Natural Born Killers

I have just spent six days on 30 beautiful acres in Tasmania. Tales of country life with two small children will follow, but first I have to tell a sad and strange story.

Many years ago, when Andrew and I were first going out together, my best friend B had a 'thing' with a handsome boy. I say a 'thing', because they were never exactly an item, and the more she seemed to want a relationship, the more he pulled away. She used to ring me, frequently, to obsess about him. Even Andrew remembers this.

We often saw them together but it was clear that he was in some way emotionally unavailable. It was interesting for me, because in the past it had always been B's role to play hard to get. Maybe she was fascinated to be on the other side of it. I never really understood it - he was certainly goodlooking, and could be quite charming when he felt like it, but there was something odd about him. I never felt I knew him, although we went to a couple of parties at his place and saw quite a bit of him for a while. He said he wanted to be an actor. Plenty of young, beautiful people think this is what they'll do, so it was nothing remarkable.

Eventually B moved on and had other relationships. Every so often we'd be chatting, and she'd say 'Guess who I heard from?' and it would be A. He used to get in touch with her, perhaps to reassure himself that he had friends - I think for a while she might still have fancied him, just a little, but that too wore off and more recently I thought she just felt sorry for him. Being an out-of-work actor when you're in your 20s is kind of cool; less so by the time you reach 40.

Anyway, B and I lost touch a couple of years back. We had been very close friends for over 20 years (she was my bridesmaid and was there when Holden was born), but I guess our lives went in different directions - when I invited her to my 40th birthday, she didn't reply and that was the last contact we had.

On Sunday last week I arrived in Tasmania. Phil, one of the friends I was staying with, said to me, 'Hey, what was B's last name?'. I told him. 'I thought so', he said. 'You know she was mentioned in one of the stories about those murders?'.

'Those murders' were a shocking story that has been all over Sydney since they happened almost three weeks ago. A man in his late 60s, a highly regarded art curator, and his daughter were stabbed to death at her home. His son (her brother) was the only suspect. I read the story once, including the names of all the players, and thought 'how sad'. I saw a photo of the suspect and thought he looked vaguely familiar, but since I read that he'd been an actor, I assumed I'd seen him on television. I didn't read any more articles, but I was aware that the police hadn't found him.

It wasn't until Phil asked me B's last name, that I realised it was him, her old flame. Apparently he was a paranoid schizophrenic who didn't take his medication. He was arrested yesterday. Chances are he will spend the rest of his life in prison or an institution.