'It torments me that I didn't pick up on the clues ...'

In the three months they were together, Oscar Pistorius showed signs he was obsessed and possessive towards her daughter, June Steenkamp reveals in this second extract from her book, 'Reeva, A Mother's Story'

When she told us she was going to break up with Warren [Lahoud], we couldn't understand it. And then she ends up with this gun-toting guy. Barry was particularly upset because he loved Warren. Although he thought Johannesburg was a more dangerous place for Reeva than Port Elizabeth, he felt she was safe with Warren because he absolutely worshipped her. It was hard for her, moving to a competitive, brittle city like Johannesburg, and she was lucky to find stability and security early on in her domestic life with Warren. She used to buy me a plane ticket and I'd go to stay with her for a week. We did that often. It was great fun, catching up, chatting. I loved going to stay there.

After the split, she moved out of the house she shared with Warren and rented a room in a friend's house as a short-term measure. She stayed there for seven months, but she'd phoned her father to say she wanted to move on and get her own place, it wasn't working out. Barry became very worked up and fretful about Reeva's safety now [that] she was lodging; he kept begging her to come home. By Christmas he had an overwhelming need to have her back with us in Port Elizabeth.

He'd imagine her being tailed home after one of these red-carpet events full of gorgeous people wearing expensive watches and jewellery. It could be that a lot of it is urban myth, but you always hear stories of how dangerous Johannesburg can be, especially for a young woman. We'd hear of muggings and car-jackings and horrible incidents occurring at knife or gunpoint. Barry would ring and plead with her to move back.

It was like he had a sixth sense that something bad was going to happen to her.

In the autumn of 2012, Reeva was going through a lot emotionally because she wasn't a person who could be unkind.

When she suggested they go their separate ways, Warren was devastated and she couldn't stand that she was causing him pain.

She carried a lot of guilt because she didn't want to break his heart. It's like a divorce, she said to Kim [her cousin].

I do feel sympathy for Warren because he said that in his head he just assumed they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. He wanted to buy a house for her and give her all sorts of things.

Maybe if he had communicated that to her, things would have turned out differently.

But life was taking them in opposing directions. They hardly saw each other. So they split in late August.

She met and became close to Francois Hougaard in September or October before they decided to keep things platonic, and then on November 4 she met Oscar through this Justin Divaris guy, who was also a friend of Francois.

By his own account, Oscar was persistent in his pursuit of her. In court he described himself as "besotted" and told his lawyer Barry Roux: "I was very keen on Reeva. If anything, I was more keen than she was." He insisted on seeing her every day for the first seven days after their initial date at the Sports Awards. Those close to her suggested she felt "caged in" and "stalked". Her landlord in Johannesburg, Cecil Myers, Gina's father, felt obliged to warn him to "back off" as Oscar forced himself on her emotionally. He said he found him superficially polite, but very moody, hasty and impatient.

Other friends said she found him overwhelming. On November 30, at the British Olympic Ball in the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, a glowing Oscar showed people on his table at dinner a picture stored on his phone of "this amazing girl" - Reeva - saying she was going to be the perfect girlfriend for him. Beyond her vivaciousness and her beauty, he said he liked the fact that she was a bit older than him, mature and dedicated to her career.

Oscar's persistence paid off. How, or why, she decided to be with him is something I keep trying to work out. I once met a man who said he had special powers and he informed me one of my daughters was a powerful personality with a strong will - and that would be Reeva, I thought - and my other daughter would always be in trouble because she believes everything people say to her, especially men. Well, Simone has a lovely, wonderful heart and she can't say "no"; in fact, she can't spell "no". This man hadn't met either of them, but that was how I thought of them in my mind.

Simone has been married three times, and though I did fear that Reeva also wore her heart on her sleeve, I thought she was so aware. And look at what happened to her.

I think ultimately she felt sorry for Oscar. She would have seen him as vulnerable and she probably thought she could make things better for him. She was a nurturer, a carer, she wanted to look after him. And as Abigail [Theron, a friend] says, Reeva was a rainbow and fairies kind of person, always seeing the pretty side of things and thinking the best of people.

She admired his achievements as a double amputee. She found his intensity attractive.

They kept whatever was going on between them, or not going on yet, quiet and private. In the middle of November her Twitter feed - a very public forum - suggests underlying turmoil among all her happy posts highlighting industry events, launches and product recommendations: "They said Reeva baby use your head. But I chose to use my heart instead."

By the end of November she had started acknowledging a friendship with Oscar, retweeting his philosophical nuggets: "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." "Wise words for an amazing person @OscarPistorius."

A post on December 3 read: "I'm so disappointed in myself today, more than anyone else. I never learn from the past. How do you grow if you never learn? #sadheart."

On December 6 she is playful again: "Wondering what my stalker is up to? Kinda miss him lurking around tonight ..."

By the middle of December, she was again retweeting a sentiment from Oscar: "Everything happens for a reason. Practice some faith in yourself and others. Pray and trust that His will shall prevail ..." Soon afterwards she posted her own sentiment: "Love comes from finding someone who makes you feel comfortable with yourself. Almost like finding the other part of yourself."

Clearly she was reassessing what she expected or wanted from love and romance and a relationship. Theirs was not a consciously public romance in November and December 2012, but they started being seen together at the same events.

Reeva told me he was a very, very good man. She was impressed by his charity work and his fundraising projects for children who had lost legs. They shared a love of fast cars, of horse racing and animals. Oscar had two dogs and owned racehorses. On a superficial level, they made a beautiful couple, thrilling gossip columnists with the ultimate high-profile celebrity match of sporting hero and dazzling model.

But after one early red-carpet appearance together her publicist, Sarit Thompson, rang me and said: "June, I'm very worried. He's so possessive." They'd been at an event the night before and he was keeping her away from people. People at the event wanted to talk to her, not him, and he got annoyed about that. Sarit was worried that he had an unnatural obsession for her. He pursued her intently.

I gently asked Reeva about this aspect of his personality and she said that on one occasion very, very early in their friendship he had cried and cried because she wouldn't go out with him.

After that, she wasn't keen on disclosing things about him that she knew I'd worry about or warn her off.

One of the things that would have bonded Reeva and Oscar strongly was their mutual attraction to speed and performance cars. There was another resident on the Silver Woods Country Estate in the east of Pretoria where Oscar had his home, a man called Michael Nhlengethwa, who'd done very well and who shared a fascination with sports cars with his neighbour. One day they were admiring a stunning new vehicle when Oscar said he wanted Michael to meet Reeva. He called her out and actually introduced her to him as his "fiancée" - no one had ever heard him say this before.

The man put out his hand to shake hers, but she had her arms out to hug him. That was her open heart. And he was overwhelmed.

Another day Reeva called me from a car. She said: "Mama, I'm scared. I'm in the car with Oscar and he's driving like a lunatic at 260 kilometres an hour."

I asked her to put the phone to his ear and I said to him: "Listen, if you hurt my baby, I will have you wiped out", or words to that effect. I didn't mean that as a threat, I was trying to keep to the spirit of fun they were obviously having - Darren Fresco, a friend of Reeva, was also in the car - but I wanted to make it very clear that he had a responsibility to look after my daughter.

I couldn't bear to think her life was in danger at his hands. He said: "Yes, Mrs Steenkamp," and Reeva said he slowed down straightaway.

That was the only time I ever spoke to him - and it was to issue a warning.

I was a bit worried about the new "fast life" she might be living after the speeding experience, but I can't say I sensed any danger signals. Having split from Warren, she was footloose and fancy-free, as they say. I did not know these people she was hanging out with or that they went around Johannesburg with guns, firing out of the car roof, handling firearms in family restaurants, going to shooting ranges for a laugh. I knew nothing about how he was an adrenaline junkie who liked all this macho stuff and had more guns on order to bring his firearm collection up to ten.

I still had my weekly long chatty phone call with Reeva every Saturday, but she didn't volunteer much about him.

We were very close, but you are private about some things with your mother, aren't you? If I'd known, I'd have said: "Listen, I don't think this is going to work." Not that she would listen! She never mentioned him to Barry, or to Abigail, and that is a sure sign that she wasn't convinced the relationship would develop or stay the course. She wouldn't announce a boyfriend to Barry or Abigail unless it were for real.

I look back now and see that that was the beginning of us losing touch somehow over the three months when she was seeing him. It torments me that I didn't pick up on the clues that suggest she was struggling. I regret not noticing the warning signs that all was not well in her life and questioning her further.

But she was 29 and I wanted to respect the fact that she had chosen to split with Warren and take her life in a different direction.

I can see now she was adjusting to so many changes: a change of relationship, a change of home, an approaching milestone 30th birthday and a blank page in terms of her plans for the future. She was asking herself a lot of questions. She was hiding her uncertainty, I think, and maybe her suffering. She wouldn't want me to know that she was having a difficult time, because if she hurt, I hurt.

©Copyright June Steenkamp 2014. This is an extract from Reeva, A Mother's Story by June Steenkamp with Sarah Edworthy. Published by Sphere, it goes on sale tomorrow. Price: R285