Read Online One Tragic Night by Mandy Wiener - Free Book Online

apart was the attitude – that same knowing wink. She knew what this game was all about, and she was willing to play it. To train up, be flirtatious on video, bring that indefinable sexiness in the eyes, strike the awkward poses.
    So there she was. On the calendar shoot for Bazaruto Island, Mozambique, where it was immediately clear she was one of the most beautiful models on the island. Her TV interviews were smart and sassy, striking just the right balance between one-of-the-guys humour and sassy coquettishness.
    She didn’t make the calendar cover, but we made a mental note to get her on the FHM cover as soon as possible.
    That eventually happened in December 2011, where we shot at a hotel pool on the roof of Joburg. Reeva nailed it, and was fun to work with, if a little nervous about her first cover shoot.
    We were impressed, and there was this vibe of, ‘Wow, this girl deserves to be more famous!’
    Samantha laughs as she exclaims about all the attempts they made at cracking the
FHM
calendar over the years, knowing what it would mean for their careers.
    â€˜Reeva and I always had this joke that we had been to the
FHM
calendar casting eight times in the last eight years. We get told to go but every year we get told, “Your boobs are too big” or “You’re too skinny,” so we always thought, What’s the point? But we ended up going anyway and the one year she got it, and that marked the start of her career. She then got the cover and from there she really worked hard. It wasn’t just a case of doing shoots; it was a lot about creating this public persona for herself.’
    Samantha says that while Reeva was committed to getting her body into shape, it certainly wasn’t achieved through sweat and hours in the gym. ‘I don’t remember her losing the weight. She just started watching what she ate. She used to gym with me, but she used to do five little things and she’d be like, “Okay, I’m going to take a break now,” so I always used to say to her, “Your body didn’t come from gymming, it came from dieting.” She was cute, she used to have a little routine: she would go to gym or she would skip at home or something – she wasn’t the biggest die-hard gym fan.’
    When Reeva featured on the
FHM
cover towards the end of 2011, she was still dating Warren. The two had been living together for around three and a half years but the distance between them had grown.
    After Reeva and Warren broke up, she was a free agent but Samantha was already dating the successful entrepreneur Justin Divaris, owner of the luxury lifestyle company Daytona Group, which sells flashy high-end cars such as McLaren and Aston Martin. Samantha and Reeva spent a lot of their free time together, meeting for tea on Mondays at the Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton and going on adventures.
    â€˜She was very similar to me. I’m an only child. She was very much a
laat lammetjie
[“late lamb”, born long after other children in a family]. She was kind of my go-to person for virtually anything, and vice versa. We used to see each other at least three times a week and have tea and a catch-up. Our weekly thing was to go to the Michelangelo and sit and have tea and scones and we had the same waiter all the time and the scones were heart-shaped and we used to sit there and be all proper.
    â€˜We would do the strangest stuff together,’ says Samantha as she vividly remembers taking Reeva to get her first tattoo – tiny, stencilled initials on her wrist. It would be the first of three she would get on her body.
    â€˜She decided she wanted to get her first tattoo and I had just come back from modelling in Taiwan and I got my first tattoo on the back of my neck and she said, “No, I want to get it done.”’ The two had yet to meet legendary Parkhurst tattoo artist Pepe – who has inked Joburg’s finest, from celebrities to hit men