Betrayed (16 page)

“Tracey's one of the few people who can live in my kids' world and enjoy herself as a child and still maintain discipline,” Shaz said.

When Tracey had been clean for nine months, I suspected she had relapsed without admitting it. After all the lies and deceit, my trust had been
broken. Not only did she have to rebuild her life, I also had to rebuild my
trust in her. My biggest fear at this time was that she had started seeing some of her old friends from her “druggie” days.

Early in December, she came into the lounge and danced a little jig, a
funny dance that was uniquely hers. She asked if I could lend her some
money. I said no. Since she had been in rehab I wouldn't give her cash,
worried that she would use it to feed her old habit. Knowing she was battling financially, I helped by putting petrol in her car and giving her a home, but I drew the line at giving her cash. She gave me a dirty look, and before long the music started up in her room.

Shaz joined us for lunch on Christmas day and I confessed my suspicions
that Tracey had used again. She admitted that it was true. Tracey had
vowed that she had lapsed only once about a month earlier, and begged Shaz not to tell me.

By this time, Tracey had found another temp job, this time at a furniture outlet in Johannesburg. She seemed to be enjoying the work and there was a good chance it would turn into a permanent position so she was pinning her hopes on that. She and Shaz were talking excitedly about their upcom
ing first anniversary of being clean – a big milestone. The tender, gentle
Tracey was back. There would be occasional flashes of temper, but the un
predictable reactions of a year earlier were gone. She was bubbly again, dragging her much quieter brother out with her and her friends. She was
again giving her granny the hugs and quick kisses that had been missing for so long.

One sweltering February day, Tracey told me she would be moving into a cottage in Kempton Park with Wilma, a friend who was working for the same company.

“Wilma doesn't have transport to get to work, so getting her to and from work will be my contribution towards the rent,” she explained.

Tracey still came home regularly and would always rush out the door with
“I love you” and my response was always “drive carefully”. Laughingly, she'd
shout, “Never!” This had become a standard practice, a little ritual be
tween us.

After a few weeks she admitted that she and Wilma were also sharing the cottage with Trudy and Wally. I bristled, knowing that Wally had been a drug user. Tracey had avoided contact with him over the past year because he had had a lot of negative influence over her in the past.

She brought him to visit one evening and I found it hard to be pleasant, given the suspicions festering in my gut. Wally admitted that he had a criminal record for assault but insisted that he had put his bad days behind him.
He vowed that he and Tracey were supporting each other to stay away
from the drugs. His words didn't ring true, but Tracey was an adult, twenty-four years old, and I could no longer control her life as I had when she was little. I could only voice my concerns and then I had to back off lest I alienate her and drive her further towards trouble.

At the end of February, Tracey's contract at the furniture outlet came to
an end, and it wasn't renewed. She felt betrayed; she had been given to understand that after the first three months, she would be taken on as a
permanent member of staff. Another staff member showed her a series of e-mails between Wilma and management. It seemed that her “friend” had stabbed her in the back, being involved with the management's change of heart. Tracey felt doubly betrayed.

Although she was now out of a job herself, she carried on taking Wilma and Wally to work and fetching them in the afternoons.

“I'd like to come to live at home again,” she told me, “but I can't leave
them without transport.” I suspected there was a lot more behind it, but
wasn't sure what. She popped into my office about a week later to ask to
borrow money. Again I refused, not wanting to give her the wherewithal for any backsliding. Then she brought the subject up again.

“I'm not happy about my living arrangements, Mom.”

“What's the problem?”

“I can't really talk about it now, but I'd like Trudy and I to come and live at home. Can we come round to talk things over on Saturday?”

“Sure, just come early because Dad and I have to go to a wedding at two.”

She gave me a hug and left, waving a cheery goodbye to everyone in the office.

“I haven't seen her look so happy for a long time,” my colleague Linda smiled.

“I'm worried she's back on drugs,” I blurted.

“I can't believe that. Her eyes are clear and her skin is perfect.”

I clutched at this assessment, hoping that I was just being stupid and neurotic, over-sensitive because of what had happened before. What was the truth? And then an image came to me from the previous weekend. Tracey
was sitting in a bundle on the floor, cleaning her takkies with a toothbrush, telling us how much she loved playing action cricket. When we were no
longer listening, she started humming and singing happily to herself.

She was going to be fine, I told myself. She was going to be fine.

I didn't know then that in just a few weeks we would be confronted with something much worse than the spectre of drugs – a murder that would give none of us a second chance.

December of 2005 arrived, bringing stifling heat and late afternoon thundershowers. Inspector Pearce's weekly calls had fizzled out, but I was still getting a call now and then. In the middle of the month,
Trudy let me know that the police had finally taken a statement from
her, although Wally and Wilma in Cape Town had still not given stat
ements to the police. It was just as well we didn't know then that this would take another five months because we needed all our energy to face our first Christmas without Tracey.

Tracey had loved Christmas. She always kept a small Christmas
tree in her room and on Christmas morning she and Glen would sit
under the big tree in the lounge, handing out the presents with excite
ment and joy. With her warm and generous heart, she was always as
interested in everyone else's presents as her own.

Buddy and I hadn't been filled with Christmas cheer the previous
year. We had been plagued with break-ins and robberies at our house
, feeling violated by strangers invading our space and going through
our cupboards and drawers. Since Tracey had recently been in rehab,
we had also been worried that she had relapsed and stolen the items
to pay for drugs. Such is the effect of drug abuse on the whole family;
you're always suspicious of backsliding and then you feel guilty in
case you're judging too quickly.

We had bought gifts and invited friends and family for Christmas
lunch as always, but there was no tree, no decorations around the
house. Tracey had been disappointed but tried to hide it from us. All
in all, it hadn't been the best Christmas and I had been glad when the
day was over, the dishes washed and packed away. Naïve, oblivious
fool, how could I have known it would be Tracey's last? How could I have known the guilt I would have to carry into the future?

Now, this first Christmas without Tracey, we made a special effort,
as though she could see it all and forgive us for the ghost of Christmas
past and all its bah-humbug. We threaded flashing lights through the branches of the trees outside and hung lanterns of red, gold and green from the smaller bushes. A snowman stood at our front gate.
The tree in the lounge was dressed with silver and red beads, and
white angels danced as the tree lights twinkled. The Christmas table was set in red and gold, with crackers waiting to be pulled into life.

As usual, we went to the early Christmas morning service at our church. I listened quietly at first, hands folded tightly in my lap, but
there was no welling of Christmas spirit, only remorse and grief.
Choking back tears, a dry ache in my throat, I slipped outside to sit
alone in the Garden of Remembrance. There are so many “firsts” to
contend with when a loved one dies. Birthdays had come and gone
and somehow we had muddled through, but Christmas without
Tracey
was punching and tearing at my lonely heart.

Back at home, family and friends arrived to exchange gifts and I slipped on the mask I had learnt to wear to hide my true feelings
from the world. It was hard, too hard, and I felt a brittleness just a
moment from shattering. One of the two most beautiful gifts I'd ever
been given had been snatched away and there was nothing else I
wanted. I placed a single red rose on the table in Tracey's memory and
each of us tried hard to lock away our grief and focus on happier
memories of the daughter, sister, granddaughter, cousin, niece we
had loved.

That night I thought back over the day as I packed away another
Christmas. I began to understand that part of the reason I had fallen
to pieces in church that morning was because my faith had toppled.
I didn't know what to make of the world anymore; it was a changed
place to me now. Part of me went missing when Tracey went missing
,
part of me died when she died. I had spent my life praying to and
worshipping a God I believed was compassionate and loving, but
maybe it had all been a giant waste of time. Had I been duped by a
myth handed down through the generations? The comfort I had always drawn from knowing a higher being was looking out for me and my family had vanished with my daughter's life. In the wake of
this double loss came a sense that there was no afterlife, we were all
mere specks in a cycle that had no meaning. My daughter's ashes were
just that – ashes. She was only a memory in our hearts and minds,
no more.

Then New Year was upon us, and the endless waiting for progress
in the investigation continued to take its toll. We had pinned our hopes
on Inspector Pearce gleaning more information from Wally, but January rolled into February and still there was no news.

It was also at this time that Connor told me he had reached a dead-
end in his investigation. He lacked evidence and he lacked cooperatio
n
from the police. He firmly believed that Wally was involved or at least
knew a lot more than he was telling, especially given the contradictions
in his statements. Legally, though, he couldn't interview him again so
his hands were tied.

“Unless there's a lucky break and someone comes forward with
new
evidence or a new lead, there's not much more I can do,” he con
fessed. He'd posted a substantial reward for an arrest and conviction, but this had brought no useful feedback, just a few prank calls.

I owe this man a huge debt – not only in monetary terms but in
gratitude. If he had charged me for all the work and hours he put in
,
according to our agreement, I would never have been able to pay him.
Most of his work was done out of the goodness of his heart. Even if
we started off on such a bad note, I'll always be thankful for his support, compassion and help.

I was exhausted from fighting for answers, endlessly clawing, scratc
hing and digging. February was over and, as disgruntled as I was, we still had March to face. One year since Tracey died.

The numbness and shock of the first year had settled into reality,
but how does a mother or father ever accept the fact that their child
is dead, a brother accept he will never see his sister again? A shadowy
mantle had settled over the family, where sadness still whimpered in
the cupboards and pain seeped into the floorboards. Everyone around us had moved on, but for the three of us our loss had curdled the rest
of our lives. Not a day passed that we did not think of what could have
been, what should have been.

I was also drained from giving numerous newspaper interviews. Whereas at first I had wrapped myself in grief and shunned the me
dia, about four months after Tracey died I had become willing to tell
our story to any newspaper or magazine that contacted me. By then
I figured that the investigation was going nowhere and that any pub
licity that could shed light on what had happened would be a good thing. I was equally keen to shine the spotlight on all the police lies
and bungling. By now, there had been nearly six months in which I
was constantly on call to the press, going over and over what little we
knew, retelling a harrowing story I still didn't want to believe, draining
me of energy, shattering and wearing me out.

Over time, one investigative reporter Serena and I had become
friends. When we first met I was sure she thought I was exaggerating how bad things were, so I let her go through my documents and files.
I think that's when she realised that, if anything, I had underplayed
the police incompetence. She was always unbiased and her articles
were to the point, with no embellishments of the facts to make a more
sensational story. She had a good relationship with the police and of
ten visited the Violent Crime Unit as part of her job. She kept me
up
dated as best she could and was always honest with both the police and me. I respected her judgement and valued her friendship.

But now, a year later, the unsolved murder was old news to all except those of us who still felt every day the hole that Tracey had left
in our lives. Buddy and I didn't want to commemorate the distressing
days of her disappearance, death and discovery so we decided to try to escape from the real world. We knew we couldn't look forward to pleasure, but hoped for some easing of the pain. Asking Glen to keep in contact with Inspector Pearce and phone us if there was any news, we set off for a couple of days to a game park in KwaZulu-Natal and then to visit my sister Marsha on the South Coast.

We had expected intense heat in KwaZulu-Natal, but we were plea
s
antly surprised by balmy days without unbearable stickiness. I forced
myself to relax and enjoy the scenery, to give in to the rare freedom from making telephone calls that simply got me frustrated and angry, pouring salt on wounds that refused to heal.

On the anniversary of the day that Tracey's body had been found, I wanted to be with Marsha. Although this wasn't a day to celebrate, I did want Tracey's memory kept alive. So often people wouldn't talk
about my child who had died, or they accused me of living in the past if I mentioned her name. It was as if I carried an infectious disease. People shunned me because they just didn't know what to say,
what to do. One or two people even nodded sympathetically and told
me that it was the same for them because their children had left home
and were living in different countries or provinces. I would have to grit my teeth to stop myself from screaming at them. They had no idea how cruel it was to know I would never see or talk to my child
again. Not ever. How could they understand how much pain, guilt
and loneliness a mother goes through when her child dies, they with
their children still just a phone call away?

We arrived at Marsha's mid-morning on a windless day and she
soon had us down at the beach. For a brief time our lives were filled
with laughter and fun. Like two-year-olds, she and I jumped in the waves and searched the rock pools for any treasures we might find, Buddy standing by and watching with a small grin teasing the cor
ners of his mouth. Late in the afternoon we packed a couple of drinks
into a cooler bag and went to sit on the rocks for sundowners, absorbing the beauty that surrounded us.

Tracey and I often used to sit on the rocks watching the waves
break. She was always as alert as an athlete waiting for the starter's
gun, ready to run from any wave that might turn out to be bigger than
we expected. Memories flooded my mind and I struggled against the
pain that washed over me, determined to make today a celebration
of her life, not a dirge for her death. Marsha, Buddy and I ended the
evening around the braai, talking, reminiscing, even laughing to
gether. Tracey would have been glad.