Reeva: A Mother's Story (16 page)

Despite whatever drama was going on in her love life, it was typical of her to share only positive thoughts in seasonal greetings to her friends and Twitter followers:

Around this time 7 years ago I broke my back & learnt how to walk again. The day before Xmas, I ask u to count your blessings! Happy Holidays!
 

On 25 December, her greeting was:

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy Birthday to the greatest man that ever walked the Earth!! Sending Love & Light to you all xxxxx.
 

On 27 December, she shared a New Year’s Resolution which suggested she was determined to live according to her own values:

In 2013 I will speak my mind. Walk where my feet dream to tread. Share company with those who make my heart smile. Make my dreams a reality.
 

A day later, she wrote:

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
 

The next day:

I am who I am by the grace of God. Nothing more. Nothing less. If He can love me as I am, then so should you I guess. – Me
 

On 30 December:

Today I wish I could pick up the phone and call my grandfather. He had the answers to everything! Who would you call that you can’t now?
 

And on New Year’s Eve, when she was alone:

Going to miss some of my best people tonight @OscarPistorius @gi_myers @Iamfomo Have the most amazing night crazies! Send piccies :)
 

This was followed by:

About to go to sleep on this 1st day of 2013. I wish you all an incredible day, be safe & count your every blessing xxxx.
 

On 1 January she duly caught a flight to Cape Town to take a break with Oscar and a few friends. Kim received a phone call from Reeva asking if she wanted to do coffee. She said Ossie was taking her to Hermanus and she wondered if they could stop and have breakfast with them on the way. She suggested Ons Huisie, a café in Small Bay, Bloubergstrand, on the beach where their grandparents took them often as children and where Grandpa Alec’s ashes were scattered. It was a place of special significance to the family and of historical significance too in that it overlooks Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-eight years.

Kim and her family were all nervous of meeting the great South African hero Oscar Pistorius, but he was the one left looking shy in the background when they turned up at Kim and Dion’s house with Reeva squealing ‘Kimmy!’, hugging them both, and getting excited about reuniting with the girls. Reeva had told Kim that she had not had a nice Christmas and Kim, knowing how soul-destroying that would be for an occasion-loving girl like Reeva and worried that something wasn’t right in the relationship, watched carefully for signs that all was well with her cousin. ‘We spent about two hours together. I did think he was nice,’ she said to me afterwards – because of course she was the first member of the family to meet him and we were all curious. Kim said they looked like they were happy together. There was a lot of teasing at the table about him going out on New Year’s Eve and him leaving her alone, and he looked suitably sheepish, like a guilty schoolboy. Apparently, though, the service at the café was atrocious and Kim could see Oscar getting quite angry about it, but he was too polite to show his frustration in front of them. He got up and sorted it out away from the table. He also received a telephone call. Once he’d left the table, Kim took the opportunity to ask Reeva if she was happy.

‘Reeva hunched up her shoulders – you could see she was excited to be in Cape Town – and said, “Yes.” I could see something hesitant in her response, and she could see that I had picked that up. “We will have a chat,” she said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

‘I had expected her to say, “YES!”’ said Kim. ‘I thought “We’ll talk later” didn’t sound right – and I just wish now that I’d stopped and asked her what she meant. But there was no time.’

Reeva and Oscar continued on to Hermanus, ninety minutes southeast of Cape Town. She posted a picture of the sunrise taken from the balcony of the presidential suite at the spa hotel where they stayed. She tweeted a picture of Oscar at the wheel of an Aston Martin with the caption:
The chauffeurs in Cape Town hey. Nice!
They had lunch at Shimmy Beach Club –
Tooooo much food!!! Amazing holiday :)
– and she came back typically both thanking Cape Town and the special people who made this break memorable and noting the risk to animals of the dangerous temperatures.
So hot today WOW!!! Make sure your pets have loads of fresh water to keep them hydrated :)

Later in January, Reeva rang me and said she had decided she was going to devote her time to Oscar. Despite the problems, she had made up her mind to give everything to the relationship and see how it went. She loved him, she assured me.

At my age I’m not someone who bothers with social media. I know it’s ephemeral, of-the-moment stuff that keeps the modern world going around, but the press have made much of the tweets and posts that were exchanged between Reeva and Oscar. I look at some of her words now and I can’t help but try to search for signs to analyse her feelings and interpret them as her baring her soul, even on a public forum. She described herself in professional terms on Twitter as ‘SA Model, Cover Girl, Tropika Island of Treasure Celeb Contestant, Law Graduate, Child of God’. Where most of her tweets and Instagram snaps throughout 2012 had been about events, parties, products, her routine as a model and public rallies to support the causes that were important to her, increasingly, in these last three months of her life, there were verbal snippets and inspirational quotes that suggest she was having a hard time as she struggled to stabilise this fledgling relationship with Oscar. On 16 January she posts this thought:

Out of every misery, you WILL find your rainbow. A lesson. A truth. Nothing is a wasted experience if you look with willing eyes!
 

We learnt in court when Captain Francois Moller read out their WhatsApp exchanges that all this time she was standing her ground with a combustible personality. To hear her words read out in court when the police mobile phone analyst went through transcripts of anguished exchanges between the pair was astonishing. It was as if she was in the courtroom, giving her own evidence. Her words were so powerful, so heartfelt and eloquent in their honesty. On 27 January, just a few weeks before she died, she uploaded a collage of photos to Instagram which included the picture of her and a shirtless Oscar on the beach that she would later frame as his Valentine’s Day present. She was excited about attending the engagement party of her close friend Darren Fresco and his fiancée Beatrix with Oscar.

And then this private message to Oscar:

I’m not 100% sure why I’m sitting down to type you a message first but perhaps it says a lot about what’s going on here. Today was one of my best friend’s engagements and I wanted to stay longer, I was enjoying myself but it’s over now. You have picked on me incessantly since you got back from CT [Cape Town] and I understand that you are sick but it’s nasty. Yesterday wasn’t nice for either of us but we managed to pull through and communicate well enough to show our care for each other is greater than the drama that attacked us. I was not flirting with anyone today. I feel sick that you suggested that and that you made a scene at the table and made us leave early. I’m terribly disappointed in how the day ended and how you left me. We are living in a double standard relationship where you can be mad about how I deal with stuff when you are very quick to act cold and offish when you’re unhappy. Every 5 seconds I hear how you dated another chick. You really have dated a lot of people yet you get upset if I mention ONE funny story with a long term boyfriend. I do everything to make you happy and to not say anything to rock the boat with u. You do everything to throw tantrums in front of people. I have been upset by you for 2 days now. I’m so upset I left Darren’s party early. SO upset. I can’t get that day back. I’m scared of you sometimes and how u snap at me and of how you will react to me. You make me happy 90% of the time and I think we are amazing together but I am not some other bitch you may know trying to kill your vibe. I am the girl who let go with u even when I was scared out of my mind to. I’m the girl who fell in love with u and wanted to tell u this weekend. But I’m also the girl that gets sidestepped when you are in a s**t mood. When I feel you think u have me so why try anymore. I get snapped at and told my accents and voices are annoying. I touch your neck to show u I care and you tell me to stop. Stop chewing gum. Do this don’t do that. You don’t want to hear stuff cut me off. Your endorsements your reputation your impression of someone innocent blown out of proportion and f***ed up a special day for me. I’m sorry if you truly felt I was hitting on my friend Sams husband and I’m sorry that u think that little of me. From the outside I think it looks like we are a struggle and maybe that’s what we are. I just want to love and be loved. Be happy and make someone SO happy. Maybe we can’t do that for each other. Cos right now I know u aren’t happy and I am certainly very unhappy and sad.

And just two days later, she admitted via Twitter –
Some days you just want to stay in bed and nap and think and watch tv and drink tea. It’s those ‘I need my mommy’ days
–
and a couple of days after that, she was trying to cling on to positives:
When someone has the ability to make you feel blessed every single day. #thankful #thelittlethings.

Kristin told me that throughout January she could hardly sleep. She was so tense and she wonders to this day if she had a sense of something. She said Reeva had called to invite her to a
braai
at Oscar’s house in late January, but Kristin didn’t want to go. Instinctively she didn’t want to become involved. ‘And I am really, really glad I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I would have slept in the same bed, used that bathroom. I am so thankful I never went to his house.’

February began with Reeva posting a brooding picture of her boyfriend with the comment,
He certainly doesn’t need more followers but he’s beautiful to look at & says some smart stuff too ;) @OscarPistorius
.
He, on the other hand, was quoted in
Sarie
magazine explaining how difficult he found it to trust anyone: ‘You’re never sure in a relationship. You take a chance every time you get to know someone.’

Behind the scenes, things sound rocky. What’s this about on 7 February?

When it takes you an entire day to try and compose a fitting response, a lacking one at that, rather leave it. It’s just substandard.
 

On 8 February, in another private WhatsApp message that was read in full in court, she again objected to his behaviour towards her at a public function.

I like to believe that I made you proud when I attend these kind of functions with you. I present myself well and can converse with others while you are off busy chatting to fans and friends. I also knew people there tonight and whilst you were having one or two pics taken I was saying goodbye to the people in my industry and Fitz wanted a photo with me. I was just being cordial by saying goodbye whilst you were busy. I completely understood your desperation to leave and thought I would be helping you by getting to the exit before you because I can’t rush on the heels I was wearing. I thought it would make a difference in us getting out without you getting harassed anymore. I didn’t think you would criticize me for doing that especially not so loudly so that others could hear. I might joke around and be all tomboyish at times but I regard myself as a lady and I didn’t feel like one tonight after the way you treated me when we left. I’m a person too and I appreciate that you invited me out tonight and I realize that you get harassed but I am trying my best to make you happy and I feel as though you sometimes never are, no matter the effort I put in. I can’t be attacked by outsiders for dating you and be attacked by you – the one person I deserve protection from.

Five days before her death, the pair seemed ensconced in a routine of cosy evenings and healthy breakfasts. They had a cosy popcorn and movie night in and Reeva had retweeted a post that ran:

[email protected] = When you fall in love with someone’s personality everything about them becomes beautiful.
 

On 9 February she uploaded a disturbing illustration to condemn violence against women with the comment,
I woke up in a happy safe home this morning
, she writes.
Not everyone did. Speak out against the rape of individuals in SA. RIP Annie Booysen. #rape #crime#sayNO.
The details were so horrendous and the circumstances so poignant – an adolescent girl walking home with a man for whom she harboured romantic notions – that the savage crime moved the nation to prioritise the war against rape. President Zuma condemned the attack as ‘shocking, cruel and most inhumane’; the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s biggest labour union, called for mass action over rape in South Africa. Opposition leader Lindiwe Mazibuko called for parliamentary hearings and the United Nations issued a statement strongly condemning the rape and murder. It was the kind of incident that enraged Reeva.

On 12 February Reeva contacted her former boyfriend Warren, suggesting a quick coffee. She texted Oscar about meeting up with her ex, as if she had to ask for permission. He told her to go, saying ‘I have a dentist appointment, maybe go see him and come see me when I’m done.’ Warren noted that Reeva seemed happy, though he was moved to ask her if everything was all right when Oscar phoned twice in the forty minutes that they were catching up over coffee. She said everything was going well for her. But Reeva was proud, she would never have admitted to difficulties to Warren. The next day she uploaded a picture of a shake. Oscar had made her breakfast and she sounded happy: