Strictly Confidential (6 page)

Turning into Shelley’s driveway in Woollahra was like visiting Gatsby’s humble abode. Her recycling bin stood sentry out the front, stuffed full of iconic black Net-a-Porter delivery boxes and the odd empty bottle of Moët. Her sleek grey Porsche sat in the drive, the keys dangling temptingly in the ignition.

I waltzed through her open front door, my laptop bag banging against the intercom. ‘Shell?’ I bellowed down the marble hallway.

‘Sweetie!’ A figure clad in white emerged at the end of the hall, holding two glasses in front of her. ‘I was just about to call you! The wine is getting warm and we can’t have that!’

Shelley tottered down the corridor then stopped dead. ‘Oh my god,’ she said, lowering the glasses to chest level. ‘You look like shit!’

‘Thanks, hon.’

‘Seriously, you do. What’s wrong? Is it Will?’

‘No, just work as ever.’ I grabbed the glass that wasn’t covered in lipstick. ‘And it’s not over yet. Tonight I have the very great pleasure of standing outside a club for five hours. FAB!’

We clinked glasses and plonked ourselves down on her Missoni-covered bar stools.

‘Dah-ling, I don’t know why you are still carrying on as a bloody door bitch,’ Shelley said, swigging her sav blanc.

‘Shell, you know I have to. Girl’s gotta pay the rent, right?’

‘Oh babe, fair enough,’ she said sympathetically. ‘And, while it won’t pay the rent, I do have something that might make up for the fact you flog yourself senseless every day.’

Running upstairs – no mean feat after her three glasses of vino to my three sips – Shelley was back down the impressive spiral in no time with a hessian bag promisingly labelled
Balmain
.

‘Here,’ she said, thrusting it at me. ‘I don’t want it any more. I think my initial love for it was merely a projection of knowing you would adore it, you know? I haven’t even worn it. Just not my style, really.’

I looked at her like a kid scoring a bat mitzvah gift, then opened the bag and pulled out a magnificent wide-shouldered black jacket decorated with studs placed randomly down the collar.

‘Oh. My. God,’ was all I could manage as I put it against my body.

‘Divine, right? It’s only just hit the stores.’ Shelley winked.

Decadent tails sat tightly on the waistline, hugging the stomach, while the shoulder pads trapezed out ever so flatteringly beyond the arms.

‘Shell, I couldn’t possibly take this. The tag is still on! You could totally take it back.’

‘Oh babe, that’s never going to happen.’

‘Honestly, Shell, borrowing something like this is just as special as owning it.’

‘Dah-ling, you know I’d never let you hire out an item. I want you to bond with this Balmain. Develop a deep and meaningful relationship with this Balmain. Don’t wear it and return it like some desperado celebrity coat hanger, snapped once in lay-by couture in a vain attempt to resurrect their profile.’

I laughed. ‘Like the wardrobe equivalent of
Dancing with the Stars
?’

‘Exactly! Or the sartorial substitute for a sex tape! Now,’ Shelley went on, ‘in return for the new addition to
your
wardrobe, I’ve got a teeny favour to ask: can you sort out mine?’ She gestured towards the dining room table, which was littered with shopping bags and clothes still on hangers.

I shook my head in wonderment at what was coming.

‘Any chance you could pop these things onto eBay for me?’ Shelley asked. ‘They’re all
so
over, it’s just not funny.’

‘Sweetie, you know I will. Or I can show you how to do it yourself and you could make a small fortune without having to get up off the couch. It’s really easy.’ It wasn’t that I minded selling Shelley’s stuff online for her and then popping her profits into her bank account so she could spend them all over again, it was just that I couldn’t quite grasp the invisible but all-important line Shelley had drawn between selling her own clothes on eBay and having me do it for her.

‘Oh, never!’ Shelley said, mortified. ‘I could never stoop so low as to use that lazy woman’s approach to shopping. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ I said, giving up yet again on her logic and going back to admiring the Balmain beauty.

‘The point of shopping is to actually go into a bloody shop!’ she continued. ‘Browsing, trying on the same thing in three different sizes, asking the staff for a discount. It’s a whole package, not just using a mouse and typing in your credit card details. That is just plain lazy.’

‘And yet you’re more than happy to have people buy your things online,’ I smirked. I couldn’t resist.

‘Ugh. I am merely manipulating the pathetic so-called “consumers” who can’t be bothered leaving their homes. Hopefully one day they will realise they have been ripped off and will actually enter a store every now and then.’

‘If it means my label lifeline runs out, I sincerely hope not!’

‘Stick with me, sweets. You’ll be fine.’

‘You’re sure I can have this?’ I held up the Balmain jacket and checked one last time.

‘Dah-ling. Celebrities can borrow. My sister can borrow. Magazines can borrow. You deserve to own. And you need it! Good clothes are a PR staple!’

Now, how could I argue with that?

If you believe our press, life in Sydney is all about sex and sunshine and sinking your toes in the sand on Bondi Beach. Maybe running into Alf Stewart at the surf club. In reality, unless you’re a British backpacker your day-to-day involves none of those things. In fact, with one of the longest working weeks of any country in the OECD, life as a Sydneysider is more likely to be consumed by hard slog at the office. Followed by Friday nights downing overpriced booze in an achingly hip wine bar while you talk about real estate you can’t hope to afford.

The never-ending working week certainly rang true for me as I manned the door at Mrs Sippy that night in my Balmain jacket. I was doing my best to channel Abbey-Lee Kershaw on the cover of
Muse
circa ’09 but feeling more like the star of one of
Wear
magazine’s
‘Celebs without makeup’ exposés. As I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to stay awake, I contemplated what it meant to have access to all the red-carpet events and celebrities I wanted, yet to be trapped in an entry-level position. I nodded hello to the ubiquitous celebs traipsing past on their way into the launch and thought about that funny expression ‘She’s made it’. Most PRs in my industry would have given a year’s worth of blowdries at Valonz salon to be on first-name terms with these people. And, don’t get me wrong, I really liked many of them. In fact, more often than not, when I had to deal with an A-lister about product placement or a photo shoot, or even just when I ran into a ‘name’ at a launch party, they turned out to be lovely peeps. But let me have my Oliver Twist moment: couldn’t I have some more from my career, please?

To cheer myself up, I checked my phone for tweets from Luke. As the
Sun
’s gossip columnist, he was a very handy person for me to know. I wasn’t averse to pitching story ideas to him over lunch; plus, he always had the inside on everything happening in Sydney. But our relationship meant so much more to me than just work. Luke was closer to me than most of my girlfriends, and not just because he had better dress sense than they did. (A fact that was the first thing to strike me about Luke when we met – several years ago now – at a Sydney soirée.) Of course, the second thing that struck me about Luke Jefferson that night was his dogged determination to score a scoop for his column, as he spent the entire evening coaxing and cajoling and unashamedly charming me into giving him the inside story on one of our clients and their new (and top-secret) romance. More than anyone else I’ve met, Luke is passionate about fashion and he’s passionate about his job and, for those two reasons alone, it was (platonic) love at first sight between us. In fact, if Luke had been at all interested in skirt, and if I wasn’t married to my work, ours would have been a long and beautiful relationship. As it was, it proved a pretty tight friendship.

As I leaned against the doorframe at Mrs Sippy, Luke was being as active in the social stratosphere as I’d hoped, offering Twitter fans the very latest on Belle Single’s bed-hopping antics. Belle Single was an aspiring actress and the high priestess of Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. More than this, though, she was a manic man-eater with a penchant for fast cars, fast men and fast-tracking her bank account.

Belle would date whoever it took in order to see her name in the headlines. I idly retweeted one of the juicier pics and Luke, who never surfaces before midday but can be relied upon at any hour of the night, responded straightaway:
@JazzyLou when can I see you for some raw slippery fish?
Game on.
Does Monday suit?
I texted in reply, not keen for a world’s worth of Twitter stalkers to know our movements. Social columnists were God in this town and I didn’t need Luke’s disciples bothering us when we broke bread.
If so, midday. Done and done. Can’t wait.
Lunch with Luke was exactly what I needed to get me out of my vocational funk. What I didn’t need was the next text that popped up on my screen:
You missed another great night out tonight, Jazzy Lou. Your loss, not mine, Will.
Charming. I really should call him tomorrow.

By the time the little hand slipped past one, I was beyond ready to head home and reacquaint myself with my mattress. It felt like aeons since we’d last been in one another’s company and we had a lot of catching up to do. I hurried back to where I’d parked my car hours earlier. Jamming the keys into the ignition I willed my old Volvo to life before easing out onto the road. My bulging LV Speedy handbag sat on the passenger seat beside me – my ideal driving companion – and I rummaged around for my lipgloss as I drove, pausing only to flick through radio stations. The dulcet tones of Richard Mercer and his ever-faithful love song dedications drifted out of the speakers and I felt a momentary pang of guilt about my own lack of dedication in that department. Little as I wanted to admit it, Will and his passive-aggressive texts had a point. I never paid Will as much attention as I awarded the rest of my life and certainly not as much as I lavished on my career. And while there was a hell of a lot that bugged me about the guy, there must have been even more that I still found attractive about him to have stuck around so long. Maybe it wasn’t too late to invest a little more in our relationship.

Cruising to a halt at a lonely red light, Richard Mercer’s voice pouring out of the speaker like honey, I waited sleepily for the lights to change. Then suddenly everything changed. They say in life-altering moments – those split seconds of action or inaction that you’re forced to revisit for years to come – the world actually slows on its axis. It’s like watching a flipped coin pivot between heads and tails in those final wobbly seconds before it falls.

As I sat at those traffic lights my passenger-side door was violently yanked open and a pale, tattooed arm reached into my car.
My
car. A scream rose in my throat as I slammed myself up against the driver’s door, as far away from the intruder as I could get.

The lights flicked to green.

The hand was still there.

I screamed again and fumbled with my foot for the accelerator.

Fuck.

The lights glowed green, but there was no impatient CBD driver behind me to blast me with their horn. Or save me.

The hand connected with the handles of my bag and then both disappeared into the blackness.

I put my foot to the floor and screeched away from the corner, causing the passenger door to swing wildly, but I wasn’t stopping for anything. I sped down the empty backstreets of Darlinghurst, the door still flapping in the breeze, my mind racing to catch up.

My bag had just been stolen.

From my car.

From inside my car.

Leaning over to slam the swinging door shut, I gave a long, guttural moan of self-pity. I had just been robbed. Oh, Shelley’s beautiful bag! Oh, all my personal belongings! My BlackBerry, my laptop, my credit cards, my crappy old makeup bag. Not to mention a new box of Nurofen.

And Raven’s knickers.

Shit. Anya was going to kill me. Raven’s knickers were still at large somewhere in the bottom of my handbag, now itself at large in the world. This couldn’t end well. At least they were freshly sealed and clearly labelled, I thought to myself, and laughed out loud at the thought. I was obviously in shock.

Dragging myself awake the next morning, my first thought was for my poor Louis Vuitton bag. Sure, it might be looking shabby and more than a little clichéd in a city where half the twenty-to thirty-year-old female demographic could be seen toting one. (Show me a private schoolgirl in Sydney who
didn’t
receive a Speedy as their first designer bag.) But Shelley had given me that bag when I’d first started working for Diane and I’d always brandished it as a symbol of my survival. And occasionally as a shield, when Diane turned violent in the office. I knew I should have been feeling relieved I hadn’t been hurt last night. And at least I still had my house keys (which had been hanging safely on my key ring in the ignition). But the hassle of reporting it to the police, filing an insurance claim and then replacing all my stuff didn’t exactly fill me with joy. Not to mention surviving the next few days without my BlackBerry.

Then I remembered those damn red knickers.

How was I going to break this to Anya? I’d just destroyed her only investment plan. And probably the extent of her life savings too. Best deliver the bad news to her in person. I’d do it as soon as I got to work, I promised myself.

Then, of course, there was the risk of the press getting hold of them. After all, Raven’s smalls were now in a bag with her name helpfully plastered across the front. No self-respecting journalist would require a media release urging them to turn that discovery into a headline. That’s glossy-magazine heaven right there. And I’d just signed, sealed and delivered it to the world. What a helpful PR I was. Somehow I didn’t think Diane would see it that way. But what could I do? Other than cross my fingers that the crim who stole my bag didn’t dump it – and the knickers – somewhere the press might find it.

I hopscotched my way to work that day, more like a journo who’d lost the front page than a PR who’d misplaced some undies. Time for a quick pit stop at Oddy’s Cafe for coffee? Thank you, don’t mind if I do. A flying visit to Benefit to spend my only remaining cash replacing my stolen makeup essentials?
Naturellement.
Swing by the newsagent to peruse any new-release mags, you say? Why, that’s practically working right there. I did manage to stop short of dropping in on Shelley for breakfast. But only just.

By the time I eventually stepped into the lift at work, I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. People in my industry got shot of their underwear in the name of career advancement on a weekly basis. This was something to put on my CV, not cause me to drag my feet all the way to the office. Admittedly it was not every day you lost
someone else’s
smalls. But who was counting?

Still, by the time I got to my desk I half-expected Diane to have a warrant out with my name on it. Turns out I wasn’t far wrong.

‘Morning,’ I said to Zoe as I plonked myself down at the desk next to hers.

‘Don’t talk,’ she hissed, her immaculately made-up face riveted to her screen.

‘Okaaay,’ I said slowly, as if dragging the word out didn’t count as actual speech. I’d always been unable to follow that particular instruction very well. I waited for my PC to spring to life so I could resume our conversation on email. Clearly, Diane was on the warpath.

whats the go
I typed to Zoe, not bothering with the niceties of punctuation.

dunno. some sort of aggro with Vixenary
, was the reply.

Fuck. The knickers.

For a moment I imagined myself and Anya trawling through some garbage-lined Darlo alleyway, sniffer dog by our side, desperately trying to track down the lowlife who had stolen my handbag so we could beg him to give us back Raven’s g-string. ‘Bud, g-strings are so last season.’ I planned my argument in my head. ‘The high-waisted brief is the item
du jour
, trust me. Didn’t you see Bigeni’s collaboration with Spanx underwear at Australian Fashion Week?’

I snapped out of it.

This was ridiculous.

There was no way in hell Vixenary even
knew
the red knickers were missing, let alone cared if they were. They probably gifted a thousand g-strings like that to celebs every single day. I was being paranoid.

Or not.

As I opened the first of seemingly hundreds of emails marked
urgent
in my inbox, my stomach sank.

From: Anya

Title: Colleague

Time: 07.58 am

I need the knickers. Urgently.

I stood and craned my neck to see over the workstation partition. Good. Anya was still alive and kicking at her desk. You could never be sure where Diane was involved. I banged out a quick response.

Er, teeny problem with that, love. I don’t have them. I’m so, so sorry. I was robbed last night on my way home from Mrs Sippy and the knickers were in my handbag (I can explain).