Chanel Sweethearts (17 page)

Jessica furrowed her brow in surprise. In her mind creativity and rigidity didn't sit well together. There was nothing in her contract for this position that suggested time-keeping was to be valued ahead of creativity. She opened her mouth to reply, but Mimsy gave her an imperious wave and she realised her time was up.

Jimmy showed her to her office, a large sparse room with blank walls. She stowed her new portfolio under the industrial steel desk, checked out the view of the city from her window and was delighted to discover there was a Saeco coffee machine installed in the corner of the room.

‘How about some caffeine to get your brain firing?' Jimmy suggested, grabbing some tiny espresso cups off a shelf above the machine.

‘Do I look that desperate?' Jess laughed and took a seat at her desk, relieved to surreptitiously slip her feet out of her crippling shoes.

‘Not at all,' Jimmy said, as the rich aroma of coffee beans filled the room, ‘But hey, you're only human, babe, and this is a sleek operation you've stepped into.'

He handed Jess a steaming short black in a dolls'-house-sized stainless-steel cup. Lattes were her coffee of choice, but what the heck, she thought, sipping the hot, bitter brew; maybe it was time to toughen up a bit.

‘Right then, you're all set,' Jimmy announced, gulping down the last of his coffee. ‘I gotta get on with my day. How about you whip up a fabulous new piece by lunch, and then I'll take you somewhere awesome to eat, okay?' He gave her a mock salute as he strode out of her office.

Alone in her cavernous office Jess braved another sip of her tiny coffee and wondered how she was going to achieve ‘fabulous' in the next two hours. She crammed her feet back into her painful shoes, and went back out to the design room to explore the hundreds of materials at her disposal.

She approached a waif-like girl with a pixie haircut who stood at one of the long workbenches twisting barbed wire around a reclaimed fence paling. ‘Hi, it's Pandora isn't it?' Jess asked, leaning over to get a closer look at her work.

‘Got it in one,' the girl responded without looking up.

‘What are you working on?'

The girl put down her pliers, folded her arms and fixed Jess with a direct stare.

‘Hal – that's whose job you've got–' Pandora said, ‘he designed this piece for the foyer at Government House. He won an international design award for it. So now we're recreating several dozen for the sales team to pitch elsewhere.'

Jess nodded slowly.

‘Hal was poached by a design company in Paris,' added Bruno, a hairy, bulky man. ‘You must feel terrified to fill such big shoes.'

‘Hopefully I'll bring my own touch to the company,' Jess said, fiddling with her silver bracelets.

‘We'll see,' Pandora muttered.

Jess grabbed some iron pieces, copper wire and steel columns and headed for the safety of her office. This place was tough.

At one o'clock Jimmy knocked on her door. ‘Let's do lunch, new girl.'

Jess gratefully put down the copper pipe she'd been wresting with and grabbed her bag. He took her to a nearby restaurant where he explained his job to her in more detail; basically he caught the big clients, schmoozed them and convinced them they couldn't live without the stunning artworks from Still Life.

‘So do you consult with me to ensure the team can meet your quantity before promising the client fifty-seven lava rock candle sculptures for Cup Carnival? Jessica asked.

‘Of course I do, Jess: it's a team effort. You see, I'm the key enabler yet you're on the fast-track to a super-incent, you know? As long as you keep a handle on the deliverables and recognise greater results from collaboration, then streamline efficiencies in the supply chain and reduce costs, we're all headed for a real viable growth industry.'

Jessica's fork halted halfway to her mouth as Jimmy's words tumbled forth. Dr Suess made more sense.

‘Jess, your mouth is open,' he said, then grabbed a passing staff member by the arm.

‘This soup is unacceptably cold,' he said and softened the complaint with a sweet smile. ‘Could I possibly trouble you for another serve?' He turned his attention back to Jess. ‘I think once we get your scheduling under control, you'll have no problem. You're very talented. We'll have you as Melbourne's sweetheart in no time. The world won't remember Poppy King and her lipsticks, it will be all about Jessica Wainwright.'

‘Really?' Jessica said, quite seduced by the idea. She took a sip of her iced water.

It would be a battle to begin with, though. Just getting the trust and support of the design team would be hard enough, and learning to create to a schedule was going to be a real struggle. She was already behind on her first piece. It needed a good couple of hours of love before she got it right, and she knew she wasn't going to do it with the sales team breathing down her neck.

It was all giving her a thumping headache and she was only halfway into her first day.

‘Hey, what's the story with the girl at the front desk?' she asked Jimmy as she nibbled the edge of her rice paper roll.

‘Sventana?' He grinned. ‘Just ignore her; she's been doing the ice-queen thing since she read about it in Moscow
Vogue.
It's like the heroin chic look of the nineties but with attitude instead of make-up. Great with clients though.'

Jess spent her afternoon grappling with the materials she'd chosen to make her first Still Life piece and praying for some creative magic. She tried arranging the metal pieces on top of each other, then rummaged in the materials bin for a shorter piece of copper pipe. But somehow the whole thing looked messy and unbalanced. She went back to the design room, hoping for inspiration from the materials, but no matter how many different elements she tried the piece still looked amateurish and awkward at five p.m.

Mimsy stuck her head in Jess's office door as she left for the day, took a look at the piece, sniffed and walked away.

Jess hung her head in frustration just as Jimmy came up behind her, whispered in her ear, ‘I think it's wonderful sweetheart. It's only your first day: hang in there.' His warm breath on her neck sent a delicious tremor through her body. He offered to walk her to the tram stop: ‘Don't want you getting lost,' he teased.

It was such a relief to finally be in the privacy of her own room that night – and doubly exciting to pull the crippling shoes off her swollen and blistered feet. But she'd made it through her first day.

...and furthermore, the town has the greatest potential as a newly developed retirement and tourist site, thanks to my own approved plans of an eco-village of multiple residences, which is now under threat thanks to this awful smell that now permeates the immediate vicinity.

The village can no longer tolerate the stench that is being created by this ridiculous hippie enterprise.

I urge you, Shire Council, to immediately close down this operation. The property is only zoned residential, not rural, so the residents, Songbird Patterson and Rainbow McIntosh of 38 Stumpy Gully Road, aren't supposed to be operating anything more agricultural than a vegetable patch.

I need not remind you of the loss of rates revenue should my project not proceed due to this abhorrent landfill site that is being allowed to continue to operate.

I thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely ... etc, etc.

Tori had enjoyed buying the books, uniforms and shoes for the children's new school. She'd had fun choosing Tupperware lunch boxes in the new Berrylicious colour range, then selecting smart Sigg drink bottles in designer patterns, splurging on Quiksilver backpacks and finally buying each child a full selection of the bright new range of Bonds underwear. Now that they lived on the coast it was clearly de rigueur for the children to have thick, bright bands of Bonds underwear showing above their boardies during beach swimming lessons. No one could accuse her of not being a cool mum, Tori had thought smugly.

Now, sitting on her porch swing, she couldn't think of one more thing to buy them. She felt flat and bored. The children had gone off to Rainbow and Songbird's to play for the afternoon and she was alone. Tori sighed and threw down the Country Road catalogue that she'd already read comprehensively several times. She gazed over at Jess's paddock. Stupid, boring cows. They were only good for turning into shoes.

Tori checked her mobile. Still no texts. She'd sent messages off to half a dozen girlfriends, hoping for a natter with someone, but it seemed everyone was busy now that they'd all gone back to the city, leaving her behind.

She stared over at Jess's house again and wished her friend were there to share a coffee and chat. Jessica had been gone for a month and Tori missed her terribly. They'd managed a quick catch-up in the city last week during Jess's lunch break, but Tori didn't want to dampen the occasion by whining about how lonely she felt, stuck in the country on her own.

She glanced at her watch and did some quick calculations; if she jumped in the car now, she could get to the shops in Frankston in under an hour, spend an hour there and be back in time to pick up the children. There was a cute little Smiggle shop in Frankston she remembered with a happy start. The children loved Smiggle, and it was important to start the new school year with lots of bright, fun stationery items. She felt immediately revived and rushed into the house to grab her bag and keys. It was fun to have a mission.

She jumped in her car, revved the engine happily, and steered out of the driveway. Thank goodness for reasonable shops at Frankston, she thought, speeding along the local roads. It was hardly Southland, but it was certainly better than the local shopping options. Apart from the occasional little boutique dotted around the peninsula (which she'd exhausted in her first few weeks in town), there was not much shopping joy to be had.

How do people survive down here? Tori wondered once again. They must do their shopping online, she mused. How dull. She much preferred the sight of excellent store merchandising, the tangible thrill of touching, smelling and just getting the vibe of an item. It was an art form, she thought happily, plugging her iPod into the car stereo and smiling as Michael Bublé's seductive voice filled the car.

She'd always loved shopping. Her parents were just the same, she thought with an indulgent smile. They'd spoilt her rotten, and hadn't it been fun? And what an education too; she'd learned how to behave in the best restaurants, the value of natural fibres over nasty synthetics and the importance of keeping up with the latest trends and fashions.

She flicked on the air-con as she turned onto Moorooduc Highway. If only her parents had stayed together. It had all got a bit ugly after she'd turned twelve. Suddenly the arguments that had formed a backdrop to their everyday lives had reached crisis point and they'd split up. It was only the shiny new trinkets each parent bought her that made that awful time bearable.

She pushed her sunglasses on to her head and rubbed her forehead. She turned off the music and, in the quiet that followed, thoughts of her difficult adolescence flooded her mind. Her mother and father had competed to give her the biggest gifts and most exciting treats. There'd been two weeks in Paris with her mum, a trip to Disneyland with her dad and an endless stream of toys and clothes, but actually none of it really seemed to help all that much. She had just wanted to be a family again.

Now her children would have a similar life. The thought brought a wave of nausea as she remembered finding Priscilla face down on her bed that morning, shuddering as deepthroated sobs tore from her.

Tori had sighed and sat down beside her little girl and placed a soothing hand on her back. She loved this room. She had redecorated it last year to help Priscilla get over the disappointment of not being selected for the aerobics team. They'd replaced the childish pink-and-white checks, white cane rocking chair and ruffled bed skirts with a Hawaiian theme. They'd draped frangipani lights from the window frame, found hula dolls at the huge antique barn, and had the room repainted in tropical aqua and cerise, with a mural of hibiscus down one wall. Tori was especially fond of the tropical island bed linen she'd found in the US.

‘There there, darling.' She'd patted the little girl, remembering her as an infant and how difficult it had been to get her to sleep. ‘What's the matter?'

‘I ... I ... I ... miss ... Daaaaaad,' Priscilla had sobbed.

‘But darling, you saw him yesterday: he came down and spent the whole day with you. You had a great time.'

Priscilla had sat up then, eyes blotchy and wet curls plastered to her flushed cheeks. ‘Yes, but I want to see him all the time, not just sometimes.'

‘Priscilla,' Tori had tried to reason with her, ‘when he lived with us he used to work all the time during the week and play golf all weekend and you hardly ever saw him anyway. You're actually seeing him more now.'

‘You don't understand!' Priscilla had screeched. ‘You just don't get it!' She'd thrown herself back down onto the bed and launched into another volley of sobs.

Tori had sighed. Her back was hunched. She'd caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and shaken her head in sad resignation. She had aged so much. Her posture was shot, her jowls sagged, her eyes were blue-bagged and her cheeks were flat and droopy.

Priscilla was wrong. Tori did understand. It wasn't about missing her dad: it was about feeling abandoned, unloved. Tori had looked at the small shoulders shaking in misery and been unable to bear the sight of her child in so much pain.

‘Hey Priscilla,' she'd said gently.

‘What?'

‘How about you and I have a cheer-up day tomorrow, while Dustin's still on school camp? That'll fix us up.'

Priscilla had slowly sat up, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She knew all about cheer-up days. They were fantastic. She and her mother would start with a mini-makeover at a salon, then shop for new outfits. Then, looking beautiful, they would go out to lunch and finish the day by buying each other a present from their favourite gift shop, D'enfouissement. ‘Okay,' she said in a little voice.

When Tori had left the room she'd felt triumphant and in control, but right now all she could think was how much her daughter's life was turning out like her own childhood.

Tori gripped the steering wheel harder and smacked her lips together and ran her tongue over them. She did it again, and again. Suddenly she realised what she was doing. It was a childhood tic, and not one she wanted to revive. She'd spent a hideous summer with a circle of dry, chapped skin around her lips when she was thirteen. She pressed her lips firmly together and clenched her teeth, making a mental note to pick up some Aveda lip gloss at the shops.

Smiggle, she thought. Smiggle was bright and fun, and the kids would be delighted with their treats when they got home. She turned her iPod on again and let Michael Bublé sweep her away.