Chapter Nineteen
At four o’clock on Sunday evening, at around the same time that Jack and Cameron were arriving at Balwyn Park for the school party, the last of the film crew were finally packing up and leaving Elsa Anderson’s home.
They left behind half-eaten platters of food, along with approximately two dozen empty coffee cups, littered all over her marble benchtops.
As Elsa closed the door on her favourite make-up artist, with air kisses and thanks, her wide smile dropped away.
She raised her hands to massage her jaw, made her way back into the kitchen, and looked with strong dislike at the mess left behind.
She should have arranged for the caterers to come back at the end of the day and pick up all of this crap.
What was she supposed to do with all of these dirty glasses and plates, and the uneaten food?
Elsa started tidying up, sorting good leftovers from scraps.
She should dump the sushi—it had been sitting out too long—but there were mini beef Wellingtons that were definitely still good, and the compressed watermelon with crème fra?che was still sitting on ice blocks.
She tasted the chopped salad. Still good.
Maybe. Christ, it was all so much work. Even making decisions about food was too hard.
She wanted to cut to the chase and dump the lot but guilt wouldn’t let her.
So she kept sorting and scraping, and stacking dirty dishes up by the dishwasher, which was, aggravatingly, already full.
For a moment she felt like she might cry.
Fuck that. Feeling sorry for herself never helped.
Elsa went to fridge and poured herself a glass of white wine, then turned on some music.
Her favourite playlist. A mix of eighties hits and Taylor Swift that always gave her a lift.
She started to work faster. The music and the wine helped.
Taylor was a real tough kid, and so was Elsa.
She could handle her shit, even when that shit included a twelve-hour day and a wreck of a kitchen.
At least the girls weren’t there. Celine had taken them to the park.
The clean-up took nearly two hours. When everything was done, and the plates of leftovers were covered and put away in the fridge, Elsa poured herself another glass of wine and took it upstairs to the bath.
She double cleansed her face, applied a moisturising mask, and sank into the water gratefully.
She set her iPad up on her dressing table and watched clips of Schitt’s Creek on YouTube.
At some point she heard Celine and the girls arrive home.
Elsa thought about getting out of the bath, but figured if she lingered a little bit, Celine would probably bathe the girls and get them into their pyjamas and settled.
It was so hard to get good childcare. Elsa had a lot of trouble holding on to nannies, which was something she really couldn’t understand because she paid a good rate, Doris and Lola were far from monsters, and Elsa herself tried so hard to be considerate.
Okay, sometimes she asked for a little extra help, a few hours that strictly speaking weren’t in the contract.
But she always tried to make up for it! And then the last girl just took off with no notice.
She’d met a guy, apparently, and hadn’t even bothered to tell them in person that she was off to Queensland with him.
She’d packed up her stuff and left when they were out of the house, informing them by email.
And the girl before that had been struck by an attack of homesickness so acute that she’d gone home three months early.
By the time Elsa eventually padded downstairs, damp hair tied up, dressed in her new favourite lounge wear—heavyweight jersey casual pants with a matching collared long-sleeved jersey top from her own label—Celine had taken the girls upstairs to bed and Elsa had the kitchen to herself.
She checked her phone. She had a couple of missed calls from Jack—probably he wanted a moan about her not showing up for the park thing—but nothing else.
She poured herself another glass of wine, and heard a key turning in the lock. Nathan was home.
Thank god. The day was nearly done.
After a minute he joined her in the kitchen, leaned down to kiss her cheek.
‘Christ, I’m wrecked. There was a pile-up on the West Gate. I had a thirty-year-old woman, mother of three, with a fractured skull and major clotting. Is there anything to eat?’
‘There’s a fridge full, darling.’
Nathan went to the fridge. He took out a plate of leftovers and the bottle of wine, now half-empty, and poured them both a glass. They sat at the breakfast bar and ate.
‘What’s the news?’
‘The shoot was fine, but you won’t believe what happened.
’ Elsa launched into her big story for the day.
Three months ago she’d managed to land a major influencer to promote her clothing line.
The influencer—she called herself Darla Darling online—had a highly-engaged following of one point six million.
Darla was cool, edgy and up and coming. At the time, Elsa’s investors had made it clear that they felt her content was in danger of becoming a bit too Byron.
Once upon a time, Elsa had been the edgy one, the enfant terrible, falling out of nightclubs, giving the finger to the waiting press, a wicked smile on her pretty pretty face.
But now she was a mother of two, and she was turning thirty on her next birthday, and she wasn’t building with the yummy mummy set as fast as she was losing the cool young things. Hence—Darla.
Darla hadn’t been an easy get. Everyone wanted her, particularly after she was photographed partying with Charli XCX in Sydney.
Elsa had had to double her initial offer to get Darla to commit, a sum of money that had made even Elsa, who believed firmly in the maxim that you had to spend money to make money, more than a little nervous.
‘And now, can you believe this shit? Darla must have spent the last three months sitting at home eating bloody Woolworths mud cakes, because she’s put on like, twenty kilos.’
‘Elsa, come on.’ Nathan gave her a sideways look.
Elsa felt a rising irritation, mixed with guilt. She knew she was being an arsehole, but Nathan had no idea how hard she had to fight to stay competitive.
‘I’m serious. We’re not talking like a little extra curve here.
We’re talking about a girl who went from looking like Bambi with tatts to looking like a dollar-store Robyn Henson in three months!
I love Robyn. She’s fabulous. But first of all, Darla is not Robyn, and also, I’m not hiring a plus-size model for my brand.
That’s not my offering. I don’t make anything over a size fourteen, just for starters. Plus-size is just not my market.’
Nathan shook his head, smiling a little, but with that vacant look in his eyes that told her he’d already tuned out. ‘You’ll figure it out. You always do.’
Elsa felt a little sick. They rarely spoke about the details of her business. ‘Nathan, I paid her a quarter of a million dollars.’
Nathan had just put a mini beef Wellington into his mouth. He looked for a second like he might choke. It took him a full minute to chew and swallow the thing.
‘What the hell, Elsa?’
‘That’s what it costs to get these people. You have no idea. And everything is about social these days. Social is the marketing funnel. If I don’t make it work there, I’m done.’
‘Quarter of a million . . . can you even afford that? I mean, my god. How many pairs of pants do you have to sell to make that much?’
‘The investors wanted her. I had to get it done.’
‘But if you can’t use her, there must be a way to get the money back.’
Elsa wasn’t sure that there was. You couldn’t put a ‘don’t gain weight’ clause in a contract, surely?
Although now that she thought of it, major brands who hired celebrities for beauty campaigns must be able to mandate some basic requirements.
What if someone shaved their head or got a face tattoo or something?
For multi-year and multimillion-dollar contracts, you’d have to agree some parameters.
But it hadn’t occurred to her to ask for anything like that.
Getting Darla had been a months-long campaign of flattery, love-bombing, and big promises.
There had been no time or headspace to think about worst-case scenarios.
Nathan was looking at her with an expression of growing concern. And suddenly she wanted it all to go away. She wanted to go back to the days when her business was strung together on two credit cards and a bright smile, and the problems seemed like part of the adventure.
‘Of course!’ Elsa said, breezily. ‘No, of course you’re right. The lawyers covered all of that. We’ll get the money returned. It’s just, I’m back to the drawing board. I’ll have to find someone new, and it’s not easy.’
The concern disappeared from Nathan’s face. ‘You’ll figure it out, Els. By the end of next week you’ll have signed up two Darla whatevers.’
Elsa smiled at him. He really had no idea what he was talking about, how impossible the task was that she was facing, but she needed him to be happy.
Nathan was a brilliant man, but he was not a businessman, and he was not a risk-taker.
If he knew half of what she had done to get her business where it was, he’d have had a stroke by now.
And she liked the way he saw her. She liked the picture of herself she saw through his eyes.
Someone with an easy, breezy, natural talent who waved her manicured hand and just manifested a fashion brand with a revenue stream of three million dollars a year.
She didn’t want him to stress out about every up and down of her working life.
She didn’t even want him to know about it. He was her safe space.
And probably her lawyer had taken care of everything. There must be boilerplate language that covered stuff like this, right? She would deal with it in the morning.
They moved to the living room with food and a second glass of wine in hand. Nathan had flicked on the TV and they were just settling into the couch when Celine came downstairs.
‘I’m sorry to disturb, but I really must talk to you, Elsa.’
Shit. Please, please let her not be about to give notice.
‘Of course. Of course, Celine, no problem.’ Elsa put down her blini and her wine, and wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ She gestured towards the armchair opposite her, but Celine stayed standing.
‘No, thank you. I wish to talk to you about Cameron, about his papa.’
‘About Cameron?’
‘When I collect him, there was a police at the appartement.’
‘I’m sorry. You collected Cameron?’ Elsa was tired, and more than a little confused, but Celine was nodding. She looked tired herself, and very young and frightened.
‘Jack, he call me and he ask me to come to his appartement and collect Cam.’
‘Jack called you?’
‘Oui, yes.’
‘And you brought Cam here?’ Elsa glanced at her watch. It was after nine.
‘Yes, but you see at the appartement there was police officers. They take Jack away.’ Celine made a small grabbing motion with her hands.
Elsa and Nathan exchanged glances. This . . . seemed impossible. Celine had it wrong, surely. She’d misunderstood something.
‘Are you saying that Jack was arrested?’
‘Yes!’ Celine looked relieved, that she’d finally been understood. ‘And Cameron, he is very upset. He is crying. Perhaps you can come . . .?’
‘Of course. Yes, of course.’ Elsa stood. She followed Celine up the stairs, certain that it was all a big misunderstanding that would be quickly resolved. Jack was not the type to get into any kind of trouble. She wasn’t worried about that at all.