Alexa Brink's stage fright grew worse. The loss of her grandma was a blow, as though a foundation had collapsed, so she learned to smoke to control the fear.
Despite the glowing reviews and the enthusiastic response of the small but loyal audiences in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, the demon of self-doubt clung to her shoulders every night. With a mean voice it whispered that one day she would be unmasked, someone in the audience would see her for what she really was and cry out that she was an impostor, an outsider and a fake. Alone in the dressing room she could not cope. One night she burst in on Dave Burmeister in tears and confessed her fear. That was the beginning of a vicious circle. With fatherly patience, Burmeister explained that all the great names struggled with stage fright. At first his gentle, quiet voice calmed her and got her behind the microphone. But every night it took a little longer, a little more convincing and more praise before she could make the terrifying walk across the stage.
One day, at his wits' end, Burmeister placed a glass of brandy and Coke in front of her and said: 'For God's sake, just drink it.'
Oliver Sands controlled his attraction to Rachel Anderson with an iron hand. Instinctively he knew he must not reveal his burning desire, he must keep his distance. He didn't look for a seat close to her on the truck, he didn't pitch his tent in her vicinity in the evening. He waited for those magical moments when - usually with Erin - she talked to him spontaneously, or asked him to film them with her video camera at some tourist spot. She sometimes saw him with a book in his hand and asked him what he was reading. They began a conversation about literature. In the evening she would come and sit beside him at the campfire and with her dazzling zest for life would say: 'So, Ollie, did we have a good day today or what?'
Day and night he was completely aware of her, he knew where she was every moment, what she was doing, whom she spoke to. He saw that she was friendly with everyone in the group, he kept count of the time she spent with others and realised he was especially privileged - he received more of her attention and conversation than anyone else. The two lean and self-assured chief guides were very popular with the other girls, but she treated them just the same as the men in the tour group, friendly and courteous, while choosing to take her meals with Ollie, talk to him and share many more personal secrets.
It was like that until Lake Kariba. On their second day there, when they boarded the houseboats, she was different, sombre and quiet, the joy and spontaneity gone.
Alexa Barnard learned to have three drinks before a performance. The dose required to keep the demon sufficiently quiet. It was her limit. Four made her slur, the lyrics swimming in her memory, Burmeister's proud paternal smile wiped from his face by a worried frown. But two was not enough.
She understood the risks. That was why she never had a drink during the day or after the show. Just those three glasses - the first one tossed back an hour and a half before the curtain, the other two taken more slowly. The cellist suggested gin since it didn't leave the odour on the breath that brandy did. She tried gin and tonic, but didn't like it. Dry lemon was her ultimate choice of mixer.
In this way, she kept the demon under control for four years, hundreds of appearances and two CD recordings with Burmeister and his band.
Then she met Adam Barnard.
She noticed him one evening in the little Cape theatre - the tall, virile, attractive man with a thick head of black hair who had listened to her spellbound. The following evening he was back again. After the show he came knocking on her dressing-room door with a bunch of flowers in his hand. He was fluent and charming, and his compliments were measured, and therefore seemed more genuine. He invited her out: a business lunch, he made it clear.
She was ready for what he suggested, aware of the limits of her chosen genre. She was known and popular in a small circle, she had a few glowing interviews in the entertainment sections of a few dailies and modest CD sales. She was aware of the limited scope of her career, audience and income. She had reached the highest rung of a short ladder and her prospects were predictable and uninspiring.
Three days later she signed a contract with Adam Barnard. It bound her to his record company and to him, as manager.
He made good on his professional promises. He sought out Afrikaans compositions from Anton Goosen, Koos du Plessis, and Clarabelle van Niekerk, songs to suit her voice and what would become her new style. He hired the best musicians, developed a specific and unique sound for her and introduced her to the media. He courted her with the same quiet professionalism, and married her. He even weaned her off the three pre-appearance gins with his total support, belief in her talent and his silver, silver tongue. For two years her life and career were everything she had dreamed of. One day an open-air photo shoot for Sarie magazine was cancelled due to bad weather and she came home unexpectedly. There, in the same sitting room where she and Griessel had sat, she found Adam with his trousers around his ankles and Paula Phillips on her knees in front of him, performing skilful fellatio with her long fingers and her red-painted mouth. Yes, that Paula Phillips, the dark-haired singer with long legs and big boobs, who was still dishing up pointless commercial junk to middle-class ears. That was the day Alexa Barnard began to drink in earnest.
Even though Rachel Anderson had changed in her behaviour towards everyone, Oliver Sands knew it must have been something he had said or done. He replayed every interaction, every word he had said to her, but he could not pinpoint the source of her aversion. Had he said something to someone else, or done something to someone else that had upset her so much? He lay awake at nights, on the trips to Victoria Falls, the Chobe Game Reserve, the Okavango, Etosha, and finally, to the Cape, he would stare out of the window in the faint hope of gaining some insight, some idea of how he could make things right.
The previous night in Van Hunks in Cape Town he had cracked under the strain. What he ought to have said was: 'I can see something is bothering you, Rachel. Do you want to talk about it?' But he had already downed too many beers for Dutch courage. He sat down beside her and like a complete idiot said: 'I don't know why you suddenly hate me, but I love you, Rachel.' He had gazed at her with big hungry puppy eyes in the crazy hope that she would say, 'I love you too, Ollie. I've loved you since that magical day in Zanzibar.'
But she hadn't.
He thought she hadn't heard him over the loud music, because she just sat there staring into the middle distance. Then she stood up, turned to him and kissed him on the forehead.
'Dear Ollie,' she said and walked away between the crush of people.
'That's why I came back here,' Sands said to Vusi.
'I'm not following you.'
'Because I knew the dorm would be empty. Because I didn't want anybody to see me cry.' He did not remove his glasses. The tears trickled under the edge of the frame and down his round, red cheeks.
Chapter 12
Rachel Anderson lay on her stomach behind the stacked pine logs, powerless and gutted.
Something pressed uncomfortably against her belly, but she did not move. She couldn't hold back the self-pity any longer; it overwhelmed and paralysed her. She did not cry; it was as though her tear ducts had dried up. Her breathing fast and shallow, mouth gasping, she stared at the grain of the sawn wood, but saw nothing.
Her thoughts had stalled, trapped by a lack of alternatives, the door to all escape routes slammed shut, except this single option, to lie in this shade, a gasping, helpless fish on dry land.
She couldn't hear the voices any more. They had walked uphill. Maybe they would see her footprints and follow them here. They would look at the unfinished garage and realise it offered a hiding place and then they would look behind the pine logs and one would grab her hair with an iron grip and slash open her throat. She didn't even think she would bleed, there was nothing left. Nothing. Not even the terror of that chunky blade; it did not release the flood of adrenaline in her guts any more.