Trinity Rising

By Fiona Snyckers

At last - South African chick-lit with all the wit and charm to hold its own against international bestsellers. 'If I hear the word "Struggle" one more time, I swear I'm going to strangle someone.' Trinity Luhabe is so OVER the whole Robben Island thing. Sure, her dad was one of the last activists to be imprisoned there, but he's now a billionaire mining magnate. We all have to move on, right? And Trinity is moving on with a vengeance. She's just passed Matric at an exclusive private school, and is all set to take Rhodes University by storm. She's got the looks. She's got the brains (sort of). She's a girl with a plan. Okay, it's not a plan she's prepared to share with just anyone - especially not her feminist, do-gooder mother. Delightfully ditzy, but with an inner core of strength, Trinity parties her way through life. That is, until she discovers that life bites back. And then there's her arch-enemy - the deliciously wicked Sophie Agincourt, who definitely has something evil up her sleeve. Will Sandton's favourite daughter ever find true love, straighten out her priorities, and make it to lectures on time? Or will her career be over before it's begun? Find out as you follow her along the path of true love, self-discovery, and eBay handbags in the first book of the beguiling Trinity Luhabe series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Release date: Nov 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781868424146

Fiona Snyckers

Fiona Snyckers is the author of the Trinity series of young adult novels, the Eulalie Park series of mystery novels, and two high-concept thrillers, Now Following You and Spire. She has been long-listed four times for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize.

Book preview

Fiona Snyckers

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

Johannesburg & Cape Town

To Frank,

for keeping that bottle of Moët on ice.

Acknowledgements

A very big thank you to Frank, Julia, Adam and Charlotte for hardly ever complaining about having a writer in the house. To my parents for their lifelong support – and especially my mother for all the typing. To Trish for listening to years of moaning about how I’d like to be published some day. Huge thanks to the bookclub girls for all the many glasses of wine and the devastating critiques of the latest bestsellers. They helped me realise what people really want to read. To my agent Ron Irwin for his support, and my editor Jane Rogers for her endlessly patient attention to detail. And finally to Yona, who knows why.

*

Thanks to Sylvia Chidi for permission to reprint her poem ‘This Pride of Mine’.

To: [e-mail]

From: [e-mail]

Subject: Welcome to Rhodes, Darling!

Dear Trinity

I wanted this to be the very first email you got when you started your new life as a university student!

I hope your laptop battery is working and that you managed to get your 3G set up. I made Daddy promise he wouldn’t leave until he’d got you connected.

Have you had a chance to look around yet? Don’t forget to give my love to the Vic. I spent many happy hours there. (Happy Hours – get it?) Can’t say I remember them very well though!!! Ha ha.

Another thing you must do is take a walk from Naran’s in New Street, down into African Street, and all the way to the police station. You will be following the exact route we took in 1989 when we marched to the police station to hand over our petition to the Kommandant. They chased us away with sjamboks. I was just eighteen – exactly the same age as you! Can you believe that your mom was ever that young?

Well, my skattebol, I hope you have a wonderful first week. Enjoy the break before lectures start. And don’t forget to wrap up warmly at night. That Grahamstown air can be really tricky.

Lots of love

Mom XXXXX

To: [e-mail]

From: [e-mail]

Cc: Unknown Recipients

Subject: Welcome to Somerset House

Dear First Year Student

A very warm welcome to Somerset House.This will be your home away from home over the coming year. I hope you will be very comfortable here. If you have any questions about anything at all, day or night, please don’t hesitate to contact me in the warden’s flat on the ground floor. My door is always open. Please note that I am not available before 11 am or after 2 pm as I will be studying. June exams are only four months away!

In addition to the list of Rules and Regulations that you will find in your Information Packs, I would like to add a few guidelines for the smooth running of our residence.

No loud walking in the corridors. No loud flushing of toilets after 9 pm.

Although male visitors are allowed in your rooms until midnight, I expect you all to remember that June exams are just around the corner and to keep this privilege to a minimum.

Sandwiches equal crumbs, and crumbs equal a messy residence. Kindly confine your eating to the dining hall.

LET’S MAKE SOMERSET HOUSE A RESIDENCE WE CAN ALL BE PROUD OF!

Yours truly

Jasmine Nair

The Warden

Somerset House

Trinity Luhabe’s List of Things To Do Before Varsity

– Facial

– Mani

– Pedi

– Highlights (tell Johan to think Beyoncé, not Missy Elliot)

– Lose virginity

– Break up with Munashe

– Make last payment on Marc Jacobs coat

– Finish Advanced First-Aid course

– Buy new salon-strength hairdryer

– Put sugar in Sophie Agincourt’s petrol tank

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the author

Chapter 1

OKAY, this isn’t a big deal. I can do this. I am not going to cry.

I am not – repeat not – going to cry.

All right, he’s walking away now and reaching into his pocket for his car keys. He’s frowning down at the unfamiliar remote, looking for the button that will unlock the rented Nissan Micra parked on the other side of the road. He’s turning his head slightly and giving me a little smile and a finger wave. I can see that he is also blinking hard.

Oh God, I am so going to cry.

I bite down hard on my bottom lip, but this only makes it worse. I hear a noise behind me, and turn to see the warden – Jasmine Something-or-Other – gaping at me in amazement.

‘Isn’t that …?’ She points across the road. ‘That looks exactly like that guy – what’s his name again? He was on the news last week. Abel Luhabe – isn’t that Abel Luhabe?’

I nod my head up and down, still biting my lip too hard to speak.

‘I learned about him in Industrial Sociology!’ She looks totally astounded. ‘What’s he doing here? Do you know him?’

My lip goes all wobbly the moment I let go of it.

‘He’s my dad!’ I blurt out, before bursting into tears and running back up the stairs.

I bump into a group of second-years on the way up and land sprawling on my hands and knees. My skirt ends up flapping around my ears, for maximum dorkiness.

‘Who on earth … ?’ I hear one of them say just before I leap into my room and slam the door shut behind me.

I lean my head against the wall and take a deep breath.

Okay. That did not go well.

At least I’m no longer crying, but my cheeks are sizzling with embarrassment. That was the exact opposite of the suave, super-cool entrance I planned to make. I was going to be all bored and sophisticated – not start blubbing the moment my father leaves.

I can feel my lip getting wobbly again at the thought of him. I give myself a mental smack on the head and march over to my desk to fire up my laptop. Perhaps there’ll be an email from home. At the very least I can calm myself down by surfing some of my favourite shoe sites.

I sit down and switch on the laptop. It makes a lovely, quiet humming noise. The moment it boots up, I click on the Heatmail icon.

God, this 3G line is fast! Dad was right. Wireless is totally the way to go. I select Inbox and wait eagerly to see if anyone has sent me an email.

YOU HAVE 142 NEW MESSAGES

I goggle at the screen in disbelief. What the fuck …?

Oh. Right. It’s all spam.

I’ve never had a Heatmail address before. It’s unbelievable how much junk my address has attracted in just two days. I scroll through screen after screen of crap.

Penis enhancements. Viagra substitutes. Online pharmacies.

I stop when I see one called ‘Hello Tluhabe’ but it turns out to be a letter from a Nigerian businessman who has 4.5 million US dollars that he wants to invest in South Africa. Apparently all he needs is for his money to ‘rest’ in my account for a few months. He’ll even let me keep the interest in return. So that would be about $450000. All I have to do is send him my full banking and credit card details.

Ja, right.

Tucked in between the porn sites and drug dealers, I find just two messages that are actually meant for me. One is a letter from Mom, and the other is a round-robin email from Jasmine Nair – that warden I met downstairs.

I skim through Mom’s letter and in slightly less than three seconds I’m remembering exactly why it was that I chose a university a thousand kilometres away from home.

She drives me nuts, my mother. She really does. Always wittering on about the Struggle. All the marches she went on. All the pamphlets she printed. All the times she almost got sjambokked by the police.

Yes, I know it was all noble and everything. And those were really dark times in our country’s history, blah, blah, blah. But do you know how old I was when South Africa had its first democratic election? Four. That’s how old.

And do you know how old I was when Mom was running up and down ducking sjamboks? Zero. I was an egg for God’s sake! But they expect me to care about it all as much as they do.

Seriously. Do I look like I care?

I’ve spent my whole life listening to them moaning on and on about apartheid and I’ve had it up to here. Dad’s almost as bad as Mom. He’s not quite as fanatical as she is, but when he starts reminiscing about Robben Island, it makes me want to smack him.

Suddenly I don’t feel like crying at all any more. I’ve come here to have fun, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I mean, look at this email. Mom expects me to ‘go and say hello to the Vic’ for her. I asked one of the second-years about the Vic last night. And guess what? It’s gone. Closed down years ago.

Mom is totally living in the dark ages.

I don’t yet know where the cool students hang out, but I’m going to find out. And you can bet it won’t be some grotty, smelly old pub that my mother used to frequent.

I transfer her letter to Saved Messages with a sigh. I’ll get around to replying to it some time or other.

Then I open the email from the Somerset House warden. I read through it and frown slightly. She seemed nice enough when I met her earlier, but this email makes her sound a bit mental. ‘No loud walking in the corridors’? She obviously hasn’t heard me in my Miu Miu heels. I hope she’s not going to turn out to be a problem.

I save her letter as well, and then delete my entire Inbox.

Goodbye spam.

I decide to clear out the My Documents folder while I’m at it. It’s full of horrible old schoolwork from matric. Thank God I never have to go through that again.

Are you sure you want to delete the selected files?

You bet I do. It gives me an actual physical pleasure to send them all to the big Recycling Bin in the sky.

The only thing I save is the old To-Do List I made before Christmas. I still can’t believe I got all that stuff done. It seemed like such a mountain to get through at the time.

Okay, maybe I didn’t quite get it all done.

There was that one tiny detail about losing my virginity. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t exactly get around to that one. And I so wanted to!

I mean, let’s face it. It’s hard enough moving to a totally strange town without having to worry about your ‘first time’ as well. I wanted to get it out of the way so I could stop worrying about it.

I had it all planned. It was going to be my going-away present to Munashe – to soften the blow of breaking up with him. Only I made the mistake of breaking up with him first and then expecting him to sleep with me afterwards. We got into such a fight that by the end of the evening we were hardly speaking to each other – never mind having sex for the first time.

So bang went that opportunity.

Then I tried to date some other boys. Except I couldn’t find one who wanted to go out with me.

Me! Trinity Luhabe! The girl voted most likely to make the FHM Homegrown Honeys list!

And why? Because that raving bitch Sophie Agincourt had told everyone I had chlamydia. I didn’t even know what that was until I googled it and saw that it’s some disgusting STD.

Cow, cow, cow!

But I didn’t let her get away with it. No way. That sugar in the petrol tank trick was a total stroke of genius. It must have cost Daddy Agincourt a packet to fix, but he deserved it too. I mean, seriously, who gives their daughter a Porsche for her eighteenth birthday? I only got a Tazz, and I wasn’t even allowed to bring it to varsity with me.

When I think about what Sophie might to do to me if she ever gets the chance to get even, I feel a little shiver run down my spine.

Thank God that’s never going to happen. At this exact moment, Sophie Agincourt is thousands of miles away in England. She’s staying with relatives for a few months before starting her A-levels in September at some snooty public school.

I am finally free of her. At long, long last she is out of my life forever. It’s a fantastic feeling.

* * *

I’m still feeling pretty good a few hours later when I sit down to dinner in the Somerset Dining Hall.

Here I am – a young, independent woman out on her own in the big wide world for the first time. My evil arch-enemy is on the other side of the planet. My family is on the other side of the country. And, best of all, I’ve already made a friend!

They say you spend your second term at varsity trying to ditch all the friends you made in your first term, but this one feels like a keeper. Her name is Stephanie O’Farrell, and everyone calls her Steph. I noticed her yesterday when Dad and I were lugging suitcases up the stairs. Her father was helping her move into a room two doors down from me. She caught my eye because she was the only other girl who seemed to have almost as much stuff as I did. We shared a little joke about how grumpy our dads were getting and how they couldn’t seem to understand why we would possibly need so many clothes.

She just seemed really nice. She’s not the coolest or the hippest girl in res. That honour belongs to a scary first-year girl by the name of Tyler Valkin, who looks exactly like Angelina Jolie in her Goth phase. Steph has one of those friendly, smiley faces that just cheers you right up.

We’re sitting next to each other now, as a matter of fact. I notice that she’s choosing her food just as carefully as I am – picking around for the piece of fish that has the least batter on it, and loading up on veggies. She’s also staying right away from the mashed potato.

My cellphone beeps suddenly, jumping all over the table like a cricket. Bloody Munashe set it on vibrate last year and I’ve never figured out how to switch it off. I pick it up and glance at the screen. It’s an SMS from Lael in Cape Town.

700 cals yesterday and 500 so far today

‘Wow!’ I say, more loudly than I intended. My thumb leaps into action and I start sending a reply.

Awesome! How did u do it?

Her answer comes back five seconds later.

Res food totally gross

I burst out laughing. When I look up, everyone at the table is leaning towards me in curiosity.

‘Good news?’ asks Tyler with a supercilious smile.

‘My best friend has just started at UCT,’ I explain. ‘Her name’s Lael . She sent me an SMS to tell me that she ate only 700 calories yesterday, and today so far she’s up to 500.’

‘Wow!’ Steph says in an awed voice. ‘That’s incredible. How did she do it?’

‘She says the res food in Cape Town is totally gross.’

‘I wish the food here was gross too,’ Steph says wistfully, looking down at her empty plate. ‘It’s too delicious. That’s the problem’.

‘Not to mention all the carbs,’ I agree. ‘Dangling in front of us, trying to tempt us. At least when I lived at home I got my mom to put all the carbs away in a special carb pantry where I didn’t have to look at them.’

‘I wish I could put on some weight,’ Tyler says loudly, running a hand down her flat tummy. ‘I eat and I eat and I eat, but I can’t seem to put on a single gram. You girls are so lucky.’ She fixes her black-rimmed eyes on my upper arms and gives a little sigh.

Steph and I exchange glances.

Bitch alert.

Luckily I’ve had years of experience dealing with Sophie Agincourt, so I know exactly how to handle this kind of thing.

‘I really feel for you, Tyler,’ I say in my most sincere voice. ‘Thin is so last year. You must have seen that survey in last month’s Cosmo where it said that a thin girl has less chance of finding a boyfriend than … um … shoulder-pads have of making a comeback.’

‘I read last month’s Cosmo,’ Tyler says, narrowing her eyes at me suspiciously. ‘I didn’t see anything about that.’

‘Not the South African Cosmo,’ I say with a dismissive little laugh that I’ve been practising on Sophie for years. ‘I’m talking about the American Cosmo. I have it flown in specially.’

That shuts her up for the rest of suppertime.

* * *

The last few days of Freshers’ Week fly past. It’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. I have to go and register for my courses, which takes up two whole mornings of standing in queues and filling out long, boring forms.

The subjects I’ve chosen are English I, Economics I, Visual Communications, and History of Art. Yes, I know those last two are soft options, but English and Economics are really big courses, and I don’t want to overdo it, do I? A couple of the course advisers I spoke to got a bit sniffy about how I’m limiting myself to only two possible majors, but at the end of the day, whose life is it anyway? Mine. Exactly.

I reckon this whole varsity thing can be a bit of a cruise if you just approach it in the right spirit. I’ve already worked out which soft options I’ll be taking next year (History and Appreciation of Music and Introduction to African Studies). And, after all, how bad can English be? It’s just reading, isn’t it? I can read. I picked it up in a flash when I was just six years old.

I know Economics will be a headache, but there’s probably some really easy ‘Economics for Idiots’ study guide I can buy. And anyway – Economics is the one subject I simply can’t compromise on. Not if my master plan is going to work.

Do you want to hear about my master plan?

Nobody knows about this. Not Lael. Not Steph. Not even my mother. In fact, especially not my mother.

The truth is, there’s a very special reason why I’m taking Economics.

It’s a fabulous way to meet a rich husband.

Yes, okay, I know what you’re thinking. How can I be so shallow and materialistic and unfeminist and all those bad things, right? But if you think about it, I’m only following the advice they gave us at school. They said that in planning our futures we should think about where our strengths lie and what we enjoy doing. So I went home and thought about it, and realised that what I would really enjoy is being the wife of a rich man.

And I’d be good at it too. A lot better than some others I could name. I even took an aptitude test once, and it said I should consider a career in retail. Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s just that I happen to be more interested in the buying side of the process than the selling side.

Is that so wrong?

This is a long-term strategy, of course. I’m not stupid enough to believe that my Economics I class is going to be packed with rich men. I know they’ll be mainly bursary students who don’t have two cents to rub together. But today’s starving bursary students are tomorrow’s CEOs of Anglo. And I’m going to be the girl who sat next to them in class way back before they were famous.

I’m also not dumb enough to think that I’m going to graduate from varsity with a ring on my finger. My plans are much more subtle than that. So, yes, I do realise I’m going to have to have some sort of career in the meanwhile. Top Billing presenter and talk-show host are two that come to mind. My CEO might not come along any time soon, but the important thing is that I’m putting myself in the right kind of environment to meet him.

Obviously, this isn’t exactly an ambition I want to share with the whole world. In fact I keep quiet about it completely. Even people who might secretly sympathise with me – like Lael – would have to pretend that they didn’t just to seem like modern feminists.

I’m not too sure where Steph would stand on the whole issue. I haven’t quite got her figured out yet, to be honest. She’s a lot of fun to be with and we totally get each other when it comes to the important stuff like shoes, clothes, music, dieting and guys. And I wasn’t wrong about her smiley face. She’s got this warm, friendly personality that cheers me up straight away. Even standing in a queue at the English department at half past seven in the morning is less of a pain when I’ve got her to chat to.

The thing is … I’ve started to suspect lately that she might be really bright. For instance, I’m almost sure she’s got a very high IQ.

Like, scarily high.

Her tooth mug has MENSA written all over it and she has a couple of MENSA Sudoku books in her bookcase. When I asked her about it, she just laughed it off. She admitted to being a member of MENSA, but said that their entry-level requirements are really low.

Ja, right.

Like I’m sure they’d let me in like a shot. Especially if I showed them my D for matric Science.

Anyway, I was worried there for a moment that Steph might secretly be all serious and swotty, but it turns out she’s even lazier than I am!

When we registered for English, we were given these reading packs to prepare for our first poetry tutorials. Steph flipped through hers in about two minutes while we walked back to res. Then she said something about ‘unsound methodology’ and turfed the whole thing into the nearest bin. I was so impressed that I nearly did the same. Only I didn’t quite have the nerve.

It’s ten o’clock in the morning now and I’m standing outside Steph’s door, knocking patiently. Lectures start tomorrow, but there’s something important I need to get done first. The trouble with Steph is that she sleeps like a dead person. Literally, like a dead person. She hardly ever makes it down to breakfast. Her theory is that she avoids a lot of unnecessary calories that way, but I reckon she makes up for it at lunchtime.

‘Steph!’ I call in a kind of suppressed shout. ‘Wake up!’

I’d love to pound on her door and yell, but that would bring our dear warden down on me like a ton of bricks. She can hear a fly fart from three floors away, as Steph puts it.

‘Stephanie O’Farrell, this is your mother calling,’ I say, pressing my lips against the keyhole.

No answer.

Oh, fuck this for a joke. I turn the handle and walk straight in. She never locks her door anyway.

I find Steph lying face down on her bed. She’s fully dressed and fast asleep. It’s beyond me how anyone can breathe with their face flattened into the pillow like that.

‘Wake up!’ I say, shaking her shoulder. ‘It’s ten o’clock.’

‘Okay, okay …’ She sits up groggily. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe I fell asleep again. I was going to come down to breakfast. I had a shower and got dressed and everything. Then I thought I’d just lie down and rest my eyes for a bit, and the next thing I know …’

‘You shouldn’t stay awake all night doing Sudokus,’ I say disapprovingly. Now I really sound like her mother.

‘I wasn’t. I was bidding on this awesome Chanel evening bag on eBay. The bidding closed at three o’clock this morning. And I didn’t even get it. Someone outbid me by 50 dollars.’

‘Remind me to show you how to set your computer to bid automatically for you,’ I say. ‘But not now. I want you to come with me to put up these notices around town. I’m a bit skaam to go on my own.’

‘What are they?’ Steph asks, running a brush through her hair.

I pass her one to read, feeling slightly shy.

‘Wow!’ she says. ‘These are really professional. How did you make them?’

‘I had them printed and laminated in Joburg.’

‘Mature student offers professional baby-sitting service,’ she reads, running her finger down my ad. ‘Eight years experience. Certificate in infant CPR. Age-appropriate stimulation. Birth to fourteen years.’ She looks up at me with a concerned frown. ‘But Trinity … you’re not a mature student.’

‘I’m very mature,’ I say, slightly offended.

‘No, no. I mean … you’re not old. A mature student is someone who is older than normal. Like 21 or something. Or even older.’

‘Oh,’ I say, flummoxed. ‘I didn’t know that. I’ll just have to dress older then. If I put my hair up and wear a suit and high heels, I can look 21.’

‘It’s not just that.’ Steph looks at me worriedly. ‘This CPR course. And the eight years experience. Is any of it true? I mean … how can you have had eight years experience of baby-sitting? You would’ve had to have started when you were, like, ten years old.’

‘I did! I’ve been doing paid baby-sitting since I was ten. Okay, so it was just for my little cousins. And their dad was there the whole time. But I looked after them completely on my own. And I’ve been taking courses in childcare since I turned sixteen. That’s how I make my money. I’m a baby-sitter.’

‘Wow, that’s really impressive!’ Steph looks at me as though she’s seeing me for the first time. ‘Are you sure you want to keep it up at varsity, though? I mean – we’re here to study and have fun. Not work.’

‘Of course I want to keep it up. I need the money.’

‘You need the … what?’ She sounds as though she can’t quite believe her ears.

‘I need the money! What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

Steph claps a hand over her mouth as though she’s trying not to laugh.

‘Stop that! It’s true. I need the money.’

‘Trinity … I don’t want to be rude or anything, but your allowance is already … well, basically … huge. How can you need the money?’

‘I’m a high-maintenance girl. You can’t afford designer clothes on a student allowance. Not even a big one. Baby-sitting is where my real money comes from.’

‘Okay …’ She holds up her hands in surrender. ‘If you say so. What’s this little dinges for then?’ She is sticking her fingers into the hard plastic pocket at the bottom of my notice.

‘That’s my card holder. Every few weeks I’ll go round to all my posters and fill them up with business cards.’

‘You have business cards?’ she asks faintly.

‘Of course. Check it out. Aren’t these the coolest?’ I hand over one of my deluxe, satin weave, raised-ink, embossed business cards.

‘The Baby Whisperer. Is that what you call yourself?’

‘Yup. Just finished up the paperwork to register myself as a close corporation.’

‘Amazing.’

‘It is quite!’ I agree happily. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a CC. It’s been my dream.’ One of them, anyway.

Steph points at the prices I’ve listed. ‘Isn’t this is a bit steep for an evening’s baby-sitting though?’

‘That’s not for the whole evening!’ I say, shocked. ‘That’s my hourly rate.’

‘Your hourly rate? Okay, now I really think you’ve lost it. Who do you think can afford that kind of money for baby-sitting? This is Grahamstown, you know, not Joburg.’

‘You’d be surprised how desperate parents get to have