Reeva: A Mother's Story (15 page)

That was the only time I ever spoke to him – and it was to issue a warning.

Ironically, her friend Darren had taken her ex, Warren, car shopping one day and Oscar was there too. Kristin tells me it was the three of them together. What a bizarre combination. Apparently Warren quietly told Oscar that he must promise to look after Reeva.

I was a bit worried about the new ‘fast life’ she might be living after the speeding experience, but I can’t say I sensed any danger signals. Having split from Warren, she was footloose and fancy free, as they say. I did not know these people she was hanging out with or that they went around Johannesburg with guns, firing out of the car roof, handling firearms in family restaurants, going to shooting ranges for a laugh. I knew nothing about how he was an adrenalin junkie who liked all this macho stuff and had more guns on order to bring his firearm collection up to ten. I still had my weekly long chatty phone call with Reeva every Saturday but she didn’t volunteer much about him. We were very close, but you are private about some things with your mother, aren’t you? If I’d known, I’d have said, ‘Listen, I don’t think this is going to work’. Not that she would listen! She never mentioned him to Barry, or to Abigail, and that is a sure sign that she wasn’t convinced the relationship would develop or stay the course. She wouldn’t announce a boyfriend to Barry or Abigail unless it were for real.

I look back now and see that that was the beginning of us losing touch somehow over the three months when she was seeing him. It torments me that I didn’t pick up on the clues that suggest she was struggling. I regret not noticing the warning signs that all was not well in her life and questioning her further. But she was twenty-nine and I wanted to respect the fact that she had chosen to split with Warren and take her life in a different direction. I can see now she was adjusting to so many changes: a change of relationship, a change of home, an approaching milestone thirtieth birthday and a blank page in terms of her plans for the future. She was asking herself a lot of questions. She was hiding her uncertainty, I think, and maybe her suffering. She wouldn’t want me to know that she was having a difficult time, because if she hurt, I hurt.

I do know that she was particularly upset to hear that after she moved out of Warren’s house, her beloved black and white cats Panther and Milk had disappeared. They were wild cats who had appeared in their garden. She had fed them and when it was clear they regarded her as their owner, she had had their ears clipped and had them neutered, as the law requires you to do with wild cats. She adored them and they ran away the day she left Warren’s house, perhaps to find her. It really hit a nerve with her, that her decision to move out had such a negative impact on her cats. She felt guilty and distraught. She was a big animal lover. Initially she was going to send both cats to me, but changed her mind because she thought I had enough worries and Powder would probably have eaten them anyway. She asked the guy who took over their place to leave food and drink out, but Panther was never seen again. Reeva was heartbroken. Milk returned, and she sent him on his own to Kim. He moved on to Kim’s sister, Sharon, and then disappeared again. The funny thing is he was eventually found alive and well, staying with another family close by who have adopted him.

Reeva was very disorientated that winter of 2012/13. She became a bit depressed, I think. Whenever she suffered emotionally, she fell ill. I get the feeling she was evaluating her life, asking herself questions about what she wanted as a woman. She was very wrapped up in trying to puzzle out the potential of a relationship with Oscar and considering whether it had a future. Their relationship seemed very stop and start. When it was going well, they had fun together. She called him a sexy boy and found him beautiful to look at. She thought him smart and classy, and they had common ground in needing to eat well and look after their bodies for their careers. He had an intensity she was drawn to, but the flipside of that was that she told me they were fighting a lot, always initiated by him, often – to her embarrassment – in public. At some stage, at some function, she and Oscar had a fight in the car park. Several people told me it had been commented on in the papers and magazines.

In one phone call, when I asked how it was going, she said, ‘Mommy, we’re arguing all the time.’ I said, ‘But what can you be fighting about in such a new relationship?’ And she said, ‘Mommy, you can’t understand what it’s about.’ When their WhatsApp exchanges were revealed in court, everyone could see the controlling and demoralising nit-picking he imposed on her: Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Don’t chew gum. Don’t speak like that. (I think she’d had some part on TV and she had to speak in an American accent, and maybe she was practising and it annoyed him.) You can’t wear this. You must wear that. It was heartbreaking to hear how she had tried to make him proud of her when they went to an event and her dismay when he’d publicly cause a scene and walk off in a huff. She was tiptoeing around this man’s moods – and that was not like Reeva. She told me on the phone how they were at one event and he said huffily that he had to eat at a particular time, something to do with his special diet regime, and abruptly announced he was leaving immediately. She had very high shoes on and didn’t want to hold him up, so she let him walk out while she followed as fast as she could to the exit, but he drove off without her. When they discussed it later, he accused her instead of chatting up some guy and ignoring him. That was why he’d turned on his heels, nothing to do with an eating regime. She was very upset to be treated like that.

Kristin says everything Reeva mentioned about Oscar gave her misgivings. She understood he had a nasty temper, but thought the problems were more that everything to do with him was a huge drama. From what she said, he’d flip about a lot of things. Reeva had a role in an advert and part of the script involved her kissing a man. She was very nervous about telling Oscar. Her friends kept asking, ‘Have you told him yet?’ And she hadn’t. She couldn’t face it. And she was embarrassed to admit it, because it was so out of character. She was too scared of how he would respond. He was so possessive. When Kristin was out with Reeva once, she pointed out how ridiculous Oscar looked dressed up in a red silk jacket on the cover of
GQ
Style
spring/summer magazine 2012/13. Reeva said, ‘Don’t ever say that to him!’ As if Kristin would. She’s not a rude person and Reeva knew that better than anyone, but it shows how she was always anticipating an angry reaction from him. Another time, she’d told Kristin how his bull terrier had killed a dachshund, which upset her very much as an animal lover (and a dachsy owner herself), but again Reeva begged Kristin never to mention this around him. There were so many things she shouldn’t say or do around him and Kristin thought,
why
is she pussyfooting around this guy? It was so unlike her.

I think the difficulties stemmed from him being accustomed to calling the shots about everything in his life. As an athlete, he was surrounded by an entourage. As a role model in South Africa, he was used to being cosseted and treated as the guy at the top. He wanted her to be Oscar’s Girlfriend. But she wouldn’t want that. She was Reeva. She was completely feminine, but she had a mind of her own. Although she was nervous of his reaction to things, she would not have always been able to quash her assertive self – and some men don’t like that. It was up and down on that front. Reeva used to go into the offices of ICE Models once a week to take in banana bread she’d baked for all the girls. Twice, she brought Oscar into the agency, and according to Jane he was happy to take a back seat. He knew this was her place, her home, she told me. All the girls at the agency dropped in regularly for coffee and a chat. They had boys in there, and mums and sisters. They were all very close. They all shared what was going on in their lives. ‘With Oscar, it was such a new relationship we only saw him twice,’ Jane said. ‘He was one of those men who phone seventeen times a day. He was like that in November and early December and it was too much for Reeva. They had a break over December. She gave him a second chance in the New Year and then they became quite serious quite quickly.’

I wonder now, if it had been a man who was not a lauded celebrity, whether there might have been more of a red flag for Reeva? How much of an unattractive attitude did she dismiss because he was a golden boy, an ambassador for the Paralympian movement, who achieved his fame surrounded by a tight-knit close circle? How much was she flattered to have won his heart? Perhaps her empathy towards all he had overcome in life blinded her judgement? In falling for Oscar, she accepted the whole package. If only we’d known what was going on, but we respected her desire to spend the festive season independently from us that year.

Barry was unhappy about Reeva’s relationship with Oscar. She hadn’t officially announced it to him, but I’d briefed him of course. He couldn’t clarify exactly what his misgivings were. She and Oscar were supposed to spend Christmas and New Year together. From what I can gather, he decided instead to go to a bachelor party in Cape Town. She ended up spending Christmas Day with Kristin, and then he came to fetch her from Kristin’s mother’s house later that day, and I know she ended up on her own again on New Year’s Eve. I was more than a thousand kilometres away and have been grateful to Kristin for telling me how it played out.

Kristin said it was just her and Reeva and a few other friends around as a lot of people don’t stay in Johannesburg for Xmas, they head to the coast. Oscar had gone to Cape Town just before Christmas without including her and he had asked her to look after his house for him. She invited Kristin to come and stay with her there in Pretoria because she was very uncomfortable being alone in his big empty luxury house. Kristin’s car was giving her problems and she didn’t want to risk driving the fifty kilometres. Reeva said she’d come and fetch her, and promised to take her to and from work in her car. That’s the kind of friend she was. Kristin said she thought it was so weird that Oscar left her alone to look after his house. He was happy to do that – and over Christmas. Reeva messaged Kristin to say she had nowhere to go at Christmas. Kristin was going to her aunt’s house and checked that it was okay for Reeva to come too. Kristin said she could not bring herself to ask Reeva why she wasn’t spending Christmas with Oscar or whether he’d got her anything for Christmas. It remained an unspoken thing between them. She found the whole situation awkward.

Reeva arrived at Kristin’s on 25 December in Oscar’s white BMW and they had Christmas lunch. Her aunt had cooked a Springbok pie and Reeva ate everything! I gather she spoke a lot about him that day. It was Oscar this and Oscar that. Kristin’s granny had no idea who she was talking about. Reeva didn’t put him in a context. It was so unlike her. Kristin felt Reeva was not in love with him, but seemed a bit star-struck.

At 3 p.m. Oscar arrived in his Audi to fetch Reeva and his BMW. Kristin’s brother and cousin went outside to say hello and Reeva came inside and said she was so cross with Oscar because he was swearing at his friend and she didn’t like him swearing in front of Kristin’s family. Kristin herself didn’t have the desire to go out to meet him. ‘I assumed this whole Oscar episode was a short-lived thing,’ she told me. ‘They weren’t on a romantic footing as a couple; she hadn’t slept with him. She was nervous about that. Oscar came inside and said to me, “I’ve heard so much about you,” and I had to bite my tongue. I wanted to say, “I haven’t heard anything about you. You’re not that special!” My entire family was in the lounge, including my granny, who didn’t have her hearing aid in properly. He introduced himself as Oscar and Granny shouted back, “Sorry. Who are you?” That was funny, but I did appreciate that he sat and chatted a bit before he left with Reeva.’

Again, he wasn’t around for her on New Year’s Eve. Again, she messaged Kristin, who was planning on doing something with other friends. They were at the ‘What shall we do?’ stage of planning and one option was to go to a party in Pretoria, where Reeva was house-sitting for Oscar. Kristin suggested that she join them and perhaps her guy friends could also come and stay at Oscar’s house for that night so they wouldn’t have to drive back to Johannesburg. Reeva said no, Oscar would freak out. Kristin was irritated because it seemed
everything
with him was a drama and this was the way she had to act around him. She thought it was very rude of him to ask Reeva to look after his house over New Year’s Eve and not allow anyone there to keep her company. He did not seem to care at all about her security, physical or emotional.

On New Year’s Day, Reeva and Kristin had tea in the morning, pampering themselves with face masks on and they were going to go to the cinema to see
The Life of Pi
. ‘In hindsight, it was so ironic,’ Kristin tells me. ‘I feel I have very good instincts and I just didn’t have a good feeling about 2013. I said to Reeva, “I don’t know why I feel like this, but I do.” She said, “No, I think 2013 is going to be a great year. I can feel it…”’

About midday Reeva messaged me to say Oscar had bought her a plane ticket to join him in Cape Town and so she’d have to drop our plan. She said, ‘This is me being spontaneous!’ – which Kristin thought was strange, because it wasn’t her being spontaneous. I mean, who wouldn’t take the plane ticket? It wasn’t spontaneity, it was Reeva jumping at Oscar’s beck and call and she seemed to feel it necessary to apologise for that. She was not herself around him.

That morning of 1 January was the last time Kristin saw Reeva. That same morning she hoped it was the end of Oscar. ‘She’d only known Oscar for seven weeks so it was too early for me to question her, but I had definitely decided that when “it” ended with him I was going to say that I hoped she wasn’t going to go for another sports person and be the trophy girlfriend again,’ she said. ‘It didn’t sit well with me, and after Francois too, I definitely didn’t want a third one.’

New Year is a time for celebration, for looking back over the past year and making plans for the future. On a professional level, Reeva had so much to be proud of with
Tropika
set to air and a host of new projects in the pipeline. I hate to think of her spending the holiday period upset and confused. When she first moved to the city she found it a difficult environment, competitive and quite bitchy. She found happiness and a healthy equilibrium with Warren. When she travelled to Cape Town for modelling jobs, she’d say to me: ‘It’s very hard, leaving Warren in Johannesburg, but it’s work and money.’ I fear that once she’d split from him, she underestimated how lonely and vulnerable she might feel without the security of a stable loving relationship. She was big on star signs and quoting Leo traits, such as ‘A Leo cannot live without love. Love is a Leo’s life blood’. Reeva loved everybody and she would expect to be loved protectively by the person she herself chose to love.