Strictly Confidential (9 page)

Following my sacking by Diane, my dumping by my boyfriend, my robbery, and my assault by an A-grade cricketer, I did what any self-respecting girl would do: I cried, I drank and I complained bitterly to anyone who would listen.

‘It’s not
fair
!’ I wailed down the phone to Shelley. If she’d not heard this same line from me a thousand times already this week, she would have been forgiven for not being able to make out my words from where I sprawled prostrate in bed, a bag of full-fat, high-carb Black Star pastries by my side and a discarded empty wineglass on the floor, its telltale red-wine tide mark crusted like blood around the dirty rim. There’d been a lot of that going on lately. The bloody discarding of things, that is. (Although that could equally apply to the swigging of wine, I admit.) But it was the bloody discarding of things like
me
by that vampire Diane that was on my mind.

‘All I did was get accosted by a client! People normally get compensation for such things. Not fired!’ I whined.

‘You should sue the bitch, dah-ling,’ Shelley said soothingly.

I didn’t disagree. In what was the closest I was going to get to a balanced diet since my sacking, I guzzled my friend’s unflinching sympathy as hungrily as I guzzled cheap red wine. ‘I 
would
sue,’ I replied, throwing my feet into the air to inspect my chipped toenail polish, ‘but I can’t afford to even google a lawyer, let alone hire one to act on my behalf.’

Shelley murmured in agreement. She was clearly preoccupied with something more interesting at her end. I couldn’t blame her either. It was days now since I’d been made to pack up my desk at Diane’s and take the long, lonely walk – flanked by security – to the building’s glass-fronted entrance. Days since I’d proudly held my head high (and not just in order to see over the top of the cardboard box full of my worldly belongings that I was clutching). Days since I’d refused to cry, since I’d politely thanked the security guards for their company and since I’d walked stoically away from Wilderstein PR, confident in the utter injustice of it all. And stoic I’d remained. At least until I’d been a safe two blocks away and my arms had no longer been able to hold the weight of my box, when I’d promptly sat it down on the pavement, plonked myself on top and started – to my mortification – to cry.

‘I would have cried too, love,’ Luke consoled me when I recounted this to him afterwards, ‘if I’d just tongued a sportsman.’

Anya’s commiserations had been a little more sensitive. After all, she’d been there, done that and bought the T-shirt herself.

‘Oh hon, you’re better off out of Wilderstein PR. Truly,’ she’d assured me.

This probably would have held more sway if Anya herself had, by now, secured a fabulous, high-paying publicist’s job that involved her poaching all of Diane’s clients and taking them out for dinner where they’d eat ludicrously expensive degustation meals courtesy of her new employer while bonding over the ridiculing of Diane’s peccadilloes. As it was, Anya was still unemployed. The highlight of her fortnight was collecting her measly dole payment from Centrelink then going online to see what, if anything, she could still afford on MyCatwalk.com.

‘Remind me again what it is you do as part of your work-for-the-dole services to qualify for unemployment benefits?’ I asked Anya.

‘I’m a mentor for underprivileged teens at my local high school,’ she explained without irony. ‘I teach them stuff like how to make their torn jeans work for this season. The distressed look never really went out, you know.’

I disguised my laugh with a cough. Only a fashion publicist could turn a government support requirement into a sartorial service.

Still, at least Anya was doing something proactive. I surveyed the mess of pastry crumbs and B-grade 1990s chick-flick DVDs in my orbit. Not to mention the empty cask of wine on my bedside table. That had been a mistake.

And apparently not the last one I was to make in my post-sacking slump. Nor the biggest.

Oh no. That honour went to my decision while still in my emotionally fragile, unemployed state to meet up with my now ex-boyfriend, Will, for the traditional post-breakup-exchanging-of-personal-belongings ritual. And what a mistake it was, on par with shoulder pads and mullets and Crocs and harem pants and 1980s perms – none of which should ever have had a moment in fashion history. And yet I went ahead in blissful ignorance and organised to meet Will at Raw Bar Japanese restaurant, just a stone’s throw from Bondi Beach, so that we could be reacquainted with our own stuff and part ways with one another in a mature, adult fashion.

‘Hi, babe.’ I greeted Will with a kiss on each cheek, determined to be the bigger person as I slid into my seat in the corner of the restaurant.

‘Hey, Jazzy Lou,’ he responded. He looked pale and a little dishevelled, I noticed with satisfaction. Given I’d spent over two hours waxing my legs, painting my nails, applying makeup, blowdrying my hair and selecting then reselecting my outfit of a fabulous dégradé wool Stella McCartney jumpsuit, I felt I could take the moral high ground here. Career crisis or not, there was no excuse not to look hot.

‘Sake?’ Will asked.

I nodded.

We busied ourselves with the menu – a vast array of uncooked Asian delicacies. If my relationship was to be served up dead and cold on a slab, then so would be my food. I settled on salmon sashimi, with a side of seaweed salad.

‘So, how have you been?’ I asked, keen to deflect the conversation from my own situation.

‘Good,’ he replied in the customarily articulate style of the Australian male.

‘I brought your stuff.’ I indicated a bag by my feet crammed with T-shirts and CDs and a camera and other odd remnants of our relationship.

‘Same,’ he said and pointed to a green recycling bag on the seat next to him.

I nodded awkwardly.

‘So, Matt Ashley, huh?’ Will asked, trying to feign indifference.

Will must have seen the tabloid pic of Matt Ashley with his tongue down my throat. (I didn’t dwell, here, on exactly how many other people across greater Sydney were likely to have spied it too.)

‘OMG! No!’ I cried in horror. ‘Oh no! No way!’

Polite Japanese waitresses looked over at me nervously.
Who is this crazy blonde girl and will she make a mess in our restaurant?
their immaculate expressions said.

‘No way,’ I repeated for emphasis. ‘Matt Ashley and I . . . that was not . . . that was a mistake.’

Will raised a sceptical eyebrow and sipped his sake.

‘Really,’ I persisted. ‘It wasn’t what it looked like. I mean, yes, Matt did kiss me but it wasn’t wanted. Or reciprocated.’ How many times was I destined to have this conversation? ‘It was just work,’ I added lamely.

At the mention of work Will’s dark eyes flashed and I knew I’d stepped on a landmine. I popped edamame beans and waited for Will’s explosion.

‘Yeah, I know all about your work, Jazzy Lou,’ he started. ‘I heard a lot more about your career than I did about anything else during the whole time we dated.’

I bit down on my soy bean, hard.

‘Only, mostly I heard about it when you were telling me you couldn’t make it to dinner because you were working back. Or you were missing another party because some C-grade celeb needed babysitting. Or you had to skip my birthday because your boss broke a nail.’

This last comment made me cringe. It was true that I’d missed Will’s birthday dinner, but the reason why eluded me now. Sure, his broken-nail comment was spiteful, but I couldn’t be sure that my no-show wasn’t Diane-related. It certainly sounded plausible.

‘In fact,’ Will went on, getting warmed up as our clinically cold meal arrived, ‘I can’t quite believe you found time in your schedule to meet me tonight. Don’t tell me the wheels of Wilderstein PR are turning without you for a whole evening? Surely there’s a product launch or a premiere of something you should be attending?’

I grimaced into my gohan.

‘No? Not got a runway you should be side of stage for?’

‘Actually, no,’ I replied, steeling myself. ‘I no longer work for Wilderstein PR.’

Will threw his head back and laughed heartily. ‘You’re not working for Diane?’ he asked incredulously. ‘But that place is your life, Jazz!’

I blinked hard as I pretended this didn’t hit home. ‘Not any more,’ I said haughtily. I could feel my impersonation of a functioning, coping member of society growing wobbly. I shouldn’t have come here tonight. Seeking closure on my relationship with Will so soon after my career sought closure from me was just too much to handle. ‘Wilderstein PR was
not
my life!’ I lied. ‘I don’t need that job and I don’t need you!’

I grabbed the bag by my feet and thrust it at Will, knocking the bowl of edamame beans everywhere in my haste. The bright, bouncing beans escaped across the table in a flurry of salt and spilled sake. Will looked shocked. The waitresses looked horrified.

I swiped my own bag of possessions from where it sat glumly beside Will.

‘I’ve moved on from Wilderstein PR and I’ve moved on from you,’ I announced. Then I turned on my heel and stalked out into the warm beachside air.

Days after my disastrous dinner with Will, I decided it was time to bite the bullet.

‘I’m going to start that PR business I told you about,’ I said to Luke one afternoon over a particularly rancid glass of goon, the only alcohol my redundant self could now afford.

Luke eyed me dubiously. I could see his brain oscillating between wanting to shoot me down in flames and being too scared to disagree with the crazy girl who had finally stopped crying for the first time in a fortnight. He opted for the latter.

‘Really? That’s
amaze
, babe.’ He slugged some wine to wash down his insincerity.

‘I’m serious,’ I said.

Luke put down his glass. ‘Jazzy Lou, has this got anything to do with the fact your only claim to fame at dinner with Will last weekend was the fact you inadvertently pashed an A-grade cricketer? An accidental kiss that doesn’t gloss over the fact you’re single and unemployed and have fallen off the coping wagon?’

Ouch. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I’d seen daytime television interventions that were less harsh.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘And, anyway, I didn’t bring up Matt Ashley, Will did. He backed me into a corner.’

‘That so?’ asked Luke. ‘Would that be the corner you were cowering in when you turned kamikaze and threw food and wine all over the joint before storming out? Can we ever eat at Raw again?’

I sighed in response.

‘Jazzy Lou, you know I want you to succeed more than anyone else in the world, right?’ Luke said, more gently now. ‘And I’d love you to start your own PR business. If only so you can give me an exclusive with all your famous clients.’

This was more like it.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘you can’t just go off and start your own company because you had a fight with your ex. Or because Diane sacked you. God, if everyone did
that
the ASX would go under from the demand for newly registered companies. Diane’s track record for firing employees puts Donald Trump in the shade. You can’t let her get to you.’

‘It’s not just because of Diane,’ I lied again, visualising running a Public Relations Golden Target Award trophy inscribed with my name through Diane’s heart.

Luke topped up my glass. ‘But what about the master plan, Jazzy? You know, earn your stripes, learn the ropes, and do all those other corporate clichés before you branch out on your own?’

I scowled.

‘Jazz,’ Luke reasoned, ‘you’ve only got a thirteen-thousand-dollar insurance cheque and an unhealthy collection of OPI nail polishes to your name. If the dwindling remainder of your savings wasn’t paying your rent, you’d be on the street right now. Exactly how do you plan to fund this business venture?’

If Luke was trying to change my mind he was going about it the wrong way. Nothing says ‘do’ to a Jewish woman louder than saying ‘don’t’. Hell, we made the Bar Mitzvah Disco apparel line fashionable. If anyone could create a company out of nothing it was me. Either that or go crazy trying.

Recognising this, Luke resigned himself to my fate. ‘So what will you call this conglomerate of yours?’ he asked.