Strictly Confidential (17 page)

‘So where the bloody hell are you?’ I shouted at poor Luke when he answered his phone.

‘Oh, Jazzy sweetie, I’m so sorry I’m not there for your do,’ Luke apologised. ‘My editor’s got me staking out her pad in Double Bay. But why are you calling me now? Shouldn’t you be in overdrive bossing people around right this second?’ Subtle. Even if it was normally true.

‘Why the fuck has your editor got you staking out her own pad?’ I asked, confused. ‘And I would be bossing the press around, if there was any press here to boss.’

‘No press?’ Luke gasped. ‘Are you for real?’ And then, ‘Oh shit. That’s why. They’re all here.’

At his editor’s waterfront unit? What the fuck? There was the screech of car tyres followed by the sound of Luke’s car engine being switched off.

‘I can’t even park within five hundred metres!’ Luke sounded exasperated.

‘What’s up with your editor?’ I demanded.

Now Luke was confused. ‘Didn’t you hear me, Jazz? All the paps in Sydney are here. It’s not just her.’

This was baffling. Luke’s editor was better known for her sharp-tongued celeb assassinations than her daytime soirées. Why the hell had she come over all Donna Hay today of all days?

Suddenly it dawned on Luke. ‘OMG! You haven’t heard, have you, hon?’

Finally. This I understood. ‘No,’ I said bluntly. ‘I haven’t.’

‘I’m staking out
Belle Single’s
flat, not my editor’s. Word on the street is Belle Single has a new man. And not just any man. Her BFF’s ex-fiancé! A tip-off went out that the happy couple have been holed up in her flat for days, à la Warnie and Liz, so everyone is down here trying to get the scoop.’

Fuck. ‘I’ve gotta go, Luke.’

‘Chin up, babe.’

Outrageous. One man dangles his dongle in front of Single and our twenty bachelors are blown out of the water. This stunt had to be the work of Diane Wilderstein. Why else would Belle come over all John and Yoko today of all days? It seemed a hell of a coincidence. Especially when you considered that Diane would be gagging to get some publicity coverage up and happening for Belle. Plus, anyone who was anyone in the Sydney press scene would have received our media alert about today’s conference. Anyone like
Eve Pascal
editor and good friend of Wilderstein PR, Lillian Richard. It wouldn’t have been hard for Diane to find out about our plans today. Seemed like it wasn’t so tough for her to ruin them either.
All she’d had to do was convince Belle Single to jump into bed with her best buddy’s sloppy seconds. We didn’t stand a chance.

But how would I tell the Bees? How would I explain that we’d been trumped by the Shire tramp? Not to mention what I would say to our clients. Swallowing hard, I walked over to where the editor of
Coco
was on her mobile and motioned for her attention.

Leila nodded and wrapped up her call. ‘I heard,’ she said, solving my problem of how to start. ‘Farking Single.’ And then, ‘If she thinks I’m sending my entertainment writer over there to snap her dirty laundry she’s dreaming.’ I admired her chutzpah.

‘I promise we’ll turn this around, Leila,’ I said. ‘Leave it with me. We may not have got the coverage we wanted today but Queen Bee will get things back on track.’

Leila clearly wasn’t convinced but was polite enough not to disagree out loud. ‘I’ll leave you to explain to the press that did turn up,’ was all she said before leaving with her posse from the mag.

Turns out it only takes minutes to cancel a media call compared with the weeks involved in organising one. As we armed our bummed guests with as many goodie bags as they could carry, I promised to shoot them a media release explaining all later today. God only knew what I’d write in that. I slumped down onto a bench in the beer garden and Em plonked herself next to me and handed me a glass. I swear that girl has a bevvie for all occasions. ‘A martini?’ I asked half-heartedly, smelling the alcohol before I could taste it.

‘Shaken not stirred. Just like you, love,’ said Em. ‘The bartender did offer me the special of the day but I figured a “Group Hug” wasn’t really your style, with or without Zubrowka Vodka.’

‘No, I’m feeling a little more “Harvey Wallbanger”,’ I conceded. ‘Shit, Em. How did this happen?’ I asked, watching our bachelors file downstairs to the bar in the stuff of an NRL publicist’s worst nightmare. ‘We had the pièce de résistance of Australian hunks here today and we still couldn’t get the media to come. Was there more we could have done?’

Em stabbed at the olive in her drink.

‘What’s wrong with this fucking city today?’ I went on. ‘Honestly. This is Sydney. Sydney! This is the city where being attacked by a shark might be the end of your arm or your leg but it’s just the beginning of your career as a male underwear model. The city where you might be jailed for conspiracy to murder but if you’re blonde and hot and sporting a European accent you can move from Long Bay to Double Bay faster than you can say “parole”. This is the city where your mates have modelling contracts, the models have designer clothing lines and the designers have the keys to the city. Sydney is the vain and narcissistic capital to rival all other vain and narcissistic capitals. We make London look like a UN ambassador and New York a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Since when did twenty semi-naked male models not rate in Sydney?’

Back at QB HQ, I was still reeling from this morning’s floor-wiping from Belle Single. The Bees, however, were reeling from a surfeit of Lindt chocolates. A girl’s gotta keep morale high somehow, right?

Staring despondently at the blank media release template document on my screen I groped for the words to explain this morning’s debacle. COCO
MAN OF THE YEAR AWARDS PLAY JAKE WALL TO BELLE SINGLE’S JEN HAWKINS
? Not exactly the headline I’d had in mind when we launched the campaign. Distracted, I toyed with my takeaway matzo ball soup in its plastic bowl until Lulu interrupted me.

‘I’ve got Amanda from Coast on the line for you, Jazz.’

Oh, someone drive me to the Gap, will you? I can take it from there, I swear.

‘Thanks, put her through, Lulu,’ I said.

‘Jasmine, we’ve got to stop press on
tX
,’ Amanda said breathlessly, not even bothering with the niceties.

‘Pardon?’ was the best I could manage.

‘We’ve got to stop
tX
from going to print. Their photographer, Matt –’

‘Max,’ I interrupted.

‘Max,’ she repeated. ‘He just sent me through the images from this morning’s shoot and Cody is practically naked!’

Oh, that.

‘So were you happy with the pics? Cody sure can fill a pair of Coast briefs.’

‘Jasmine, we need to stop press now!’ She was starting to sound hysterical.

‘Look, Amanda,’ I reasoned, ‘as much as I feel for you – what with you being the only Coast representative at a shoot where the Coast protocol was so blatantly stripped away, so to speak – we can’t hit pause at 2.45 pm on a newspaper that hits stands at 3 pm. Today’s
tX
will already be stocked at train stations across the city, just waiting for the
tX
promo girls to strut their stuff.’

‘I don’t care!’ Amanda screeched. ‘Can’t your girls go and stop them?’

I had a brief image of the Bees doing battle with tight-T-shirt-wearing promo girls at stations across the greater metropolitan area. Like
Sucker Punch
does CityRail.

‘No, Amanda. They can’t.’

‘Shit. Well, it better not be on the front cover,’ she said, which was quite possibly the first and last time I’d ever hear those words uttered by a publicist.

‘Right. Let’s hope we’re not page one,’ I agreed, marvelling at the parallel PR universe I’d stumbled into. Would Kyle Sandilands be capable of good press here? The mind boggled. ‘I’ve gotta go, Amanda,’ I signed off.

‘Later,’ came the response as Amanda hung up.

Seriously. That girl put me off my matzo balls.

As I toyed with my takeaway and replayed in my mind the conversation with Amanda, Em appeared at my office door, a glossy mag in hand.

‘Am I going to like this?’ I began, wincing in expectation as Emma proffered the latest copy of
Eve Pascal
magazine, its lustrous pages shining under the harsh overhead ceiling lights.

Em shook her head, cringing.

I braced myself and extended an arm. Em handed over the offending glossy.

Flipping the mag the right way up I found myself face to face with one very sultry, very pouty sloe-eyed Belle Single. Seducing the brave citizens of Sydney one newsstand at a time, I thought wryly.

‘Belle bloody Single.’

Emma grimaced in support.

‘Well, what a surprise to see her cosmetically enhanced face on the front cover of
Eve Pascal
. I suppose I’m meant to think it’s a happy coincidence that Belle’s smug mug features on the very issue that hits stands the day she’s caught in a sordid tryst,’ I fumed. ‘It’s like Lillian Richard
knew
Belle was going to be busted on publication date. Uncanny, isn’t it?’ I added sarcastically.

Em’s eyes widened. ‘Surely you don’t think Diane set this up with Lillian just to fuck up our press conference today? Paranoid much, Jazz?’

I shook my head vigorously. ‘You don’t know what Diane’s like, Em. The woman probably bites the heads off orphaned kittens before she sits down to breakfast each day. Squashing my press conference wouldn’t even rate a diary note in her daily reign of terror, so hectic is her schedule of atrocities.’

Em stifled a giggle at my hyperbole. Easy for her. She’d never had to face Diane. It was like staring down Lucifer.

‘Plus,’ I slammed
Eve Pascal
and Belle Single’s face down on my desk for emphasis, ‘it’s not like Lillian Richard hasn’t been using my headshot as target practice lately. Ever since our run-in over the
Eve Pascal
Awards for fashion and beauty Lillian has been gunning for me.’

‘And Diane was only too happy to supply the bullets,’ Emma finished for me.

‘Bullseye,’ I agreed. ‘Only, there’s no straight shooting when Belle Single gets involved. Her best friend’s ex-fiancé? That stuff is twisted!’

Emma laughed. ‘You wouldn’t need to look far to find the smoking gun, would you?’ She changed tack. ‘So what do you plan to do, Jazzy Lou? Retaliate? Or do you reckon this is a parting shot from Lillian? She won’t take it further, surely?’

I sighed. ‘No, she won’t. The
Eve Pascal
lot need us as much as we need them, so I can only assume that Lillian has made her point and now is the time for a ceasefire. Besides, even if Diane hadn’t arranged Belle’s bed-in for today, there was no way Lillian would have covered our event anyway.
Eve Pascal
and
Coco
are direct competitors, after all. It just sucks that they took the rest of the competition with them. I still can’t believe we held a press stop and no press stopped by.’

Em saw the warning signs and before I could begin ranting again she started backing away towards the door. ‘Shame, Jazzy Lou, shame,’ she consoled.

As Em beat a hasty retreat I picked up
Eve Pascal
from where it lay on my desk and idly gave Belle Single a monobrow and moustache. Then I stopped myself. Why was I bothering to deface Belle when she’d done a good enough job of losing face with the public herself? Bonking her BFF’s beau? Really? As far as publicity strategies went, this one was shockingly ill-advised and I wondered what the hell Diane was thinking. If, indeed, she was the one who dreamed it up. More likely the press had already got wind of Belle’s bedroom antics and Diane had been forced to salvage the situation as best she could. Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced Diane wasn’t
solely
to blame for Belle’s misbehaviour. That honour lay partly at Belle’s feet. Or a little higher up her anatomy.

If my Jewish grandmother, Bubbe, worked in the Queen Bee offices, she’d say we were cursed. Of course, if my Jewish grandmother, Bubbe, worked in the Queen Bee offices, a curse would be the least of our problems. For a start, there’d be her advice about my love life (‘Get one’) and her incessant self-commentary in the third person: ‘Bubbe doesn’t understand why you haven’t met a nice Jewish boy,
Jazmine
.’

Luckily for all of us at Queen Bee HQ, Bubbe hadn’t moved in. Unluckily, a curse had.

It started with simple things. Missing samples, deliveries that were never delivered to us, lost stock. But then things stepped up a little. Entire clothing rails of product started vanishing and then reappearing for sale on eBay. Cash was evaporating from desk drawers. As were jewellery, mobile phones and any other electronic item of value. Then one day, when a client arrived for a meeting at the Queen Bee offices and left relieved of her purse, it was time to admit the ugly truth: our curse looked an awful lot like a kleptomaniac.

Of course, what our thieving friend hadn’t banked on was the fact that I was at the office by seven most mornings and rarely left before ten or eleven at night. Consequently, I was a human CCTV system and nothing that happened in the Queen Bee building could escape my beady eyes for too long. So by the time we’d seen more stock walk out the door than at an Alex Perry sample sale, I was pretty sure I knew whose sticky fingers were to blame: Holly’s.

Holly had brought a little WAG
je ne sais quoi
to Queen Bee. Sadly, it seemed she had also brought with her a knack for swiping anything not nailed down. Like cash from my wallet the day I had a date with Ben Gorman. Or my Oliver Peoples sunnies before the
tX
shoot. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t phoned Diane Wilderstein for a character reference before I’d hastily offered Holly a job at our Queen Bee anniversary party. If I had, I might have learned that – for once – Diane was wholly justified in getting shot of this member of her staff. Holly was a chronic thief and Queen Bee was just the latest in her long line of suckers. No wonder she’d been evasive about the reason she’d been sacked from Wilderstein PR. Fired for boardroom burglary isn’t exactly the first thing you flag to a would-be employer. But now, at Queen Bee, it was time to catch a thief and I was certainly up to the task. Because, to misquote the inimitable Karl Lagerfeld, fashion’s biggest bloodsuckers are light-fingered publicists.

First, however, a little pre-sacking sustenance was in order. Plonking myself down at a coveted table in Kawa Cafe, Surry Hills, I scanned the boho-organic menu while I waited for Luke to arrive. Two skinny mochas later, he made his entrance.

‘
Ma chérie!
’ he air-kissed. ‘Are we channelling our inner Donald Trump today?’

I smiled wryly. That was sweet. But not really true. Because anyone who’d spent more than five minutes in my company knew my Donald Trump was much more
outer
than inner.

‘You’re fired!’ I replied, a little too enthusiastically. I really was going to have to tone that down when I fired Holly.

‘So tell me, Jazzy Lou,’ said Luke, signalling for a waitress, ‘how do you know Holly’s your girl?’

I rattled off a list of indiscretions. Given that this culminated with the sentence: ‘And then she was photographed in the social pages wearing an Allison Palmer one-off design that had been customised especially for me and is now missing from our showroom,’ there wasn’t much doubt in my mind.

Luke looked mortified. And well he should. Allison Palmer was our favourite client. ‘Ah. That’s fairly incriminating,’ he offered.

Yes. Yes, it was.

‘Will you lay charges?’

‘There’s no need,’ I replied. ‘When word gets out, this WAG’s career will be red-carded anyway.’

Back at the office after breakfast, I popped a bunch of Nurofen and rehearsed my ‘pack up your desk’ address. While I had no doubt I had the balls to do this, the words proved a little more elusive. ‘Holly, it’s come to my attention your clients’ products are getting more coverage on eBay than they are in the press . . .’ Or: ‘Holly, when I say I want you to
adopt
your client’s style, I don’t mean in a Brangelina-take-it-home-and-keep-it-forever kind of way . . .’ Even, ‘Holly, most people don’t come to work with a balaclava and hessian sack . . .’

It was as I sat ruminating on my speech that I was interrupted by a series of loud bangs.

Gunshots! Jesus Christ, was Holly holding up the joint? I sprinted out of my office. ‘What the fuck? Did you hear that?’ I demanded.

The Bees looked at me like I was the one wielding a weapon. More shots were fired.

‘That!’ I exclaimed again. ‘You heard that, right?’ This time the Bees nodded.

Sirens kicked off somewhere in the distance and we all rushed to the floor-length dormer windows keeping sentry over the sleepy Alexandria street outside. Nothing. Not even a casual car-jacking. This was curiouser and curiouser. While our showroom here at Queen Bee saw as much celebrity traffic as the Ivy on Robertson Boulevard, LA, the rest of downtown Alexandria wasn’t known for its bustling activity. Criminal or otherwise. Unlike Darlinghurst, where Wilderstein PR was located, and where I’d bravely taken my life in my hands every day I fronted up for work. And that was just
inside
Diane’s office.

At the thought of Diane I wondered idly whether the shots outside our window could possibly have come from her trigger-happy gun finger. After all, it wasn’t as though Diane wouldn’t kill me given the chance. And she did have a shoot first, ask questions later policy when it came to human resources. Most likely, considering our proximity to the inner city, it was simply a drug-related crime. Fashion crimes tend towards the sartorial rather than the homicidal, after all.

Holly chose that moment to saunter into the office. Fresh from a little armed hold-up of a client somewhere, no doubt.

‘What the –’ she began when she saw us all standing by the window, but I cut her off.

‘Holly? I’ll see you in my office just as soon as my phone conference is done this morning.’ I fully intended to uphold her right to remain silent, even if she didn’t.

An hour later, as commanded, she appeared at my office door. ‘Take a seat, Holly,’ I began, idly wondering if she might walk off with the thing. I popped a handful of Nurofen and willed myself not to come over all Diane and utter the immortal words: ‘Pack up your desk.’ Instead I started with the much more obtuse: ‘Holly, we need to talk about your office behaviour.’

Holly looked confused. She wasn’t going to help me out here. Either that or she genuinely had no idea what I was talking about. That, however, didn’t explain the Allison Palmer frock she was rocking in the weekend papers.

‘Okay, Holly, why don’t we start by listing some of the things that have gone missing from the office lately? You had realised things were going missing from the office lately, hadn’t you?’

Holly nodded, giving nothing away.

At this point Lulu phoned from reception. ‘Uh, Jasmine, I think you’d better come down here.’

‘I’m in the middle of an arresting conversation right now, Lu. Can it wait?’

‘It’s the cops.’

Shit. What the hell were the police doing in my reception area?

‘I’m on my way down,’ I said to Lulu. I thrust a piece of paper and a pen at Holly with the instruction: ‘Write me a list of stolen goods.’

Clattering down the stairs in my Miu Miu pumps, I imagined all sorts of scenarios waiting for me at the bottom. Holly had stolen something from the new Dion Lee collection. Or the whole collection. Or kidnapped Dion himself.

I turned on a high-wattage smile for the policemen slouched against our reception desk. ‘Officers!’ I greeted them, my hand shooting out to shake theirs. ‘I hope my girls have been looking after you. What can I do for you?’

The officers barely cracked a smile. ‘We’re here about an alleged drive-by shooting that took place in Alexandria this morning. Did you hear anything?’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh,
that
!’ I laughed. ‘Yes, we had a drive-by this morning. Yes sir, we sure did.’ The officers, however, failed to see the hilarity in this morning’s shooting. I quickly went on, ‘Uh, I didn’t see anything. But I did hear shots being fired at about, oh, 9 am.’

One officer scribbled this down in his notebook.

‘Any idea what the deal was?’ I asked, showing all the concern expected of a model citizen.

‘Drug-related, I’d say,’ one cop mumbled, confirming my initial suspicions. At least I didn’t have to worry about a murderous Diane barging through the showroom door. Not today, anyway.

‘Mind if we have a look around?’ the cop asked, as more officers wandered up the front staircase. In their wake I could see the beginnings of a roadblock outside.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Be my guest. I’m afraid I’ve got a meeting to get back to but if you need anything at all, please just ask one of the girls.’ The officers nodded. ‘And Lulu, why don’t you get the officers some water? They must be thirsty after working so hard to keep us safe and sound.’ I pointed to a fridge filled with Queen Bee water bottles. No point missing a PR opp, is there?

Trekking back upstairs in my teetering heels, I was determined to see out my conversation with Holly before any more emergency services arrived. ‘So how are you getting on with that list?’ I asked as I walked through the door. ‘Can you see what I mean now about things going missing?’

Holly sat slumped in her chair, her arms folded defensively across her chest and the piece of paper I’d given her lying blank on my desk. Fine. It was time to bust out a little Donald Trump.

‘Holly, I saw you in the social pages at the weekend wearing my customised Allison Palmer gown. The same gown that went missing from our showroom last week. Any idea how you came to be wearing that particular dress? No? How about the wallet that disappeared from the boardroom when the reps from Mavi were here last week? Or Alice’s iPod? What about the entire Body Science collection that went missing but later appeared for sale on eBay? Ringing any bells, Holly?’

Holly pouted her perfect WAG pout. ‘You can’t prove anything,’ she said sullenly, waving a match dangerously close to my fuse.

‘Holly, don’t speak to me that way,’ I sighed. ‘It’s insulting and it’s unprofessional.’

The pout was unmoved.

‘Holly, I’ve given you so many opportunities since you joined Queen Bee and you’ve responded by stealing from me – and your colleagues. I’ve got more than enough evidence to know it was you. I only thought you might come in here and be honest with me about it so we could end your contract on better terms.’ Who was I kidding? We were hardly going to be having sleepovers and braiding one another’s hair after I fired her. But now I had Holly’s attention.

‘You’re
firing
me?’ she asked incredulously. Wow. This kid might live under the same roof as an Olympic medal but she was hardly in the queue for a Nobel Prize.

‘Yes, Holly. I’m terminating your contract. Effective immediately. How could I not? You stole from my
clients
. It’s hardly PR 101. You’re lucky I’m not pressing criminal charges.’

Holly nearly fell off her chair. ‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Well, no. I said I wouldn’t. But I’m very disappointed.’

‘But you won’t call the police?’ She was panicked now.

‘No, I won’t call the cops.’ As the words left my mouth, there was a knock on my office door. ‘Stay there,’ I instructed Holly as I went for the door.

They’re strange, those moments in life when the literal and figurative worlds merge. Where your day becomes a cartoon strip and the words in one speech bubble are simply scooped up and turned into reality in the next box along. ‘I hope Superman gets here soon!’ you say. And
kapow!
, there he is in the very next picture. This sensation is rather like viewing a Romance Was Born design collection. You want a fashion show inspired by the 1980s cult classic
The Neverending Story
? Why,
kapow!
, here’s a dress channelling Falkor, the giant flying dog-thing. Send an iced Vo-Vo down the catwalk, you say?
Kapow!
There goes a walking biscuit now. Looking for a nanna-blanket-slash-dress for the new season?
Kapow!
Your wish is my command. It’s like, just by forming the words with your mouth, you somehow will them into being.