Strictly Confidential Read online

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).

  The muffled sound of hope curling up its toes and dying came from Anya’s direction.

  Just then, Diane’s door swung open seemingly unaided, as if by the sheer force of her foul temper and expensive Balenciaga perfume.

  ‘Jasmine!’ she shrilled.

  Oh, God. I scuttled towards her office, bowing and scraping as I entered.

  As I stood in her sprawling office suite, Diane looked me up and down, her sunglasses perched on her nose as ever. Must be concerned about her macula, I mused. She frowned as if reading my thoughts.

  Don’t speak until spoken to, don’t speak until spoken to. My mantra played over and over in my head as I sweated it out under her glare.

  ‘Sit,’ she indicated.

  I sat.

  ‘Jasmine, perhaps you can solve a little puzzle for me?’ she said.

  I gulped nervously. Her Blixzed nails rapped on the desk between us.

  ‘Perhaps you can explain to me,’ she began again, ‘why one of my best clients – one of this company’s most lucrative and most important clients – had certain goods stolen from them?’

  My eyes widened. I couldn’t help it. How on earth did she know? She must have seen me flick the knickers off my desk yesterday when she came to talk about the drycleaning, and now, having not sacked any hapless member of staff lately and clearly suffering withdrawal symptoms as a consequence, she planned to exercise her HR rights on me.

  We sat in silence as Diane waited for me to drop myself in it.

  I scrambled to think how I could avoid dropping Anya in it.

  ‘Ringing any bells, Jasmine?’ she prodded. ‘Perhaps cast your mind back to yesterday’s Vixenary shoot with Raven?’

  I gulped again. It was a Mexican stand-off in here but my back was flat against the wall and we both knew it.

  Without warning, Anya materialised in the doorway and the world began its now all-too-familiar trick of slowing on its axis.

  ‘It was me,’ she said, falling on her sword in one fell swoop.

  Diane’s neck snapped around. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘It was me. I took the g-string from yesterday’s shoot,’ Anya said again. ‘It was . . . it was lying on the floor and I knew Vixenary wouldn’t miss it and clearly Raven didn’t want it because she just left it sitting there and I’m such a big fan of Raven, oh and Vixenary too, I just love their new Sabotage range, and all I wanted was a memento of the shoot,’ she raved like a dead person walking.

  I couldn’t sit and watch this. ‘Diane, it’s my fault,’ I intervened. ‘The underwear ended up in my bag after Anya showed it to me in the office yesterday and then my bag was stolen last night. We’d have the knickers here now if I hadn’t been robbed on my way home from Mrs Sippy.’

  Diane sniffed incredulously. ‘What you’re saying is,’ she spoke slowly, articulating every syllable, ‘I’m unable to phone Vixenary and say the g-string is on its way back to them as we speak?’

  Jesus Christ. As if Vixenary even knew it was missing. Moreover, why had I bothered playing the I-was-friggin’-robbed-on-the-way-home-from-slaving-my-guts-out-for-you sympathy card? Everyone knew the woman didn’t have a soul.

  ‘Yes,’ I said at the same time as Anya mumbled, ‘No.’

  Diane got the picture. ‘OMG,’ she said.

  I was yet to get through a meeting with Diane without at least one OMG.

  ‘Well, pack up your desk, Anya. I won’t tolerate thieving by my staff.’

  Anya just nodded dumbly.

  ‘What?’ I cried. ‘This is ludicrous. As if Vixenary care about a g-string. I bet they don’t even know it’s missing. And it’s not Anya’s fault my bag was stolen. We’d still have the stupid thing here now if it wasn’t for me!’

  Diane pondered this last comment as I put down the shovel from digging my own grave. Anya began sobbing quietly in the corner.

  ‘This is ludicrous,’ I repeated for good measure, although a little softer this time. ‘How did you even know?’

  And now Anya had been sacked. I felt awful.

  Yet Diane waved away my qu
estion with a flick of her manicured hand, dismissing us from her office without feeling the need to explain her actions. ‘Anya, security will be here in twenty minutes to escort you from the premises. Jasmine, count yourself lucky you’re not going too,’ was all she said.

  As I comforted Anya on our dazed trek back to our desks, I pondered my so-called luck.

  ‘Showwwwww me the moneyyy!’ I announced, flinging a flimsy piece of paper onto the table in front of Luke as he sat sipping his Sugar Daddy cocktail in a padded booth at the Victoria Room. The British-Raj style bar was so Luke, all gilt wallpaper and slow-whirling ceiling fans. I was sure he secretly fantasised about meeting his very own Mowgli here among the jungle palms.

  ‘I’ve always been more of a Risky Business aficionado than a Jerry Maguire man,’ Luke said in response.

  I picked up my cheque again and wafted it under Luke’s nose. ‘This,’ I waved the cheque some more, ‘is going to make me so successful that soon you’ll only be able to talk to me through my publicist.’

  Luke raised one eyebrow.

  ‘Like Donald Trump says,’ I went on, ‘if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.’ I punctuated this with a swig of Luke’s cocktail.

  ‘That a fact, big shot?’ Luke asked, sliding his drink back across the table and out of my reach. ‘Well, if you plan on being that successful, you won’t need a Sugar Daddy then. And how exactly, Jazzy Lou,’ he went on, ‘do you plan to rise up, phoenix-like, from the dust of working for Diane, huh? Tell me, I’m intrigued.’

  I laughed and then paused for dramatic effect. ‘I’m going to start my own business,’ I said.

  Silence.

  ‘OMG, shut up!’ was Luke’s eventual reply.

  ‘Totes,’ I said. ‘What I have in my hot little hand may look like a simple insurance cheque but this, babe, is my destiny.’

  Luke rolled his eyes at my hyperbole.

  I helped myself to more of his drink as I explained. ‘You know how my Louis Vuitton Speedy was so cruelly ripped from my loving arms just recently? To say nothing of my BlackBerry, laptop and a small fortune in cosmetics? Well, the insurance cheque for the theft has come through and I’ve decided to put it towards starting my own PR company. Booom!’