STALKED BY A STRANGER

Journalist and mother Nicole Madigan was minding her own business at a school cricket match when a perfect stranger set out to ruin her life.

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

It started over a sausage sizzle and casual game of cricket on a sweltering Queensland day. Journalist Nicole Madigan was feeling flat. Her marriage was ending, and it had been a bruising few years. But she had tossed her blonde hair up into a bun to take her son to his game and when it was his turn to bat, she perked up and snapped some photos. A woman she didn't know breezed past. "Are you taking photos of Adam?"

"What?" Nicole asked, bemused. She wasn't sure she had heard the woman correctly. Adam was one of the fathers who coached the team. "An acquaintance at best," Nicole says. It was a strange interaction that Nicole might have completely forgotten had she not received a Facebook message that night from someone named Karissa Owens*.

"Hi! Sorry, totally didn't mean anything by my comment when the boys were playing cricket ... Anyway, really wanted to chat to you today."

Nicole was taken aback. "This is a person I don't know. I thought it was really strange." But she didn't give it much thought. A week later Karissa messaged again: "Can I ask you a question? Are you married?"

Nicole was in the process of separating from her husband of 12 years. "I was not going to start talking about this to this stranger," she says. The woman sent several more messages.

"But you aren't married, right?"

"Sorry it's quite weird, hey! Haha. Guess I'm trying to ask if you're married."

Karissa's determination unnerved Nicole. "It seemed like something was going on, but I didn't know what," she says. She initially replied so as not to be rude but decided to ignore the woman when she pressed the marriage question. That night, the woman sent more messages:

"Is that a no? No worries. You have beautiful kids."