Strictly Confidential (19 page)

Just as I was debating whether to take the spotty (and probably highly infectious) child beside me hostage and hold up the storeroom and medicate myself, a familiar voice called out from across the room. ‘Jazzy Lou?’

My head snapped up. ‘Samantha Priest?’

For the second time that evening, a blonde ponytail bobbed dizzyingly in front of me. Only this one was decidedly
less
squeaky clean than the one that greeted me in the ambulance. As was the person attached to it.

‘What in the bloody hell are you doing here, babe?’ she screeched affectionately, scuffing towards me across the lino, sick and dying people turning pale in her wake.

‘Er, I think I may have a stomach ulcer,’ I tried to say discreetly. The guy next to me shifted away in his chair as though he was sitting next to a leper. I looked pointedly at the spotty child in his lap.

‘Shit, eh?’ called Samantha. ‘That’s rooted.’

Quite, I thought, idly wondering whether Samantha was here to have her excessive Australian vernacular gene removed. She seemed to have been born with more than her fair share.

‘And you?’ It seemed only polite to return the question. And much as the Emergency Department at POW Hospital was not where I would have chosen for our rendezvous, I 
was
glad to see her.

‘Had me stomach pumped.
Again!
’ She laughed at the folly of her situation. ‘One too many bourbon and cokes at Ravesi’s. LOL!’ she added. The remnants of charcoal skirting round her mouth suggested some other form of decontamination but I let it slide. Instead, I nodded like it happened to me all the time.

And then I did the maths on that. ‘Let me get this straight: you’ve been to Ravesi’s, had time to get wasted, been through ER and had your stomach pumped.
Already?
’ I asked incredulously. ‘What time did you start drinking? Breakfast?’

Samantha laughed and tugged at her cotton shift dress. Even in the middle of the night in ED, dressed only in beach wear, she still managed to look like a model. ‘Nah, babe. I didn’t get to Bondi till late. But I’ve got contacts here so they don’t make me hang around.’ She inclined her blonde head towards the queue of patients now snaked out the doors of Emergency.

I sat up straighter in my plastic chair, sending shooting pains through my abdomen. ‘Contacts?’ I yelped.

‘Yeah, I slept with one of the registrars here. Cute guy but way too brainy for me. Like being stuck in an episode of
Grey’s Anatomy
.’

I pulled myself out of my seat and clutched at Samantha’s arm. ‘Take me to him!’

‘Sure thing, babe. But I never thought you’d be one for sloppy seconds.’

‘The good news is the PUD in your duodenum is not perforated as suspected.’

I squinted in concentration. Clearly the drugs had inhibited my ability to understand English because that last sentence didn’t make a whole heap of sense when received by my throbbing head.

‘Of course, the bad news is obviously that the diagnosis
is
a peptic ulcer, probably caused by NSAIDS or anti-inflammatory medications.’

Nope, no good. Not a language I could understand. I stared in incomprehension at the registrar, who’d come to visit me the next day. No wonder Samantha Priest had had trouble with this guy. God knows what their pillow talk involved.

I held my hand up to indicate he should stop talking. ‘Again?’ I requested.

‘You’ve got a stomach ulcer but the stomach ulcer hasn’t burst,’ he said flatly. ‘That was the upshot of the gastroscopy and the barium meal we gave you this morning.’

Oh, the barium
meal
. That I understood. How could I forget the revolting chalky goo I’d so recently had to force down. It was the first square meal I’d eaten in weeks.

‘So,’ the reg went on, ‘I’m recommending a short-term course of antibiotics and a long-term course of proton-pump inhibitors. Plus close observation in hospital for at least the next few days.’

I gasped.

‘And lay off the Nurofen tabs,’ he added categorically.

No Nurofen? Incarcerated for at least the next few days? Fuck, it was like a kibbutz in here. And this reg was the head zealot. What had Samantha Priest ever seen in him? Other than his willingness to support queue jumpers in ED, that was. A handy perk if you got wasted as often as Samantha did, I guessed.

I rolled over haughtily in bed, grabbing uselessly at my hospital gown in a vain attempt to achieve some semblance of dignity.

‘Nice arse, babe!’

WTF!
I nearly toppled off the narrow hospital bed in shock as I scrambled to cover my cavorting cheeks. Weren’t there laws against a lack of doctor/patient decorum?

‘So are you hot to trot now or what?’ Samantha Priest bounded into the room, her appraisal of my anatomy arriving before she did.

‘No, she’s not,’ interjected Doctor Fun.

I couldn’t tell who was annoying me more, him or her.

‘And she won’t be for several days,’ he added.

I let out a sigh of frustration.

‘Oh, too bad, huh?’ Samantha consoled, then in the next breath: ‘So, are you ready to split, sweet cheeks?’

I grabbed at my hospital gown again.

Samantha laughed. ‘Not you, Jazzy Lou!’ and she slipped a hand under the registrar’s scrubs before manhandling him out the door.

Over the next few days I made life hell for the poor nurses assigned to care for me, refusing to lie down and take my prescribed medicine quietly.

Instead, I moved the Queen Bee offices into Ward E of Prince of Wales Private Hospital.

‘No, no, that’s not enough,’ I blasted down the phone. ‘We need at least double that amount of imported limes and we need them before Friday.’

A pause while the person on the other end responded was punctuated by the beeping of some complex-looking machine to my right.

‘No, I won’t take limes from the Riverina! This is a Hawaiian-themed event and I want my limes to come from the North Pacific!’ Honestly.

I punched the red phone symbol on my BlackBerry, nearly reefing my IV line out at the same time. The machine beside me beeped angrily. Maybe it was a heart-rate monitor after all . . .

‘Imbeciles!’ I huffed to Em, who sat perched on the end of my hospital bed, iPad in hand. Em busied herself reading publicity schedules.

We had less than two weeks to go now until the VIP (and Hawaiian-themed)
Coco
Man of the Year Awards event. And not much longer until Allison Palmer’s show at BMW Australian Fashion Week. I needed to haggle over limes like I needed a proverbial hole in the head. Or a literal one in the stomach. Anya, Alice and Lulu wandered into the room, fresh from an excursion to the hospital canteen.

‘It was
dire
,’ announced Alice, flopping onto the empty bed beside me. My BlackBerry rang again loudly just as Em’s mobile buzzed and yet another delivery of flowers arrived at the door.

‘Lulu, can you get those?’ I indicated the enormous bunch of gerberas blocking the doorway, a pair of delivery-man legs sticking out below. Lulu nodded and turned to the door. ‘And remember,’ I directed while picking up my ringing BlackBerry, ‘cut the stems
pre
putting them in water. And make sure you add some sugar to the water. And one colour per vase –
never mix them
, okay? Hello, Jasmine Lewis speaking . . .’

Lulu struggled under the weight of my OCD directions as she grappled with the flowers.

A nurse squeezed past her and entered the room, muttering, ‘I thought this was POW
not
QB HQ,’ to no one in particular, which was lucky because no one in particular was listening.

‘Leila, hi!’ I enthused down the phone. It was Leila Graham, editor of
Coco
,
wanting to talk turkey about our kitten of a Man of the Year Award winner: Kurt Simmons. Kurt was an e-entrepreneur whose main claim to fame was dreaming up an online adoption process for rescued pooches. And while the women of Australia may have chosen him as their fave eligible bachelor, Kurt certainly wasn’t going to win us any friends in the press. I mean, how the hell was any self-respecting journo going to fill a feature interview with
Kurt Simmons
? Ask him about his Boy Scout badges? Reveal his heady anecdotes of helping little old ladies across the road? Tap his boringly reliable phone conversations to his mum each Sunday night? Hardly the stuff of news headlines.

Em pulled up Kurt’s publicity strategy on the tablet in front of her and swung it around for me to read while I spoke to Leila. It was a short document.

‘Okay, what we need is a new, improved bad-boy angle on Kurt,’ I began. ‘The media have done the “protector of parentless poodles” story to death. We need to give them something hot, something risqué, something they never knew about Kurt before. The Kurt I’m thinking of is a little less Von Trapp and a little more Cobain.’

‘Fab, babe, I love it,’ interjected Leila. ‘But how do you plan to do that?’

I paused. ‘Sit Kurt next to one very glamorous but very unlucky-in-love social-pages junkie at the event and sparks – then headlines – are sure to fly.’

‘Genius,’ Leila purred. ‘Absolute genius, Jazz. Do you have someone in mind? I can’t
wait
to see that in action.’

Neither could I. If only I could get out of this bloody hospital in time to witness it.

The nurse, who was still fussing around my room, chose this point in our conversation to inform me, in no uncertain terms, that I should get off the phone. She did this by removing said phone from my ear and hanging up on Leila for me.

‘Hey –’ I started indignantly, but the nurse wasn’t having a bar of it.

‘Jasmine Lewis,’ she instructed, ‘you need to make a few lifestyle modifications if you want to avoid ending up in Emergency again. Lifestyle modifications like stressing less and sleeping more and,’ she reefed open the top drawer of my bedside table and swiped my latest box of Nurofen Plus, ‘kicking your ibuprofen habit fast.’ I sulked as she made her way around the room, throwing curtains open and throwing Bees out into the corridor. ‘You can’t expect to recover if you don’t give your body time to rest!’

I paused to consider my options. The way I saw it I had a pretty clear choice: a) Put my Miu Miu-shod feet up. Perhaps book myself into some exey, unsexy, organic, hippie spa retreat and drink coconut water till I looked like an extra on
Cast Away
; or b) Put my Miu Miu-shod foot down, continue to work my arse off and maybe – just maybe – I’d pull off the best damned
Coco
Man of the Year Awards and BMW Fashion Week show this town had ever seen and assure Queen Bee’s survival in the process.

Of course, there was a third, less appealing option involving a burst stomach ulcer, some emergency surgery and a slow and painful recovery. But best not to dwell on that here.

Fact was, stomach ulcer or no stomach ulcer, I wasn’t about to bite the dust for anybody.

Daphne Guinness, celebrated style icon and kooky aunt of the fashion fraternity, once said, ‘I don’t approach fashion; fashion approaches me!’ I felt much the same way about disaster. We were beginning to look tighter than Sass and Bide, disaster and I. Always clutching one another’s arms and finishing one another’s sentences whenever we appeared in public. So now, having been beaten up by an employee and knocked down by a stomach ulcer, I was pretty much ready for disaster and me to part ways.

I staggered up the front steps of Queen Bee that afternoon, straight out of a cab from the hospital, and struggled through the heavy glass door. The chandelier in reception reflected my own bedraggled image, my not-quite-faded black eye winking back at me a thousand depressing times. But I’d survived several nights in hospital and just as many days away from the office (the two things on a par in my mind), and now, contrary to doctor’s orders, I’d signed myself out of hospital and was back at the Queen Beehive.

Which was where I found myself face to face with a new-season Rebecca Thompson creation hanging blithely in a courier bag at reception, ready to be whisked away to a fashion editor.
Wrinkled
.

‘Why has this garment not been steamed?’ I bellowed, stalking into the showroom, the offending dress dragging behind me. Laughter died where it fell and it was mourned by stunned silence. ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘You didn’t seriously think I was going to stay in hospital all week? Have you seen what a hospital gown does for your figure?’

I switched on both my computers. ‘Oh, and Alice?’ I added, not looking up from my screens. ‘Those look-books need to stay up the back of the showroom. You know how I like things to match.’ Honestly, a few days away from the place and everything turned to shit.

Bang on cue, Amanda chose this moment to phone me from Coast Underwear. ‘Jasmine!’ she gushed. ‘How
are
you? It’s been far too long.’

Had it? I couldn’t tell you. I hadn’t exactly been counting down the days in my Bottega Veneta diary until we spoke again.

While she jabbered away I tidied the Queen Bee garment bags that hung on a giant roll near my desk, like supermarket bags on steroids. Not that I did my own grocery shopping, but I’d seen how it worked in an episode of
Australia’s Next Top Model
when the models took an excursion to Coles.

‘Jasmine, I need to talk to you about the seating arrangements for next week’s
Coco
Man of the Year Awards,’ Amanda said. ‘I’ve been thinking –’ I braced myself. ‘Why don’t we abandon the current seating plan and have everyone sit at one long table together? Like a Heston Blumenthal banquet but bigger! Wouldn’t that be fun?’

My head throbbed and my stomach ached. I should have got some morphine to take away in a hospital doggy bag. That would have been fun. Pumping the stuff through my veins till I could no longer hear the words coming from Amanda’s mouth would have been fun. But redoing the seating arrangements for four hundred special guests, celebrities and media personalities a few days before an event? That would not be fun. That was not even close to fun and I told Amanda so.

‘Sorry, A, no can do. I’d rather hang myself with my new Hermès belt than make changes now. The current arrangements are final.’

Or so I thought.

It’s funny, that word final. Look up the
Macquarie Concise
and there, listed with a neat little
adj.
next to it, is this:
1. relating to or coming at the end; last in place order or time
. Not:
Last in place order or time until someone else messes with it.
Or:
Last in place order or time until someone comes in and fucks it up by switching all the place cards thereby screwing the seating arrangements.
My guess was that certain someone had straggly blonde hair extensions and a name starting with ‘A’ and ending with ‘manda’. Because when I made my entrance into the Grand Ballroom at the Ivy several days later – bespangled from blonde roots to ankle boots in silver, sparkly, sequinned Ellery and ready to witness the crowning of
Coco’s
Man of the Year – what I
thought
was the final seating plan proved not to be. Around me, the rest of the room whirled on. Beautiful girls with deep golden tans and long, long synthetic blonde hair stalked past pretending they couldn’t tell you were watching. Snappers hustled through the crowd and waitresses tottered past carrying trays of cocktails decorated with kitsch umbrellas. And there, among the pineapples and palm trees of this evening’s Hawaiian theme, the seating arrangements had been changed. Gah! My plan to score Kurt Simmons some headlines – and a date – would be sunk if I didn’t rearrange the rearranged place cards. And fast. Stalking over to where our winner was supposed to be sat, I began hunting around for his name tag when I stumbled upon my own. Gah again!

Now, rather than sitting surreptitiously by the door so I could spend all night slipping out and monitoring events backstage, I was slap-bang in the middle of the room. Much worse, though, were my dining companions. You know when unimaginative journalists ask the question: ‘Who, dead or alive, would you most like to invite to a dinner party?’ That night it was as though someone had found my list, scrolled straight to the very bottom and then set the table accordingly. I swear I’d rather have plated up for Galliano than broken bread with those on my table that night. There was not a single person in my immediate vicinity that I wouldn’t have preferred dead than alive.

For starters, to my right was sat the PR ambassador for Coast Underwear Australia, one Amanda Worthington. This arrangement promised an evening of banal conversation, possibly peppered with a PR disaster or two, and all caused solely by Amanda’s ineptitude. And to my left? Why, there was that other ambassador of men’s underpants (by reputation at least) – Belle Single.

‘Belle Single!’ I hissed down the phone to Luke, who was on the far side of the room interviewing celebs for the social pages. ‘
Belle Single!
’ I repeated for effect. ‘What the hell is Belle Single doing here?’ Had Amanda forgotten Ms Single singlehandedly sabotaged our press conference for this very event by staging a love-in with her best friend’s ex-fiancé?

Luke laughed. ‘Babe, Belle Single is like the mascot for man-hunters. You can’t host a male meat market in metropolitan Sydney and not expect Single to show. Trust me, she can sniff it out!’

I sighed and took a swig of my mai tai cocktail.

‘Anyway, who else is sitting with you?’

I turned to inspect the remaining place cards on the table. ‘Uh, Michael Lloyd, whoever that is. And – ’

Suddenly, a lone figure appeared before me. A lone figure with a new-season Birkin. A lone figure that struck fear into the very core of my heart and made me forget, temporarily, about my plan for Kurt.

‘Diane!’ I gasped, my phone still glued to my ear.

‘Diane?!’ Luke shrieked down the line.

‘Jasmine,’ she said flatly, her hands too occupied with her enormous Birkin for anything as civil as a handshake.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ I blurted, dropping my BlackBerry (and poor Luke) to the floor. ‘And at
my
table?’ I added, narrowing my eyes. Suddenly I doubted it was Amanda who had switched the table arrangements.

Oh, why did Diane keep doing this to me? I wondered, thinking ruefully back to her unwelcome appearance at Queen Bee’s first-anniversary party. Of all the fucking gin joints . . . Why on earth was Diane seated at my table? Alongside Amanda Worthington and Belle Single! It was like the ghosts of Christmas past in here. Happy fucking Chanukah, I thought grimly.

Diane sniffed and pushed her Hermès black leather bracelet back up her bony arm. I adjusted my Givenchy leopard-print cuff in reply. Our rearmament complete, we headed into battle.

‘What am I doing here? Oh, Jasmine, there are publicists other than you with clients here tonight. Or potential clients, anyway,’ she said cryptically. ‘In fact, there are still entire PR firms eking out a living in this city alongside Queen Bee PR,’ she sneered.

I nearly choked on my mai tai in delight. Eking out a living? Diane was eking out a living? Don’t tell me Wilderstein PR was feeling the sting of Queen Bee’s blossoming PR presence? Don’t tell me she was hurting because of little ole me? Each and every morning that I’d hauled my arse out of bed and into the office since QB PR began suddenly shone golden in my memory. It was like those TV ads where they wipe over the kitchen in one easy motion and the whole thing glistens and sparkles. If Diane was hurting, then my every effort had been worth it. I didn’t even try to suppress my smile.

‘Of course there are,’ I gloated unashamedly. ‘It’s just we’re getting so busy at Queen Bee these days that we forget all about the competition. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to check on a few things backstage. You understand.’

Diane scowled and I hotfooted it before she had the chance to wrap her Hermès leather bracelet neatly around my neck.

Backstage, however, things had gone awry.

The five hundred gift bags we’d couriered over early that day had been unceremoniously dumped on the floor of the green room, like the Mount Fuji of freebies. Beside them sat an unopened box containing one thousand individually wrapped gourmet macaroons. All of which were supposed to be inside the offending gift bags. Gah!

It was time to do what I do best.

‘Um, can someone tell me
what
is going on here?’ I shouted. ‘Someone? Anyone? You!’ I screeched at a hapless cable runner who had made the mistake of being in my firing line. ‘I want you, you and you to tidy this up now,’ I continued, pointing at two other randoms who were hanging out backstage. ‘And Lulu and Alice,’ I said, spying some Bees nearby, ‘help me sort out these biscuits. Now!’ Kurt’s place card would have to wait a bit longer.

I took a deep breath, kicked off my shoes and bent down and got to work. I was in the middle of running an Isabel Marant-clad knuckle down the seam of the macaroon box to slice it open when I heard the swish of sequins behind me.

‘Doll!’ came a plummy voice from inside the sequins. A voice I’d recognise anywhere.

‘Pamela Stone! My favourite gossip queen! What brings you backstage?’ I kicked a gift bag out of the way with my foot.

‘Oh, I 
live
for backstage. Everybody’s a nobody until you get backstage,’ she said, laughing.

I stood, barefoot, and brushed cookie crumbs from my gown.

Pamela had enough class to pretend not to notice. ‘Now, doll, I’ve heard talk that you had some kind of epiphany while holed up in hospital. You know, detoxing and soul-searching and generally turning all zen and Miranda Kerr on us. So is it true Queen Bee PR is up for sale now?’

My mouth fell open.

‘And that you’ll settle for ten million because you’re downsizing and sea-changing to somewhere more coastal? Like Tamarama? What’s the story there, doll?’

Now I had to laugh. Even by Pamela’s standards this was impressive. The tabloid talent was always first with the goss but this rumour was so fresh even I didn’t know I was selling. In fact, I wasn’t sure what surprised me most – the idea that I was selling Queen Bee or the fact that the social pages knew about it before I did. Not to mention the thought of ten million dollars.

‘Ah, sorry to disappoint you, Pamela, but nothing could be further from the truth. Queen Bee is not on the market. And I’m not in the market for a life overhaul.’

That last part was probably not strictly true, but Pamela, bless her, looked relieved anyway. ‘You’re sure, dear?’

I nodded emphatically.

‘And what about the ten million? Is that bit true?’

I was tempted to nod again. While there was no way in hell my business was worth anywhere near ten big ones, there was also no way Diane Wilderstein would ever miss one of Pamela’s columns. And I’d love to give Diane something to stew on over breakfast.

‘I’m afraid I can’t comment,’ I replied sweetly. ‘It’s so crass to talk about your millions once you pass double figures, don’t you think?’ Oops.

Leaving Pamela to spread that salacious story, I was on my way back into the Ivy Ballroom when Shelley texted:
Dah-ling, in the bath with a vino and the Man of the Year edition of
Coco
magazine. Now, here’s a fun reconnaissance mission. If I select my fave hot bod, will you find him in the flesh for me tonight? Mwah.