by Ros Reines
‘Thank you so much for being here, Savannah, and I am so glad that you loved the show. We’re all looking forward to your coverage of the fashions and the photographs of some of our VIP clients,’ she said, not quite making eye contact with me. ‘And as soon as your glowing report has been printed, you must come in store and select something fabulous for yourself.’
And there it was, I was being bribed. But I wasn’t even tempted. I had the rest of my life to wear expensive threads but only a small window in which to prove my skills as a journalist. My account of the night was probably going to scare the pants off every publicist in town, but I knew they couldn’t afford to leave me off their guest lists; any publicity was good publicity, after all.
‘That’s a very kind offer, Jenny,’ I said graciously. There was no point alarming her with a declaration that I was going to write a true account of the evening; she’d find out soon enough.
I was about to head for the door myself when a large slab of watermelon materialised in front of me in an overpowering cloud of Eau Sauvage—Lahar Kapoor, the one and only.
‘Savannah! I’ve been trying to get your attention all night,’ he grumbled. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Are you free to have a drink?’
I was about to tell him that I’d have to take a raincheck when it occurred to me that I could do with another alcoholic pick me up. Besides, Lahar also seemed so intent on telling me something he considered to be important that I was intrigued.
‘Okay, but just one drink—I’ve had a long, long day. Where were you thinking of going?’ I asked, hoping he wouldn’t suggest anywhere too remote. He wasn’t planning to leap on me, was he?
‘Let’s go back to the Taj,’ he suggested. ‘You seemed to really enjoy it there . . .’
‘Okay,’ I said, trying to work out what he might be implying when he said I’d ‘enjoyed it’. Was he referring to my hook up with Daniel?
As Lahar ushered me out of The Duchess, I was aware of several people turning around to stare at us. I supposed we did make an interesting-looking couple—the exotic, vibrantly dressed Indian jeweller and the slightly edgy gossip columnist. It probably looked as though we were up to no good. (Well, we weren’t yet, but I was hoping that whatever Lahar had to say, I would get a column item from it.)
Erica Hopewell emerged from the backstage area just as we were walking out the door and I saw her watching us closely and conferring with Frances Ford as though they were taking notes on a car crash.
Thankfully Lahar had a discreet white limo idling outside this evening rather than the bright yellow one, so our exit didn’t attract as much attention (and laughter) as it could have. As we pulled away from the restaurant, Lahar closed the partition between us and the driver. Whatever he wanted to discuss with me, it was clearly top secret. Almost automatically I shifted in my seat so my knees were angled towards the door.
‘Savannah, I’ve noticed the way that you have conducted yourself on the social scene ever since you started writing for the paper,’ Lahar began.
‘Yes?’ I said warily, not at all sure what was coming next.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I would like you to come and work with me. Whatever you’re earning now, I’ll double it.’
Through the car window, I could see the reflection of the streetlights on the road, glistening with a fine spray of water; it must have rained while we were watching the fashion show, I thought absently. I briefly considered how bright and shiny my life would be on double the salary. There would be no more shark-hunting expeditions for a start. Then I looked at Lahar’s face, regarding me seriously now. Something told me that whatever he had in mind for me, it would probably make my current job look like a picnic. Even sitting in a tinnie in the middle of Sydney Harbour at its stinkiest would probably seem like a holiday cruise.
‘Um, thanks for thinking of me, Lahar, but I’m very happy where I am,’ I said.
‘You haven’t even asked what the job would entail,’ he pointed out, sounding peeved.
We were speeding up William Street now, tantalisingly close to the freak-infested Darlinghurst Road, where there always was a reliably well-stocked taxi rank. But how to extricate myself from the car now? Could I feign the onset of an excruciating headache without it seeming too obvious?
‘Anyway, we’ll talk about it in a civilised way over a glass of champagne,’ the businessman suggested and I nodded my head politely. Surely it couldn’t hurt just to chat.
‘There’s been something else I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ said Lahar as we rounded the corner into Cross Street and the entrance of the Hermitage came into view. ‘How well do you know Daniel Acton? Has he ever introduced you to his boss, Alex Evans?’
‘What?’ I started. My mind began to race. My lover worked for Alex Evans? The same Alex Evans whose circle my boss had directed me to infiltrate? No way! So it had been Jacqueline Evans that Lahar had referred to when Daniel and I were together at the Taj.
‘Ah, well, I haven’t known Daniel very long at all,’ I stammered. ‘I had no idea he worked for Alex Evans.’ What else didn’t I know about Daniel? I wondered.
‘Well, he does,’ Lahar said with a smirk that showed just how much he was enjoying his superior knowledge. ‘Come along, my dear. Let me tell you all about it over that glass of champagne.’
Eight
With his outrageously colourful suits, which gave him plumage as bright as a rosella, and his questionable manners, Lahar Kapoor was as good as a society outcast in Sydney. He simply wasn’t rich enough to matter—not when people were throwing money around as if they had printed it themselves.
In fact, Lahar Kapoor’s total lack of class was only matched by his ambition. His bold idea of hiring me as his ‘global head of public relations’, it turned out, was just so that I could secure him invitations to the major parties. Lahar desperately wanted an A-list clientele so that he could jack up his prices—and the only way to find them was at the town’s most exclusive soirees. Naturally he thought that I would have the contacts to get him invited to the society wedding of the year, for starters.
Retail magnates Peter Lovejoy and his wife Gertie, who had created the first shopping town in Sydney’s western suburbs, complete with a skating rink and drive-in movie theatre, were reportedly spending a million dollars on the wedding of their only daughter, Chloe, to A-grade footy star, Troy Saunders. Troy was also a newly minted executive in the Lovejoys’ company, Love Shopping Pty Ltd, though he was essentially nothing more than a trumped-up ambassador with a hefty salary and a fancy title on a business card. It was fortunate that his was not an active role in the company, since his first duty was to his footy team—the Kangaroos (Troy played for Australia, and was a very big deal). However, his retail appointment provided him with the funds necessary to finance the lavish lifestyle to which Chloe was accustomed. She was the sort of girl who thought that she was slumming it if she had to climb into a taxi or wear an Australian label. When her fiancé borrowed her father’s Rolls for a big night out, Chloe preferred to sit in the back while Troy drove. This was a source of much mirth among certain women who gathered in Eastern Suburbs cafes because Chloe, who had absolutely no social pedigree, thought she was far grander than some old-money families in Sydney whose fortunes went back for several generations.
‘The Lovejoys are so gauche,’ Patricia Wren (who dreamed of having the means to be just as vulgar) had been heard to complain to Lady V over lunch at Emerald Ville. ‘It’s going to be quite something when the world comes tumbling down around them—and it will. I’ve heard that they are frightfully overstretched and everyone will soon tire of those ghastly shopping towns.’
Lady V had just nodded sagely, as she thought it was highly unlikely that shoppers would become bored of wandering around large malls but she had not wished to contradict Patricia. After all, her snobby friend was probably just really put out that she would not be attending the wedding of the year. This was not at all surprising as why woul
d she when she merely hung around the A-list like a piece of old tinsel?
When Troy had popped the question to Chloe, he had presented her with a fifteen-carat diamond, which Gertie insisted was a family heirloom. (It had actually been hurriedly purchased in secret from a King Street diamond wholesaler shortly after Troy had approached Peter for permission to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage). Of course, Chloe had cried tears of joy when Troy got down on his knee and presented her with the huge rock—but his future in-laws made Troy sign an agreement stating that if the union ended, the ‘heirloom’ would be returned to the family. Maybe it wasn’t an heirloom yet, but it soon would be.
When I was writing up the exclusive on the engagement, I did wonder how a knockabout family like the Lovejoys, who had arrived in Sydney from London in the 1950s as ten-pound Poms, could have something so valuable in their family. Wouldn’t they have cashed it in and used the money to set themselves up? But this small detail had been lost in the saturation coverage of the engagement details. There was nothing that Sydney loved more than a sporting legend marrying into serious money (even if some thought it was all down to smoke and mirrors), and it didn’t hurt that Chloe was beautiful. She could have been a model or a pageant queen if her parents hadn’t considered it beneath her. Chloe’s job title was ‘shopping-centre heiress’.
In the meantime, there had been plenty of updates in my column on plans for the society wedding of the year. There was talk that Aretha Franklin would be flying in to perform at the reception, which would be held in the family’s Darling Point mansion. I had also revealed that Chloe was being fitted in Paris for a billowing Christian Dior gown, which cost more than most people spent as a deposit on their home. In fact, whenever I had space to fill, I could always publish the latest details on the wedding, including the fact that extra supplies of Krug champagne were being flown in from overseas at one hundred and fifty dollars a bottle because the Lovejoys were worried that the champagne favoured by royalty would run out.
Since I had been so avidly lapping up details of the wedding and reproducing them in my column, Gertie Lovejoy had personally sent me a handwritten invitation to the nuptials (the invitations reportedly cost forty dollars each to reproduce because of the calligraphy and the gold leaf inscription). These cards were initially sent out to five hundred guests, including Eurotrash royals the Stephenedis family. (Gertie had become friendly with some of the junior members of this stellar clan during European summers spent on the Lovejoy yacht in the south of France, which was berthed right next to the Stephenedises’ super-yacht at St Tropez.)
All of Sydney had been breathlessly following the details revealed in my column, including Lahar, who had decided that since I was so well connected to the family, I was perfectly placed to appeal to Gertie on his behalf. At the very least, he suggested, he could accompany me to the wedding as my plus-one. I’d had to tell him that I had only been given a single invitation, and there was no way that I would compromise my unique position with the family by pestering them to invite more people than they had planned. Gertie and I had hit it off from the start, which is another reason I had scored an invite, but she and Chloe still prided themselves on the fact that the guest list had become a mini version of the international social register.
‘The current who’s who of Australia’s Most Wanted Fraudsters more like it,’ insisted my editor, who was less than impressed with the Lovejoys, but thrilled that I had scored an invitation to the ridiculously vulgar nuptials. He also had me working up a story on the final cost per head, which would have been difficult to attain had not Gertie been so committed to boasting about her wedding spend.
All this meant that Lahar Kapoor had been almost hyperventilating at the thought of somehow attaining one of the treasured invitations. He had decided that it would eventually reap him hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewellery sales as he would meet prospective clients from Australia and abroad.
‘I’m sorry, Lahar, but it’s not possible for me to approach Gertie Lovejoy on your behalf,’ I said as gently as I could.
Lahar acted as though he had not heard this but there was a new coldness in his expression. ‘I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars if you can get me an invitation to the Lovejoy wedding,’ he said, avoiding my eyes.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said flatly, trying covertly to attract a passing waiter’s attention. It was time to get another stiff drink. The thought of twenty thousand dollars was admittedly making me feel a bit giddy. I could put a deposit down on a flat with that or go back to London and live it up. But that would probably be the last money I would earn as a journalist as word spread that I was on the take.
‘Think about it. I’ll tell you what, if you can get me a double invitation, I’ll make it fifty thousand.’
Fifty thousand! I would be rolling in it.
I shook my head, feeling quite sick in the stomach. Had anyone at the Taj overheard him? Had I already been compromised? Just agreeing to have this drink with Lahar was turning into one of my dumbest ideas since I had convinced myself that renting a terrace house with a cupboard for a kitchen was a good idea. I looked around the bar. There were a couple of tables of women of a certain age in tight jeans and high heels, who were no doubt on the hunt for young hunks; a couple of businessmen in suits—most probably hotel guests—who were sitting morosely at the bar, sipping drinks and decimating a greasy plate of prawn cutlets they’d ordered from the small bar menu; a group of youngish girls, who looked like they had come straight from a nearby office; and two well-known Double Bay hairdressers, their shirts almost undone to their navels to show off their tanned chests, bitching about their clients and getting stuck into some martinis. I could only hope that they were too engrossed in swapping stories from the frontline of blow-dry hell to pay us any attention.
If anyone had heard the conversation and repeated it, then it really wouldn’t look very good for me. It didn’t matter that I had no intention of taking Lahar up on his seedy offer; I would still be guilty by association. The only possible course of action, I decided, was to go straight into Tim’s office tomorrow morning and tell him exactly what had happened. I wished there was another way, quite frankly, because after Quinn’s allegations I had no desire to draw attention to myself again. But the alternative—waiting until someone else informed him that I had been offered a huge amount of money to secure Lahar Kapoor an invite to the wedding—was worse. In the short time I had been working on the Social Diary, I had managed to amass some powerful enemies, especially in the Eastern Suburbs, so I shouldn’t delude myself that people were wishing me well. Or even giving me the benefit of the doubt. As for Lahar—well, he was off the scale.
Where had the exotic businessman come from, anyway? His back story changed almost as much as the beautiful bimbos whom he used as arm candy. There was no way someone as socially aware as Gertie Lovejoy was going to let Lahar and his squeeze du jour loose among her daughter’s wedding guests. He didn’t need a personal publicist so much as a complete overhaul, starting with his wardrobe and followed closely by his manners.
However, I was still desperate to find out what he knew about Daniel. It seemed like the perfect time to change the subject.
‘So you were saying in the car that Daniel Acton works for Alex Evans?’ I ventured, as Lahar topped up his own drink. ‘I hadn’t heard that—tell me more.’
But the jeweller just regarded me with an amused expression. I could tell what he was thinking: now he had something I wanted.
‘I’d be delighted to tell you all about it, Savannah,’ he promised. ‘And, believe me, the association between the two is quite a story. I’ll take you through it in detail after you deliver my invitation to the Lovejoy wedding.’
For a moment the two of us regarded each other like master and prey. I decided to try and bluff it out by persisting in my line of questioning as if I hadn’t registered what he had just said. ‘Is Danielle close to Jacqueline Evans? She seems to be a fascinating woman and I
’ve heard she is an avid collector of Collier jewels?’ I gushed.
But Lahar would not be swayed by my transparent attempts at flattery. ‘Miss Stephens, as I just stated there is so much that I can tell you, but first I must see my name on that wedding invitation. And you are crazy not to accept my job offer, there really is so much you could learn from me.’
In other words, he wasn’t budging from his position.
Damn.
Nine
Only in Sydney could a man who was more used to designing clothes for ‘cabaret artists’ become a coveted label among the society darlings. Laurence Lavin (his real name was the slightly less aesthetically pleasing Leroy Bull) knew a thing or two about corset construction and bling. Tall and majestic with broad shoulders and a generous thatch of dark brown hair, he looked more like an opera singer than a fashion star.
Lavin’s designs for Mademoiselles de la Nuit, a world famous drag queen show in Kings Cross, were remarked upon far and wide because of the meticulous attention to detail and the way that his gowns managed to constrain even the most unyielding waist (although some of the performers were encouraged to have a couple of ribs removed in order to do them justice). Lavin’s costumes were just so glamorous, thanks to the veritable treasure trove of bugle beads, diamantés and sequins adorning them. They were like every little girl’s fantasy of Cinderella’s ball gown.
At the dawn of the decade devoted to ostentation and conspicuous consumption, Laurence Lavin had the idea of broadening his unique client base to include Sydney’s socialites, who attended plenty of events where a dazzling ball gown would not go astray. All of his serious creations were made to measure, so he felt justified in describing his label as Laurence Lavin Haute Couture. However, since designing for Sydney’s socialites was much more demanding than even the most petulant drag queen, there was a steep rise in the cost of each ensemble, which allowed him to move his ‘atelier’ from down-in-the-mouth Darlinghurst to the more refined Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, in the heart of the silvertail zone. He then installed his live-in partner—a former cabaret star, Coco de Chine (who still went by her stage name and not her birth name, Bruce McDonald)—as salon manager and they decided to throw a cocktail party to launch the new business. Of course, Laurence’s mademoiselles, who lived for ‘soirees’, wanted to get in on the act, so he invited some of the more discreet drag queens to mingle with the society names. The upcoming party had been a topic of conversation at Emerald Ville for weeks because everyone said that the guest list was simply genius. Who else but Laurence Lavin could get two such diverse groups together, sipping champagne from antique crystal glasses and marvelling over his giant chandelier (which had originally arrived in pieces from a Paris flea market but had been lovingly assembled and polished up to look like something right out of a drawing room in Versailles).
