Reeva: A Mother's Story (11 page)

Reeva worked for my friend Jennifer at the restaurant she owned back then, Buffalo Bills. Jennifer had her front of house because she charmed customers. She could talk to anyone as if she were one of their own. I remember once in our kitchen, Reeva was sighing to Jenny about her maths homework and Jenny just said, ‘Darling, you are so lovely and gorgeous, you won’t have to do maths for long. You are going to be a famous model, Miss South Africa!’

When she was sixteen or seventeen, Reeva wrote to Craig Native, the designer who was raised in the ghettos of South Africa at the height of apartheid, and asked him to design a dress for her. That was quite a bold thing for a schoolgirl from Port Elizabeth to do, but he responded to her in similar vein. She kept the letter in her box of special memories. ‘I would gladly like to design you a dress… obviously,’ he replied. ‘I am a fan of non-conformity… like yourself. I know you’re in PE. We’ll make it work somehow, though? We’ll innovate.’

After school, Reeva wanted to study law. She enrolled in the four-year Bachelor of Laws degree at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University which has a campus in Summerstrand, Port Elizabeth, close to the beach The course covered all the different kinds of law – constitutional, family, criminal, human rights, labour, company, administrative, property, insolvency and so on. Within the first few days of class she met Kristin, who was later to become a good friend to her in Johannesburg, too, when they were both graduates. Kristin reminded me that at this stage she used to think Reeva resembled the actress Liv Tyler with her long brunette hair and pale, pale skin. Kristin said that, compared to her, Reeva seemed quite streetwise. She was also an earnest student and drifted towards the more studious types in the class; she attended lectures, took notes, always got good marks. She used to say to Kristin that one day they’d set up together and have offices like Ally McBeal in the American TV legal comedy drama.

During her final years of varsity, we nearly lost Reeva. She was up at the stables with Barry when she fell from a horse and broke her back, severely compressing two vertebrae. After little Pinto, Reeva had moved on to bigger horses. From the age of ten or eleven, she would ride for fun with friends like Samantha and Gwyn and help Barry by exercising some of the racehorses he had in training. She was very comfortable around horses, but you can never protect against a horse having a freak stumble or reacting in fright to something unforeseen. I was busy shopping at Makro, stocking up on bulk purchases for my spaza shop, when Barry phoned me and said, ‘Now I don’t want you to get worried, but Reeva’s fallen from a horse. I think she’s okay.’ The girl who had given her this horse had reassured her that it had already been worked for the day, and should be quiet, but as soon as Reeva was in the saddle, this horse took off and threw her over its head, bang, on to the ground. Her face was full of sand; she had blood coming out of her mouth. Barry took her straight to the doctor – not the hospital, the doctor. You’re not supposed to move people with potential back injuries, but the ambulance here comes four hours after you’ve called for it, so you have to make a judgement about what you’re going to do. Barry made up his mind and took her to our doctor. The doctor X-rayed her back and said it wasn’t too bad, but insisted she go immediately to hospital. At the hospital they diagnosed two vertebral compression fractures. They put her in traction, using weights around her neck to relieve pressure on her spine, and the specialists admitted they were unable to say for certain whether she’d be able to walk again until the day she was ready to stand up.

You can imagine how frightening this was for all of us. For four months, our energetic, vivacious daughter was confined to a hospital bed, flat on her back, unsure how fully she would be able to resume her independent life as a student. This was followed by months in bed at home. It was an anxious time as she felt frustrated about falling behind in her studies and potentially wrecking her modelling ambitions. She had worked hard to attain straight A grades to get her to university and she wanted to get the most out of her law studies. It was incredibly traumatic. I sat by her bedside every day as if she were in a coma. Privately I’d cry, fearful that she would never regain her mobility. Not knowing for so long how bad the injuries might prove to be was very wearing; Reeva cried a lot, lying in bed. She developed an infection from being bed bound, a nasty case of shingles, and lay there a very sorry figure with this pale white face and big red blotchy marks everywhere. When she had visitors, though, she’d make light of her situation and lie there making wisecracks.

There was such anxiety in the build-up towards the first time she tried to stand up that she fainted. She’d been lying down all those weeks… we were all watching her take to her feet… and then she falls down, her legs giving way beneath her. I was thinking, oh my word, maybe she is never going to walk again. Slowly, oh so slowly, she did regain her mobility. The doctor said she was very lucky. But she would never be able to ride again. In Johannesburg a few years later, her friend Kristin wanted to learn to ride and thought Reeva the obvious friend to ask to come along to support her. ‘She really wasn’t keen,’ Kristin recalls. ‘She was scared, too, and out of the two of us I was always the one more scared about everything.’ With one of her main passions forbidden to her, Reeva channelled more energy into pursuing modelling as a serious option.

Reeva carried that setback around with her for a long time mentally and physically. She was determined to make each day count. She left hospital wearing a made-to-measure surgical corset, a sort of plastic supportive cage which she had to wear every day for months. She had regular physiotherapy and endured a lot of lingering pain, but she worked hard to regain her fitness and perfect posture. After she succeeded in gaining her law qualification at varsity, the first thing she bought was a therapeutic bed. She paid a lot of money for a really good mattress.

Over the next few years she studied during the week, but at weekends she’d spend a lot of her free time up at the stables. She was unable to ride, but working life for Barry and me centred around the horses and the race meeting schedule, and Arlington racecourse was the epicentre of our social lives. In her early twenties, she became close friends with Abigail, who was working as an assistant trainer based at Arlington. I was running my little shop and Reeva would be there sometimes to help me in the spaza or with the catering on race days, or she might be loitering around with Barry. Of course Barry and I were still separated then and his life revolved around his racing community. He lived at Little Chelsea Farm, otherwise known as Barry’s Barn on the Farm, a building in Sardinia Bay which had about fifteen bedrooms. Inside, there was a partition so that Reeva could stay on one side over weekends, and Barry and his apprentice and other trainers and jockeys lived on the other side. There was a huge communal kitchen and living space and when the venue staged a double race meeting – full Friday and Sunday race cards – all the jockeys would stay over. Abigail and Reeva used to have some good parties!

As a mother you’re not always privy to all the details of your daughter’s youthful partying ways, but I’ve since learnt from sharing memories with Abigail that a typical weekend would see these apprentice jockeys and Reeva all pile into Abigail’s little car. They’d go to Toby Jo’s and this dodgy place called Redemption in the old post office in Port Elizabeth that held serious raves. They were big into their weekend raving, but good clean raving. No drugs, no drink. She used to come home sopping wet because the raves had a party cannon that shot out plumes of foam. Abigail was always the designated driver and never used to drink. Reeva hardly ever drank either. The pair of them usually drank tea. The girls had very different lives during the week – Reeva at varsity, Abigail working long hard days in the yard – but they reconnected each weekend to socialise and confide in each other about boys and things. They had the kind of easy friendship where you just pick up exactly where you left off and trust each other implicitly.

At the age of sixteen Reeva had started seeing an apprentice jockey, Wayne Agrella, who was her first serious boyfriend. They were together for six years, and eventually lived together. Another apprentice had asked Wayne to ask Reeva to ask Abigail to come out to supper because he liked her… It was that kind of scene. They were all young and crazy and having fun. And these young jockeys had to be so disciplined to make their weight that they were moody. They had a sort of bad-boy swagger that made them attractive. They were on a constant diet, sweating off the weight and living on lettuce leaves, and that left the heavier ones particularly grumpy, but they were also the heroes – the glamorous guys who risked everything to deliver wins for the trainers. Off duty, they were fun to party with, but they weren’t good romantic partners for the girls. Reeva loved Wayne. She used to cook him steamed fish and vegetables and make him healthy salads. She gave him a photo and wrote on the back, ‘I will always love you. Forever + ever my babes. Even if we are a million miles apart. Reeves xxx’. And Wayne loved Reeva. He had two winners the day she gave him the photograph and he rode them in her name. He always said the best thing about being a jockey in Port Elizabeth was meeting Barry Steenkamp’s daughter. ‘She’s exactly like her dad,’ he said. ‘He’ll give his last rand away before he worries about himself.’

For jockeys, their job is their life. It’s a tough, competitive, intense schedule. Their mood depends on their ratio of winners to losers. There are more bad days than good, that’s how it goes. Reeva mentioned in her notes for the speech she was due to give to schoolgirls the day she died that she had once been in an ‘abusive relationship’. That was just shorthand, we’re sure, for being in a relationship she knew wasn’t good for her. She was never physically hurt, but she was probably on the wrong end of words that belittled her. Was she cheated on? Yes, that’s why she left him in the end. They were both young, strong-minded people. But she loved Wayne. He was her first love, sweetheart love, and she wasn’t mature enough to walk away until her heart was broken. Relationships are never smooth and easy, are they? As soon as you start loving someone, you start hurting as well because you have expectations of a relationship. Reeva was very proud. She was never, ever, ever one to air her dirty laundry, but she knew she had to move away as soon as she finished her degree course to escape the relationship and regain her self-esteem. Port Elizabeth was too small a community to have hung around in. She was always someone who’d plan ahead carefully, and she looked to make a break.

Reeva had carried on modelling through varsity. In 2004 she was a finalist in the
Weekend Post
Faces of the Future competition. A year later she was a finalist in the
Herald
Miss Port Elizabeth contest. After her transformation from brunette to blonde, she won the Face of Avon competition and as part of the winner’s prize flew to Johannesburg to participate in a shoot and enjoy a brief immersion in the world of talent agencies. While she was there, she walked into ICE Models and spoke to Jane Celliers, the agency director, who booked her straight away. At least, that was the story that became family lore. What I didn’t know at the time was how hard Reeva had to knock at the door. Jane told me recently that when Reeva had first dropped her an email from Port Elizabeth, explaining that she had won the national Face of Avon competition and wanted to pursue a career in modelling once she had finished her law degree, her standard response had been to ask how tall she was. When Reeva replied, she said, ‘I’m so sorry. You are absolutely beautiful, but your height is a problem.’

Reeva being Reeva, this was not good enough. Soon afterwards she telephoned Jane saying she was in Johannesburg, she was coming to the area, please would she meet with her. ‘She walked through the door and it was love at first sight,’ Jane said. ‘Wow! This is Reeva.’ Jane acknowledged that yes, she was short by modelling standards, where the minimum requirement is 1.77m, but she had something very special about her. ‘She was probably 1.68 or 1.69 but I rounded it up to 1.70 on her modelling card because I was on her side,’ Jane told me. ‘She was extremely beautiful. Within a few minutes of talking to her I could see that, as well as having that irresistible girl-next-door look, she could be glamorous or natural. She was very versatile. In person, she was matter-of-fact. There was no bull with her. She was outgoing; she had this vivacious, throaty laugh. And I could see from her hair, her skin and her nails, that she looked after herself very well.’

Jane warned her that at twenty-two, she would be embarking on a modelling career a lot later than most girls and that because she had concentrated on her education beforehand and because of her restricted height, she would have to work incredibly hard in the business. She was not built like a coat hanger on stilts. She would need to make sure her personality won through; she would have to shine in every casting. Garments do look better on taller, longer models, so she couldn’t do the catwalk shows though she could expect to be invited to do the odd private boutique show. Mostly she would have to concentrate on editorial and catalogue work, plus TV commercials.

Reeva was prepared to give it all she had; she was excited and, as a small-town country girl, she was also a bit nervous about moving city and living a different kind of life. In her last year of her law degree course, she had dyed her hair blonde because it became clear she would get more modelling work that way. She was quite tactical about presenting herself with a sellable look. She planned to make a career out of modelling for as long as she could before returning to fulfil her law ambitions. In a way, it meant there was no dilemma. She didn’t want to look back one day with regret and think, ‘If only I’d persisted with modelling…’ There was an ideal timeframe. She knew that as she neared thirty there would be younger, prettier girls coming through. She and Abigail forged a strategy. After varsity, Reeva was going to move to Johannesburg and Abigail was going to London. As Abigail divulged to me, ‘Reeva wanted to go to Johannesburg, make her stamp, make her money; I was going to go to London to work and get my British passport. Then we were going to come home and go with our thirties. That was our plan.’