Amid the fake snow of a ritzy farmer's market favoured by health-conscious locals in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, two tanned blondes are lunching on salad and designer water.
To the casual observer it is a familiar scene a couple of young mums sharing gossip about husbands, children and shopping.
The two women in question are actress Denise Richards and estate agent Brooke Mueller. And the man who has dominated their discussions? Hollywood star Charlie Sheen husband of Mueller and hated ex of Richards. The current and former Mrs Sheen have struck up an unlikely alliance against him.
All of which can only add to the problems facing the actor, who spent Christmas in jail after allegedly attacking wife number three, Mueller, in a drunken rage.
Former Bond girl Richards' 2006 divorce from Sheen was one of the most bitter and bloody in Hollywood history.
She accused him of being a violent gambling addict with a taste for internet pornography.
Nonetheless, Sheen, the highest paid star on US television with his role in hit comedy Two and a Half Men, is said to be "panic-stricken" at the prospect of the two women ganging up on him.
Last week the respected US showbusiness website Radar Online reported that 44-year-old Sheen is terrified his latest fall from grace could jeopardise his contract.
LA was buzzing with rumours that Sheen, who is said to have been drinking prior to attacking his wife at her home in the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, is thinking of checking into rehab. Is he finally facing up to his problems? "He's got to be seen to be doing something about the difficulties he's got in his life," one of his team said. "He needs to explain his problems to the public."
Meanwhile, his manager Mark Burg is said to be talking to broadcasters about the actor going on live television to offer a mea culpa.
That might be a good idea after a tape recording of Mueller's emergency call to police was released last week in which she claimed her husband had threatened to kill her with a knife during the Christmas Day scuffle.
Mueller is later reported to have told police that Sheen had attacked her after she told him she wanted a divorce and planned to stop him gaining custody of their nine-month-old twins Max and Bob.
Mockery
If convicted of assault, the star faces up to a year in jail. Not that the inside of a prison cell is uncharted territory for Sheen, whose CV includes run-ins with police, rehab, hookers and a boast that he has slept with 5,000 women.
The incident makes something of a mockery of Sheen's claims that he is fin-ally ready to settle down and grow up.
This latest controversy threatens to reignite the bitter custody battle with Richards, who has accused him of being violent and a poor father. Their venomous divorce culminated last year in 38-year-old Richards accusing Sheen of inappropriately touching their daughters Samantha, five, and four-year-old Lola.
But when those claims were thrown out by a judge last year, Sheen claimed his ex was trying to drum up publicity for her ailing US reality show It's Complicated.
Which could be an apt title for Sheen's memoirs. His love life was just as messy. When he was 19, his girlfriend gave birth to a daughter, now 25. Then, while he was engaged to actress Kelly Preston, who later married John Travolta, she received stitches after a shooting incident which he insisted was the result of his gun going off by mistake.
After the breakdown of that relationship, Sheen dated porn star Ginger Lynn for two years and in 1995 he married model Donna Peele, though the union lasted barely eight months.
That year he was called to give evidence in the trial of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, during which he admitted to hiring at least 27 of her call girls.
Then the following year, he was put on probation after attacking his girlfriend Brittany Ashfield.
As his life spiralled out of control, Sheen suffered a massive overdose after injecting cocaine in 1998.
Inevitably, Sheen's career stalled until in 2003 he landed the role of Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men. But it did nothing to cure him of his appetite for excess.
He married Richards in 2002, but within months there were rumours of his drunken rages.
In 2005, after three years of tumultuous marriage, Richards, six months pregnant with their second child, issued divorce papers.
In court, Richards produced voicemail messages left by Sheen in which he said he hoped she would "rot in f***ing hell".
No surprise, then, that in recent months Sheen's current wife Mueller has found his ex, Richards, a sympathetic ear as she deals with her own disintegrating relationship with the explosive star. She is, after all, just the latest woman to discover the dark side of the increasingly out-of-control Sheen.
