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I lost my baby and my hubby


Sassy celebrity ‘cougar’ Charmyne Palavi-Browne cuts a forlorn figure sitting in the middle of a room that’s almost bare of furniture.
Despite the many wedding photos still on display, spray-tan queen Charmyne sadly reveals her 14-month marriage to toyboy Michael Browne is on the rocks.

He has recently moved out – devastated by an Indian surrogate mum’s miscarriage of their IVF baby – and the Bali-style lounge suite has gone with him, together with two TVs and a car.
According to Charmyne, her 24-year-old husband wanted a child so much that he couldn’t cope with news of the loss 12 weeks ago. Michael was grief-stricken – and the discovery that her 16-year-old daughter was pregnant just made matters worse.

‘He took it really badly,’ confides the 40-year-old Brisbane beauty salon owner. ‘He seemed to think my daughter should gift us her baby once it is born! ‘I know he was disappointed and hurting. He cried, and I’d never seen him cry before.‘But he said he didn’t want her living in “his” house anymore! I’m not going to lie, he has really changed. And I don’t like the person he is right now.’

Mother-of-three Charmyne shot to national notoriety two years ago when she gave a TV interview blowing the whistle on rugby league’s bruising sex and groupies culture. In the process, she became the most loathed woman in Australian sport. ‘I hate Charmyne’ groups kept popping up on Facebook – and she is still fighting to clear her name after media comments branding her a ‘s***’.

The former de facto of rugby union player David Palavi – he fathered her younger children Isabella, 12, and Levi, eight – Charmyne believes she’s been misrepresented, although she readily admits to bedding a string of footy stars since they split up.

At home in a rented blonde brick box in suburban Narangba, Queensland, she looks tired under the spray tan. Feisty and depressed by turns, Charmyne is well aware that her current misfortune will give her enemies a free kick. ‘I don’t want to be humiliated. I don’t want to be single again. I don’t want to be old and lonely,’ she says poignantly.
‘I know what people will make of this: “Of course this was bound to happen. She’s 40 and she married a much younger man. What did she expect?”

‘I do fear that backlash, and I’ve sometimes wondered if I should keep trying with Michael...’ She sighs, fiddling with her rings, fluffing her pale blonde hair. She stares wistfully at a carefully framed seating plan from their wedding reception on April 3, 2010.

‘But if this was happening to my sister or a friend, I wouldn’t let it go on. I know what I’d be telling them, and I feel I have to take my own advice!’

Charmyne claims she recently suspected Michael had been flirting outrageously with other women while she was all alone in India for harrowing IVF treatment.
‘For some reason I picked up his phone when I got back and found these messages he’d sent to a girl called Kate. He was trying to tee up a meeting with her and it was like: “I’m home for a week alone, yay!”

‘You can imagine my hurt. I was over there in India getting four needles a day to have a
baby for him, in a hotel room by myself 22 hours out of every 24, and he was doing that!
‘I spent nearly $23,000 on the surrogacy!’ She pulls a wry face. ‘I’ve already got three children, you know what I mean, it was only for Michael.’

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Crash-tackled about the messages – Charmyne threw the phone at him and then walked out – her husband made lame excuses, said that nothing ‘inappropriate’ had happened and then apologised.

Still in love, she gave him another chance, despite his increased moodiness and absences at the ‘gym’. But a couple of weeks ago she allegedly caught him out again. This time, adding insult to injury, he was sending saucy messages to one of her clients in the early hours of the morning, signing off: ‘Night hottie.’

As their rows escalated, she says Michael changed his Facebook status to ‘single’ and said he needed space. At the same time, he was messaging the client: ‘That house I looked [at] seems real nice. I think you would like it... Not long now ([if] I get it) and I’m a free man. Yay.’

Only weeks before, he had bought his wife State of Origin tickets for a first anniversary present. Charmyne, with her businesses and car registered in his name, felt like the world was crumbling around her.

‘He has made me out to be the worst in the world,’ she asserts indignantly. ‘He would make horrible comments and started saying the kids were spoilt and badly behaved.
‘He took his disappointment at the miscarriage out on everyone else. He’s become really selfish. A month ago he said to me: “It’s not as if you’re going to give me a baby!”

‘Now he reckons he’s only young and he just wants to have time on his own – go to the gym, get drunk, not have to answer to anyone. I’d let him know it was going to take a lot for me to trust him again, but I never stopped him from doing anything...

‘I don’t know what he wants to do. I keep getting these messages: “You’re my wife, we’re just having a break.” You’ve got to be joking! ‘I told him: “The minute you walk out of this house, it’s over.”’ She looks around the empty room. No more to be said, really.
‘I’m never marrying again,’ she vows. ‘I’ve been married twice – twice too many!’

Words: Jenny Brown
Photos: Paul Broben