Reeva Steenkamp’s cousin says she will go to her grave wondering if she could have saved her.
Kim Martin is haunted by her last conversation with the anxious model after asking her: “Are you happy with Oscar?”
The model, who had been dating the star for a month, didn’t answer Kim but went pale and said: “We need to talk… I desperately need to talk to you.” Their disturbing chat took place as Oscar popped out of a restaurant they were in to answer his phone.
He had flown Reeva to Cape Town as a surprise so she could see her cousin on New Year’s Day. But they never did have the chat Reeva so desperately wanted – six weeks later she was dead.
Voice
“That is something that is going to have to live with me for the rest of my life,“ said Kim, who last week was “the voice of Reeva” when she addressed Pretoria High Court about their grief. “The terrible thing is we never did talk, so I will never know what she wanted to tell me. “If she was in love she would have said, ‘Yes, I love him’. It’s beaten me up over and over. Why didn’t I say, ‘What is it?’” “We spoke a few times after that but Reeva had gone back to Johannesburg and was extremely busy, her career was taking off. “I thought she was worried about her parents’ finances and anxious to find her own home… only now do I realise how much of her anxiety was around Oscar.” Kim believes the athlete shot Reeva in a “blind rage”. She said: “My cousin would only take her phone to the toilet and lock the door if she was trying to get help. “What kind of psycho must he be to flip out like that?”