Lisa Heidke by Lucy (mobi) (rosie project .TXT) 📕

dance to Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’. A surprising number of them are wearing togas.

‘Hasn’t changed much, has it?’ says Gloria, taking a wine glass from a waitress dressed as an exotic Egyptian princess.

I nod and sip. ‘It’s weird how the faces are older but they have fewer wrinkles.’ I’m also aware of the number of older men with much younger women on their arms.

‘There are some new faces as well, darling,’ says Gloria, making a beeline for a dark-haired man wearing a jazzy leopard-print skivvy, his right arm in a sling.

‘How the fuck have you been?’ says a voice in my ear.

I jump backwards. It’s Gracie Gardener, my nemesis.

I hate to admit it, but she looks great, despite having cocaine mouth and eating her lips. She’s wearing a black Max Mara diamanté cardigan. I know it’s Max Mara because I tried it on a few weeks ago and it looked positively frumpy on me.

‘I thought you were dead, Lucy.’

‘I thought you were in rehab.’

‘Very funny. Did you hear I landed the Seasons gig?

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.’

I’m nodding when she adds, ‘The directors said they knocked back loads of wannabes.’

Thank God, I think, as she zigzags off into the crowd, utterly out of it. I drink faster and say ‘Hi’ to people I don’t know and don’t care to.

‘You look great,’ says someone with feathers in their silver hair. Another person, of indeterminable sex, offers me ecstasy and a ride in their silver Porsche. I hesitate before declining. Who am I kidding? I’m too old to be taking ecstasy, as much as it might provide a welcome change from sauvignon blanc.

An utterly gorgeous woman of giraffe-like proportions glides past me, her head bobbing as she greets the assembled throng. She spots Mini, a girl with bouncy brunette hair who I was at NIDA with. Mini looks stunning but then she’s had a facelift - or six. Her eyes have that startled gazelle look and her chiselled Nicole Kidman nose is a neon sign for a fine plastic surgeon. The giraffe is wearing black Marc Jacobs boots with heels at least twelve centimetres high. I’m mesmerised as she pounces on Mini and they expertly execute an enthusiastic hug and double air kiss without quite touching. It’s magnificent to watch.

I spy Gracie Gardener again, with a small group of admirers, and overhear snippets of conversation. ‘They were so relieved to see me audition . . . after all the dregs they’d had to suffer,’ she says in a stage whisper, running her gnarly fingers through her over-bleached hair. It takes all of my willpower not to interrupt and tell her admirers about her humble beginnings as Darlene, a fifteen-year-old checkout chick at the Blacktown Coles supermarket.

‘You look unhappy,’ says an attractive young gladiator beside me.

‘Well, I’m not,’ I lie. I’ve seen him before but can’t quite place him.

‘Fuck, I’d hate to see you when you’re unhappy then,’ he laughs, and lights up a cigarette. ‘Want one?’

I shake my head and wonder what the hell I’m doing here surrounded by gorgeous people, some barely past their teens. My new friend was no doubt playing with Tonka trucks while I read Dolly magazine to find out if my boyfriend of the time was a cosmic match.

‘Yeah, filthy habit,’ he says. ‘Hey, I know you. Weren’t you the babe in The Young Residents?’

I wonder if that’s code for ‘What happened? You’re an old scrubber now.’

‘I’m Rock, by the way,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘Rock Hardy.’

I want to laugh out loud but shake his hand instead.

‘I’ve seen your commercials,’ he says, and smiles. ‘Don’t you want to go back to acting though?’

After a brief pause to confabulate I say, ‘I’m thinking about doing this show MTV are producing, you know, the first hip-hop reality sitcom, but it’s still hush-hush.’

I’m just starting to enjoy lying through my teeth when Gloria and one of her charges, Petrea, walk into the conversation.

‘Hello, Rock. Looking gorgeous, as always,’ says Gloria, kissing him playfully on the lips.

‘Look, everyone,’ says Petrea, brandishing a calendar and a joint, ‘I’m Ms September!’

Petrea is in the midst of a crisis. She’s just turned thirty and is terrified of being usurped by younger, better-looking and thinner models. Hence, she recently posed naked for a Sydney radio station charity calendar. Hopes are high the exposure will reignite her modelling career. I know this from Gloria’s indiscreet gossiping. God knows what she tells people about me.

Gloria introduces Petrea to Rock. They laugh, telling Gloria they’ve known each other for yonks. I find myself wondering if they’ve slept together, and then wonder why I’m wondering.

‘Bald head at two o’clock,’ says Gloria, spying one of the ‘it’ girls of the moment, sans hair. Her name? Summer Ashcroft. ‘Shaving your head is de rigueur, Luce. Think Cate Blanchett in Heaven, Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 -’

‘Demi Moore in Striptease,’ I add.

‘It wasn’t bloody Striptease.’

‘Whatever. I wouldn’t do it.’

‘Suit yourself. That’s why little Summer over there gets the gigs.’

‘Really? It’s got nothing to do with the fact she’s sixteen, ten-foot tall and looks sensational in a bikini? I doubt if I shaved my head it would have the same effect. Were my breasts ever that high?’

‘Look,’ Gloria says, ignoring me, ‘there are people at the bar doing cocaine.’

She’s about to make her way over there when a commotion breaks out near us. It involves Gracie and her ex-husband, Edwin.

‘What’s her problem tonight?’ I whisper to Gloria.

‘See that guy with his arm around Edwin?’ she replies.

A theatre critic with The Australian newspaper, Edwin has a gaunt, elegant frame and is wearing crocodile-skin trousers, a black poloneck cashmere jumper and black boots with a five-centimetre heel. The guy Gloria is referring to is dressed similarly and holds a cigarette between his middle and ring finger. As I watch, Edwin throws his head back and laughs at something the young (very young) and pretty guy has just said.

‘That’s Marcus, Edwin’s new friend,’ says Gloria.

‘No! Edwin’s pushing forty-five. Marcus must be