Red Carpet Burns

By Georgia Cassimatis

What If 'The One' …isn't?

After meeting the gorgeous and charismatic Simon, Georgia Cassimatis swaps her fabulous life in Sydney for Los Angeles – risking it all for a chance at love. Georgia soon finds out, however, that Simon is not the man he seemed to be, and she has left her entire world behind for a loveless marriage with a man who is intent on making her miserable.

LA is a tough town – especially for a girl with no friends, no money and no job. But Georgia finds her way through the liars, fakes and cheats to become a successful celebrity journalist and soon realises she's fallen in love again – this time with her new home town…LA!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781460894552

Georgia Cassimatis

Georgia Cassimatis is an author and journalist. After finishing her Masters Degree in Journalism where she majored in print media and television, winning an award for sitcom writing and for her documentary on Australian politician Tanya Plibersek, she began her career as a contributing writer on Cosmopolitan magazine. She was appointed the editor of tween magazine Barbie shortly after and spent the next two years interviewing teen idols and organizing fashion shoots before being lured to Los Angeles where she spent the next eight years working as an on-camera reporter and an entertainment, travel, lifestyle, health and wellbeing writer for magazines worldwide. In 2017, PJ Pictures optioned her book Red Carpet Burns. The TV series will be produced by Spiritchaser Productions.   To find out more, visit Georgia on her website and follow her on Twitter. 

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Prologue

LA Story

Los Angeles. You either become it or you leave it.

– Arj Barker, comedian

Well, here I am in Los Angeles. LA. The City of Angels. It really has been my City of Angels. I think about this as I drip sweat, hiking up a hill in Laurel Canyon in the dry desert Californian heat; a heat with no humidity. A heat that shocked me when I first made my pilgrimage to this place from across the Pacific Ocean: an ocean I’d often stare across and contemplate being 12 049 kilometres away from my family.

My thoughts endlessly cast back because I’m at a crossroads. I think it might be time to go back home to Australia. But, then again, LA has been my home for the past seven years.

How did I get here in the first place? The whole reason I’m here on top of this hill is because of a guy called Simon Jamison. Handsome, tall, charming, blond Simon walked into my life in Sydney seven years ago, and he changed it forever.

I reminisce as I draw in another huge breath of dry desert air. Simon and I crossed paths in Sydney when a lifelong buddy and flatmate of his in LA became friends. Simon was working in Sydney briefly as a TV producer. Joe introduced us and my life changed course dramatically.

Lust and then love overtook reason. Looking back, the timing seemed right. I was in my late twenties and ready to do whatever it took to find true love. Combined with the fact that I was a tad impulsive, up for adventure and romance, I threw caution to the wind and packed up my life in Sydney a year later after meeting Simon, moving to live with him in LA, dreaming of starting our life journey … together.

I’ve come a long way since that fateful meeting. Back then my mantra was ‘career is career, love is life’ and while laughing at my innocence and naïveté today I’m a very different person. I’m not as likely to throw caution to the wind and live on a wing and a prayer. Let’s say I’m more cautiously spontaneous but that comes, perhaps, with wisdom, age and a lot more experience. While living in LA I’ve had my confidence kicked out of me, yet have been handed opportunities on a gold platter, working in the world of entertainment royalty, something many people only dream about. I’ve lived an incredibly rich life so far and one that, even though I’d erase certain situations while also doing others very differently, I would turn that same corner. Why? Because I’ve cracked the code of universal experience: a knowledge that comes from taking an inner journey that opens up the heart and mind and one my soul obviously craved. I’m armed with adventure now, which is something I never had before. I no longer wonder about life on the other side of the world, because I’ve been there. I’ve satisfied my wanderlust about the rest of the world. In short, I’ve pretty much done everything I’ve ever dreamed about … and more.

I’ve hit rock bottom and survived with the help of many wonderfully insightful and wise friends. The strong support of my LA friends made me realise that I had met my people – my kind, my tribe. In Australia, my friends were different, tied up with work life. In LA, my tribe helped me dig deep into my soul when I was desperately trying to survive emotionally. They had my back and they got me through it all.

To help me sort out my thoughts, I’m indulging in one of my favourite pastimes: breathing in the spectacular view of the LA skyline. I love to hike to the top of one of Hollywood’s hills: whether it be Runyon Canyon, Griffith Park or Laurel Canyon. Today, I’m hiking to the top of Meditation Mountain in Laurel Canyon simply because I have been living here for the past year and also because Meditation Mountain is a place only us ‘locals’ know about.

My gaze wanders along the snow-capped mountains in the far distant east, across the smog-filled city hub of downtown LA that looks like a conglomeration of dark buildings from the movie The Matrix. I pan across to the seemingly infinite basin known as West Hollywood, which had also been my home for a few years before I moved closer to the hills. From up here, LA looks like Legoland with its rows and rows of orange-roofed four-plexes. I continue looking along to the small boutique, wealthy Beverly Hills village and its counterpart: the corporate fuelled Century City with its suits, bankers, lawyers and people with ‘real’ jobs. I can almost smell the ocean as I hit Santa Monica Boulevard stretching along to the beach, and finally my eyes head south to the two white and red, ugly oil pipes in El Segundo, which is next to LA airport, before reaching the more exclusive, upmarket Manhattan Beach. Ironically, being able to see those two ugly pipes poke up along California’s coastline means LA is at it’s smog-free best; the strong Santa Ana winds offshore have cleared away LA’s infamous haze and everything looks crystal clear and absolutely breathtaking.

And creating that haze is the infamous traffic. Even the monotonous, distant buzz of the freeways is strangely soothing music to my ears. Many visitors to LA ask me how on earth I can live in LA, that it is like one big ugly car park! Little do they know that there’s beauty and stories in these roads – they are the threads running throughout Los Angeles, meshing and weaving together all the places I explored over the years. These threads also signify my moods; either happy as a lark, frantically rushing to get somewhere, impossibly stuck trying to get somewhere else, boiling rage at the traffic snarls and even tears as I tried to make sense of the freeways and the byways, becoming hopelessly lost as I tried to makes sense of it all.

My work as a journalist gave me the perfect excuse to explore all facets of LA and life within this buzzing city. LA’s melting pot of creativity has given me the chance to experience the best and worst of ‘celebrity’ culture, enabled me to get access to interview the cream of the acting fraternity, producers, writers, directors, makeup artists, designers, fitness instructors, stylists, nutritionists and chefs. It’s also offered itself as a base from which to explore places far and wide, places I only ever dreamed about – Mexico, Hawaii, New York, San Francisco, Canada, New Zealand, even a tiny boutique island called Bora Bora in French Polynesia (funnily enough a place that the US immigration department mistakenly put on my greencard as my place of birth. I didn’t bother changing it either, as it sounded rather exotic).

Standing at the peak of Laurel Canyon I can see Sunset Boulevard below; so close from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood and yet far enough away for emotional and spiritual peace and clarity. While the trails in the Hollywood Hills have served many a purpose in times of fitness, daily walking meditations, spotting the odd A-list celebrity, watching the passing parade of the fit, the fabulous and, of course, the beautiful, these hills have also been an escape from the daily grind and more often than not provided an answer to a life crisis.

Many times I’d watch people as they appeared like ants while hiking along the beautiful, dusty desert hilltops at sunset and I’d experience a moment of realising that, yes, there’s something bigger than all of us, a philosophical concept that usually set my mind at ease by putting my troubles into perspective.

And here I am now, pretty much thinking the same thing, though this time around I burst out laughing to myself. Ah, the word ‘hike’. It takes me back to when Simon first told me we were going ‘hiking’ with a group of friends from Venice Beach. I thought we were going to have to buy a certain type of ‘bush shoe’ and fill our backpacks with energy bars and gatorade, while also packing a machete to get us through some challenging terrain. However ‘hike’ in the United States simply means ‘walk’ or even a stroll. But, of course, this is America, a land prone to drama, exaggeration, where it’s considered a sin to believe in the glass being half empty, where people live their lives in the relentless pursuit of happiness and where big (or grandiose) is beautiful: big car, big personalities, big attitude, big confidence, big teeth, big hair, big beliefs, big lips, big boobs, just ‘big’. In LA you learn how to get a big head.

But let’s not get started on the obvious stereotype about LA because the city’s tapestry is far more complex than the superficiality of celebrities and plastic surgery.

In fact, one word to describe my experience here in the City of Angels would be magical. When I landed in LA my life became a rollercoaster of exhilarating highs to crushing lows: it’s a place that has broken my heart many times but I have forgiven the city over and over again. It’s a place that gave me an adopted family who made me feel ‘at home’, who took on an antipodean outsider and made me feel validated LA has been like having a relationship with a hot, sexy, fun and adventurous lover. No matter how hard living here became at times, I never truly yearned to go back home to Australia.

But I’m now at a crossroads. Do I ‘become LA’ like my friend, comedian Arj Barker asks me to, or do I leave LA and go home to sort out my Australian identity within the security of family?

Deep down I know I will never ‘leave’, because the biggest relationship I’ve had so far in my life has been with this city. Everything I had known about life was confrontingly deconstructed but helped me become my own person, someone I feel more comfortable being. I have become more sensitive and gentler thanks to this town’s new-age heartbeat. I have always loved the story about the mythical bird, the phoenix, who rises from the ashes. That was me and my old life. I came, fell apart and was reborn into someone who knows who she is.

With another deep breath, as I switch my iPod on, Mark Ronson’s song Diversion starts playing and my smile feels as broad as the LA skyline. I have an epiphany and realise that while I followed my dream to come to LA to be with my love, I ended up walking into my destiny. Even though I don’t know if I’ll stay or if I’ll go, at least I do know that my journey here was meant to be.

Chapter 1

Accidental LA Tourist

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

– Woody Allen

It’s our Year 12 graduation day and my friend Giulia and I are waiting on the verandah for our final French class to begin. It’s the beginning of a hot, sweltering summer and much to the chagrin of our religious studies teacher, Miss Manwaring, our school uniforms are quite a few inches above our knees. We’re covered in toilet paper and face paint, making the most of our dark green uniforms in trying to vaguely resemble female soldiers on our last day of school. As girls screamed in excitement, teachers yelled and girls had tears for each other; Giulia turned to me and asked ‘George, where do you see yourself in ten years time?’

‘America,’ I say, without hesitation. ‘I’ll be living and working in the USA.’

Growing up on a diet of American pop culture I believed that the United States was where everything cool in the world happened: from The Brady Bunch to The Cosby Show to The Flint-stones, even my favourite movie Grease. As far I was concerned America was king. I was also obsessed with Madonna and I was inspired by her. Being half-Australian, half-Greek I identified with this cool, sassy Italian-American who refused to be held back by racial stereotypes. I also had a vague idea that I wanted to work in entertainment because working in entertainment was the perfect oxymoron, wasn’t it?

Even though I declared the United States to be my fantasy destination, I never really planned to go there, ever.

Despite all of my school girl dreams, I ended up living a nice, safe, one-dimensional life in Sydney. After school I took a year off to study dance, assuring my parents that this was the equivalent of the ‘gap’ year in the United Kingdom where kids take a year off after school to do something completely different before settling into their degrees and chosen professions. I had an overly optimistic belief that my hour weekly dance classes at Johnny Young Talent School would translate into my becoming a professional dancer.

Failing miserably, with the beginnings of an eating disorder from training too much due to being self-conscious about my Greek gal curves and eating two meals a day, which consisted of an orange and coffee for breakfast and a sandwich for dinner, my remaining sanity urged me back to what I had been doing for the past fifteen years: I chose to go back to university to polish off my education and gain further security in the big, wide world, where a basic arts degree meant I could later springboard into other careers if I had the desire. I went to university and did a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English literature while also working as a singing and dancing waitress, putting my Johnny Young Talent Time skills to use, as Carmen Miranda and Nurse Penny Cillan at restaurant chain called ‘Bobbie McGee’s’. I figured that if I had to waitress while studying I’d find places where they it was fun. I was also an eighteenth century drunken harlot at The Argyle Tavern in The Rocks in Sydney. My face was smeared in red lipstick, I wore a hideous black wig and had to talk as though I was completely smashed. At one stage some Japanese tourists actually complained about how dirty I looked. I did, however, make it to the cover of a tourist magazine called Where, dressed as a harlot with my black tooth and one-eyed wink. I then moved on to the Dendy Cinema: another place that offered a fun waitressing-while-studying job because it was associated with cool, independent films, which I could see for free. I actually ended up putting together the Dendy Cinema float for the Gay Mardi Gras, which made us get an up close appearance on the ABC Gay Mardi Gras Special. During that time I was part of the Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) and The Arts Review where, in one stage production, I walked across the stage naked. (To this day I still bump into people who only remember that skit.) I travelled to Bali, Italy, Greece and Ireland, had a couple of boyfriends where each break-up ended as amicably as possible, won a university writing competition about a sitcom set in a gym and then, after a few years, ended up in the real world.

I had so far managed to successfully avoid the world of a nine-to-five corporate slog for a few years but my time doing this ran out. I put all my skills into a metaphorical big bowl, mixed them around and came up with – journalist. I started a masters degree in journalism to hone my skills further, joined the temping division at Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), scored a job as Kerry Packer’s assistant for two weeks, during which time the Cosmopolitan magazine Editor-In-Chief called me to see if I was interested in being her personal assistant. Within two years I graduated to editing Barbie, a magazine for tweens (or girls between eight and twelve).

I was still on my nicely conservative trajectory established in a career I enjoyed and the financial set-up was pretty good too. It was a trajectory and career that I felt I’d be in for the next twenty years or so.

Then I met Simon.

Chapter 2

Blind Faith

Fate is not destiny. But I guess deep down I would act on compulsion and pursue someone. Absolutely. If that’s what you call destiny.

– Inteview with Zac Efron

26 January, Charles Kingsford-Smith Airport, Sydney

Mum is crying all the way to the airport. Her short brassy-blonde hair is dishevelled, a sign that always speaks volumes as to where her emotional state is at. My mother is the type of mother who would ask you if you wanted fairy floss on top of your ice-cream. If there’s one thing she could be accused of it is having been too ‘soft’ on us kids, letting us become ‘too feral’ and ‘getting our own way’. She is such a kind, loving and devoted mum that seeing one of her children leaving the ‘nest’ indefinitely means that she feels as if her heart is being ripped out – and she makes sure everyone knows it. A reaction that I don’t really need when I’m in the middle of making a huge life change. This only highlights how traumatic and dramatic my journey to LA is going to be.

Right now she’s distraught and I wish she wasn’t because I feel as if she’s treating my new life and adventure like she’s watching my body being carted off in a hearse. Not the most pleasant image. I’m also completely confused by the worried looks on the members of my family’s faces as we trek through the very busy Sydney airport to the gate of emotional hell, where we will say our goodbyes.

Don’t get me wrong. I love airports. I love the energetic hustle and bustle humming off the excitement, anticipation and anxiety of people heading to faraway places. I’m always in awe of people travelling for work or holidays, and the stories they must all be carrying in their ‘busy’ airport lives and bags, not to mention the cosmopolitan and international flavour with different accents and cultures that echo around the vast space of the airport terminal.

Right now it doesn’t feel exciting for my family. Just me. To be honest, I haven’t quite comprehended the consequence of the future that lies over the Atlantic, unlike everybody else. As far as my family are concerned, ‘love’ is turning me completely blind. In their eyes I’m giving a guy I barely know the complete benefit of the doubt way too soon.

To me, I’m simply going to be with the love of my life, which should be cause for celebration and joy. So I’m wondering why it’s all so traumatic. I’m actually wondering if my family is ridiculously co-dependent with more of the dramatic, catastrophic, passionate Greek gene from my father’s side, or if this is normal for any family whose daughter decides to live overseas with ‘the one’. Surely Mum should be happy I’m starting my life with my soulmate and the love of my life. Even though he’s been living in the United States for fifteen years his roots are Australian, which should soften the blow and make the situation less traumatic.

‘George,’ says my youngest sister, Catherine, seven years younger than me, with long dark, brown hair, cute as a button face with big brown eyes and round nose with one significant freckle, pale skin, wearing a hippy T-shirt and skirt. ‘I’m happy for you but worried for Mum. Wow, I had no idea what families went through when someone leaves the nest. No wonder she freaked out when I went to Israel with Ruby for four months to see if I could live there.’

‘Georgia, Georgia, Georgiaaaaa,’ sighs Ruby, Catherine’s Israeli boyfriend of six years. He is sighing like he’d seen it all before. ‘Look at your dad, he’s calm. Your mum, not so much. I think we’re all on edge. I have a headache on my head from it all,’ he added, with a hint of sadness, like he knew what we I was in for. He, of course, was seasoned at living with his love, away from his homeland.

‘Headache on my head?’ echoes Catherine. ‘Ruby, it’s headache, not headache on my head.’

‘Oh really?’ says Ruby and we all burst out laughing, another comment Ruby will never live down.

Sometimes the language barrier is quite funny and Ruby’s Israeli-into-English proves to be the perfect tonic.

Thank God for Nick, that is, Dad. He is, the epitome of logic and a pillar of comfort and at this moment I am ever so grateful for this. He’s organising my bags at check-in with me, making sure they contain enough of my life yet not too much that I’d have to pay more baggage fees or have some luggage rejected.

‘Sorry luv. One bag is five kilos over the limit and the other one is already at the limit. You’ll have to pay for a third bag,’ he says calmly while the large elderly woman at check-in, yawns and seems preoccupied.

‘Well, I don’t have a third bag!’ I say in horror, looking at Dad. I am not a terribly seasoned traveller, despite my love of airports, and here I am being told that my life won’t fit into the required luggage limit. I begin to panic.

‘Here you go, darl,’ says the kind lady at check-in, handing over a cardboard box to unload some of my excess baggage. My clothes, books and shoes are flying everywhere in front of what seems like hundreds of people pissed off as they wait for me to reorganise my bags.

Bless Dad, among the repacking I see a glimpse that he is perhaps a little anxious about ‘the whole thing’. That said, he really had been resigned to facilitating my dreams the best way he could. Normally I tell Dad he needs a serious fashion overhaul, but today I feel comfort seeing him wearing his grey trousers, tucked-in brown shirt with short sleeves making him look more like a school principal from the 1970s. He has always looked the same, ever since I was born. He has never changed and I actually thank him for it, especially when it comes to situations like this when everyone else around me seems to have lost the plot.

My decision to go to LA wasn’t always smooth sailing with Dad either. After six months of battling with me about giving all that I had worked for up – my family (I won’t have anyone to lean on when I’m in LA), my job (how can I possibly give up the best paying and best job I’ve worked hard to get and which doesn’t come around too often), my everything (family, friends, finances, stability, community), to go live with this person called Simon. Not to mention he’d only ever had one real conversation about it with Simon, which went like this:

‘Hi Simon, Nick here,’ said Dad, trying to be calm with a touch of parental authority, while my mum, my sister Catherine and I tried to eavesdrop.

‘Nick, how are you,’ said Simon, drunk and screaming out loudly from a rooftop in Venice Beach. It was fourth of July in LA and everyone was partying the night away downing numerous vodkas while watching fireworks. I later saw photos from the night and all the girls looked like Paris Hilton, drunk and half-dressed, with breast implants.

‘Simon I’m getting to the point here. Georgia’s coming over to be Mrs Jamison. She’s not coming for any other reason …’ he began, getting straight to the point.

‘Nick, I know and I want her to be that. I love the sound of Georgia Jamison!’

I secretly liked the name too; it sounded like a movie star’s name, and if I ended up using it, I wouldn’t have to spell out Cassimatis, which felt more like Cassa-alphabet.

‘OK Simon. Well, I’m letting you know that’s the only reason.’

‘Thanks Nick. Happy fourth of July!’ Clang. The conversation was over.

Even though Dad was slightly uncomfortable that Simon had spoken to him rather pithily about a ‘serious issue’ while drunk, Dad did finally come around to being on my team. Team ‘Georgia going to live with Simon in LA’. Showing trust in my decision and wanting the best for my happiness meant he was ready to let go. For Mum, however, that was a whole other story. She was Team ‘Anti-Georgia-going-to-live-with-Simon in LA’. She wasn’t convinced.

Chapter 3

I’m In Love. Who Knew.

I’ve always believed the best way to meet someone is just by accident.

– Interview with Jessica Simpson

I’d have to say it was my flatmate, Lizzie who is responsible for changing my life. I blame her for everything. Lizzie is my gorgeous, blonde, long-legged, brown-eyed, down-to-earth friend from Melbourne who works in Sydney as an event planner for sporting events. She and I met at a party and hit it off, deciding pretty quickly to become flatmates. Both our leases were coming to an end and we didn’t want to leave Balmain, our cool, inner-city neighborhood, so we found a two-storey loft apartment to share.

She was nursing a broken heart over a guy who liked his ecstasy pills more than the type of ecstasy she was offering, I decided to go through my list of male friends to see if there were any I thought could be a possible match. And I found Joe: single and back from overseas after a stint working in the Macquarie Bank in London, I called him. As fate would have it, Joe just happened to be down the road at The London Hotel for a bucks’ night but was keen to meet up with us beforehand for a drink. Sure enough, over a few cold beers and a couple of cigarettes, the sparks flew between Joe and Lizzie. When Simon, Joe’s old flatmate was in town, the least Lizzie and Joe could both do was to repay the matchmaking favour.

‘Georgia, Joe’s friend Simon is in town from Los Angeles!’ exclaimed Lizzie after work one day as we popped a cork from our usual bottle of white on a Thursday night. ‘He’s working here for three weeks shooting a television commercial. He’s Australian and has been living in the United States for fifteen years. Wanna come have a drink with us? Don’t worry, it’s not an uncomfortable set-up. Just come along for a drink and leave soon after with an excuse if you don’t want to hang around,’ she added, eagerly suggesting that this could be a great foursome.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not.’ I’d like to romanticise that my meeting with Simon was all about serendipity but it wasn’t. Serendipity means stumbling across something of good fortune while looking for something else. I was in the market for finding my soulmate and this hunt being a numbers game, I was playing it as hard as I could. So I did. But while driving from Balmain across the Harbour Bridge to Neutral Bay, I felt butterflies in my stomach: the kind I had when I had to give a speech at a party. My intuition was going into overdrive because deep down I felt like this was going to be different.

‘Simon’s a really cool guy,’ said Joe, while jumping from Lizzie’s car and cramming ourselves like sardines in the back of Joe’s latest toy – his Audi TT convertible.

‘He’s done really well. He’s worked his way up the ranks of production to being a producer, which is a pretty big thing to be able to do in LA. I knew him when we were bartenders and partying at Hugh Hefner’s house,’ he explained as we sped off across the bridge again to get back into the city, mine and Lizzie’s hair starting to resemble Effie’s from Wogs Out Of Work.

‘You guys both bartended at Hugh Hefner’s house?’ I asked, incredulously.

‘Yeah, it was great. Just like you’d imagine, except I didn’t end up having such a great time. I met a girl called Spotlight who stole my wallet.’

‘Spotlight? That was her actual name?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, it really was,’ added Joe. ‘I’m telling you, Americans have the weirdest names, and they get away with it.’

‘Well, with a name like Spotlight I would think that’d be one big red neon light. Pun intended,’ said Lizzie very unimpressed.

‘When you’re at Hugh Hefner’s party and a hot dude called Brick who all the girls want, starts talking to you and you’re single, let me know what happens,’ said Joe, raising his eyebrows.

Simon was starting to sound a little bit fascinating. My previous boyfriend was obsessed with Hugh Hefner’s life and bimbos, secretly harbouring a desire to be just like him, and here I was about to meet a guy who had actually bartended at Hugh Hefner’s house. The man himself. I was imagining the stories Joe’s friend would be full of: lingerie-clad girls, cocaine lining the bars, endless bikini parties, Hef rolling around in his infamous grotto cave having orgies with unreal, blow-up doll look-a-like girls. Simon sounded intriguing. He had experienced a life some people halfway around the world would only dream about.

We slammed to a stop outside Sydney’s infamous ‘Toaster’ five-star hotel. Standing out front was a gorgeous blond guy so tall he verged on lanky. He’s not really my type at all, I thought at the time, even though I’ve never really had a type. The guy is awkward looking with those big lips and messy mane of blond hair, a bit too ‘surfer dude’ for me. Slightly disappointed I shifted into polite mode and stared out the window and geared myself up for a night of hanging out with some nice friends. While I thought about the Cosmopolitan cocktail at The Oyster Bar in Darlinghurst, Simon managed to cram all of his 6-foot, 4-inch frame into the Joe’s convertible Audi TT. And then something funny happened.

Slowly I found myself changing my tune. The easiness of Simon’s conversation and his interest and concern at Lizzie and I crouched in the back like two ‘possums’ as he called us, made me look at him in an entirely different light. He was more interested in the wellbeing of Lizzie and I than in Joe’s latest car. He was kind of, well, nice. Not to mention he’d begun looking more like the movie star ‘Lorenzo Lamas’ and less awkward. And his voice – a mixture of Australian and American, it was deep, soothing and pretty damn sexy. I knew I was moving into the throes of a very subtle and slow seduction.

Joe’s mission was to get us to his favourite inner-city bar fairly quickly. Speeding around Sydney city’s small little streets, Simon raved about loving Sydney, how he’d driven through Woollhara and wanted to buy a house there, and how the American crew