The Rumour Mill

by Roxy Jacenko

  It would be great to be able to say that Frances had learnt not to pressure Queen Bee when it came to freebies, but sadly this was not the case. The following week she fired off an email to Lulu with another request.

  Dear Lulu,

  Amandine is holding a celebratory drink tonight to thank the fashion team for a fantastic shoot in Tahiti and she was wondering where she could source some French champagne. She just needs six bottles.

  Thanks so much for all your help,

  Frances Lilly (on behalf of Amandine Grice, editor-in-chief of Chic)

  And there it was. Chic magazine was apparently so hard up that they couldn’t even afford the office drinks. Queen Bee didn’t even have a French champagne client, but declining had to be a diplomatic effort.

  Dear Frances,

  How exciting that Chic did so well on the Tahitian shoot. All of us at Queen Bee cannot wait to see the pages. Please congratulate everyone on our behalf.

  The drinks sound wonderful but we are unclear about whether you were actually inviting Jasmine to attend in your recent email. If so, I shall have to check her diary.

  Unfortunately we do not currently have a French champagne client but we would be very happy to send round a crate of sparkling L’Eau mineral water and some packages of Canape Curls – the latest product from Byron

  Bay Cookies, which will be launching next month. You will be the first to try them.

  Kind regards,

  Lulu (on behalf of Jasmine Lewis)

  For some reason we didn’t hear back from Frances, which was rude considering our generous offers. But then this was probably because Frances took it upon herself to try to organise some champagne as she couldn’t be bothered trying to get the money from petty cash and stepping out of the office to buy it herself. Amandine would have been mortified if she knew exactly what her PA was up to – but one of these days we would find a way of letting her know all about the state of play.

  We were always happy to keep plugging L’Eau, but it had been particularly rugged lately trying to align the brand with the style elite. In fact, we almost exchanged blows with Sam Fenzno, the overblown, drug-fucked publicist who was working on the launch of Le Jean (St Tropez’s leading jeans brand, soon to hit the shelves of Myer). The launch was taking place at Otto, and L’Eau had provided the water for every table; the brief from the client was to get the distinctive water in the hands of as many celebrities as possible.

  Or at least it was until Fenzno suddenly inserted himself in front of our friendly pap Marco’s lens and threw up his hands dramatically. ‘Sorry, mate, this is a private event,’ he said in that whiny voice of his. ‘Tell Jasmine that she’ll have to try and plug her water brand somewhere else.’

  It took all of thirty seconds for Marco to relay this message back to me on his mobile, and a hundred and twenty more for me to be in front of Sam, hands on my hips.

  ‘What’s going on, Sam?’ I demanded, sounding as aggressive as I felt as the cream of the social set moved past us to their tables.

  ‘Now, Jazzy,’ he said, trying to placate me, ‘you know this is our event and not yours. It’s not really the time and the place for any more cross-promotion.’

  I looked at the big, bloated man in front of me who clearly thought he was all that and then some. I stared at his hairy gut bursting from the bottom half of his sweat-soaked Ralph Lauren shirt as he shuffled uncomfortably on his feet.

  Fortunately, Jeff, Otto’s maître d’, happened to be passing by at that very moment.

  ‘Hi, Jeff.’ I smiled winningly (Michael and I were regular clients at Otto – it was where we liked to eat most of our meals).

  ‘Miss Jasmine!’ he responded warmly. He always addressed me like that – it was our private joke.

  ‘Hi, Jeff,’ Sam butted in, ‘everything is just perfect for our event tonight. Thanks so much.’

  ‘Good.’ Jeff was faintly friendly but professional. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’

  ‘Actually we do, Jeff,’ I said with another killer smile. ‘Would you mind removing all the bottles of L’Eau from the tables? I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.’

  ‘No, no, no, don’t do that!’ said Sam, raising his voice to such a level that guests still filing to their tables stopped in their tracks.

  Apparently Sam’s budget for the Le Jean launch didn’t stretch to six hundred for mineral water. The colour had drained from his florid face. ‘Please, Jazzy,’ he pleaded. ‘No need to be rash.’

  ‘Okay, but only if you point out to Marco the celebs who would be happy to pose with a bottle of L’Eau in their hand.’

  Sam looked as though he might explode but then he nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘So I shall leave the bottles where they are then?’ asked Jeff, who had been waiting patiently during this exchange.

  I nodded back sweetly at him and gave him a wink.

  Only one person declined to be in our shots, the international stylist Ginger B, who declared that she didn’t ‘do consumer’. We could live without her seal of approval anyway. But, really, us Bees have gotta do what we gotta do, and if we need those bottles of mineral water in people’s hands, then don’t get in our way. Our lives and red-soled shoes depend on it.

  17

  As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about, in the lead-up to the wedding some deviant attempted to get my credit card details through the florist who was taking care of the arrangements for my big day. Jeez, wasn’t anything sacred anymore? When was the universe going to cut me some slack? If I’d cared to consult my Jewish grandmother about all this she would definitely say that I was cursed. But unfortunately Bubbe was already down on me for having Fifi before the marriage (‘Oy vey, what a schmuck you are! This would never have happened if you had dated a nice Jewish boy’). She would have then reverted to her customary habit of talking in the third person in order to further lament my situation and, more importantly, hers – as in: ‘Bubbe doesn’t know how she will be able to face her friends in the Bridge Club again with a granddaughter who is a nebish. Nu, she can’t do something as simple as getting married before she has the baby.’

  Ah yes, if I picked up the hotline to Bubbe central it would be on for young and old, so best just deal with it myself.

  Flowers had definitely become a thing with our wedding. Think Midnight in the Garden of Love and then some. Thanks to Churchill Brooks, our excitable wedding planner, Michael and I would be taking our vows in front of a floral backdrop composed of a wall of orchids, jasmine (of course), wild roses and tuberoses. The Oscars red carpet never had it so good. There was also to be a small field of roses on each side of the driveway leading up to Quay restaurant, petals strewn over the pathway, and inside there would be a vase on every table. The flower bill alone was costing more than some entire wedding budgets. What the hell, I was hopefully marrying Michael for life; this was no time for half-measures.

  But back to the florist and the mysterious email which had been sent to me from the florist’s office requesting the security question on my credit card.

  The florist rang me. ‘I’ve had my security guy look into this and it seems that an external party has intercepted the details within the email correspondence, and attempted to make their email look like a Visa verification request – although these are never done via email. When he sends through his findings, I’ll forward them on to you.’

  Great, it wasn’t just the haters out there who were trying to destroy my business but someone was trying to rob me as well. Just how many black cats had crossed my path? It wasn’t so much that they had been successful in siphoning funds from my credit card, it’s that they had attempted to, but better luck next time because that credit card had just been cancelled. It was a pain in the arse but it had to be done.

  ‘Bud, don’t worry about it,’ Shelley said over the phone when I called her to wallow about being marooned up shit creek without a Louis Vuitton paddle. ‘That kind of fucked-up shit happens to me all the time. Just ignor
e it and carry on. Now we need to talk about your hen’s party. It’s happening.’

  I stared at the sheaf of papers on my desk. There were so many matters pending that I’d soon have to find an entire new filing cabinet to contain them.

  ‘Shelley,’ I said, exasperated, ‘I only just have enough time to squeeze in the wedding and the honeymoon, let alone those kind of extracurricular activities.’

  ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ she said agreeably. ‘Leave it all to me. I’m thinking the luxury spa at The Darling, dinner at Black by Ezard and then Marquee. Plus a few other tricks that I have up my sleeve.’

  There was nothing Shelley liked better than to party and spend to excess. Somewhere out there a small South American country had been robbed of its entire budget to support Shelley’s black Amex.

  But I had my own budget problems trying to rein in Churchill Brooks, who had heard all about the Vera Wang shopping expedition in LA from Shelley’s Twitter and Instagram feeds and had clearly decided that this was the wedding to try out all the stunts which he had been held back on in the past because of budget restraints. Churchill was brilliant at racking up bills; he could always find new ways of spending money – like employing a troupe of jugglers and dancers to keep the guests amused between the ceremony and the reception while the bridal party were being snapped and filmed by a budding Australian film director and cinematographer he had found among the graduating class at NIDA two years ago.

  Another of his schemes was to have the bridal party arrive at Quay on a super yacht decked out in yellow and white bunting, accompanied by fireboats with ceremonial sprays of water spurting out as if from a whale’s gills. Sadly for Churchill, this was not an option.

  ‘We’re staying next door at the Park Hyatt,’ I reminded him. ‘So we’re just going to jump in some hire cars for a five-minute drive around the corner. That’s as flashy as it will get.’

  Who did he think Michael and I were – a couple of Greek shipping tycoons? There was also Fifi to consider. She was going to be part of the wedding party and I didn’t think she would like to look back on attending her very first wedding, for her parents, arriving by boat like a member of the royal family. It could traumatise her for life if there were so many things going on in one day.

  ‘Hmm,’ Churchill said, looking pensive, which of course was just him thinking about another way of adding an extra twenty k to the bill. ‘How about choppering in? That could be very chic. I don’t think anyone has done that before.’

  ‘With good reason,’ I responded, casually flicking through his portfolio of past clients’ events and scrutinising their faces to see if I recognised anyone. (Luke would love some detail on those untouchable events in the Sydney social scene.) Was that a sitting room in James Packer’s new Vaucluse mansion? It was hard to tell without looking too interested and alerting Churchill to what I was up to. But, LOL, I couldn’t imagine Packer allowing one of his events to be included in a wedding planner’s album; he was far too private for that. Come to think of it, I couldn’t imagine him dealing with Churchill at all. Somehow I imagined that any event guru to the Packer family would have to be much calmer and less given to perspiration issues. Churchill sweated up a storm, even when most people were shivering in the air conditioning. His internal body-cooling system had short-circuited and was officially as overblown as his bills.

  Churchill decided to concentrate instead on the calligraphy for the hundred and twenty guests’ menus and place cards. He also wanted to give everyone a special handmade candle from Paris, worth a hundred bucks each.

  ‘Keith Urban will be in town at that time getting ready for a concert at the Opera House three nights later. I think we should try to book him in for the wedding – even if he does just two songs . . .’ he started.

  ‘Um, earth to Churchill: Keith Urban gave up doing weddings twenty-five years ago. You might as well try and get One Direction to pop in.’ I couldn’t quite believe it when I saw him quickly note something down on his pad. What was he going to come up with next – Bono?

  It would have been good to have the luxury of taking time off to organise the wedding just like your typical bridezilla, but it wasn’t to be. Everyone’s favourite female gay couple, Chelsea and Cleo, made sure of that by phoning to say they were on their way back to Sydney.

  ‘Filming has wrapped up on The Bel Air Life for season three,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and the sales of the CD have been so strong in Australia that we figured we should come back here and do a bit more promotion. Plus, I want to see more of Cleo’s home base.’

  ‘And you’re ringing me because . . . ?’ I said, growing impatient with yet another excerpt from Lifestyles of the Lovesick and Famous.

  ‘We want you to handle the media because Eric can’t get away this time,’ Chelsea said brightly, not registering that I might be a little over the juicy twosome. ‘And, what’s more, we’ve heard that you’re having a wedding and we’d like to perform for you. It’s the least we can do, after all you’ve done for us.’

  Wha-at? I was flabbergasted. There was silence on the line for a little more time than was polite.

  ‘No, no, that’s sooo sweet of you,’ I spluttered eventually. ‘Too sweet actually.’

  My internal calculator was going into meltdown as I tried to figure out how much this generous gesture would cost me. No doubt it would mean extra security, a green room and the rider from hell. Cleo was fond of insisting on vintage Billecart-Salmon, no less than a crate – not that she ever got through it all. At least, not during an official gig anyway. And I could just imagine how it would all go down with Michael’s mum, Fiona, and all her establishment friends who would be rocking up to the wedding. They were only now just getting used to the fact that it looked like I was here to stay. I didn’t need the hottest global lesbian double act around to seal the deal that I was def a bad influence on my soon-to-be husband.

  ‘We’re not charging you a cent,’ Chelsea continued cheerfully, as if she was offering me the bargain of the year. ‘All we would need is two return airfares. Cleo wants to go first class but I’m happy to go business. Anyway, she said you have zillions of frequent flyer points so it won’t be coming out of your pocket anyway.’

  ‘What!!’ I couldn’t help emitting a slight scream of alarm, which was probably nothing compared to the sound that would escape from Michael’s mouth when he heard the news about the wedding entertainment and the frequent flyer deficit that would go along with it.

  I started coughing theatrically. ‘Sorry, Chelsea, allergies.’ Cough, splutter. ‘I’ll call you back in half an hour, once I get rid of this tickle in my throat.’

  18

  You only get married once in your life. At least, that was the plan for me, because with Michael I had everything, including our beautiful baby daughter, Fifi. And, well, who else would put up with such a fabulously frenetic life as mine? You almost had to be a human Mogadon.

  Speaking of the nuptials, Queen Bee’s phones were ringing red hot with peeps who thought they should have been invited to my wedding but weren’t. Talk about freaks. What was wrong with these desperadoes? This was a wedding ceremony involving family and close friends, not a scent launch. And yet each morning in the lead-up to the big day, Queen Bee’s message bank was filled with the hushed tones of people who thought they should have been invited despite the fact that I hardly knew them – or, in the case of Wally Grimes, wish that I didn’t.

  ‘Snazzy Jazzy,’ he bleated down the line in the early hours of the morning, the only time he could be sure that no one would be in the office so he wouldn’t have to put his outrageous request live to one of the Bees. ‘My invitation to your wedding appears to have been lost in the mail, sweetie. But, don’t worry, because I shall be able to make it. See you in church, Jazzy; and you don’t mind, do you, if I bring Jasper along? He’s dying to see you in that very expensive Vera Wang. Any chance that you could pop it on for a picture beforehand? We’ll only publish it as you walk down the aisle.’


  It takes a lot to get me gobsmacked – I’ve got the sort of gob that smacks first and asks questions later. But this had all but floored me. Wally Grimes had recently taken great delight in the toxic message campaign. He’d run it as a lead with the most unflattering pictures of me he could find and a headline that read ‘Poisonous Publicist to the Stars Felled by Toxic Messages’. There was absolutely no way he was coming to the wedding, and I would let him know this the same way that he had put the request to me – by leaving something on his message bank in the early hours of the morning, when he would no doubt be out gorging on the good life somewhere. Wally was so bloated from freeloading at lavish events that none of his jackets buttoned up properly.

  ‘Hi, Wally, good to hear from you,’ I said sweetly into his answer phone early the next morning. ‘Thank you for your enquiry about my wedding, but unfortunately your invitation didn’t get lost in the mail. I never sent one in the first place because we’re limited in numbers to just family and friends. Also, while I would love to do some pictures for you – and thank you for asking – there just isn’t time because I’m working right up until the date. I’m very flattered that you’re interested though. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Bye bye.’

  Others who were begging for an invite included Narelle Brooks, a junior fashion editor at Zest, whom I had worked with closely on a shoot with Allison Palmer. We had got along well but clearly not as well as she thought when she rang to see whether she could score a wedding invite. Narelle was salivating because she had heard that there would be a fabulous goodie bag. Lulu let her down gently by telling her that she was waitlisted and sending her out a pair of the new-season Mavi jeans.