Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen (16 page)

I would find out later, when Sammy finally opened up to talk, that Oscar almost lost control of the car he was speeding in that night during a storm, almost skidding off the road.

Samantha was terrified. He could have killed her that night.

Their stay at Sun City was far from being a weekend away
from everything, basking in the Kingdom of the Sun. It was really stressful; everything seemed to be tainted by Oscar’s argument with Quinton. He was rude to Sammy all weekend; and she was not coping very well as a result of all the chaos that had erupted. On arriving back in Pretoria, in the aftermath of everything, I think Sammy finally realised that things could not be miraculously fixed and that she wanted out.

I got a call from my daughter when they got back. I could hear things were not okay but Sam didn’t elaborate on anything. She told me they were coming down to the Cape; Oscar had a function on the Tuesday and she asked me if I would pick them up from the airport. I was excited to see both of them and my husband and I happily went to Cape Town International to pick them up, although at this stage I knew something was terribly amiss.

When Henry and I arrived to pick them up I saw a driver with a sign saying “Oscar Pistorius”. I was surprised as I was there to meet both of them and I thought they were both staying with us. Once I saw the man with the board, I realised that Oscar had changed his mind and had decided to stay elsewhere.

I sensed the tension between Sam and Oscar when they came through arrivals. He said a quick hello and immediately started rummaging through his bags. Oscar was always so disorganised; he was forever losing things, misplacing tickets, passports, documents and, as a result, missing flights… So there he was rifling through his and Sam’s bags, and as usual he couldn’t find what he was looking for.

I was amazed to see how his behaviour changed when the driver approached us. While to my husband and me his greeting had been completely offhand – a quick hello, really rude actually – as soon as the driver came up to him, he was the perfect gentleman, all well mannered: “Hello, sir, thank you so much” etc., shaking the man’s hand. He hardly gave us a second look and he was off. Sam was obviously upset but she stayed dead quiet as usual as we drove back home. I knew it was best that I just left her alone when she was like this, and allow her the space she needed until she was ready to talk. But it was clear that something bad must
have happened while they were away. I was furious with Oscar. I thought: you bugger, you can’t pull the wool over our eyes like you do with most other people. His little “lost boy” act had lost its appeal.

I couldn’t shake that anger inside. After everything, after all the support and endless hours of listening… to be treated like this! Over the last 18 months I had put so much love and energy into him, trying to guide him, trying to help him and all he could manage was a rude hello and a bad-mannered brush-off. And of course under my anger it really hurt me that he was so polite to the driver, a total stranger, while he was so rude to me… I was so upset by all of this – it just was not okay. Not in anyone’s books.

That night I lay in bed. My anger was mixed with worry. The image of my daughter’s sad little face kept coming into my thoughts. She was a nervous wreck. It broke my heart to see her like this. I couldn’t stop my mind from racing, trying to grapple with what could have gone so wrong between the two of them. Had he fought with her? Shouted at her? I had heard him lose it a number of times with her on the phone where he screamed at her so badly I could hear his angry words from another room. Maybe she had caught him flirting with or chatting up another woman? Found messages on his phone? Or, God forbid, had he threatened her or hurt her? For hours I lay awake with these endless scenarios going round and round in my mind.

And then it dawned on me – something was very, very wrong with this picture, with this whole line of thinking. With Oscar there was always something that could go wrong, in fact so many things – so many possibilities for chaos and danger. It felt like he was a loaded gun, just waiting to go off. Despite all the promises to change, to act differently, to see a therapist as he had promised, I just knew, in that moment, in the clear dead of night, it was never going to happen…

And then I suddenly saw it – clear as the clearest day – as if the lights had suddenly been switched on. It was over. We just couldn’t go on like this; it simply needed to come to a close. This was the
end of the road for me, for my daughter, for all of us, the end. I finally realised, “I don’t care what happens to him any more…” And then I slept.

The next day, a Tuesday, Sam and Kerri-Lee decided to drive into Cape Town. I hoped Ke would manage to get her baby sister to open up. Having hardly closed my eyes the night before, I was looking forward to a bit of time out from everything. A few hours of quiet. To get my thoughts together.

When the phone rang it was the kind of ring that bursts a hole through the silence of the day, rips into it. It made me jump. With the girls still in town, my husband at work, Greg at school and Ty at varsity, I had been enjoying a rare few hours of quiet, with no voices, no bursts of laughter, no teenagers calling or television blaring from the living room. Although I adored all the usual commotion in the house, today I was longing for silence, plus I needed to catch up on some overdue work. A number came up on the screen.

It was Oscar.

Damn it. I felt a rising fury. What did he want? I really didn’t feel like answering.

My first impulse was not to pick it up. Let it ring until it went away, disappeared somewhere, down a drain, got sucked into the wires that twisted and turned, stretched into the big black hole of space. Just the mere sight of his name brought up all sorts of bad feelings. One thing I knew for sure, I did not want to take this call or speak to him again. Ever.

The ringing grew insistent, glared at me from my desk, forcing me closer, to touch it, pick it up.

I had made my decision. I wanted him right out of my life, Samantha’s life, all of our lives. But… then that gnawing feeling. That inner voice. Dammit. What happened if he was in trouble, had hurt himself…? Needed me? Oh God, I was so exhausted by it all.

That was part of the problem. Right from day one, I had never been able to say no to Oscar. From the very moment he had come into our lives back in 2011, he had had this ability to wear me down, worm under my skin, find a way into my heart. But this time it was different, my ongoing compassion and patience had come to an end. I had reached the end of my reserves. At this stage all I felt was intense anger.

But then a thought crossed my mind: maybe it was all my fault I was so angry. Maybe I just had no sense of any boundaries. Maybe I was just really bad at saying no to him. Now I was even more angry. “You bastard,” I thought. “I will pick this up, but I am going to tell you exactly what I think and then it will be over.”

Finally.

“Hi Trish…” All friendly. Upbeat. Polite. Like nothing had happened…

“Where’s Samantha?”

That was it, it was as though an arrow had left a crossbow. Straight away my rage flew out full throttle.

“Oscar, you know what… let me just tell you something. You have such a bloody cheek… How dare you phone here! You were so rude to us at the airport yesterday. How dare you just call, and make out like nothing’s happened?”

White rage almost blinded me. Almost a year and a half of the Oscar Pistorius bullshit. Enough! “What kind of a person are you – that you don’t see all this? How dare you! How dare you just–?”

“Oh no no no, I’m sorry, Trish…” Immediately Oscar the Nice Guy was there. The charming, innocent sweet one he could switch on like nothing had ever happened. I had seen him do it over and over again, pulling the wool over the whole world’s eyes. Just
as he did yesterday at the airport when the driver came to pick him up – straight after he had been so rude and offhand to us, he had switched on his smile, his charm. Oscar the public figure, the brand ambassador of Nike, of Thierry Mugler, of Oakley. Poor little Oscar, the guy with no legs, the paraplegic, the mighty Paralympian, the one everyone respected and admired. Oscar – the guy I had accepted with open arms into the family, into Samantha’s life, who had parked his legs at the bottom of Sammy’s bed, the Oscar who got to me every, single goddamn time.

“Sorry for that, Trish, I was in a hurry… I couldn’t talk, I had to leave, you know… the driver was waiting. I couldn’t find the thing I was looking for, I was late – sorry if I was rude, if I sounded like I didn’t care…”

Enough! I had had enough of the apologies, the lies, the tears, all the excuses.

“No, Oscar. You listen here. You know what – I am sick and tired of this. Sick and tired. I have had enough, enough of everything. I have had enough of your lies, I have had enough of your behaviour, your rudeness, I have had enough of your crying, of your pathetic phone calls… of the never-ending bullshit. I have had enough of everything. I can’t do this any more, I can’t I can’t. I won’t…”

I was at tipping point. Hysteria. Rage. It grew, it couldn’t stop. But instead of shouting, I spoke in a very measured tone. Inside the fury was boiling.

“Trish, please–”

“No, Oscar – you listen. You are tearing us apart, Sammy, me… all of us. Have you seen what you have done to her? My daughter is like a rake. She barely weighs 35 kilos. She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t talk. You are destroying her… she is wasting away. She got home from the airport yesterday and she hasn’t said a word, not a word since then – what have you done to her!”

“Trish, let me tell you, I don’t–”

“You don’t know – of course you don’t. You have no idea what you’re doing… because you are so fucking selfish. Because there’s
nobody else but you in your world. You can’t even see what you’ve done to our lives… you’re tearing us all apart, Oscar.”

And somewhere in the middle of it, I knew this had to be it. The end. The buck stops here. We just couldn’t do it any more. It had to be right now that I had to call it. Close the door on him. No more.

He kept trying to interrupt, explain himself, but I just couldn’t listen to another word of it… I couldn’t stop myself. I was like a huge wave in the ocean, on a roll. Later I would realise that I had got my strength from something bigger, from something much greater than me. All those hours of praying – of asking, of pleading with God to help me, give me a message – had given me the strength I so badly needed.

“Something terrible is going to happen, Oscar…” I hardly recognised my voice. It was coming from somewhere else. I couldn’t stop it.

“And it’s going to happen soon. Your life is a web of lies… and the worst thing is, you believe all the bullshit. All I keep seeing is this huge spider web… this web that is eating you, that is taking all of us down. You have got to step out of your life and look at it… you have got to! Because if you don’t, something bad, something really really bad is going to happen…”

“No, Trish,” he said, “I know exactly what I am doing – everything is fine – I have control of it, really–”

“No, Oscar! You haven’t! That’s where you are so wrong. I’ve been watching everything. I see you–”

“I’ve got it Trish, I’m in control.”

“No, Oscar, you are not! You have got to listen to me, you have got to step out of your life. All you are is a cog, an object in a massive money-making machine. They don’t care about you. They’re just using you. Where are they when you need them? Nowhere, they just leave you to struggle on your own. Your friends – where are they when you need them? Where! When you were crying, weeping, sobbing, where were all these people?”

Every word that came out of me was pointed, firm. I was unable to stop.

“In all this time I have known you I have never met your family. And do you know why? Because you are so damned scared that when we meet you will be caught out with all the lies you have been telling, with all the different stories you keep concocting – telling them one thing and us another – who knows what the truth and lies are any more? You keep saying you’ll get help, you keep telling me things will change, but they don’t. You were going to rest, take time out, go on holiday with us to Mozambique… you declined that to go on this fucking motorbike trip to god knows where, with these boys who only want to be your friends because of the good times you heap on them, because they all want to be seen with the great famous Oscar Pistorius… to be seen with the man who’s buying some R4-million McLaren… the only reason they are around you is because you pay… cars… parties, clubs – throwing all this money around.”

“No, Trish,” he said, “they are my friends, my friends…”

“No, Oscar, you are wrong! You have new best friends every other day! And the ones you do have, the loyal ones, you treat like shit. These people – all these guys – can’t you see, they are just with you for the good times? You went to LA, you clubbed nonstop, you went motorbike riding… you were driving fast cars… that was not a holiday… you got yourself deeper and deeper into trouble… into more emotional trouble… You can’t see what’s happening in your life, but I can! It’s a disaster – a total fucking disaster!”

I couldn’t stop now. Everything was coming out, roaring out of my like some god-awful tsunami. “You know why I’m even more pissed off? After all the time I spent with you during the Olympics – all the phone calls, the midnight calls, the
SMS
es, all the emails, all the calls you made to my kids, all the hours and hours I spent with you… You never listened to a single thing I told you. You never went to a psychologist, you never did what I kept telling you to do… even though every time we talked you admitted you needed help, and you swore on your life that you would get it.”

How would I ever forget the Olympics, where instead of watching races and hearing stadium cheers, all I’d heard was him weeping and sobbing, begging for help, begging for Samantha
to join him, unable to see his way through. He had wept like a baby, a demented man. That’s really when I began to see the whole thing coming apart, the myth of Oscar Pistorius, the hero of the Olympics.

All those nights, he’d robbed me of sleep. The whole family had been on a knife’s edge – texting and talking and trying to help him at every turn. I was tormented by worry, wondering whether he was going to kill himself while he was London. Would we ever see him again? Or would he wait to do it for when he got back? So desperate, so sad, so at a loss… There was a huge hole in Oscar’s soul that we had all tried so desperately to fill.

“You know you never went for that coffee with me because you always had one of your flipping sidekicks with you… You were too busy racing around in your fast cars, frenetic, rushing – you never took my advice, you never went for help even though I begged you to. Now look at you. Nothing about you is real any more, you’ve lost yourself.”

By now he was silent.

“Something is going to happen. Something is going to go wrong. And it’s going to happen soon. It’s going wrong already. Oscar, can’t you see! I know it. Your life, Oscar, is like this terrible accident waiting to happen.”

Although I never said it, spoke the following words aloud, I was terrified that if he carried on in the same way, by the end of that year he would be dead – in a car crash or by his own hand, and I knew, come hell or high water, Sammy would no longer be there at his side.

Then he spoke. He was very quiet. Very measured. Very controlled.

“Trish, please, we can go for that coffee. We can go for that lunch… I would love to have lunch with you. I really want to hear what you have to tell me…”

But it was too late.

“No, Oscar. No! We can’t, because I am not interested in helping you any more. I am over your fucking bullshit… I don’t care what happens to you any more. You have killed every single
bit of care I had for you with your lies, manipulation and deceit.”

There, I had said it.

“I need you to listen and I need you to listen very carefully. I don’t want you near my daughter, near my family. Ever. Ever again. It’s done.”

“Trish, I promise. I promise, I will go to a psychologist–”

“No, Oscar. It’s too late… because when something happens, and I promise you it’s going to, I don’t want my daughter to be part of it. I don’t want Sam near you… it’s over. Over. We’re done. I can’t look back one day and regret it, Oscar. You need to leave my family alone. Never call us, never come near us. Ever again. It’s done.”

The call went on for over two hours.

And that was our last conversation. The last time we ever spoke.

That was the last day of October 2012. A few days before the Sports Awards.

Less than three months later, on 14 February 2013, Reeva Steenkamp would be dead, shot four times through a locked bathroom door by the man who had spent a year and half in our family, during which time we had laughed, cried and finally experienced an almost other-worldly darkness descend upon us. My heart broke for Reeva’s parents.