How to Hide Inside a Three

Jane van der Riet

ago 2023 · Penguin Random House South Africa

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Things I used to wish were true: 1. On the morning of your twenty-first birthday you were handed a top-secret manual explaining how to be a grown-up. 2. Mr Hoody and the legions of others in the crevices of the city had homes. 3. There were still chocolate digestives in the cupboard after last night’s binge. It’s 2017 in Cape Town. The dams are empty. There’s a gangster in charge of the country. Leigh-Anne may look like she’s keeping it together in her Southern suburbs world, but really she’s unravelling. A letter has arrived from her ageing dad, asking forgiveness for some unknown sordid deed. What on earth is that about? Then there’s the tortuous sex with her psychiatrist husband Samuel and the fact that she can’t stop fantasising about her colleague Omar. Inexplicably, one of her kids is wetting the bed while the other one’s turning into a little tyrant. Her batty best friend continues to offload her crises – the latest is a paternity test for Gwendal’s troubled teenage daughter. Meanwhile, Leigh-Anne’s supposed to be organising a play about sexual abuse with grade sevens in Gugulethu. It’s not going very well. How is a woman supposed to cope? With chocolate and wine, of course, and by making plenty of lists (things feel much more manageable when you write them down in threes). But all is not what it seems. Leigh-Anne has a secret of her own. In her quest for answers, she will have to betray everyone she loves; only then can she truly come out of hiding.

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Jane van der Riet is a psychotherapist and armchair activist living in Cape Town. This novel began as the dissertation for her MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Western Cape from 2017 to 2019.