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, theenfant 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. Socialisthe 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 lawyerhadtaken 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,pleaselet 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.
