by Wendy James
‘It’s not ideal, and it’s possible that the media will bug you for a few weeks even there,’ Honor had explained, ‘but if you’re in Sydney, they’ll be buzzing around like flies every time you take a shit.’
But Ellie had point-blank refused. ‘I’m not going back to Manning,’ she’d said. ‘I’m never going back. I can’t. You don’t understand.’
She’d refused to elaborate, had insisted she wanted to move to Sydney, that she’d get a job, find her own place; she was eighteen, after all.
They’d eventually reached a compromise, and Ellie moved into the spare room in Honor and Dougal’s place until the money started rolling in and she could rent her own flat.
They’d disagreed, too, about romantic entanglements. Honor’s advice, strongly given, was that Ellie should stay clear of any relationships, serious or not, until the committal at the very least. But she couldn’t guard her every minute, and there’d been endless possibilities. What young woman wouldn’t be tempted by all the attention? Young men who were equally entranced by Ellie’s beauty, her sudden celebrity status.
She’d been particularly concerned when Ellie began to show an interest in a journalist, Jamie Hemara – a handsome New Zealander connected to the notorious online scandal rag, 180Degrees. The maverick site, which depended on anonymous sources, and displayed a shameless genius for selective cutting and pasting, was one of the most scurrilous around, trading in celebrity gossip and political scandals. It was constantly under investigation, threatened with lawsuits – contempt of court, libel, perverting the cause of justice. Its country of origin and ownership was impossible to pin down, and prosecutions never seemed to get far. It had frequently been forced to pull stories when the law got involved, but by then they’d already been shared thousands of times, and the damage done. Jamie Hemara’s by-line only ever appeared above the website’s occasional straight offerings, but there was no doubt he was responsible for much of the muck, too.
When she’d first found out about Jamie and Ellie’s ‘hot new relationship’ (via Instagram, naturally) Honor, working late, had rung Ellie immediately, and warned her off. She’d pointed out gently that, at twenty-eight, Hemara was far too old for her, and that he was a notorious womaniser and a hard partier with something of a serious coke habit. But Ellie had dug in her heels.
‘It’s not going to get serious,’ she’d said. ‘I’m only eighteen. But I like him, Honor. And I need some sort of social life. What am I meant to do? Stay home and watch Netflix every single night? It’s getting a bit boring.’
Honor had sighed. This was a battle she would lose eventually, but she had to try anyway. ‘Right now men are a dangerous luxury, Ellie. And male journalists are even more dangerous. You have to be careful.’
‘Are you saying he’ll use me?’ Ellie’s laughter was equal parts scorn and disbelief.
‘I’m sure he thinks you’re wonderful, but journalists can’t help it. They’re always looking for an angle. If you were his granny he’d be working out how to get you into a badly run nursing home so he could write an exposé. It’s nothing personal. I was one of them. I know exactly how it works.’
Dougal had been a little harder to manage.
‘I really don’t understand why she needs to stay here, Honor,’ he’d said when she told him she’d offered Ellie a place to stay. ‘Can’t she just get a room in a hotel or something?’
Honor was surprised by Dougal’s attitude. Over the years, her husband had offered up very little in the way of opinion when it came to her clients. On the odd occasion that he’d been called on to accompany her to some function or other, he might have expressed his distaste for a particular client, or, rather less frequently, his interest or admiration, but mostly he’d kept his distance.
‘And I don’t understand why it bothers you so much,’ she’d countered. ‘It’s only temporary. I’ve already explained this.’ She’d swallowed down her impatience, made herself speak calmly. ‘She really needs some sort of guaranteed cash flow first, and she doesn’t have that yet.’
‘Well, why can’t you give her some sort of an advance? Help find her a place. Isn’t that what you usually do?’
It was a Saturday morning, Ellie still in bed, and Dougal was sitting at the breakfast table with his morning newspaper spread open in front of him, a cup of tea at hand, doing his best impression of an old-fashioned paterfamilias. He peered at Honor over his reading glasses, his lips drawn together primly. He looked, suddenly, shockingly, every one of his sixty-five years.
‘But she’s so vulnerable right now, and she’s really just a kid. She’s only just turned eighteen. She’s clueless.’
‘Why can’t she get into some sort of share house? With people her own age?’
‘There’s no one she can move in with – her friends are all still at school.’
He raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced.
‘This is the easiest route to take, believe me,’ said Honor. ‘It suits me to have her here right now because at least I can see what she’s doing, even if I can’t control it completely. I can make sure she’s not going out every night and getting drunk and taking drugs and hanging with all the wrong people. She needs to be in top form – so many people want to talk to her. She’s got so much happening it would be a pity to stuff the whole thing up. Right now she needs a responsible adult looking out for her.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Dougal, I’m not sure what the problem is. It’s not like she’s causing any trouble.’
‘I just don’t . . .’ He paused, modified what he was going to say. ‘It’s just awkward, having her here.’
‘Awkward? In what way is it awkward? I’d have thought you’d be enjoying having a young person about the place. I’m enjoying it.’
He leaned towards her, lowered his voice. ‘I don’t trust her. I can’t even tell you why, but there’s something.’
‘Is it because she’s not from a nice middle-class background? Are you worried she’s going to help herself to the family silver?’ She laughed, held up a teaspoon. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dougal. You’re such a snob.’ She shook her head, tapped him lightly on the back of the hand with the spoon.
He had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Of course it’s not that. It’s . . . You’re right. She’s everything you say she is – intelligent, thoughtful, polite. Yesterday she bought me two bagels from that place in the Cross because she’d heard me telling you how much I like them. And then we had a thoroughly engrossing conversation about the book I was reading – a history of Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. It turns out she knows quite a lot about it. And then, not five minutes later, I overheard her talking to that journalist she’s seeing, that Maori fellow. She sounded like, I don’t know – like a . . .’ he fumbled for the term, ‘like one of those phone-sex women’.
‘She sounded like a phone-sex woman?’ Honor couldn’t help laughing again. ‘Dougal. You’re a bloody old prude, as well as a snob. She’s just young.’
‘Don’t be silly. You know I couldn’t care less about her bloody sex life. It’s the fact that she can turn it on and off so easily. She can act like a virtuous schoolgirl – the perfect granddaughter to me, in fact – and then five minutes later she’s channelling the whore of Babylon. And yes, I know, you’ll say that’s just girls, that I’m old, that I’ve forgotten. But I haven’t. That girl is too much. Too smooth. She’s too good to be true.’ He paused for a long moment and when he spoke his voice was deadly serious. ‘And she’s dangerous.’
‘Dougal, my darling. Ellie’s not dangerous, she’s just a child.’
‘That’s the thing, Honor.’ His eyes were full of pity. ‘She’s not actually a child – and you’re not her mother.’
SUZANNAH: OCTOBER 2018
THE RINGING OF CHIP’S MOBILE WOKE ME. IT WAS STILL DARK. I closed my eyes again, pushed my face into the pillow, willing sleep to return.
I must have managed to drift off while he was on the phone, because when I finally opened my eyes
Chip was back in bed, leaning up against the headboard with his head flung back, his eyes closed, mouth an angry line.
I touched his arm gently. ‘Chip? Who was it? What’s happened?’
He took a deep breath before he responded, still not opening his eyes or turning towards me.
‘That was Hal. Apparently you’re big news again today. On the internet.’
‘What is it now?’ I struggled to sit up. ‘But there’s been nothing new, has there? She hasn’t said anything else?’
Chip turned to me, his voice weary. ‘That’s the thing. It’s not something new. And she’s not saying it. This is old news apparently. You really should’ve told Hal about it, Suze. He might’ve been able to prepare for it somehow. It’s too late now, even if this stuff isn’t going to be admissible.’
‘What stuff?’
‘It’s that bloody website, 180Degrees. They’ve dug up some dirt on you from the eighties. It’s like they’ve got some sort of vendetta.’
‘What kind of dirt?’
‘Filthy dirty dirt.’ He tried to smile, to make it into a joke. ‘You clearly had a more interesting youth than I did.’
‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about—’ I began. And then, suddenly, I did.
By the time I was in my late teens I had everything any girl could possibly want. At sixteen I had scored, with very little effort – I’d just done a screen test on a whim – a plum role on what was destined to become one of Australia’s best-loved soaps. On screen I was Gypsy, the show’s sweetheart: a girl-next-door surfie chick, an integral part of a loving but chaotic family, a close-knit surfing community. In real life I was living the teenage dream. With Mary permanently AWOL, and Nan and Pop too old to have much of an impact on my decisions, I was independent in a way that most of my peers weren’t. More importantly, I had money. I was also famous. I may not have been Kylie – I’d never learned to sing, and my hair wouldn’t take a perm – but I was the next best thing. Smart, but not scarily so, dark-skinned and doe-eyed and not too ‘up myself’, I was everybody’s daughter, sister, best friend and girlfriend – a kind of ethnic-looking Gidget without the bangs.
I floated through life, not giving too much, taking what I wanted, imagining that I somehow deserved all I’d got – the success, the admiration, the occasional trip up the red carpet, the cameras flashing – and thinking, too, that I had power, over men, over the world, over my future. And I thought, silly young thing that I was, that the power was real, that it actually meant something, that it would last.
What I didn’t have at that age was anyone to guide me. My grandparents had done their best to raise me, but they were bewildered by the way my life had turned out. They’d already had their hearts broken by my mother, and they’d had to work hard to hide their disappointment – and their fear – when it looked as if I was going to be swallowed up by that same world. I knew that, despite all the clear evidence of my success, they’d never stopped being afraid that eventually I was going to go off the rails too.
And eventually, inevitably, off the rails I went, although my derailment certainly wasn’t as tragic, or as long-lasting, as my mother’s. Thankfully my grandparents didn’t have to witness any of it, not that I would have been inclined to modify my behaviour for them. Pop had died and Nan’s once-sharp mind had begun to fade and she’d moved into an old people’s home, her connection to reality rapidly diminishing.
By the mid-1990s, Beachlife had been running for almost a decade and the storylines were getting stale, the ratings beginning to lose momentum. Like the Titanic, once damaged these big soaps tended to sink rapidly. First we lost a few of the biggest stars, most moving on to other soaps, the big screen. In all my years on the show I’d been complacent about my future prospects. My agent hadn’t worried either. So when management decided to kill me off in a bid to up the ratings, I was shocked and unmoored. There was a requisite fifteen minutes of public sadness over my tragic ‘death’, but once I’d made my exit from the show I was no longer hot property. Although I was pretty and talented, I was limited – too well known, not well enough trained, and not, it had to be said, all that ambitious. My agent was apologetic – there was nothing going – my identity, my signature looks, were so tied up with the show, and with being ‘Gypsy’ . . . It was over, and unlike Kylie, I had no plan B.
And I clearly needed a plan B. I wasn’t by any means a spendthrift, but apart from buying the apartment in Bondi with a deposit large enough to leave me with only a minuscule mortgage, I was broke. A small fortune could easily trickle through your fingers when you bought whatever clothes or food or cars or holidays you desired, with no thought for a future that might be leaner.
Until then my private life had been relatively tame as far as soapie starlets go. There had been no sordid scandals, no love triangles or lesbian affairs to cover up. I wasn’t big on partying or clubbing; the only red-carpet affairs I attended were the ones management told me to go to.
I’d had two serious boyfriends. The first was the lovely, and as it turned out extremely gay, Sebastián Mendes (although he stayed in the closet until the beginning of the new century). He played Mick, my surf lifesaver love interest on the show. Seb and I were an item for a few years, and lived together for almost twelve months, with the blessing of the studio. We had a great time, and though I imagined I was in love for a short while, it was an easy relationship, without any intensity – just two mates having fun.
My second serious relationship – when my own star was at its peak – was with one of the film editors, Dylan Menzies. Dylan was older, and though he was extremely good-looking in a slightly sinister way, nobody would ever describe him as lovely. He was sharp, slick, ambitious, opportunistic. He ran with what my nan would have called a fast crowd – clubbers and druggies, low-level crims – in a world that I knew existed but had somehow avoided. We broke up after a tempestuous year-long relationship – his penchant for drugs and other women too much of a challenge to my own innate conservatism.
It’d been a year or so since our break-up, when I bumped into him at a club. It was a few weeks after I finished on the show, there was no work on the horizon, and my bank balance – and sense of self-worth – was rapidly dwindling. He’d persuaded me to go to a party at Edward Levant’s waterfront mansion. I knew of Levant, and though everyone who was anyone knew Levant, I’d never actually met him. A millionaire, back when the term meant something, he was a constant presence on the fringes of the film scene. No one (in the pre-Underbelly world) seemed to know much about him, where he’d come from, what he did, or why he had money. There were all sorts of rumours – that he was the head of an international drug syndicate, that he sold arms, that he dealt in human trafficking – but no one seemed to care. We were young, we were having fun, and people like Levant provided money, glamour, a place to be seen and people to be seen with, and that was all that mattered.
According to Dylan, Levant waited to get into the film industry. He was looking to invest, perhaps head a production company, and Dylan thought there might be an opportunity there for me. And as there didn’t seem to be anything else looming on my horizon, how could I resist?
I met up with Dylan at a nightclub in Darlinghurst and had a few drinks. Very uncharacteristically, I was coked up too. ‘For fuck’s sake, Suzannah,’ Dylan had sighed, only half-joking, when I’d initially declined, ‘you can’t turn up to Eddie Levant’s place straight. You’ll get us thrown out.’
So I had shared a line, or maybe two, and when the taxi set us down outside the imposing stone gates of Levant’s Point Piper mansion, my inhibitions were pretty loose. And by the time I’d had a few glasses of Bollinger and shared a line or two more with a couple whose names I never bothered to ask – they were non-existent.
The following day, I woke up on the floor of a holding cell at Kings Cross police station, having been arrested after a police raid at Levant’s. I had no memory of what I’d actually been doing when the shit hit the fan the night
before. It was only when my agent bailed me out that afternoon that I found out what had gone on. Apparently when the police descended, I’d been in the basement, where our host kept a fine assortment of bondage gear, appropriately dressed (or undressed, depending on your perspective) and ready to play house.
It hadn’t been a huge thing in the press at the time – there’d been some much bigger names at Levant’s that night. A couple of supermodels and visiting American actors had been among those arrested, and naturally the tabloids had focused on them. But I had been listed among those charged, and though it hadn’t exactly harmed my already floundering career, it hadn’t helped either. The charges against me were dropped the following day, and by the next week, the affair was nothing more than yesterday’s fish and chip wrapping. My career had more or less ground to a halt soon after, though that had nothing to do with the arrest.
On the advice of my agent, who was refreshingly, if brutally honest, I’d decided to pursue an ordinary life. I enrolled in an Arts degree, majored in English and drama, then did my high-school teaching diploma. And life, as my agent had assured me it would, had gone on.
I’d met Stephen in my first year of teaching, married him the following year, and a little less than twelve months later, Stella had arrived. I can remember laughing with Steve about my single criminal escapade, and that was probably the last time I’d ever mentioned it. In fact it was probably the last time I’d thought about it; far bigger and harder things had happened to me since.
I put off looking for the story until Chip had gone. He grunted his goodbye, not quite meeting my eye. Mary was in one of her compliant moods, happily entranced by the morning cartoons. The dogs were lying in a sliver of pale sunlight on the verandah, enjoying their brief respite from Mary’s attentions. I made myself a coffee, then sat at the table with my laptop and googled my name. I had to scroll down a little to find the 180Degrees link, which gave me some hope. Clearly the story hadn’t gone viral. Yet.