On Thursday the 22nd of April, the police arrived at 5 Carlton Avenue. There had been a noise complaint, a woman screaming, and a neighbour who had seen her hanging from a broken glass balcony by the hem of her dress. There were glass shards all over the floor and her body had been badly bruised.
When they arrived, they found the owner of the house waiting with an army of lawyers. A young man sat on the stairs shaking, blood on his arms and t-shirt with a tear-streaked face. Next to him was another young man with bloodshot eyes and a cut on his face. A woman had died in what seemed to be a pretty violent death. There were two young men in the room who looked guilty and an army of lawyers ready to defend them. You can imagine who the first suspects were.
This is not a love story. It never has been. It is the story of obsession, lust, and everything in between. It's the story of how one woman had to die, and how a system built for the rich failed her.
****
Ruth
Of course, now that she's dead everyone wants to pretend she was this perfect angel. Ayo Abiola was not perfect, she was barely likeable. She had a stick stuck up her ass so far that it made it impossible for anyone to like her. That's why Ade got sick of her you know? It's because he couldn't stand her little phony act any longer. People are going to say terrible things about him, but you shouldn't believe them. He's a good person.
Mixo
Ruth is not a reliable witness, she's in on this too. She's going to lie for Ade, she always does. She's obsessed with him you know? She was there, did she tell you that? Did she tell you how she sat silently while Ade tormented Ayo, and how she shook in fear and stayed perfectly still, and watched him hurt her, all because he said so? So you see, detective, Ruth isn't going to tell you anything that isn't a lie. She would do anything to protect him.
Lesedi
I had gone out with my friends for the weekend, so they were alone in the loft. I remember coming back to the house and seeing Ayo get into an uber with her luggage in tow. I had walked into the house and found broken glass everywhere. On our dining table; a bag of cocaine, a few lines, a straw and a credit card. I rushed to his room immediately and there was my best friend lying face down on his bed. His chest was moving up and down so he was fine. I couldn’t believe that Ade had done drugs again, he hadn’t even touched weed since he had gotten back together with Ayo, for the seventh time now.
It was their thing, they were on and off you know? Ade would do something terrible; hurt her, hurt me; anything to get a reaction really, she would leave, he would apologise and she would come back. They would fight, really big fights that left them both severely scarred and bruised, afterwards they would have really wild sex. Ayo would leave, and she would come back preaching about how they both had to do better. They never did. That is what I lived with, for over eight months. It was a toxic situation, too toxic for even me, that's why I spent so much time away.
I wasn't even supposed to be there that Thursday, the day she died, I was supposed to move out that weekend. He was really angry, mad at me, I know, for wanting out. Fuck, I knew he was angry at me for 'abandoning' him as he says, but to try to frame me for murder? I never thought he would go that far.
"Mr Mokoena, I'd like to ask you to stick to answering what you have been asked. What happened that day?"
Apologies detective. Well anyway, I walked in on Ade and it was clear that he had been doing drugs that night. I couldn't tell if it was only cocaine he'd been taking. There was molly in his bedroom as well. His knuckles were bruised, probably from punching the wall near his bed, which was covered in blood. I could tell they had fought about something, you know? I just couldn't tell what it was. When I went to the bathroom, the bath was full of blood.
"And you didn't ask what it was?"
Of course not, it's Ade, and he had been doing some really hard drugs. I don't ask him questions when he's like that, I value my life. Besides, Ayo had bled plenty of times for that man. I just assumed she would be fine. I assumed she went to her mother or something.
"Her mother says she hadn't seen her in over a month. She didn't go home."
Oh? Well, wherever she went they took good care of her. The next time I saw her she was looking pretty good. Oh don't look at me like that detective, just because I didn't care much for her doesn't mean I killed her. I just wasn't her friend, that doesn't make me a murderer.
After seeing all that blood, I knew I had to do damage control. So I called her for the first time ever. Ade got really violent when he was high, so I had to make sure. She picked up on the fourth ring but she didn’t speak. I could hear her shaky breath at the end of the line so I asked her, “Did he hurt you?” There was a small pause before she said no. “Did he scare you?” I already knew the answer, but I needed to know the extent of the damage done to her. No matter what had happened that weekend, Ade loved that girl and I wanted him to be able to get her back if it came to it. If I was leaving him that meant she had to stay.
“He did scare me, but I’m okay. I just need a break for a while. Ade and I have been living in a bubble you know? It's not pretty inside the bubble anymore though and I’ve been in it for too long. I need a break.”
“Are you coming back?” Deep down I didn’t want her to come back. If she didn't come back it meant I could stay.
“I don’t know.”
I smiled, she wasn’t coming back. I would rehabilitate my best friend and he would get back to normal. Well, normal for Ade. Ayo was really bad for him you know, when he was with her, it's like he was both at his best and worst. He had always been a bit violent, but he only expressed it that freely with her. He had never been that horrible with anybody else, I wanted her gone for that. Well, not gone like she is now obviously, but just away from him.
I saw her a week later on campus. To everyone else she might have looked normal, I won’t lie she had looked normal to me too. She had gotten better at pretending to be happy by then, and she had gotten better at hiding her bruises too. She only looked a bit more sad than she usually was when she was with Ade, which was understandable because they weren’t talking. It took me running into her on my way to my class for me to see it, the concealer on her neck. I was too much of a coward to ask her what she was hiding, and not for the first time, I feared my best friend.
Regardless of whatever happened between the two of them that weekend, Ayo came back the next Thursday.
and this was this past Thursday? The one where she died?
Yes, it was early Thursday morning, before she died.
****
Mixo
Ade gave her an abortion pill, in secret. She had told me about her pregnancy when she first found out. Said she was excited, can you believe it? She was in this hugely dysfunctional, toxic, mess, and she was excited to bring a baby into it. She was convinced that she could go clean. Oh, by then she had also started doing cocaine and whatever else Ade was feeding her. That's part of the reason she kept going back you know, he had her hooked on drugs. She had to keep going back to him because that was the only place she could get her fix. But anyway, she was excited to have that baby, she wanted to do right by it, she thought the best way to do that was to tell Ade about it. I knew it was a bad idea.
Ade didn't want to have children, it's part of the self-loathing thing he has going on. He doesn't want to pollute his offspring the way his father did him, that's what he says. So he made all of us get abortions, he went a step further with Ruth, asking her to get a full hysterectomy. The foolish girl had done it. Anyway, that's who Ade is. I knew that if she told him about the baby, he would want it gone. Ayo was stubborn, she would never go for it. So it makes sense that he went that route you know? Slipping her abortion pills. She told me he made her bathe in a pool of her own blood, as she bled out her child.
She had come to me, she always did. She came to me every time things between her and Ade got very bad. She would always say she couldn't go to her mother because her mother couldn't know how bad it was, 'she wouldn't understand, but you do'. She had grown to accept that I had dated Ade too, at some point, and had gone through most of what she was currently going through.
She had changed so much in those eight months, she was thinner, gauntly and haggard; you could see the sadness in her eyes from a mile away. Ade had stolen so much from her, I think she felt that if she kept going back then maybe one day he'd give it all back: her light, her soul. Anyway, that last time she ran to my house it was because he'd forced an abortion on her. She arrived at my door helpless, desolate; the way she cried that day still haunts me. She wailed; the sound she made couldn't have come from a human. She was absolutely shattered.
It took a few days, but she finally spoke to me. She told me what he had done to her, and for the first time, I told her my story. What I had done with Ade, what I had done for Ade. I told her about the time he asked me to seduce the Dean, take a video and use it to blackmail him. I told her how he shared that video with the entire faculty, the entire school. I told her about the girls Ade would have me pick up at clubs for him, how he would say it was better if I picked because I had better taste than him. I even told her about the abortion he had made me get as well, and his reason behind it too; "The mother of my child isn't going to be some slut."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she asked
"I was scared, scared you would judge me,"
"He's a monster," she had said.
She was angry on my behalf, kept going on about how we couldn't let him keep getting away with this. That he had to pay for what he had done to us, to all of us. So she came up with a plan: she would go back to the house, she would start a fight with him and he would attack her. She wanted me to go with her, hide in the trees and take a video of the entire thing. She thought that that would be the thing to expose Ade; people seeing him for the abuser he was.
And you let her go back?
I tried to stop her, but she was adamant. She told me that that was the only way to expose him. I wanted him gone so bad that I ignored my concerns for her safety. Besides, I never thought he would kill her. I thought he loved her, as sick as he is, I thought he loved her, at least. Part of me though, thinks she went there to die.
He didn't actually kill her. I mean, we don't know that he did. There is no proof of murder.
What are you talking about? You saw that video, I showed you the video detective. The one Ayo risked her life for.
The video doesn't show much Ms Dladla, the letters Miss Abiola wrote tell us it was a suicide.
There are letters?
Yes, many different love letters. The latest letter though, is a bit different. You see, it was written on Wednesday the 21st, the night before she died. It tells us that she had given up, it's like you're saying, she probably went there to get herself killed.
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