Lunch with Madison

In this extract from Steve Braunias's new book, ex-fiancée Madison Ashton discusses central characters in the Polkinghorne case with the outrage of a wronged woman.

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Madison Ashton was expected to be a key witness for the prosecution at the trial of the man she believed was separated from Pauline Hanna and had become her fiancé. But furious at her treatment by New Zealand Police, whom she claimed disrespected her, the Sydney sex worker never testified. She did follow the High Court trial of Philip Polkinghorne, sending comments to journalists covering it, including Steve Braunias. She visited Auckland after the trial was over, meeting Braunias for lunch at the city's Park Hyatt hotel.

Only Madison Ashton looks like Madison Ashton. Even though there was something generic about her cosmetic maximisations – everything large, blown up - she had a natural and touching prettiness to her features. She wore leather pants and a tight blue top. Her nails were painted gold. At 50, she was classy and glamorous, and her manner was friendly, demure, shy.

We sat down and scanned the menu. There wasn't a lot she could eat, as in she couldn't really eat anything; she had recently gone for gastric surgery, and her post-op regime was no solids. We lunched for two hours. She had a ready wit and could be quite epigrammatic; she loved punning “hierarchy” as “whorearchy” to discuss her perception of the top echelons of sex workers. She saw herself in that top echelon. She had a belief in herself and her abilities. I felt she was genuine in every single thing she said. She was nobody’s fool. But like a lot of people with that determination she was prone to being her own fool, by talking herself up and overestimating her importance. She put up a hell of a front. She needed it. It guarded a person I thought of as terribly vulnerable and terribly lonely. She settled for tom yum soup.

She laughed at the interest the Polkinghorne trial had generated, and said, “You know, I couldn't believe that it took hold so intensely here. I thought, oh, maybe you guys are just going through a slow news period.”