She heel-clicked her way into every boardroom and accounting ledger under the Hasluck-Royce banner. It turned out she was a fierce and savvy businesswoman, and psychological warfare became her weapon of choice against anyone with misogynistic tendencies. To this day she used her carefully constructed (yet well-earned) reputation as a menacing dragon lady to drive fear into those who opposed her.
‘Sorry,’ I said, addressing her.
It was her turn to use the eye roll. ‘What have I told you about waiting on people?’ she said sharply under her breath. ‘No good can come from it.’
I looked at her. Had she finished?
‘Go on. It is hardly the most pressing matter now.’
I nodded readily in agreement, turning my attention back to Searing and Burns.
‘I was holding the tray,’ I said, still holding the tray of scones, one-handed, by its very edge, as delicately as I could muster, ‘like this.’
The square Flora Danica china tray was large and heavy. Just like the wooden sashimi platter. The longer I held it, the heavier it became, and the more it wobbled up and down in my hand. The scones began to madly slide around. Several fell off the edge and plonked unceremoniously onto the coffee table. One bounced off the table, hit the floor, rolled under the table reappearing on the other end to hit Esmerelda in her sneakered foot. She picked it up, its flour dusting her, weighed it in her hands and nodded approvingly. Things were bad. My personal assistant ate off floors.
I was not the only one captivated by Esmerelda’s consideration of floor food. ‘What?’ she said defensively.
I shook my head. Mother shook her head too, although more kindly.
‘Five-second rule?’ she said hopefully. She got no takers so dropped the scone back on the floor.
Mental face plant.
‘Okay,’ said Burns, ‘again, go on. Your tray wobbled?’
I started up again, ‘Yes, the wooden sashimi platter wobbled too. And the sashimi … fell off.’
The end.
‘And?’ said Burns.
‘Well,’ I said, clearing my throat and rapidly devising ways to minimise my humiliation, ‘in addition to trying to distract them I was also trying to see down the hall to the powder room. I could hear Richard banging on the door by this stage, asking Crystal to open up. He was making quite a fuss. Which wasn’t like him at all. The problem was that I could hear him, but I could not see him. I thought if I could walk backwards a few paces I would be able to see down the hallway and figure out what was going on.
‘But I didn’t want Brad, Sam or Rachael to notice I was looking. So, while I was offering them the sashimi, instead of walking two steps backwards to look, which would have been sensible but obvious, I tried to subtly lean backwards. I leant a little too far … and I lost my balance. The sashimi platter slipped out of my hands,’ I said as nonchalantly as possible.
Surely that was explanation enough?
They all looked at me expectantly. Waiting for more.
I cleared my throat and stared at my shoes, cheeks burning.
‘The sashimi platter may have gone flying like a giant wooden frisbee across the room. And I—I might have fallen … backwards … over …’
I looked around. Prying eyes were everywhere.
‘Fine!’ I huffed. ‘I fell off my heels!’
Mother gasped. There was a collective, sympathetic ‘Ooh!’ from the rest of the audience.
The truth was I was wearing a new pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos that were a little higher and a little thinner than those I am most accustomed to. Okay, so they were over 15 centimetres high, but I had a gorgeous new floor-length, mandarin-orange silk organza Alex Perry dress that really would not have worked without the new, blood orange satin shoes.
The end of my left heel caught on the silk hem, which became slippery and slid along the floor like a child whizzing down a slide. I took a backwards dive to the floor with about as much grace as an Olympic figure skater who had just failed to land a triple axel.
‘I fell flat on my back, winding myself and cracking the back of my head on the marble floor.’
Another round of face-scrunching ‘Ooh!’ followed.
Mother looked sympathetically at me. Falling in heels was a super modelling cardinal sin. It was simply not done. Those who fell on the catwalks of New York, Paris or Milan were not invited back and often had lucrative endorsement and cosmetic contracts pulled out from under them.
It was the modelling equivalent of Grandmother dismissing the maids and personally serving Gina Rinehart cocktails and canapés. Or like having a bodily function in an elevator: it may not have been completely your fault, but it was absolutely unacceptable and deeply shameful. It simply was not done.
Mother patted my hand, ‘Never mind honey, it happens to everyone every now and then.’
I was fairly certain it had never happened to her, but then she was more like an ethereal being, than an actual being.
Everyone knows that when rich people go insane, they’re eccentric. The faces around the table had the same expression, the expression that said everyone in my family was eccentric.
Except Searing. His face showed only empathy. Then again, I suspected Searing had a superpower: getting women to tell him all their secrets.
‘Okay, you fell. On your heels. Sorry, off your heels. The tray went flying. Is that right?’ Searing said, breaking me out of my reverie, encouraging me forward.
I nodded. The moment of truth had arrived. If I was going to explain my way out of this whole thing and avoid a pair of silver bracelets of the chunky variety I was going to have to say it, in detail, out loud, to every person in the room. My humiliation would be complete.
‘Yes,’ I said, chickening out immediately. ‘And that is how I burnt our penthouse down.’
Burns and Searing looked stumped.
‘Forgive me,’ said Searing in a most apologetic way. ‘How did your falling cause the fire? Could you elaborate?’
I exhaled dramatically in mock exasperation and looked around as if the answer was obvious, which I knew it wasn’t. I then relented. Sort of.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Diane von Neuvo?’
Both Burns and Searing shook their heads.
‘I know who she is,’ put in Nigel Barker. Considering many of Nigel Barker’s clients were young and newly rich actors and musicians, and people with more money than sense, I completely understood how he might be familiar with her name.
‘Yeah,’ said Eddy, yawning and bobbing his head in recognition. ‘She’s that interior designer, charges an absolute fortune for it. All her designs have bar carts or something that go around and around, you know like a snail-shell shape.’ He made his point by making circular motions with his right pointer finger directed at the almost-priceless rug.
‘Do they?’ said Earl Stevenson, looking at Eddy. ‘I was told she was right on trend. My wife says she’s … Oh my God! That woman is charging her $700 an hour to redecorate our Portsea beach house into a bar cart spiral?’
‘I’ve met your wife,’ said Grandmother, the judgement that it was his fourth wife clearly present. ‘I can guarantee Diane von No-idea is charging her more than $700 an hour.’
Burns’s ears began twitching, ‘People, please. Mrs Bombberg?’
I thought I had better get going with the rest of the story before she yelled again.
‘When I fell backwards I accidentally got a very strong spin on the sashimi platter. It frisbeed out at an alarming rate and crashed straight into one of our newly acquired, fully stocked, three-level,’ I nodded to Eddy, ‘Eames-era bar carts.’
Esmerelda was grinning. Her teeth were so white, and so straight, and I just knew she did not suffer through one, let alone two sets of braces for the privilege. Hearing humiliating tales about rich people must have been like Christmas for her.
‘Where’d the sashimi end up?’ she asked.
‘Nowhere,’ I said nonchalantly.
Lie.
; My face heated up.
I hesitated, then began again.
‘The spin on the platter gave quite a lot of momentum to the sashimi,’ I said.
In fact, the sashimi rose off the wooden platter like a ballet of spinning raw fish in a zero-gravity environment and headed for the ceiling. This was, sadly, shortly followed by the realisation that delicious or not they were in fact subject to Newton’s Laws, at which point they began a rapid descent back towards earth. Pink, white and orange clumps of raw fish rained down on me and plastered themselves all over my face, hair and—if I remember correctly—down my cleavage. It was bad enough to have egg on one’s face let alone raw fish down one’s bra. What was the deal with my family and raw salmon?
‘The fish fell on you, didn’t they?’ said Esmerelda smiling.
I ignored her.
‘I looked to Richard for help, now that I could finally see him, but he was in the midst of wrestling the bathroom door open.’
Searing looked embarrassed for me. I was embarrassed for me. Just tear it off like a band aid, I thought.
‘Richard was trying to push open the powder room door, he had a foot wedged in, but Crystal had enormous strength for such a willowy girl. So, he began ramming the door with his shoulder, she lost her hold and the door snapped in. Richard flew into the opening.’
Burns seemed compelled. Searing seemed confused. They said in unison, ‘So how did the fire start?’
‘Well the sashimi platter hit, with frightening precision, a large bottle of Watenshi gin on the bar cart. The gin bottle exploded sending gin and glass in all directions.’
I heard Mother sucking a breath. She knew Diane von Neuvo’s designs. She knew what would happened next.
I paused. ‘Can I just quickly stop and go back and explain—’
‘Oh my God!’ spat Burns throwing up her hands. ‘Here we go again.’
I ignored her. ‘The powder room really needs further explanation at this stage.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Burns, moving forward and then backwards on the Chesterfield of Doom in an increasingly irritated effort to get comfortable.
‘One of the main features of Diane’s powder room design was the use of an oversized perfume collection. Another feature that made the powder room so gorgeous was its vast array of Venetian essential oil diffusers and handmade soy candles. There is a chandler in Vienna who specialises in making them. There were at least twenty dotted around the powder room. And,’ I hesitated, ‘there were at least forty in the cocktail area. Possibly fifty.’
‘Lit?’ asked Searing.
I nodded.
Burns’s jaw dropped. As did Earl’s. ‘Sixty candles? Are you serious?’
‘And oil diffusers,’ I corrected. ‘They had purpose,’ I added defensively. ‘Each scent was carefully chosen by Mother, her psychic Lucy and of course her Buddhist advisor Guy to make guests feel happy, calm, agreeable, fulfilled … and malleable.’
Handy for charity fundraising events and convincing new surgeons to move halfway around the world.
‘Although the candles sat on gorgeous little silver plates, it was, in retrospect, perhaps not such a great idea to sit the candles so close to the oil diffusers. Or the alcohol.’
Burns, wide-eyed, put a hand to her forehead.
‘The flying sashimi platter knocked over the bottle of gin, which then knocked over the oil diffuser, which splashed oil onto the candles, which set the bar cart alight. Very quickly. The fire leapt in a circular, Diane von Neuvo snail pattern, from one bar cart to the next.’
Like Eddy I demonstrated, illustrating the snail pattern with my finger, spinning it around and around.
‘Fire is fast. So very fast,’ I whispered, recalling how rapidly it spread. Its intense heat. Its sheer fierceness. I exhaled and suppressed a ghost cough in my lungs.
It was my turn to question Burns and Searing. ‘Did anyone complain of being hit by a flying sushi platter? I think it went over the balcony. I’m not sure. I lost track of it.’
Burns and Searing looked at each other. ‘No. No reports of anybody being hit.’
I looked over to Esmerelda. ‘You can take that one off the list Esmerelda.’
‘Got it,’ she said pulling out her device. Compensate person hit by flying sashimi platter. Check.
All eyes settled back on me. ‘What happened then?’ asked Searing.
‘Well, after finding my feet, I tried to put the fire out with a champagne bucket.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mother encouragingly.
‘Thank you. Yes, the iced water did put out some of the fire, but the cloth wrapped around the bucket caught fire. And this caused the sleeve of my dress to catch fire.’
If they looked a little shocked before they looked mortified now. Although I was quite enjoying this cathartic letting-go experience. That was unexpected. I’d go to prison with clean karma.
‘I started searching for help. Poor Dr Sam wasn’t much use. She was fixated on the powder room. I think she was worried about Crystal. Unbelievably Crystal and Richard were still in there fighting! Crystal had something in her hands. A small box maybe. It looked like she was threatening him with it.
‘Rachael and Brad White however—they were brilliant. She dashed straight into the kitchen (frankly I am impressed she even knew where it was) and came back with an enormous bowl of water. He went for the closest fire extinguisher. I have to admit I didn’t even know we had one.’
It is possible that many precious things—lives, shoes, egos, homes—may have been saved if that was the end of the story. Sadly, it was not.
CHAPTER 7
BAR RUN BOMBSHELL
‘Crystal had been making …’ I thought long and hard of a polite way of saying it but there was no polite way of saying it so I just said it, ‘… multiple trips to the multiple bar carts in the room throughout the entire evening. And because her other favourite route was up and down the hallway to the powder room, inevitably there was crossover in her drink spillage. She spilled the contents of her many cocktails between the bar carts and up and down the powder room hallway.’
‘The fire ran from the bar carts, up the hallway and into the powder room,’ Grandmother surmised.
I nodded.
I imagined Crystal was also sloppy when placing her cocktails on my powder room’s handcrafted oak vanity. My guess would be that the fire worked its way up from the alcohol-soaked floor to the side, and then top, of the vanity. And God only knows how much alcohol was soaked into her Versace ensemble. A lot.
I sniffed back a tear as I recalled the last few seconds of Richard’s life.
‘Richard always was a gentleman,’ I said, picking up my tea. ‘When Crystal’s dress caught fire, he took off his jacket and tried to bat out the flames. Even as he was trying to put her out, she held onto that stupid box thing, whatever it was.’ I was beyond astonished at her behaviour. ‘She wouldn’t let go.’
A tear fell into my tea. ‘Richard did successfully bat out most of the flames on Crystal’s dress, but he also, accidentally,’ I emphasised, ‘knocked over one or two of the powder room candles. The candles knocked over the Venetian oil diffusers. This had a domino effect around the bathroom: diffuser hit perfume bottle, which hit another candle, which then hit diffuser, which hit perfume bottle. And so on.’
I made the spiralling motion again with my free hand.
‘Diane von Neuvo,’ said Burns and Searing in symphony.
Bloody Diane von Neuvo.
‘Perfume is very flammable,’ I said quietly to no one. I paused, drew a deep breath and looked up.
‘The bathroom and the cocktail room were both on fire. I did try to get Richard out. He and Crystal had begun fighting over the box. It looked like maybe she was trying to give it to him. I couldn’t be sure. I screamed at him, “Richard, get out! For God’s sake, forget that thing! Let go!” He wouldn’t. He said he’d be okay. He told me to go.’
I gazed down at my hands. The soot was gone and I had wa
shed myself and my hair many times, swum hundreds of laps, but the smell of the fire remained.
Fire is so loud.
Searing leant over and touched me gently on the arm. He had lovely hands and smelt wonderful. Clean. Fresh. Delectable. Burns gave him a small, sharp stare, but he lingered until I spoke again.
‘The Whites were really fantastic,’ I said nodding. ‘They did all they could with the fire extinguisher and water bowl. They headed out. Dr Sam still wasn’t moving. The fire came for her and she just stood there. I don’t know when Rachael and Brad White realised Sam was absent, but they came back for her. Rachael batted out the flames and he carried her out. I presume they took the fire stairs and used their swipe cards to open the front doors.
‘Crystal became more and more hysterical. But Richard wouldn’t leave her.’
I looked up, straight into Searing’s eyes and continued, ‘I didn’t want to leave him. I kept screaming at him, “Get out! Get out and leave that stupid thing!” I tried to go down the hallway to the powder room, but the fire … Richard kept shaking his head and telling me to go back, get out. Crystal had a hold of him. She was crazed. The fire was so loud I couldn’t hear him, but I’m sure he said, “I love you”.’
I paused and swallowed.
‘Then he slammed what was left of the powder room door closed. I swear to you, even over the roar of the fire I heard it lock. He was not getting out. He was not coming with me. I was stunned. I couldn’t move towards the locked door, nor back towards possible safety. I couldn’t leave him there, but if I didn’t move, I was going to die.’
‘How on earth did you get out?’ asked Grandmother. Everyone looked at her and then me.
‘The powder room exploded,’ I said plainly. ‘All the oils and perfumes in there must have acted like a bomb. Bang. I was thrown backwards through the air; back through the hallway, across the cocktail area, and into the entrance hall.
‘I was deafened by the noise by now and almost blinded by the smoke. I could feel hot wind all around me.’
Heiress On Fire Page 5
