of her journey from a trapped wife to a self-sufficient life, which was no less treacherous than her son’s 10-year rise to the top of his sport.

Seeking an Easier Life

Dening shakes her head now, thinking of how she came to Australia in search of an easier life than the one she had in the Philippines. After studying nursing in college in Manila, she said, she took a job as a medical secretary and rented a room in a boardinghouse. Her landlady had a sister, who was single and whose name was registered with a marital agency in Australia. As Dening recalled, “They said, ‘Can we find a husband for her because she’s a spinster?’ ”

A letter of introduction from an Australian man seeking a wife arrived in the mail for the landlady’s sister, but she had moved to Italy. The letter fell into the hands of the landlady, who passed it on to Dening. The letter was from Alvyn Day.

On a whim, Dening penned a reply. That was how she “met” Alvyn.

“Maybe I was tired of Manila,” she said. “I maybe had enough of working as well.”

Dening looked at it as if she were writing her own fairy tale, moving to a strange, new world for a more comfortable, more contented life as a wife and mother with a Prince Charming conjured by the Fates.

But her new life in Queensland, after the wedding in the Philippines, was more Brothers Grimm than Walt Disney. Alvyn, who had already fathered three daughters and a son from two earlier marriages, both of which ended in divorce, abused alcohol. He became belligerent when he drank, Dening said. When the girls were little, she said, her husband went through alcohol rehabilitation because his drinking was hindering his ability to keep a job.