Teenage friend was the sharpest of all

I’ve heard her called ‘alleged victim’, ‘accuser’ and ‘the dead woman’. To me she’ll always be the girl who made my jaw drop the first time I saw her speak.

Nick Ryan was a long-time friend of the woman who accused a cabinet minister of rape.

Since Friday I’ve heard her called the “alleged victim”, the “accuser” and — this is the one that slices between the ribs each time — “the dead woman”.

That’s how you know her. To me she’ll always be the girl who made my jaw drop the first time I saw her get to her feet to speak.

The woman at the centre of this storm is the girl I first met in 1986 when she suggested I raid my local TAB because the betting slips made the best palm cards for debating speeches.

Debating is a honey pot for precocious kids. I would stand there and speak, my feet on a firm foundation of self-regard and cockiness.

A minute listening to her showed where all the cracks were. Fifteen-year-old kids just don’t have shoulders topped with a head like this one.

She was formidable. A brain that whirred so fast you swore you could hear it; her words were sharpened scalpels.

I knew then that one day I would brag about having known her. I never thought it would be like this.

We made representative teams together, attended debating tournaments where kids from across the nation came together. Every one of us thought we were good but knew she was better.

It’s the people who knew her then who have come together to fight for her now.

We built a friendship of deep respect and affection, purely platonic and probably better for it.

I was her date for her Year 11 school formal and I’ve always suspected it was because anyone in Adelaide’s shallow pool who might have caught her romantic interest would’ve been too intimidated to accept.

After school she went away to university. I thought at the time it was because Adelaide couldn’t hold her any more. I wonder now if there was more.

She wrote often, long letters in her distinctive hand. Excitement about the life she was shaping leapt from the page, but the space between the lines was fraying.

Over time our closeness did too. Different lives and all that. But every now and then, entirely out of the blue, a little letter would arrive, a postcard, a trinket.

The last time I saw her was in an Adelaide bar in October 2019. She said she had something to tell me and it needed to be done face-to-face. She told me she was ready to come forward with the ­accusation that has caused such turmoil in recent days.

A reaction to that kind of news is visceral. There’s an explosion of half thoughts that collide inside the head. But the one I remember is this: “I hope you’re strong enough for this fight.”

When I left her that night, things felt unfinished. The last half-hour of our conversation was hijacked by a homeless man who came over to bum one of her cigarettes. He got three of them and a half-hour of her full attention.

I would’ve hurried him along and got back to our conversation, but she wasn’t dismissive. There is solidarity in troubled souls.

“Don’t worry about me, Matey. I’ve got this,” are the last words she said to me. But she didn’t. Her demons won out in the end.

There will be a lot of speculation about her in coming days. There’s already been more than makes any of us comfortable. Her struggles with her mental health are now part of the public record.

Her brilliance, her kindness, her empathy, her humour, and her bravery should be too.

Nick Ryan is The Australian’s wine writer.

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