The Rumour Mill Read online

  ‘And I haven’t told you the worst bit,’ said Lulu, who still looked slightly flustered by the morning’s high drama with Teddy. ‘Diane Wilderstein is also going for the account.’

  This was not supposed to be the way it would go. Wilderstein PR, hopefully backed by the Shavaliks, were supposed to be keeping busy looking for new accounts – just not any of mine. First Teddy Gladhand was threatening to sign up with Diane and now Salon would be lost to her as well? What the . . . ?

  Right, that was all the motivation I needed to pull this coup off. ‘Brainstorming session in twenty,’ I ordered. ‘Tell the troops to assemble in my office. This has to be a group effort – through all of our contacts, we have to find the right celebrity ambassador for Salon, and it has to be someone with the style to make schmutter look as expensive as an important label.’

  I began flicking through the latest local magazines to remind myself of the sort of talent that was out there, while Lulu brought up our A-list party guests on her computer screen. The problem was that most of the well-known faces were already linked with other brands, especially the international beauty queens, who may as well have become walking billboards, endlessly spruiking a brand or service.

  ‘Let’s look at Chic’s Celebrity List,’ suggested Lulu. ‘At least we know they’re managed by someone sensible.’

  I could see the rest of the Bees making urgent calls on their mobiles and scrutinising the screens on their computers to come up with a list of likely candidates for Salon. It was cheering they knew me well enough to know that a brainstorming session meant they had to come up with the goods before they took a seat.

  I looked up to see Thelma coming towards me, her face pale and anxious. Was there more drama with the Russians? I knew I would have to face them very soon. They just weren’t on my to-do list for today.

  Thelma, who really did look much younger than her twenty years, appeared mortified at having to interrupt my morning. ‘Ah, Jazzy Lou, there’s someone waiting to see you in reception, and he won’t take no for an answer.’

  It was Teddy Gladhand, who had driven in all the way from the north side of Sydney, and negotiated the Harbour Bridge at the tail end of peak hour to try to convince me not to drop his account. He was not only clutching a big bunch of flowers for me, but also made an offer to increase our retainer by four thousand dollars a month. This was unheard of – was Teddy having a nervous breakdown?

  ‘I want that offer in writing before I’ll even consider it,’ I insisted. ‘And you will need to sign a new contract pronto, before you change your mind.’

  Teddy started puffing out his chest in the way he did when he was about to explode, but then he miraculously pulled himself back before self-immolation. ‘I’m a man of my word and, to be honest, I find your lack of trust mildly offensive, Jazzy Lou.’

  ‘Oh, you want to talk offensive?’ I hissed at him, while everyone else suddenly made themselves scarce. ‘Your rudeness to my staff is unacceptable,’ I said sternly, handing the hapless Thelma the bunch of flowers to plonk in a vase.

  ‘They’re David Austin roses – ten dollars a stem. Be careful with them.’ Teddy just couldn’t help himself; he was such a control freak, he was even trying to assert his authority over a peace offering.

  ‘Teddy!’ I shouted, waving a now seriously startled Thelma back to her post as I went on with my counterattack. ‘And then there’s that seventeen-year-old pest in your office, the amazingly ambitious Chloe, who keeps emailing us to suggest more effective ways that we could promote you. Well, you’re welcome to give her free rein – maybe she’s a marketing genius – but I don’t like your chances, because to tell you the truth everything she comes up with is totally woeful. She sounds like she’s spouting Marketing 101 for those who want to run their own cake stall at the local school. Good luck with that.’ There it was, I’d finally said it, and for a moment all the sound was sucked out of the room. Blame those leftover pregnancy hormones for making me act as if I’d swallowed a truth serum smoothie.

  Teddy’s face turned bright red as he stared at me incredulously. So what, he had it coming to him. Right on cue, from inside the meeting/lunch room (not that the Bees ever got time to eat more than a protein bar at their desks) I heard Fifi’s cries. She had obviously woken from a nap and since she was in a new, alien environment – an office – I should be the one to go in there to soothe her and give her a bottle, even though Anna was very capable of doing that. It would also make the perfect excuse to end the conversation with Teddy.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, sounding as insincere as I felt. ‘Gotta go. Lulu, would you show Teddy out?’ And with that I turned and walked towards the boardroom.

  ‘Jazzy Lou, you can’t be serious,’ Teddy called after me. ‘Nobody fires me, and you definitely need me as a client. I’ll wait here for you – I know you’ll change your mind.’

  ‘Bye, Teddy,’ I hollered as I took Fifi from Anna and cuddled her before offering her the bottle. Why the hell did those Russians have to be so shonky? I asked myself for the hundredth time. This was what my life was supposed to be about right now, looking after my baby, not dealing with prima donnas like Teddy, who thought because we were his publicists that he could treat us as though we were dud employees.

  Let’s just say I was somewhat taken aback when I walked back into the reception area after finally settling Fifi to find Teddy on the couch with a cup of tea in one hand, a pen in the other, and one of our large brainstorming pads on his lap. He looked so sheepish it was almost embarrassing.

  Lulu shot me a warning look in case I started laying into him again. ‘Jazzy, Teddy and I have been working on a new employment contract,’ she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be writing a list of rules of conduct for Attila the Hun.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about some of the things that have happened in the past, especially about the way Chloe has overstepped the mark,’ he said, almost contritely. ‘From now on I’ll make sure she has nothing more to do with your office.’

  This was sounding good.

  ‘And I’ll be on my best behaviour,’ he promised. ‘Now, can you resume work on my account again? And I mean ASAP?’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll give it another shot but you are def on three months’ probation. Any more screaming abuse and you will be in our too hard basket, permanently.’

  Teddy was clearly the kind of man who needed some tough direction from anyone whom he came in contact with otherwise he would walk all over them. I left it to Lulu to see him out and promised that we would be in touch soon with a new plan of attack.

  ‘As if the morning could not get any more twisted. My personal mobile started to ring and the caller ID recognised Wally Grimes’ number from when I’d had to call him at Catalina the other evening. I barely had a moment to wonder how he had got my private number before the line went dead, then it started to ring again. The process was then repeated another three times. It seemed that this bizarre sequence was his way of communicating the fact that this was a top priority call, and I could almost imagine him smacking his fleshy lips together as he pressed redial.

  ‘Yes,’ I said flatly when I finally decided to see what he was calling about.

  ‘Oh Jasmine, I do hope I’m not disturbing you,’ he crooned, but was unable to hide the venom in his voice. ‘So sorry if I woke you. Are you getting any sleep at all since your daughter was born?’

  Okay, so no congratulations or anything. Was he hoping to find me a screaming mess after such a momentous occasion in my life? My instincts told me that this call wasn’t just about him being able to boast to his ever-diminishing circle of female hyenas how putrid I sounded on the phone and how I was just not coping at all.

  I was right.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, when the silence on my end of the line evidently became too uncomfortable to bear, ‘when are the christening invitations going out? And is it true that my good friend Pamela Stone is to be the godmother?’

  I still d
idn’t bother answering him. As for Pamela being his best friend – puhleese, they hated each other. There was absolutely no one Wally was more wary of than Pamela because he thought he should be the only one everyone talked about. But so what if she was going to be Fifi’s godmother? Pamela had been incredibly loyal to me over the years because she respected the fact that I was not afraid to work hard and I had all the time in the world for her.

  ‘Are you still there, Jazzy Lou, or have you fallen asleep on me? Hehehe.’ Wally’s attempt at a theatrical laugh fell as flat as the way he attempted to work the room at a party, by sashaying around like a reject from the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert auditions.

  ‘Cut to the chase, Wally.’ I said, keen to bring the conversation to an end.

  ‘Well, of course, I would like to come. That would be lovely, I’m sure,’ he cooed. ‘Do you already have a party planner working on it?’

  I decided to ignore that in the hope my silence would unnerve him into telling me what he had on his mind. Just taking a call from him was already starting to make me feel queasy. It worked.

  ‘I hear that your Russian partners are trying to sue you for breach of contract,’ he said finally. ‘And that they have given you an astronomical bill for some furniture that was due to be installed at your headquarters. Is that correct? Would you care to make a comment about that?’

  I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh, as much from relief as anything else.

  ‘Why is that so amusing?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Has someone else already raised it with you? Is your pathetic little friend Luke Jefferson about to reveal all in his largely unread column?’

  Lukey unread? He probably had more readers than the last instalment of the Harry Potter series compared to Wally’s readership. Let him think whatever he wanted to – maybe I should call Luke and have a debrief about it all. It was always good to start spinning that kind of story first.

  ‘But Wally,’ I said airily, ‘how can I be sued for breach of contract when no contract existed in the first place? Now, if you will excuse me, I have a baby girl to look after.’

  The next call I made was to my lawyers. ‘Wally Grimes has just called me with a story that the Russians are trying to sue Queen Bee for breach of contract?’ I said the moment I was transferred through to Marshall Coutts.

  ‘Oh hello, Jasmine, how are you? Motherhood agreeing with you?’ Marshall made a point of going through the social niceties because he always accused me of lacking any sort of diplomatic skills when no client was around to pick up the tab.

  ‘Do you know how he found out about that?’ I demanded. I had no time to waste on idle chitchat

  ‘Well, we have all the documents here,’ Marshall confirmed, ‘but I doubt they were leaked from this office. I think you’ll find that Ivan himself has probably been tipping everyone off to counter the press release you sent out. Anyway, Jasmine, if he does try to sue you it will make a riveting court case before it is thrown out by the judge.’

  If Marshall’s comments were meant to comfort me, they had the opposite effect. I was starting to get those old butterflies in the tummy which I last experienced when I worked for Diane Wilderstein and was summoned to her office to be royally shit-kicked for any number of transgressions – from not picking up her dry-cleaning to not being awake 24/7 to save one of her wacky clients from being made a meal of from the paps. At her peak, Diane refused to acknowledge regular working hours. Even on holidays, our mobiles had to be turned on, so she could contact us if some sort of issue arose. And it always did.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that all these potentially long and protracted legal battles were going to cost a great deal of money, so it looked as though we would be taking Teddy up on his offer of increased fees. And we were going to have to become even more hungry for new accounts – I needed to compile a shopping list of the ones that we could land. And first thing tomorrow I would have to sit down with the accountant.

  When the next call came through, I absent-mindedly answered it myself. ‘Queen Bee,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Queen Bee?’ the female caller repeated to me. ‘I have Tod Spelsen on the line for Jasmine Lewis.’

  Tod Spelsen was a fashion designer who was making it huge now in LA, even though he was originally from Australia. This was the label that even the most blase supermodels were desperate to walk for. ‘Yes, one moment please,’ I replied, trying to sound like my own personal assistant and pressed the loudspeaker button so everyone could hear. Holding the phone out from my ear and shushing my Bees, who had all gathered around when they saw me mouth Tod’s name, I walked loudly across the floor so that my heels made a satisfying clip-clop sound.

  ‘Ye-es,’ I said in my best Jasmine-Lewis-means-business tone.

  What Tod had to say totally floored me. He was travelling to Australia the following week and wanted to set up an appointment with me. Seems he was looking for a PR company down under, and if it all panned out there was a possibility of looking after his business globally.

  ‘I’ve heard so many good things about you, and I believe that we share the same star sign, Gemini,’ he said.

  I nodded back, which was really just silly since we weren’t on Skype. ‘Yes, yes,’ I said quickly, losing my last ounce of cool.

  ‘Well then, Miss Lewis, it seems that the planets are aligned! I do have the overwhelming feeling that we’re meant to work together. Maybe it’s in the stars. I look forward to meeting you in person in your offices next week.’

  So Tod Spelsen was a nut job and a bit of a stoner. There was nothing wrong with that, especially with his account one of the most sought after in the world of PR. Now he was personally coming into this office.

  I briefly wondered again about taking delivery of all those French antiques that the Russians wanted us to pay for. But they were probably as fake as Ivan’s residency permit and Tod would smell them a mile off. Besides, we didn’t have the account yet. Instead I decided to call in my event guru, Laurence, who would be able to transform Queen Bee into something witty, sophisticated and suitably cosmic for the international designer – and it was hardly going to cost me a cent, since Laurence owed me big time for helping him save face after some very personal photos of him appeared on a social networking site.

  When Fifi and I finally made it home after what had certainly been an action-packed day, Michael didn’t seem pleased by my breathless rendition of the day’s events.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that it has all become too much for you,’ he said, sadly, when I had cleared away the last of the containers from Dial-A-Dinner Party. ‘So I have decided to pay your salary for taking a year off to look after Fifi and me. You could even consult to my company and help us present to our clients better. Couldn’t you find someone else to take over the business?’ he pleaded. ‘What about Lulu?’

  He was gazing at me beseechingly with his big blue eyes, the look that was almost guaranteed to make me go weak at the knees. But not tonight, when I was still buzzing from the events of the day.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Michael. You won’t have to pay me to do that. I intend to make enough for all three of us and I can help you with your business anytime.’

  Practically any female-orientated self-help guru would have been able to tell me this is not the way you are supposed to approach your significant other. My Jewish grandmother, Bubbe, would have had me on a toasted bagel if she knew what I had just said. I could just hear her now: ‘Nu, you dumbcluck. You always let the man wear the pants in the family – even when you are down to the last pair.’

  Michael just stared at me balefully. Then he stood up and walked out of the room. This was the first time ever while we had lived under the same roof that Michael went to sleep in the spare room. It was something of a watershed moment and one I never wanted to repeat.

  7

  It took all of my chutzpah to be able to hold the launch of edgy fashion magazine and internet site Point Blank at Butterworth, the Bellevue Hill mansion
of one of Sydney’s neediest socialites (well, what didn’t she need when it came to milking an occasion for all it was worth?).

  The recently separated Ella Von Scandale’s husband, Piers, had done the bleedingly obvious and run off with the nanny. If rapidly ageing blonde Ella had been absolutely sure that she would be fairly treated in her divorce settlement, she would never have contemplated opening the doors of Butterworth to people she frankly didn’t know and would probably never see again. However, the intel (through the divorce lawyer) was that tyre magnate Piers had already secured their vast fortune in the Canary Islands and would soon be pleading poverty.

  Tracking down those assets would take several teams of highly expensive forensic accountants, and in the meantime Ella and her teenage children had to eat. So the hundred grand she was offered for stylists to transfer her home into a French chateau for the launch was quite welcome. Plus she had a clause put into the contract that if any of the props took her fancy, she could keep them. And she wanted a designer gown thrown in as well, since she could hardly face the fashion world in last season’s Alex Perry.

  Yes, Ella Von Scandale had always understood that timing was everything. She must have been a hell of a lover, because she knew all about withdrawal at the last minute. Each time everyone was just about to stand up from the bargaining table, business concluded, she would find one more condition. The more time I spent in her company, the more I marvelled that her marriage to the flirtatious Piers had lasted as long as it had. Despite his attraction to women of all shapes and sizes, the man was clearly a saint for putting up with the neurotic and demanding Ella. However, Butterworth had several key assets that made it worth my while to be tortured by Ella’s prevarications – it had its own polo field and a small maze in the garden, plus it had never been utilised for any sort of launch before. It was just too, too perfect.