half an hour.
“Love, I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”
Despite my reassurances to my husband, I, too, am getting worried. Especially when Carmen phones to find out if Lyndi is with us because she has not yet turned up to help. I tell myself that soon I will hear that cheery voice,
“Howdy Mooks, What ‘tja doin’?”
Why panic? All will be well. It always is. No sense in stressing myself unnecessarily.
The evening before Lyndi had packed a basketful of presents for her friends in Cape Town. Her friend Quentin had arrived from Johannesburg in the afternoon, and they’d set off in her father’s bakkie so that they could help Carmen move. Tonight, they are planning to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
“Fireworks on the beach at Sea Point – what could be more fun?” She had called as she whooped down the stairs and out of sight. I can’t help feeling uneasy. She’d mentioned that Dave, her flat-mate, could make the fireworks in his laboratory. I conjure up images of an accident; someone losing an eye or burning an arm, but stifle my dark thoughts. I don’t want to put a damper on her enthusiasm. After all it is to be the first day of the year 1994, the year of the first ‘free and fair democratic elections’ in South Africa, scheduled for April 27 - a moment in history, a year to celebrate the end of apartheid.
Now I am equally determined not to let my imagination run away with me. We are planning a Winelands tour with friends Billy and Madeleine. With Christmas over and a long lazy summer day stretching ahead, I am determined to enjoy myself. But I can’t get rid of the niggling doubts, a cloud hanging over me. I keep telling myself that I must pack a picnic basket, but somehow the energy and inspiration is missing. I pick up the bread-knife to make sandwiches. It feels heavy as a stone. I can’t decide which bread to use and put the knife down. I mean to boil some potatoes and eggs for salad, but the pot seems unusually bulky. It all seems like too much effort.
We greet Billy and Madeleine with the usual compliments of the season, I feel detached and try to connect. Madeleine, looking like a porcelain doll with her curly shoulder-length hair and cotton dress. Billy cracking his usual jokes and although I laugh, I know it sounds hollow and insincere. As we seat ourselves in the car with the men sitting in front and ladies in the back, I am aware of more heaviness and almost start to cry. I’ve been looking forward to this visit from long-standing friends, and we have a lot to catch up on, I can’t seem to feel any enthusiasm or life – no connection. Madeleine has been depressed for the past few months and I wonder; am I picking up on something in her?
“Tell me about Lyndi and Ant,” Madeleine says as she settles in. “Stella missed Lyndi so much at Christmas and is dying to get back down here as soon as she can.”
Stella has been Lyndi’s best friend for 13 years. At the mention of my daughters’ name, my heart skips a beat. I’ve managed to banish her from my thoughts for the past few seconds.
As the day drags on, I find it challenging to engage in conversation. We talk about our friendship; we’d been neighbours for many years, and what the futures of our children might hold. Lyndi is interested in going to Alaska to do her first work assignment.
“To travel and to find my self, my ‘true identity’ in the big world,” she’d said with a grin, watching for our reaction.
The silences in the car are uncomfortable. I wonder whether it’s because we have been apart for a while or whether it’s me. I’ve always felt so at ease with Madeleine in the past, what is happening now?
Around four o’clock, as we draw near home, we pass our young friends Ray and Marianne. They wave, but somehow look awkward. The heat is oppressive. At Aster Street, I notice a car parked outside our driveway. As we draw closer my husband recognises Delyse and Diantha. I wonder why they are waiting without letting us know beforehand that they are planning to visit.
We enter the driveway and Ray draws up behind us. He comes towards us with an envelope in his hand,
“It’s a bit late for a Christmas card,” I quip. “But lovely to see you all the same.”
Their extended family are going to have lunch with us the next day,
“Ginn, you don’t know, do you?” Ray says.
By this time Delyse and Diantha have joined us. Delyse suggests we go upstairs so I can sit down,
“Dee don’t mess with me – its Lyndi isn’t it? She must be dead, or you would be rushing us to a hospital.”
I suddenly realise what I’d sensed all day; there is something desperately wrong, and the shock of this intuitive moment takes my breath away. I hear myself saying as if from a distance, “I don’t think I can deal with this. What’s happened to her?”
“There was an attack at the Heidelberg Tavern in Observatory last night” Delyse answers. “They say Lyndi died with three others. The police have been trying to trace you, and there’s a message from them on your answering machine.”
I feel numb as I drag myself up the stairs. Surreal… it’s as if I am outside of my body watching it all happen. My husband goes straight to the telephone and hits the ‘play messages’ button. On the outside, he appears calm; able to handle the news. Perhaps he feels as numb as I do? My thoughts are confused, tumbling in chaos, no match for the numbness. Was the activist Lyndi part of the attack? Wait for the story! I tell myself. I find it difficult to respond to anything with more than a nod.
There is an American woman’s voice on the recording. I wonder why they’d use an American – I’d imagined a burly Afrikaner polisieman - a policeman. She is telling us something to the effect that the police have been trying to contact us. That, unfortunately, it is thought that our daughter Lyndi has died and that we should go to the morgue in Observatory as soon as possible to identify her body.
I don’t remember the exact words, not that it matters, I am trying to grapple… to grasp how this last ten minutes is going to affect my life. How can I live without her? For twenty-three years and twenty-eight days, plus a further nine months, she has been part of my life, my body and my dreams.
Ray offers to drive us to Observatory, and Billy takes the seat beside him, leaving the back seat for my husband and me. Delyse handles the telephone which is already ringing incessantly with Madeleine and Diantha at her side for back-up. The news is filtering through the grapevine, and it seems that everyone wants to know what happened? The family are already making arrangements to fly to Cape Town to be with us (mobile phones are a rarity at this point).
I sit with my head on my husband’s shoulder, holding his hand. Although I am aware of the speed at which everything is happening around me, I am frozen, unable to participate. My heart and mind are in one place only, the m-o-r-g-u-e. Flashes of the television show ‘Law and Order’ flip into my consciousness. Will we be taken to a locker, have the door opened, the drawer pulled out with a ticket tied to her toe? Maybe there is a mistake. Maybe she went off for the day to be on her own to gather her wits. Maybe ... maybe… maybe… Stop! I shout silently to myself - Stop. None of this grasping at straws will help. Face the possibility. Perhaps this has happened. And, oh God if it’s true...
I start to feel a dull ache developing in the centre of my chest. I spend time later marvelling that the Ancients had called the heart the ‘seat of emotions’. Right now, it is as if I have a heavyweight on my chest and nothing is strong enough to lift it.
I’m finding
