Anele took a deep breath and looked at Thami.

“My uncle used to drink and beat up his wife, but it didn’t end there. He raped me. It started when I was only twelve years old. He took my pride and left me empty. He raped me regularly for four years.”

She was speaking boldly now and Thami sat next to her on the kerb, his arm around her shoulder.

“I stood up for myself … and killed him. I don’t regret doing it. In fact, I’m proud I saved the little pieces of me that he hadn’t taken. I had four abortions. Can you believe it, a child who had four abortions? At school I was known as the girl who couldn’t hold her bladder.”

She started to cry again.

Thami shifted next to her and then turned and faced her, so that both his arms were around her.

“It’s OK Anele. I would have done the same if I was in your shoes. But why didn’t you tell Aunt Doris?” He was looking into her big, black eyes, which were so innocent and so sad.

“I told her Thami, but she told me to suck it up because the man was supporting me financially and I was living in his house. She said I was paying him in kind for my stay … after all they didn’t kill my parents.”

“How did you convince the police?” Thami was still coming to grips with what Anele had done.

“I lied,” Anele sobbed. “I lied and the police believed me. I mean I was a girl, only in Grade 11. And yet I had killed two people. I shot Aunt Doris in her own bed, with Uncle Steve’s gun. It was easy in the end. I wiped off my prints, put her dead fingers on it, and left the gun on her chest. The police assumed it had been her who killed her husband, for all his womanising.”

Anele couldn’t stop talking. It was as if years of holding everything in was flooding out. She felt light and free and she kept talking.

“They both hurt me very deeply at a time when I need love and understanding. They changed my perspective of men for ever. I told myself then I would never let a man have power over me.”

“Anele, I don’t want power over you. I love you and I love what you have done with your life. I love you and I will never hurt you. I’m willing to wipe away all your tears, please.”

She rested her head on his chest and he held her in his arms. In the distance they heard the sound of a police siren, as a group of off-duty hospital staff gathered around them in the street.

“Dr Anele, Thami are you Ok? We saw what happened and called the cops.”

Thami and Anele said nothing, just absorbed that the full truth about her had been told. They realised that despite everything, from now on, they would always have each other.

***

Tell us: Are you happy that Anele has ‘got away with murder’?