Celebrity Shopper

by Carmen Reid

  Once Annie had answered these questions, gushing as much as she possibly could about her Ukrainian friends and their ‘totally genius’ dress line, she was hit by Vickie’s more awkward line of questioning.

  ‘So your friend Connor McCabe. He’s been dropped from The Manor and he’s not found any other work yet?’ Vickie asked, in a voice just as pleasant as if she’d said something incredibly nice about Connor, instead of something incredibly rude.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly talk about Connor,’ was Annie’s immediate response, ‘other than to tell you he’s been my friend for ever and he’s a fantastic guy, a really funny, really kind, fantastic person. He’s just as good a friend as he is an actor,’ she went on, although they hadn’t spoken since his grumpy text, ‘and …’ Suddenly she remembered the unflattering front cover photo she’d seen at the airport. ‘… he’s totally buff.’

  Had that been Pssst! magazine? The thought flashed through Annie’s mind. Was this woman from the magazine that was about to publish an interview with her dad?

  ‘You often talk about your mum in interviews, Annie,’ Vickie went on, ‘but you never mention your dad.

  Annie scrutinized Vickie more closely.

  She was young, maybe twenty-five, with a sharp blond bob, thin lips and penetrating blue eyes. She was trying to make her face look friendly and kind, but the hungry nosiness behind her questions stared out from behind the thin smile.

  ‘I’ve not seen or heard from my dad since I was thirteen years old,’ Annie answered calmly, determined not to show how rattled she was by this question, ‘so you’ll understand that he’s not exactly a big part of my life.’

  ‘Oh goodness!’ Vickie was pretending to look surprised, but not succeeding very well. ‘So you’ve not heard from him … you’ve no idea where he is or what he’s doing?’

  ‘No,’ Annie said firmly, but inside she felt a churn of worry. ‘Do you know something about him?’ she asked sharply.

  Vickie immediately exclaimed: ‘No! Of course not,’ but she looked down at her notebook as she said it and Annie thought there was a trace of guilt about her. ‘Thank you so much for your time!’ Vickie added.

  Vickie?

  Didn’t Dinah say a journalist called Vickie had phoned her?

  ‘Hey!’ Annie called out, but Vickie’s back was already turned and she was stepping away quickly just as Svetlana swooped down on Annie.

  ‘There is someone over here who is desperate to meet my Annah.’

  And that was it. When Annie next looked over in search of Vickie, she had gone.

  ‘Mmmm. I’ll have to think about it and come back to you.’

  If Elena heard this line once again from one more buyer, she would scream.

  No one had yet committed to a single sale. No one had told her anything overwhelmingly positive. All the buyers she’d spoken to so far could at best be described as ‘lukewarm’ about the dresses.

  All the money was gone and, so far, neither Elena nor Svetlana had made one single sale.

  As she watched the buyer to whom she’d just delivered a long and impassioned pitch walk through the chain-link fence towards a waiting taxi, the young photographer she’d noticed during the show walked towards her, raised his camera and reeled off a couple of snaps.

  ‘I think you have enough pictures,’ she told him with a slightly exasperated smile.

  He shook his head and, now that she was finally looking at him, took a whole load more.

  ‘You can’t have enough photos, it’s impossible,’ he said eventually, emerging from behind the camera. He had a square and unexpectedly handsome face.

  ‘And you are … ?’ Elena asked haughtily.

  ‘Sye Westhoven, freelance photographer, working today for Women’s Wear Daily,’ he said with a light transatlantic accent.

  ‘The website?’ Elena asked, more than a touch dismissively.

  ‘No, the magazine,’ he replied, not taking his intense look from her face.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get into the magazine?’ Elena was trying to hide her excitement.

  ‘Well, what with your burning bride and your famous mother, I’d have thought the chances were … hmmm … about a hundred per cent,’ he answered.

  Inside Elena’s clutch bag, her BlackBerry began to vibrate, so, turning away from Sye with an ‘excuse me’, she snapped open the bag and answered.

  She didn’t hear the whirr which meant he was photographing her again.

  Sye pushed his straight, dirty blond hair behind his ears, scrunched up his eye to get a better look through the viewfinder and moved round to the side of Elena once again.

  He liked her face. He liked it very much. He’d looked at hundreds, probably thousands of pretty faces before and usually they didn’t move him a great deal because he no longer enjoyed perfection in features. He liked a face that was interesting, one full of character, just like Elena’s, with its determined little frown between the eyebrows, steely cool eyes and, by contrast, the lusciously full mouth.

  He tried to keep his eyes focused on the face because if he looked too long at the knockout figure in the dress beneath … well, then all concentration on his work threatened to be lost.

  When her call was over, Elena turned to Sye again. ‘Have you taken my mother’s picture?’ she asked, sounding very professional.

  He gave a nod.

  ‘The models?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘The woman in the red dress, over there, she’s a famous TV person in Britain.’

  Sye nodded again. He was looking at her with a little too much concentration for Elena’s liking.

  ‘Then I think you’re all done here, aren’t you?’ she asked with a smile.

  He nodded, lifted his camera and banged off another frame of her.

  ‘I think that’s rude!’ she exclaimed.

  He did it again.

  ‘Hey!’ she said.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t think you look old enough to be co-running a dress label.’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped back, but then to her surprise, found herself asking: ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-three,’ he answered back, without hesitation, ‘so now you have to tell me your age.’

  ‘No deal was made,’ she informed him. ‘Anyway, you look much older than twenty-three.’

  ‘I lead a hard life,’ he replied. He raised an eyebrow, challenging her to tell him her age.

  When Elena said nothing, he guessed: ‘I don’t think you’re a day over twenty-two, are you?’

  ‘That is for me to know—’

  ‘And for me to find out,’ he answered. He was looking at her very intently again: ‘I liked the dresses, but they’re not very European. More American, I think. Simple, professional, American.’

  Elena shrugged and made no reply to this. She was looking at him too. She took in his thick white cotton shirt, hanging from broad shoulders, efficiently rolled up at the sleeves. He wore a woven leather bracelet on his tanned wrist … and now she was looking at his tanned hands, pliant and capable around the camera.

  She was – she realized with something of a shock – going to have to admit to herself that she had never felt so strongly and yet so inappropriately and inconveniently attracted to someone in her whole life.

  Now she didn’t seem to be able to stop looking at him. She couldn’t help noticing all sorts of small and enticing details. He was wearing hiking boots, for goodness’ sake. How uncool was that? His grey multiple-pocketed combat trousers were grubby and hung loosely from his wiry frame.

  But if she let her eyes dwell on the slim hips, she was going to lose herself. She was going to start panting with want.

  The want was right there at the back of her throat, drying it out, making it hard to speak to him and definitely widening her pupils like tell-tale saucers.

  ‘Elena!’ someone shouted out behind.

  She turned to see Rich, Annie’s cameraman, stridin
g towards her.

  ‘Oh, hello there.’ She tried to make this sound as disinterested and professional as she could. She didn’t for one moment want Sye to imagine that …

  But Rich walked right up to her, dared to kiss her on the cheek and squeeze hard at her waist. ‘Brilliant, brilliant show!’ he grinned. ’I’ve not had the chance to tell you how much I loved it. It was sensational, it’s going to be the talk of the town. And as for the TV footage – fan-bloody-tastic!’

  He hadn’t let go of her.

  She squirmed in his grasp, wanting to get out of it as quickly as possible.

  ‘I’ve spotted the woman over there from Browns in London, she’s probably dying to talk to you,’ Rich added and, with a little nod at Sye, he steered Elena, before she could even protest, in the direction of a very chic, very important-looking woman.

  Glancing over her shoulder back at Sye, Elena saw him give her a little salute and a wink. Then he picked up his camera bag, tied a lightweight anorak round his waist and was gone.

  Elena’s heart sank like a stone.

  Even though her head kept telling her that she could never, ever want a man who wore an anorak.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The girl from British Vogue:

  Pale pink strapless chiffon (Temperly)

  Black cropped jacket (vintage, Oxfam)

  Black shoe-boots (Manolos from the Vogue cupboard)

  Total est. cost: £460

  ‘It is so hard to break through.’

  ‘You are absolutely loving this, aren’t you?’ Rich asked as he trained the camera close up to Annie’s face.

  She just nodded and smiled. She couldn’t think of anything to say, she was too busy looking and drinking in the wonderful scene. Ever since she was a teenager, Annie had searched for fashion: in shops all over London, of course, in the racks of carefully wrapped clothes which had come into The Store at the start of every season and in the preview videos of high-street collections she now religiously scanned for her TV audience. But right here, in this ornate, chandeliered and gilded room, the George V’s blue ballroom, Annie finally felt as if she had reached the epicentre, the beating heart of fashion.

  Svetlana, of course, had been the woman with the invitation to this glittering fashion world cocktail party. But because she wanted company, she had swept Elena, Annie, even Rich and his camera along in her wake, merely flashing a severe look and her monumental diamond necklace at the security man who had dared to raise an eyebrow at her ‘entourage’.

  A quick conversation with Ed had assured Annie that the sickly babies and the patched-up roof would be fine, at least until she made it home much later tonight. So for a few happy hours, Annie planned to people-watch, celebrity spot and generally revel in the fashion buzz.

  The room was packed. Waiters were struggling to break through with their trays of champagne flutes and canapés.

  Every so often in the crowd, Annie would catch a glimpse of a famous face and feel the urge to go over and congratulate them on all the wonderful work she knew they’d done over the years: every careful hem, every daring new angle on a trouser leg. She felt as if she had been studying the work of these creators for so long.

  ‘Do you think I can just go over and say hello to a designer?’ Annie asked Rich. ‘You don’t think that would be too pushy … or too star-struck?’

  ‘Go for it!’ he urged her. ‘Introduce yourself to Karl Lagerfeld. I just saw him over in the corner.’ Rich, in typical, subtle chimpanzee fashion, pointed.

  ‘No!’ Annie moved his hand down immediately. ‘I thought I’d start maybe with Ren Pearce – you know, of Pearce Fionda? He’s just over there.’ She moved her eyes tactfully in the direction of the London designer. ‘I think I have to, I want to invite him on to the show … he can talk about how to look slinky.’

  ‘Give him a whirl,’ Rich urged.

  ‘Right,’ Annie decided, allowing herself another little swig of bubbly for courage, ‘but you are definitely to keep your distance,’ she warned her cameraman.

  ‘Long lens,’ he assured her, ‘strictly long lens.’

  In the midst of the achingly fashionable crowd, Elena was deep in conversation with a girl from British Vogue. They were talking fabrics, next season’s colours and importing costs.

  ‘It is so hard to break through,’ the girl was sympathizing; she’d heard about Elena’s struggle to start up and all the things that had gone wrong with the show. Still, Elena was almost certain that Perfect Dress was going to be featured in one of the autumn editions. She was silently congratulating herself when she felt a touch on her waist.

  It was very gentle, the slightest of touches; it could just have been someone brushing past in their hunt for a champagne waiter or a canapé tray, but nevertheless, Elena turned.

  There right up close behind her was Sye Westhoven, just as casually dressed as he was earlier today, despite the full-on glamour of the crowd.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I thought you might be here.’

  ‘Did you?’ The surprise in her voice was obvious. ‘So what …?’ she began, and then wondered what on earth she was going to ask him, because the incredible excitement of seeing him again had made her forget.

  ‘I don’t have enough photos of you,’ he told her still with that fixed, challenging, slightly amused look on his face, ‘definitely not. Not nearly enough photos.’ Turning to the Vogue girl, he said, ‘Can you excuse us for a moment? There are a few extra shots I need to take … outside if possible?’

  ‘I see,’ the girl said and looked Sye up and down disapprovingly.

  Elena understood that look. It was the kind of look she too might have given a young photographer in a wilted white shirt and grubby combats whose hair was rumpled and overgrown and who accessorized with several Nikons on brightly coloured straps.

  But …

  She certainly wasn’t shooting that look at Sye. Not right now.

  Elena felt Sye take hold of her hand. Wordlessly, he led her out of the thick crowd, past fabulous women in even more fabulous dresses, past pampered and powdered fashion power brokers, through white and gilded double doors and into the cool marble splendour of the hotel’s lobby.

  There, they didn’t have to give another single word of explanation, they just turned to face each other, Elena’s hand still in his, and they began, without a heartbeat of thought, to kiss.

  Kiss and kiss … breathtakingly hungry, startling, electrifying kisses that meant only one thing, that they were just the very start of something incredibly powerful. Kisses that ached for somewhere to go.

  Annie was just beginning her weave through the crowd in the direction of Ren Pearce when she suddenly felt a hand on her arm, pulling her back.

  ‘There you are!’ It was Svetlana. ‘What you think of this man? I show you. He very important.’ Her voice had dropped as close to a whisper as she could manage. ‘Owns two fantastic shops in London, another in Paris and one in Milano and look how young he is and how handsome.’

  Annie finally homed in on the man Svetlana was steering them towards. He was handsome: a dark, strong-jawed, immaculately dressed specimen. He spotted Svetlana coming and gave a smile in their direction.

  ‘He’s not homosexual, I check,’ Svetlana added through the smile she had set on her face, ‘and he is single. This is very, very exciting.’

  ‘Why?’ Annie hissed at her. ‘You’re not single … and neither am I.’

  ‘Tcha!’ came Svetlana’s disdainful response. ‘Not for us. I think he will be perfect for Elena. They meet, he buy dresses, they go out, he buy more dresses … Hello again,’ she said warmly as the man was now within earshot. ‘Dominic, meet my friend Annah Valentine who have very, very important fashion show on television in Britain. You know how important television is to the poor British people. The weather so bad they can never leave their over-priced houses … but you must meet my beautiful, clever daughter. She is brains behind Perfect Dress. I am just looking all round the room for her.’<
br />
  Annie smiled and shook Dominic’s hand. Sadly, she glanced over to see Ren Pearce move in the direction of the door, but then he was stopped by another small group of people who obviously wanted a few words with him.

  If she wanted to talk to him too, she was going to have to be quick.

  ‘Where Elena?’ Svetlana snapped, searching the room with concentration now. ‘You know?’ She directed the question at Rich who was standing behind her shoulder with his camera.

  ‘No,’ he answered, but he did look almost guilty because he had been wondering exactly the same thing himself. Where was Elena? He had been filming her from a distance and trying to work up the courage to ask her for a drink after the party; then he’d spoken to Annie and now he’d totally lost sight of Svetlana’s daughter.

  ‘Dominic, after the party, you come up to our suite and have a drink with us. I’m sure we find Elena and you can meet her there.’

  Annie, who could still feel Svetlana’s hand on her arm, supposed she was included in this plan. Now she felt conflicted. On the one hand, yes, she definitely wanted to see Svetlana and Elena’s suite at the George V. On the other hand, this party was due to finish at 4 p.m., which gave her almost two whole shopping hours on the wonderful streets surrounding the hotel before she had to head to the airport for her flight.

  There were presents to buy for her family, but there was also that pair of shoes at Chanel. When she’d first seen them, spotlit on a pink velvet cushion in the window, she hadn’t really considered them. But now she found that they were stealing into her thoughts. At totally unexpected moments she would realize, like the solution to a puzzle, how well they would fit with that pair of trousers or how amazing they would look with that particular skirt. She had already decided that she must go to the shop, she would love to look round the Chanel shop in Paris anyway … she would just ask if they had the shoes in her size. Almost certainly they wouldn’t. Then the problem of whether or not to spend five hundred pounds on a pair of shoes wouldn’t really come up. Would it?