She was lying in bed. There was a drip in her arm. She seemed to be of average height—a shapeless mass under white sheets. Her hair was blonde and stringy and her blotched, red skin stood out against the yellow decay of her teeth. She asked me to sit next to her on the bed, which I did, and then she took my hand and held it in her own.
I didn’t know what to say.
The weather.
I started with the weather and an avalanche of mundanities poured out – breakfast, the curtains, the rugby, anything and everything but that day.
…and yet our chit-chat was interspersed with “I didn’t mean to do it” or “I shouldn’t have”.
She wanted to know about me, about my life, and so I told her and then reverted to things like, “Tell me about your friends in here in Tara” and “What do you spend your days doing?”
We must have spoken for about 30 minutes and by the time I left, there was a light in her eyes.
That morning. She was having coffee with her father—watching people pass by as the bitter taste of caffeine livened her sleepy morning senses. At the same moment, Maureen Naughtin walked slowly into Cresta shopping centre, leaning on her walker and thinking how nice it was to be in the company of people. She meandered past families and couples, friends eating breakfast, on her way to Woolworths to do some shopping. Eighty-one-year-old Maureen never made it out of Cresta shopping centre that morning. Her throat was slit with a butcher knife and she died in a pool of her own blood to the tune of breathless gasping and the screams of Saturday morning shoppers.
She didn’t know Maureen.
Vanessa, my girlfriend at the time, asked me to visit her. She was the daughter of a friend and was living in Tara under a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Vanessa had shown her kindness; visiting regularly and subsequently meeting the doctor treating her. She described her as a troubled soul and felt it might be helpful for her to meet someone new, who had compassion and had some experience working with unstable people. Vanessa told me about the murder but I remembered it from the news and the story didn’t require embellishment.
I agreed to see her.
She was a wisp of a woman. Barely present.
That knife. It was in her hand. Blood spurting. She dropped it and ran.
Kanellie dropped it and ran.
Kanellie Hazikonstandinou.
Storyteller: Noel Huntingford
Author: Andrea Zanin
Noel Huntingford was born in London. From the age of 6 weeks, he lived in Zambia with his missionary parents and two older sisters. When he was 14, he moved with his family to South Africa. Noel has been living in the UK for the last couple of years (to spend time with his three children and ten grandchildren) but plans to return to Africa, where he left his heart.
