Siren

Kuli Roberts

Description

Meet Zinhle, the glamorous Siren, as she reels through the highs and lows of fame-seeking in Jozi. Zinhle lives through a sham marriage, a stint as the lover of a Nollywood high-roller, sex parties, and an affair with a football star. She bed-hops from man to powerful man, overcoming cattiness,rivalry, cheating and dodgy agents, to nab a starring role in Heritage, a highly successful soapie.She has attitude and sass in bucket loads and is never far from the latest front-page scandal. Siren, Kuli Roberts’s gripping debut novel, is a classic rags-to-riches tale, jam-packed with drama, hot sex and reversals of fortune that will keep readers zipping through the pages until the very end.

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine
• Romance
• Romance d'Afrique de l'Ouest
• Romance Sud-Africaine
• Romance contemporaine
• Littérature
• Nouvelle
• Littérature sud-africaine
• Nouvelle, Quebec
• South Africa
• Novela corta
• Littérature
• Littérature
• Littérature Sud-Africaine

Informations

• Publié par: Blackbird Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781928337980
• Langue: English

Extrait

Siren



Siren
Kuli Roberts




First published by Blackbird Books in 2019
593 Zone 4
Seshego
Polokwane 0742
South Africa
www.blackbirdbooks.africa
© Kuli Roberts, 2019
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-928337-98-0
Also available in print.
Cover design by publicide
Editing by Henrietta Rose-Innes
Proofreading by Joey Kok
Layout & typesetting by Nsuku L. Sithole
See a complete list of BlackBird Books titles at www.blackbirdbooks.africa




To
Isabella Corte
Live, darling, live



Contents
Prologue
PART ONE – MABEL
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO – ZINHLE
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PART THREE – YELLOWBONE
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART FOUR – SIREN
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART FIVE – SIPHO
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
PART SIX – THANDO
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
PART SEVEN – BABALWA
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Acknowledgements



Prologue
2018
Italian sports cars.
Of all the things she loved the most, they were way up there. And she loved this one particularly because it was hers, and that made it special. But right now she didn’t love it quite so much, because right now it was on fire, and she was trapped inside. She’d tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. All so inconvenient – wasn’t there a launch to attend, people to suck up to, photos to be taken? Such a shame it had to end this way. Even her most ardent Instagram followers wouldn’t follow her into this particular hellhole.
Sitting there, she could imagine the unfolding scenario, her wig catching alight, her flesh beginning to melt into the plush leather seats. Perhaps there would be an explosion – wasn’t that how it happened in the movies? She should know, having been in a few. There was even one in which she was actually blown up. Yes, she was sure – the fire would reach the petrol tank and then BOOM!
Reaching down for the catch of the seat belt, she wondered why she couldn’t find it … but then maybe she hadn’t been wearing it. Yes, that was possible. More than possible, in fact …
She fought against the growing wooziness, wanting to be present for everything that was to come, all the bad that was bound to happen no matter what she tried to do. It can’t end like this. Not after everything she’d been through, not after all the unsavoury dicks she’d sucked, the drugs she’d taken, the lies she’d told, the bad sex with bad people, the bad sex with great people, the great sex with both kinds, the hoops of fire she’d jumped through to get where she was, to where she needed to be.
Fire. Why oh why did she have to think of fire at a time like this? Oh yes, because it was the perfect time. Her car was on fire, and she would also be burning up.
Won’t be long now ...




PART ONE – MABEL
1979–1997




Chapter 1
One bus and two taxis , up at four to get to work by seven.
That was how it was for Mabel the day it happened. Like all the other days.
From her little room in Orlando West to Bryanston, Northern Johannesburg.
Just another day.
The taxi rank was its bustling noisy self, with hooting everywhere. Sitting close to the bus driver, she could hear him complain about his wife and the useless food she prepared for him – though the smell of his deep-fried magwinya made her hungry.
Just another day. Except it wasn’t, not really.
When she finally arrived at work, she had a good half-hour with Mrs du Ploy. Then came the best time of day, when Florence – as she never dared call Mrs du Ploy to her face – left in her VW Beetle for her secretarial job at a lawyer’s office. Of course there was work to do, but that would happen at Mabel’s own pace. She could watch programmes on TV she’d never think of watching at home while she listened to the hum of the washing machine as it went through its spin cycle.
She was alone in the house, with Solomon the gardener outside. At about eleven, they would have a cup of cheap coffee together, relishing its rich aroma as they chatted. Madam would never let them drink the filter brand she kept hidden away. They would not talk for long, because Solomon was over fifty and struggling to keep up with the demands of the large garden, while she’d turned twenty last December. He was more like a kindly uncle than a friend, and on most days they had little to share.
At least three days a week, around midday, Mr du Ploy would make an appearance. Emerging from the cottage at the far end of the garden he used as a study, he’d enter through the kitchen and demand something for lunch. Most days she’d make him a sandwich, usually cheese, because Mr du Ploy was a man of simple tastes. And he was easier to talk to than the Madam, who liked issuing instructions. He’d ask her how she was doing, whether she had a boyfriend, who she lived with, how she got to work.
Mabel thought them an odd couple. How the short, frumpy Florence ever got her claws into the tall and hunky Richard was truly a mystery. And she rarely saw them together. When she arrived in the morning, he was already in the cottage, and by the time the Madam got home he was still in there, finishing off his day’s work.
Mr du Ploy was a writer, although exactly what he wrote Mabel was never completely sure. A bit of everything, she thought. A bit of copywriting for the advertising studio where he went in to work a couple of days a week, and scripts for some television show, probably one of those soapies Mrs du Ploy watched when she came back from work in the afternoon while sipping her tea and munching her scones.
If Mabel hadn’t asked, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. It was just that she was curious about who cleaned the cottage, because she knew it wasn’t her.
‘I do it myself,’ Mr du Ploy answered. ‘Once a week I give it a thorough going-over. Helps me order my thoughts.’
When she asked him whether he’d mind helping her out in the main house, they laughed at her attempt at a joke, though she knew she was close to overstepping her bounds. And there had been other times … she’d noticed his eyes moving over her body, lingering a little too long.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how some men looked at her; she sometimes worried what they might do. But not Mr du Ploy, not Richard: she was never afraid of him. Yes, he was white, and the law stated that white and black were to remain separate as much as possible, but nothing about him was even vaguely threatening. Men had touched her before, but this was different. And it wasn’t because of his colour – she was glad to steer clear of most white people.
And so that day, when she was at the kitchen sink washing a few dishes and cups and he came behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, she was shocked but not afraid.
‘You’re a bit of a tease.’
She couldn’t help wondering if he was right. Had she been leading him on without knowing, asking him questions, liking it when he made her laugh, glad that he lingered when he should have been heading back to the cottage to work?
His touch aroused her, awoke something she’d been trying to ignore. When his hands moved down to her waist, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Even when he brought them up to lightly squeeze her pert breasts. She knew it was wrong, but there was no way she could deny this man, no way she’d even want to. And there were those hands again, bolder this time, moving downwards, pulling up that dowdy housedress the Madam made her wear, moving up towards her panties, caressing her gently. And then he was undressing her. When he touched her bushy mound, it set her heart racing. It was a feeling she liked, that she wanted more of ...
At least a couple of times a week she’d bring Richard his tea and sandwiches instead of him coming to the house. And once inside, curtains would be drawn, saliva exchanged with deep, sensuous kisses, clothes removed, and what had begun that day in the house would continue.
To say that she did not enjoy it would not be true. The way he came behind her and put his hand up her dress, pulling her panties down until she could step out of them, opening her blouse and lifting her bra, caressing her breasts gently at first and then more aggressively, teasing her large nipples … When he first introduced her to the wonders of oral sex, she balked, but as his tongue explored her honey pot any resistance she may have harboured vanished. And when she returned the favour, his penis in her mouth, his accompanying moans made her feel a kind of power over a man she had never before experienced.
Certainly it was all a million miles from the trauma of her first time, in Orlando West, her drunken divorced neighbour Fiston forcing himself on her after a hectic drinking session. This was different, this was passion and lust, but also something else – tenderness coupled with what could only be termed affection.
She was not foolish enough to call it love, for, after all, he was white and she was black, and this was South Africa, where love between the races could never be; at least, that was what the law said, and who was she to argue? Those wiser and more educated knew better, and she would not presume to question.
The tidiness of the cottage amazed her. If her Madam ever thought to compare Mr du Ploy’s cleaning work with Mabel’s, she had no illusions about who would come off second-best. But if he was so diligent in h