he didn’t,” replied Vee, taken aback. Had she gone that far in her misrepresentation? She was certain she hadn’t. Ignore the second question.
Armed with the photograph and buckets of innocent charm, she’d managed to wangle an identification out of the more talkative members of the paediatric nursing staff. People were helpful if they thought there was a chance of seeing their names in print. It was easy enough to link Jacqueline to her mother, but suspicion sealed off communication beyond that. Otherwise, all she got was a very tenuous connection to a Dr Fourie, of which both an Ian and a Carina falling under that surname had refused to take her calls.
“I’m sorry if I led you to think otherwise,” she continued. “I hope you don’t change your mind about speaking to me.”
She cringed internally. It was never advisable to give a source the option of shutting you down. Plus her own health and sanity depended more than her livelihood on finding the truth behind Jacqueline Paulsen’s disappearance. Envisioning the hovering dead wasn’t fun any more. As they regarded each other, she saw with relief her plaintive look was matched by Adele’s own desire to talk.
“How much do you want to know?” the woman said wearily. When Vee produced her Nokia and switched it to voice recording, Adele nodded mutely, giving the go-ahead.
“Please,” said Vee, propping it on the table, “everything.”
Chapter Four
At the age of sixteen she’d met Ian Fourie, Adele Paulsen began. They were two middle-class coloured teenagers growing up in Athlone, her family being further down the ladder of the class system than the Fouries. It was the early eighties and the winds of change weren’t blowing through apartheid South Africa yet, or at least not hard enough to keep up with the tide of ambition swirling inside Ian. His aura of “more-ness” had him destined for far greater things than what the restrictive government had mapped out for “non-whites” of his kind. Bright herself, Adele was nevertheless content with her lot in life and vacillated between nursing and teaching. Highest on her list of priorities was to adore her secret boyfriend. Ian was immensely intelligent, but like many talented men was controlled by an insufferable matriarch.
“It’s amazing how powerful men can be such shrivelled assholes in their mothers’ presence.”
Vee gave an involuntary start at the sound of an expletive coming out of the mouth of such a collected, well-spoken woman.
“Ian’s family didn’t have much more than mine, but to see his mother carry on you’d think they were rolling in it. Every time I came by, that crabby old bat had her face scrunched up like I came to steal something. In a way, I guess . . . I guess I did. We were both so young and didn’t think for one second we wouldn’t end up together. It was that naive first love.”
“What made you stop seeing each other?”
“We didn’t. We never actually broke up, not formally. He left in December 1981. One day he was here in Cape Town, and the next he wasn’t. He had family abroad, in Europe. His mother didn’t want him leaving the country to study medicine, but after he started up with me it became the best idea she’d ever heard. I knew Ian wouldn’t pass up the chance in a million years. Not that our relationship didn’t matter. Ian’s just like that, always has been. He has this fire to accomplish things, and nothing should ever stand in his way. Emotions . . . love and things like that just have to work their way around what he plans to accomplish.”
The bitterness left her voice, and she turned on a softer look. “He isn’t all cold, ambitious bastard. Ian’s a good man; he truly is. He protects and provides for all the people he loves. I think so much is expected of him by so many people, it gets hard for him to balance being successful and keeping everybody happy.”
She still loves him. Tightness closed around Vee’s heart. Did she still look like this to others, deflated and blindly defending a man who had, to all intents and purposes, moved on with his life and excluded her from it? What was love worth at the end of the day, when someone left you behind without a backward glance?
“We stayed in contact as much as we could. We didn’t talk much about where our relationship was going or if it was going anywhere at all. Ian didn’t really want to talk about things like that, and being apart took a huge toll on his studies, so I stopped asking. There was nothing either of us could do about it. After a while we just grew up. I for one started feeling so stupid waiting for a man who’d be so different when he returned – that’s if he ever did. He’d be a doctor and I’d be a teacher, you know? Things were changing drastically. Apartheid seemed suddenly on its last legs and us ‘non-whites’ were going to have so many new opportunities. But at the end of the day, he’d still be a doctor and I’d be a teacher. I started thinking . . .”
You thought his mother was right.
“Maybe his mother had a point, much as I hated to admit it. And you know what men are like when they’re far away. Who knows what they’re doing? I was so young, and if I didn’t move on my whole life would pass me by. So . . .”
Adele shrugged, a world of history in her shoulders. She’d done what she had to, and damned if she didn’t look ashamed and apologetic about it. Her demeanour spoke of a woman who believed, to her own bewilderment, in one true love for a person in their lifetime.
“We fell out of touch eventually, and that made it easier. There were other men. Some were wonderful, and I tried to take the relationship seriously. But . . . have you ever been in love?”
Vee looked at the floor.
“Then you know what I mean. Sometimes you pretend to get over someone so well you start to believe it. You remember all the history, everything they put you through, and tell yourself you’ll never get past it. Then you plan this new life that doesn’t include them any more. And all the time you’re doing it, something inside you knows you’re completely full of shit.”
Vee fidgeted a little, unprepared for such honesty and vulnerability so early in the interview. There would never be a time when she would get completely used to the raw glare of heartache, no matter how many hard-luck tales she heard. Distraught mothers didn’t normally allow strange journalists into their homes and let their hearts bleed all over the floor.
“What happened when Ian finally came home?”
Adele shrugged again, only this time it was more a lazy lifting and resigned dropping of the shoulders. As if gravity was too strong to encourage more.
“What I expected to happen happened. We didn’t just pick up where we left off; too much time had passed for that. Actually we danced around the issue for quite a while. I heard talk in the old neighbourhood that he was home for good, but over a year passed before we saw each other again. Cape Town’s not that big, but you can avoid people if you want to. We finally ran into each other at a party at a mutual friend’s place. He looked so much the same. Only difference was he was married.”
She looked over as if expecting reproach. Vee stayed impassive.
“I knew about it – of course I knew. His wife wasn’t with him that night. She was very pregnant then, about to have their first child. I only saw her in passing over the years, and not very often. We got to meet properly much later on.”
“What was she like? When you finally did meet?”
“We didn’t talk much that night. Both of us wanted to pretend for a while,” Adele ignored the question and ploughed
