The Rumour Mill

by Roxy Jacenko

  Finally an agreement was reached, and thanks to the awesome work by our stylists, Butterworth now looked like it belonged in downtown Fontainbleau, rather than a leafy Bellevue Hill street within jogging distance of Bondi. We also put on extra Bees just for the event, two of them dedicated to ensuring that Ella was plied with champagne and kept pretty much mesmerised by some of the male eye candy on display.

  In the countdown to the launch of Point Blank, everything was going to plan. Anya had organised the delivery of the cake from Sweet Art which was an exact replica of the front cover of the magazine and its website. It was to be ceremoniously cut by the magazine house’s ambitious, toothy publisher, Gertrude Roberts, who always wanted to be front and centre at any event. We also had the obligatory fireworks display by the same people who were responsible for Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve cracker night. Most ambitious of all, Butterworth’s famous fountain at the end of the drive had been transformed into a champagne fountain, through a clever visual illusion that made the bubbles look as though they were spurting from the original water jets, when in fact they came out of another device, beautifully lit. The champagne fountain had ended up costing nearly sixty thousand dollars and I was damned if our hostess was going to score that. In fact, I wanted it disassembled once the last of the guests had moved into the marquee erected on the lawn. It was now essentially a Queen Bee prop, which would be used in several more launches this year in very different areas.

  With the countdown on, Anya and Emma were stationed at the other end of the driveway with the guest list, which was littered with A-listers and the magazine’s key advertisers (those with at least a million-dollar spend).

  All week Anya, whose name was on the official RSVP, had been bugged by tragic nobodies trying to talk their way in.

  The worst was Sonny Poon, an exotic self-styled CEO from an electronic company that nobody had heard of, who was notorious with other PRs around town for always trying to wangle his way into the hottest event of the week.

  ‘He’s just told me that no beautiful people list should be without him as he is also a model,’ a giggling Anya had said during the week, putting the phone receiver in a drawer as she regaled the rest of the Queen Bee office with Sonny’s latest requests.

  This had our internet wiz Alice feverishly hitting the keyboards until she had indeed found a photo of Poon striking a James Bond-style modelling pose with a mobile phone pressed to his ear. But sadly there was no mention of his model agency.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anya had told Sonny when she retrieved the receiver from the drawer and managed to compose herself, ‘but the only models invited are Megan, Jen and Miranda.’

  ‘But you don’t understand, I’m a leading member of the Indian community, and the bigwigs behind Point Blank will definitely want me there. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Anya had told him, ‘maybe some other time.

  ‘“Leading member of the Indian community”,’ she laughed when she’d finally got rid of him. ‘Leading wanker, more like it.’

  So, would Sonny just turn up tonight and get ready to strike a pose? I didn’t like his chances. To deter any would-be gatecrashers, security guards were strategically placed all around the property, but particularly at the entrance. This was an exclusive event and I didn’t want any of the guests to look around them and suddenly see one of Sydney’s many desperadoes who would turn up to everything from a party in a shop to a book launch.

  And while half the city’s key influencers were getting styled and polished for tonight’s party, I was wearing my usual outfit of choice – a crisp white Givenchy tee, Bassike lowslungs and a skyhigh pair of Laboutin ‘Pigalles’ – with my freshly washed hair scraped back in a high ponytail. My only concessions to the bling that the occasion demanded of everyone else were my diamond and white gold Chanel watch, a tennis bracelet studded with thirty carat diamonds that had been a special gift from an old friend, and the seven-carat diamond ring that Michael had given me as a push present and which meant we were officially engaged.

  Dressed in this very outfit, I was briefing Vogue Williams, the model/DJ wife of Brian McFadden, when an apparition caught my eye that was so darn alarming, I thought I was hallucinating from staying up too long for Fifi’s early morning feeds.

  Picking her way delicately through Butterworth’s cobbled entrance was my old boss and nemesis Diane Wilderstein in all of her Botoxed glory, clutching onto a man with a chiselled jaw, carefully streaked blonde hair and slightly bulgy, clear blue eyes. Yes, my ex-business partner, Ivan Shavalik. My plan had worked and they had found each other but I don’t recall seeing either of their names on the invitation list, and just having them there made me feel uneasy.

  There was something about Ivan’s old fashioned black velvet jacket and tie that made him seem a little dangerous – like the Russian spy in an old James Bond movie. But it was with some satisfaction that I noted that Diane, who was dressed all in black, was wearing last season’s YSL Tributes. Or was it the season before. Either way, they looked like a toxic couple and I wondered whether either of them would turn feral when they had a couple of drinks. Ignoring them was sadly not an option, especially because if they had somehow faked an invitation I would have them thrown out with as little fuss as possible. Grabbing a spare guest list from a startled security guard, I marched over to them, but Diane got in before I could utter a word.

  ‘Jasmine, what a surprise to see you here. Don’t tell me you’re working tonight? Who’s looking after your baby?’

  I could sense Ivan’s penetrating stare, no doubt intended to unnerve me, but I kept focusing on Diane – the way you don’t take your eyes off a venomous creature in the bush. ‘Her father,’ I said evenly. ‘Now, is there something I can help you with? This is a private function.’

  Diane’s beaded Cooper number deemed to rattle with outrage at my question but she smiled as sweetly as she could with her scarlet slash of a mouth that was always, always turned down. ‘Not at all,’ she demurred. ‘Ivan here, whom I believe you know, is a major advertiser in Point Blank. You’ll notice he has the entire gatefold for Pantheon watches, for which he has the global agency, and naturally he asked me to accompany him. He was worried that a Queen Bee party would be too boring to deal with on his own.’

  Of course, I knew that Ivan had the agency for Pantheon but I had not registered the ads properly when I was looking at the launch issue. But why wasn’t his name on the invitation list? Knowing him, he had probably not bothered to RSVP and then just shown up.

  ‘Really?’ I said, laughing nonchalantly. ‘Boring? When I learnt everything from you Diane? How could that be?’ I winked at Ivan. ‘I hope you both have a wonderful time and now if you will excuse me, I have to look after some other arrangements.’

  I could see that Thelma was trying frantically to attract my attention, so we wandered towards a quiet area where we could chat. ‘What is it?’ I asked the quivering girl in front of me, who looked even more like a nymph with her long hair frizzing up around her face.

  ‘S-s-sorry,’ she apologised for being the bearer of potentially bad news, ‘but the latest intel is that Ivan has bought into Diane’s agency and they’ve told everyone they’re going to win all your accounts and send you broke.’

  Of course, the first half was exactly what I had hoped would happen but what was this about trying to steal my accounts and send me broke? There were quite enough accounts in this town for everyone. Besides weren’t most of my clients loyal to me? Nobody could match the Queen Bee service because I made sure that we were always available 24/7. Before I could digest this information, I had to deal with a more immediate crisis, which revolved around our talent and their lack of respect for their surroundings. Alec Shadow, the American singer who had just had a number one hit around the world with ‘Sleep Walking’, was to have been the special guest tonight to perform, but was now apparently holed up in the Park Hyatt with a throat infection. According to his manager, Roscoe, he could hardly speak
, let alone sing. Blame it on all those germs floating around the stale air on his flight from the US.

  A local artist, Larry Low, who fancied himself as the next Chris Brown, had taken his place at the last minute, and had appropriated one of Butterworth’s guest bedrooms as his green room. This had made our charming host Ella Von Scandale very nervous, but not nearly as fraught as she would be after she had a good look at her carpets: At Emma’s insistence, when I went to check on Larry, I saw that he had been practising his breakdancing on the white silk carpet and there were black marks all over it from the rubber soles of his trainers. So now Emma was frantically calling the carpet cleaner to see if he could come out in the early hours of the morning at the same time as bump out, when all the settings would be taken away by the stylists. He would no doubt charge three times the usual rate but it would be a drop in the ocean compared to what it would cost if Ella sued us for damages.

  With Larry Low’s new green room hurriedly moved to the pool cabana, and Ella distracted by Adam Nobbles – winner of two reality shows on television and now a member of the cast of Sunset Beach – the situation was almost contained, for now. I could take a moment to silently rage about Diane. There was no way she could take me on, even with all that Russian money – which would be as good as worthless anyway once Immigration caught up with that group. The idea of her basically printing out my client list and trying to take every one on it was not what I had expected when I thought of putting them together. I mean ‘what the fuck?’ I didn’t exactly think she would send me round a bunch of flowers for recommending her in the first place to Ivan but I thought she would play a bit nicer than this. Suddenly the balmy Sydney evening was pierced by a bloodcurdling scream. Ella Von Scandale had just walked into her guest bedroom and taken a look at her carpet. It looked as though a graffiti artist armed with some black greasy paint had run amok in there and no amount of emergency carpet cleaning was going to make a difference.

  8

  The launch got more exposure in the next day’s gossip columns than we could ever have hoped for – it just wasn’t the kind of publicity we wanted. Even my BFF, Luke Jefferson, breathlessly reported in his column in The Sun that guests attending the launch of Point Blank at society pitstop Butterworth had at first thought that someone must have committed a murder at the historic Sydney mansion (which would have no doubt only added to its lustre).

  Swept along on a small ocean of champagne bubbles, a story had gathered momentum that Ella Von Scandale had discovered at least one body, and maybe two – so piercing were her screams when she walked in and found her white silk carpet ruined. Adam Nobbles, whose arm was at the time wrapped possessively around her Alex Perry-corseted waist, at first assumed that her husband had turned up unexpectedly, and was quite shaken. The romantic interlude Ella had planned with the young thespian, whose acting skills would have undoubtedly come in handy in her glamorous bedroom, was also put on hold. Nothing put Ella Von Scandale less in the mood for sex than the prospect of having one of her assets devalued.

  Several of her frenemies later remarked that this was where her obvious lack of breeding showed her up. A member of one of Sydney’s fast-diminishing group of old-money families would have only lost the plot behind closed doors; Von Scandale, who had just stopped short of graduating from the appropriately named Rooty Hill High, continued to wail like a banshee.

  Some of the more inebriated guests had thought that her cries heralded the start of a new facet of the evening’s entertainment – like when they rolled back the doors at the Cointreau Ball to reveal a fleet of dodgem cars (even, one year, dodgem boats).

  I had tried to calm her down as best I could, while Adam Nobbles (who had, prior to this interruption, been imagining himself flying to LA at the pointy end of a plane with his new benefactress by his side, and was mentally planning his first hosted lunch at the Soho Club) raced off to get her another glass of champagne. However, the mood was broken. From that moment on she would always associate him with disaster and ruin. Sex was well and truly off the menu.

  After that, the night had gone downhill for Point Blank, with some guests leaving before the fireworks. The only saving grace was that it was definitely one of the most memorable parties of the month so far, which was exactly what the magazine’s executives had wanted – well, sort of.

  For several weeks afterwards, everyone involved handballed the cost of the new white silk carpet for Butterworth. The insurance company tried to put it on the event company for acting irresponsibly by not accompanying the entertainment into the house, and then the event company tried to get the magazine to pay. Of course, the carpet was handmade, and Ella Von Scandale insisted that the entire room had to be done and perhaps the entrance hall as well. ‘I simply cannot live any sort of life on a carpet which has been patched,’ she declared.

  For a while there, it looked as though Queen Bee would have to foot the bill, but the insurance company finally caved in and came good. Ella Von Scandale had done massively well from the night – a big fat fee for loaning Butterworth, a couture gown by Alex Perry which was worth a good fifteen grand, a new white silk carpet, and she somehow managed to hold on to all the leftover wine and champagne too. Von Scandale definitely had balls, just not Adam Nobbles’ slightly inflamed ones.

  And on that note, the other talking point of the night involved the eastern suburbs property developer, Rick Conrads, who picked up something a little extra when he took home Antonia Brown, fringe TV presenter, who was unfortunately as ambitious as she was largely unwatched. Despite this fact she managed to borrow an Allison Palmer gown from the showroom to wear to the launch of Point Blank because she insisted to Lulu that she had a TV crew following her around that night. And sure enough, there was one lone cameraman who looked as though he was filming on something resembling his iPhone but with a tiny tripod attached to it. This had kept many of the Bees amused at the start of the night; Antonia’s cameraman was so intent on filming her, you would have sworn it was David Attenborough shooting a wildlife doco. The Bees especially loved it when he walked backwards with his iPhone trained on her and they screamed at him that he was about to take out the champagne fountain. Antonia hardly blinked, entirely focused on sucking in her heavily made-up cheekbones and staring moodily into the distance in front of the photo wall. This was just as well, because none of the photographers was calling out her name – in fact, all that could be heard from the lensmen was a faint muttering: ‘Who’s that again? Is she anyone? Oh ta, I didn’t think so.’ (The local paps are the best social barometer in Sydney; if they hardly bother to lift their cameras, it’s clear that the person standing in front of them has hardly any celebrity currency at all. And when that happens, it’s best to pretend you had dropped something on the red carpet rather than trying to pose on it.) Antonia was so thick-skinned she could have stood in for a crocodile on the Discovery Channel. She just kept on posing up a storm for her own ‘lensman’ as if she was Angelina Jolie at the Oscars. That was until she spotted Rick Conrads arriving in head to toe Gucci and sidled up to him immediately, gesturing behind her back for the hapless photographer to scram. Luckily for her, Rick was in a particularly flirtatious mood that night so she was quickly able to monopolise his attention. By the time that Ella Von Scandale made her scene, Rick and Antonia were ready to slip away. There was so much going on that not even gossip columnist Pamela Stone had clocked them because she was so distracted by whatever was up with Ella Von Scandale. She was scurrying towards those screams in order to be first on the scene with her video camera turned on. Pamela was fearless when it came to tracking down a story.

  At least the earth had moved for someone that night. It was just darned unfair that a few days later Rick was spotted making a beeline for a certain Double Bay practice where the doctor was not only ultra knowledgeable but also extremely discreet. He needed to be, because Rick had noticed a discharge from his penis following his night of unbridled lust with Antonia. Naturally, the doctor didn’t divulge to Ric
k that he was actually not the first to pick up something from that source: Antonia was a walking STD epidemic. Naturally, the word spread quickly back to the Queen Bee office and it was resolved never to lend Antonia another outfit again, particularly not a gown by Allison Palmer.

  In fact, for the next few days everyone was banned from borrowing from the Queen Bee showroom except for bona fide fashion editors and stylists for big-name stars. We needed to do a stocktake because it looked as though we were about to land a huge new client.

  Tod Spelsen had followed up his call with a series of emails about his possible visit to Australia to talk to Queen Bee about the release of Spelt, his own scent and beauty line which he wanted to launch in his home country before taking it to the rest of the world.

  Tall and deeply tanned, Spelsen’s trademark was his mop of tight dark curls which he somehow just managed to keep under control. So extreme was this hairstyle that it gave ‘Kaiser’ Karl Lagerfeld and his signature platinum ponytail a run for its money. Like Karl, Tod had dressed everyone from Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece, to Kelly Osbourne; they were all fans of his immaculate tailoring that managed to look both quirky and sexy. There was never any mistaking a Tod Spelsen design and, although plenty tried to copy them, no one was ever fooled by the imitations. Everyone was excited about working on the account, and Lulu in particular had been pulling ideas together for the pitch ever since he made that first call. His visit to our office would definitely be a ‘moment’. So it was a real downer when we learnt that Tod could not make it home right at this time anyway, and that the project would be put on hold. Put on hold? No one puts Jasmine Lewis in the back catalogue. Some sort of affirmative action had to be taken.

  As it happened, I had been thinking of taking a trip to LA with my oldest friend, Shelley Shapiro, to find my wedding gown because Michael and I had now set the date. (We decided that there would never be a right time to marry, so we should schedule it in and hope for the best. There had been an unexpected Sunday opening at Quay, so a celebrant had been booked and the wedding invites were being sorted. What could go wrong?)