‘Your suite?’
‘Well... . Yes. Sort of. Now that little Zivah is home, I can’t very well stay in Yair’s suite, can I? And the guest rooms downstairs are not nearly as comfortable. So stupid really, but we have to keep up appearances in front of the child, don’t we?’
Tiffany giggled and ran her pink little tongue across her full bottom lip. She smoothed her dress over her curvy hips and took a sip of her drink. Up close, Tracy could see—she was almost positive—that Tiffany had no underwear on. Her dress was so tight, pulling a little over the sexy curve of her tummy, even a G-string would have shown.
‘Nice dress, huh? Yair bought it for me. In New York... after we’d... well, you know... renewed our... um.... our friendship. And then he absolutely insisted on bringing me home, absolutely wouldn’t take no for an answer, said I just had to come back. I moved in... umm... on... ummm... yeah.’
Tracy gulped. ‘Yair never told me that ...that he’d seen you in New York. That must have been...’ Tracy calculated quickly. Yair had gone to New York on business just after her birthday. ‘...a couple of months ago. And you’re staying here?’
‘Like I said. Yair asked me to move in. Isn’t it wonderful? There were a few loose ends I still had to tie up in the States so I only got back a couple of days ago. But Yair was so helpful – you know how he is. Well, maybe you don’t know him like I do. I mean, well, you know, Yair and me – we’ve been... ummm ...friends since, gosh, forever. Wasn’t this Aviva’s room – before all the renovations? I’m sure this was Avi’s room. I’ll never forget it.’ Tiffany smirked and sipped delicately from her champagne flute. ‘I don’t think Yair has forgotten it either. Good memories in this room. Gooood memories.’
Tracy hoped she wouldn’t be sick.
‘Such a fast learner, our little Yair was back then. He’s come a looong way, don’t you agree, Tracy?’
‘I don’t... I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh come on, Trace. Who are you kidding? I know you slept with him. He told me all about it. It’s okay. I don’t mind, we’ve a very open relationship. Oh my word. I do hope you didn’t think it meant anything? Oh darling, you didn’t, did you? Oh poor you!’
Tracy put the mascara brush down before she took her eye out. From a distance she heard Tiffany warbling on. She forced herself to focus on what the other woman was saying: ‘...so it’s best if I tell you now... wouldn’t want it to come as a shock when you find out later.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tracy’s frozen lips could barely shape the words. She was hypnotised by Tiffany’s red mouth reflected like two bloody slashes in the mirror.
‘Gosh Tracy. Don’t you listen? I’m pregnant and Yair is so happy about it. Bless him. I’ve always loved him. He’s special, you know? We haven’t told anyone yet, of course, but you’ve been such a good friend, you deserve to know and...’
From the corner of her eye, Tracy thought she saw a flash of white in the bedroom doorway before the door slammed.
‘...hurry up Tracy and get out of the bathroom. I need to pee,’ Tiffany said.
Chapter 3
Tracy
Tracy buried her face in the pillow, trying to stifle her sobs and willing Maxine to go away and leave her to wallow in her misery. She barely remembered the drive home from Yair’s house. She’d never know how she’d managed to walk across the patio, head held high, after telling him that she’d been called back to the office and just wanted to wish him mazeltov.
She had hardly been able to bring herself to look at him, to look into those blue, blue eyes.
‘Thanks Red – I’m really pleased with it,’ he’d said.
It? It! She’d stared at him in horror. How could he refer to his baby, his impending marriage, everything, as ‘it’.
‘I’m so glad you’re pleased,’ she’d said, dripping sarcasm.
‘What’s up Red? I thought you liked...’
‘Tiffany is obviously very happy too.’
‘Tiffany?’ Yair’s eyebrows rose.
‘She told me about the baby, and everything,’ Tracy blurted, clutching her kitbag to her chest, a scruffy lifejacket that was unsuccessfully trying to save her from drowning in desolation.
‘Yeah? She told you she’s pregnant? What else did she say?’
Tracy couldn’t bear to see the deepening flush creeping up Yair’s tanned cheeks. She knew that if she didn’t get out of there, quickly, she’d dissolve in front of him, in front of everyone.
‘So I just wanted to wish you all the best and everything you wish yourselves but I can’t stay, so bye,’ she said, turning on her heel and pushing through the crowd. She thought he could hear Yair calling her name, but she wasn’t going to wait to find out.
‘Traysh...Traysheeeee, s’long time. Lemme buy you... .’
‘No thanks,’ Tracy said, trying to sidestep the stocky, bearded man who had planted himself firmly in her path.
‘Aw cummon. Don’ be like that. I shaid I’m buying.’
‘It’s a party, Gilad. The drinks are free, and I don’t want one. I’ve got to go.’ Tracy moved to the left, but Gilad moved with her, continuing to block her advance. He pushed his ridiculous black trilby hat back onto his head from where it had slipped over his left ear with a pudgy, freckled paw and leered at her, breathing sickly sweet alcohol fumes at her.
‘Wash’s your rush. S’ha great party, from the great Yair Shilverman. Cummon, have a drink – here, have thish one. Sh’only Sprite.’ He held out a glass of clear liquid that slopped over his hand as he thrust it towards her.
Tracy feinted to the right and ran. This party was going from bad to worse. How on earth had Gilad managed to swing an invitation? He and Yair had always loathed each other.
‘Have to get back to the office, emergency,’ Tracy mumbled at the radiant Tiffany who was ostentatiously refilling her champagne flute with sparkling water. Gilad’s stepmother, she realised with a start. If it wasn’t so bizarre, so horribly and disgustingly sick, it might have been funny.
‘Oh that’s too bad,’ Tiffany cooed and swayed off to publicly claim her latest lover, fiancé, soon-to-be-husband, father of her unborn child... whatever. Tracy had no intention of being around when that scene unfolded.
‘Miss Tracy? You going now? It’s too early,’ Stembiso Tshabalala said as she stumbled past him towards the now-locked wrought iron driveway gates.
‘Have to. Work. Emergency. Please open the gates. My car’s outside.’
Ignoring the bewildered expression on the old driver’s face, Tracy virtually sprinted the last few metres down the driveway, through the still-opening gates, and down the road to Buttercup.
A blur of salty tears and smeared glasses and hooting taxis and then she was home, safely behind her bedroom door, blubbering like a two-year-old.
‘Trace? I know you’re in there,’ Maxine insisted. ‘I saw your car in the garage and I wondered... I thought you were going to Yair’s party. Tracy... open the door. Why have you locked it anyway? I can hear you. Are you crying? Are you ok? Answer me!’
Tracy turned over with a groan. ‘I’m okay, mom. Just a really bad migraine.’
‘A migraine? Where did you get a migraine from? You never get migraines. You poor baby. What have you taken for it? I’ve got some Brufen... I’ll get you a couple and a nice cup of Rooibos with honey.’
‘Mom, no! Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep. Okay? Really. I’ll be fine.’
‘Well... if you say so. But if you need anything, you call me. And unlock this door. What am I supposed to do if something happens to you? You know what happened to Bobba Fanny – three days it was before anyone thought to break down the door. Three days! If they had bothered... if they had cared... the suffering that poor woman...’
Tracy sighed with relief as the oft-repeated saga of her great-grandmother’s demise in the Old Age Home faded with Maxine’s footsteps. She reached for a tissue and dabbed her dripping nose. This was so humiliating. She had be
en so stupid. How could she possibly have expected a man like Yair to love a scarecrow like her? To want to marry her when he could have any girl he wanted? And he probably had – only he’d never flaunted it. But it was obvious to everyone, even her own mother, that he was waaaay out of her league. He always had been. Even at school, the only reason she had been invited to any of the Silverman parties was because the whole class had been invited. He was gorgeous. So how could she have been so bloody stupid, so naive to think she meant anything to him. But she had. She really, honestly, truly had.
He’d said it had been special, that she was special. He probably said that to all the girls. And she’d been so bloody desperate, she’d really believed him. Or more likely, she’d wanted to believe him. She needed to believe him. How pathetic was that? He and Tiffany had probably had a good laugh at her expense and how she’d thrown herself at him. But she hadn’t exactly thrown herself – she’d been drunk, he’d also had a bit to drink and he had made the first move. Or maybe he hadn’t. It didn’t matter – she should have known better. She was stupid, stupid, stupid to think he loved her. Did he even like her? Maybe he’d just been tolerating her. He had always been kind to her, even at school when all the other kids had been so horrible. He was kind to everyone. He was the kindest person she knew. So it made sense that he’d let her think he liked her and that he liked having her around all the time when she must have been such a nuisance and she had been a total idiot to think he’d ever really wanted to be her friend, let alone more than that. It was so obvious now. He’d just felt sorry for her. And he’d slept with her because... well, he’d slept with her because he hadn’t wanted to embarrass her when she was drunk and needy and clingy... and all the while he had been with Tiffany and he hadn’t told her and now Tiffany was having his baby and they were getting married and... oh God, she just wanted to die. She buried her face in her sodden pillow and a great surge of white hot anger welled up, burning her throat, forcing her upright, gasping for air.
‘The fucking bastard,’ she hissed. She swung her legs off the bed and reached for her laptop. She’d show them – him and that slutty bimbo. She didn’t need his pity. She didn’t care who he screwed, who he married. And hats off to Tits Tiffany for finally landing a really good catch – far better than old Cecil Zaldain. Yair was young, handsome, virile... rich. Maybe not quite as rich as the Zaldains but still, rich enough. Clever, too. An amazing businessman in his own right. Hell, it hadn’t been easy to keep Silverman Properties going after everything that had happened, but he had. She was so proud of him... had been so proud of him. But she’d show him... she’d show him that she didn’t need him or his pity.
She checked her watch. Just over half-an-hour to the first edition deadline. She’d just make it. She opened her notebook and started typing. Twenty-five minutes later it was finished. A gossipy, bitchy little story about the forthcoming nuptials of one of Johannesburg’s most eligible bachelors and upcoming entrepreneurs, Yair Silverman, and the buxom beauty and mother-to-be Tiffany Horwitz Zaldain. She hadn’t even had to quote anonymous sources for the slither of scandal surrounding the good news. It was the 21st century, for God’s sake – no one would care that the blushing bride was pregnant. And anyway, the two principals themselves had confirmed the good news, directly to her, so they obviously didn’t care if everyone knew.
Her cursor hovered over the ‘send’ button. She knew Yair would be angry, really angry, with her if she published the story. Did she care? After what he’d done to her? Of course not... but. She caught her breath. Perhaps she should ask him first, ask whether she could use the story. Even though she didn’t need his permission – or Tiffany’s for that matter. Their conversation hadn’t been ‘off the record’, not really. Not in the strictest sense of the word. Since when was a private conversation between friends ‘off the record’? And so what if it was – or should have been? It wasn’t as if she was giving away anything that wouldn’t be public knowledge soon, if it wasn’t already. Everyone at the party probably knew by now. Yair and Tiffany had probably already made the announcement. And even if they hadn’t, why shouldn’t she use her ‘insider’ status to break the story? Mafuta was always going on at her to get her own stories, to bring him a ‘scoop’.
‘You’re not a junior any more, TT. It’s time to prove yourself, to show whether or not you’re a journalist, or just a hack.’ His tone always made it clear exactly where he thought she stood on the journalistic spectrum.
She bit her lip. She read the story once again. She moved her cursor back to the send button.
***
‘Hey Trace. You didn’t tell me about this.’ Maxine said pointing her blood-red nail at the Daily Express front page as her daughter shuffled into the kitchen, puffy-eyed and fuzzy-brained with tearful exhaustion after tossing and turning all night.
‘About what?’
‘This. This story. About Peter... Peter... um, I can never pronounce his name. That man you were so interested in.’
Tracy grabbed the newspaper from her mother and speed-read the article. Nausea threatened to choke her. This was her story – her’s! This was the story she’d been chasing for weeks. This was the story she’d driven hundreds of kilometres in blazing heat in a car with broken air conditioning and obsolete shock absorbers across the worst roads imaginable in Botswana and Zimbabwe to get an interview with Mr Peter fucking Lepalake... and there it was. On the front page. Under Duduzile Zulu’s byline.
She blinked, forcing herself to focus on the fury-blurred words. It seemed Mr Lepalake had sat down with Duduzile and spilled his guts. Some of the facts were wrong—Tracy knew they were wrong—but Duduzile had had no way of knowing. It hadn’t been her story.
‘I’m going to shower,’ she muttered. ‘I have to get to the office.’
‘What about your coffee – and breakfast. You know you have to eat breakfast. You look awful. Are you going to start crying again? Why were you crying last night? You were crying last night. I heard you.’
Tracy ignored her mother’s barrage and hurtled into the bathroom. She tore off her pyjamas, turned the shower on full blast, and stepped into the still icy torrent. The water would warm up eventually but her heart, her body would remain frozen. She just knew it. She had died inside. She stood motionless as her tears washed down the drain.
It was all too much. First Yair. Then this. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fucking fair. She had worked so damn hard on that story. Lepalake had promised her... he had promised that he would phone her the next time he was in Johannesburg and... and he had! That phone call that Duduzile had so kindly offered to take just as she was leaving the office yesterday – that had to have been Peter Lepalake. And instead of Duduzile calling her back, the bitch had kept the story for herself – and Mafuta had obviously helped her, filling in some of the blanks from the things Tracy had told him over the weeks she had spent working on the story. Damn him. At least she hadn’t filed her story about Yair and Tiffany. It would have seemed so petty, such a nothing story, in comparison to Peter Lepalake. Mafuta and Duduzile would have made her life a misery—more of a misery—if she had given in to her spiteful temptation. They’d be saying she was only capable of stupid gossip, not real news.
Hammering on the bathroom door startled her.
‘Your news editor’s on the phone. Can you speak to him or will you call him back?’ Maxine shouted.
‘Tell him I’ll phone him,’ Tracy said and poured some shampoo into her hand to lather into her hair. Mafuta could wait. He probably just wanted to explain why he had given her story to his mistress. Maybe. Mafuta never explained anything to anyone. Ever. Too bad. He’d just have to wait until she was ready to speak to him about whatever he wanted. She wasn’t supposed to be on duty until 9am... he could fucking wait.
Tracy rinsed her hair, massaged in a liberal amount of conditioner, shaved her legs, rinsed off the conditioner, switched off the water, stepped out of the shower, wrapped herself in her threadbare towel and p
added down the passage to her bedroom.
Her cellphone was ringing as she stepped through the door. She picked it up. Mafuta.
Her finger hovered over the red icon – but she couldn’t bring herself to cut her news editor off.
‘Hello Prince.’
‘TT, what the fuck has taken you so long. I told your mother to tell you to call me back urgently. And when I say urgently, I mean immediately. Not a fucking half hour later.’
‘Sorry. I was washing my hair. I supposed you wanted to tell me about Peter Lepalake. Don’t worry. I’ve read Duduzile’s story. It’s full of mistakes. Why didn’t you call me when he phoned? I was still in the building.’
‘And let you screw it up again? You couldn’t get the story, Duduzile did – end of story. Anyway, I’m giving you a new story and I hope you don’t fuck this up too. Mpho’s police contacts called him this morning, early. Something has happened at Alan Silverman’s house. Police and ambulances are on their way. Or are probably there already, as you should have been if you hadn’t been fucking washing your fucking hair.’
Tracy sat down heavily on the bed, her hand shaking.
‘What’s happened?’
‘It may be nothing more serious than a house robbery or a hijacking. But Mpho says there could be some fatalities so it may be something worthwhile – more death in the cursed Silverman mansion type of thing. Just get over there. I’d send Mpho but you know the family so, for once in your useless little life, get me a fucking story I can use.’
Tracy stared at her phone, willing it to ring, willing it to be Yair telling her that he was okay, that everything was okay. But the phone stayed stubbornly, ominously silent.
Chapter 4
Zivah
It’s so early but the sun is shining already. Nice and bright. The sky is blue and I can see a big cloud, all white and fluffy. It’s a nice cloud. Like Daddy’s chair, sort of. Well, okay, daddy’s chair wasn’t all white and fluffy. I wish I was sitting in that big white squishy cloud chair so I could push myself back really hard and the bottom will come up and I’ll lie back like I’m on a stretcher at the pool. I bet you anything Daddy is in that cloud chair right now. And I bet you he wants to put me on his lap like always and love me and tell me I’m his very, very special girl. I miss him so much. He loved me so much. He did, he did. He wouldn’t have shouted at me like Yair. I’m cross with Yair. He shouldn’t have treated me like I’m a naughty little girl when all I wanted to do was go downstairs but he stood there and shouted at me to go to my room in front of that horrible fat freckly Gilad and the others who stayed here last night. Horrible drunks. Like Mommy. They should have called an Uber if they didn’t want Stembiso to take them home. I don’t like strangers in my house. I hate it when Yair treats me like a baby. I’m not a baby. I’m a grown-up. I’m twenty-one. I never thought I’d be able to blow out all those candles on my cake at my party – it was like there was a fire and I was scared the icing would melt. But I did it with one big breath. It was really quite easy but I’m not going to tell Yair that. He was so proud of me. He hugged me and everyone clapped. Even that horrible Tiffany. I don’t like her and now she’s going to ride in the ambulance and that’s not fair. I know she’s sick and that’s why the ambulance has come, but it’s still not fair. It’s not. I also want to ride in an ambulance so I won’t touch my head or touch my toes and hope I never go in one of those and then I’ll get my turn to ride in an ambulance like Tiffany. The ambulance had its sirens on and everything. It was so exciting. I could hear it coming from far down the road but Yair shouted at me and wouldn’t let me even look inside it. I also want to watch the paramedics like on Chicago Fire but Yair said no. He’s so silly because I can still see the ambulance from my bathroom window. I wish I could see what the paramedics are doing inside the house. I wonder what is taking them so long. It’s getting a bit uncomfortable standing like this on the toilet seat. I wonder if they’ll put the sirens on again when they leave. That will be so cool. Oh look – Daddy’s cloud chair has gone. Now it’s like soft serve ice cream. I like soft serve even if it isn’t kosher. Yair doesn’t care about kosher any more. Daddy would be so cross with him and with me. I don’t want Daddy to be cross with me. I love Daddy. I love Yair too. But I still love Daddy more.
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