by Carmen Reid
Annie was feeling more than a little insulted now.
‘What about you?’ Annie decided to change tack, ‘what do you do?’
‘I’m at Elle Decoration. I’m an editorial assistant.’
‘That’s great and what about your friends?’
‘Well, Taylor, he’s the blond guy who seems sooooo interested in your daughter, he’s doing an internship at Vogue. He’s at college, majoring in journalism. Then Mick is at Elle with me. He’s one of the contributing editors, he writes about architecture and Donald is a news photographer. He’s with the New York Post.’
‘And you all kind of know Elena because of Sye?’ Annie asked.
‘Yeah. He’s crazy about her, I don’t think she has any idea.’
‘No. I don’t think she does.’
Silence.
Annie looked over at Lana again. Handsome blond – Taylor, she remembered – was leaning right over her; he looked as if he was about to kiss her.
Annie felt herself bristle.
But instead, Taylor turned and whispered in Lana’s ear.
‘So I guess,’ Miss Fringe went on, ‘even though you’re on television, you must eat carbs and everything. That would never happen over here. I know this girl who’s trying to get into presenting. She’s way, way thin and they still keep telling her she’s too fat to make it.’
Now Annie was bristling all over.
She turned to her wine glass, but she’d emptied it ages ago. No one had offered to buy her another and she wasn’t going up to the bar to be charged twenty quid for a second glass.
‘We have to go,’ she said, standing up abruptly, ‘Lana, do you remember? We said we’d have to be at the … the thing before midnight … so we have to go now.’
Lana looked up at her in dismay.
‘Vat thing?’ Elena asked, back just in time to hear this.
‘It’s a private thing,’ Annie said and now she felt torn. She didn’t want to drag Lana away, but she couldn’t take this any more. Carbs. Carbs! Of course she was allowed to eat carbs even though she was on TV. These people were absolutely mad. Obsessed. She couldn’t bear to sit beside them for another second.
‘Please, Lana,’ Annie added in a voice which was a little too pleading.
Lana turned to Taylor: ‘Lovely to meet you. I really mean that. I’m in New York for a few weeks. I hope we’ll bump into each other again.’
‘Bump into each other?’ Taylor asked, looking confused.
Obviously this was not an expression which crossed the Atlantic well.
‘See each other …’ Lana began but then blushed and came to a halt. Because even she knew what ‘seeing each other’ meant in US-speak.
‘Good-night.’ She smiled at the others then began to pick her way out of the banquette.
‘See you later,’ Elena offered.
As soon as they were outside the bar, Lana turned to her mother full throttle.
‘Why are we leaving? I was having the best time. I do not want to go home now. It’s early. You could have gone home on your own you know, you didn’t have to bring me into it. I’d have been fine with Elena.’
‘I didn’t want to leave you with Elena and those people. They all seemed really, really shallow,’ Annie said. She was feeling flustered.
‘Shallow? Because they work on magazines and take photos? You used to work in a fashion store and now you work in TV. I don’t think that makes you one teeny bit more deep and meaningful than they are,’ Lana stormed in reply.
‘You’re just angry because that guy didn’t ask for your number.’
‘So? Why shouldn’t I want him to ask for my number? Maybe if I’d been able to stay there and talk to him, he would have asked. Instead, I’m being dragged home by my mum like some six-year-old.’
‘Ouch.’
‘What did that girl say to you, anyway?’
‘What girl?’
‘You know, the one sitting beside you. One moment you were chatting away, the next you were standing up, wanting to leave. What did she say?’
‘Nothing.’
For several seconds they walked along the sidewalk together. A brisk wind had picked up and it felt surprisingly cold walking along in thin summer dresses without any coats.
‘Was it about your weight?’ Lana asked in a much calmer, gentler voice.
At first Annie said nothing.
Then she finally admitted: ‘Maybe.’
‘New Yorkers are very weight conscious.’
‘I’m very weight conscious,’ Annie protested, ‘but that doesn’t seem to help me. I just get bigger and bigger.’
‘Poor old Mum,’ Lana said and slipped her arm round Annie’s waist.
‘Can we have less of the “poor” and less of the “old”?’ Annie said, putting her hand over Lana’s and patting it. ‘I’m not even forty and I’ve got this gorgeous grown-up daughter who completely overshadows me. It takes getting used to, babes, it takes some getting used to. I can tell you.’
‘You’re lovely and you’re famous,’ Lana added kindly. ‘Can you walk in those shoes?’
When Annie nodded yes, Lana insisted they walk some of the way home.
‘I’m not going to get thin just by walking,’ Annie protested.
‘It’s a start though,’ Lana insisted.
‘I didn’t think Taylor looked very nice,’ Annie confided, ‘he was too handsome and very full of himself.’
‘Mum! Don’t say that. I really, really wanted him to ask for my number.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes!’
‘And you still came with me?’
‘Yes!’
‘That is very, very kind of you,’ Annie said.
‘I know. Too kind. But maybe he’ll ask Elena for my number. What do you think?’
Chapter Twelve
Librarian Lana:
Green capri trousers (Miss Selfridge)
Pink shirt with ruffles (New Look)
Green messenger bag (Fossil)
Yellow heels (borrowed from Elena)
Highly kissable pink lip gloss (Mac)
Total est. cost: $220
‘Shut up!’
When the first rays of sunshine stole in through the little kitchenette window the following morning, they found Lana deeply asleep on the sofa bed, her head shrouded with dreams of noisy New York streets and handsome New York men.
Annie was already at the café table, quietly tappity-tapping on the laptop. She was reading through her business email about fabric and factories, checking her personal email and looking at the photos Ed had just sent through this morning.
Her lovely babies were sitting on Owen’s lap eating something which looked worryingly like chocolate brownie! Ed must have been in charge of that. Dinah would never, ever let the twins have chocolate brownies.
‘What are they eating and should I be worried?’ she typed to Ed, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to reply for hours because he was already at school. She’d phone Dinah later in the day and make sure the babies were really absolutely fine. Dinah would tell her just exactly how well Ed was coping without her around.
Meanwhile, Annie had three factories not far from New York to call. She also had a list of discount fabric warehouses in the area. If they could somehow find some very cheap fabric, maybe they could use the remaining few thousand pounds just to get the very first dresses off the production line.
She and Elena were going to have a very busy day, so after switching on the coffee machine, Annie also decided to turn on the TV news at low volume to gently wake the household. It was 6.45a.m. Time to kick New York ass, no matter what time it had been when Elena had stumbled over their sofa bed in the dark last night.
With something of a groan, Lana opened her eyes, but then immediately put her hand up to shield them against the sunlight.
‘Just be grateful I only let you drink one Flirtini,’ Annie said.
‘What time is it?’ Lana asked.
‘Nearly 7a.m.,�
�� Annie replied.
‘Too early!’ came the shout from next door.
‘It’s never too early for New York,’ Annie called back, ‘we’ve got a busy day. I’ve got a whole list of factories and fabric suppliers, you need to drink coffee and help me call them all.’
A long, loud groan came from Elena’s bedroom.
‘Yeah and if you drank enough cocktails at that place to make you groan, you’re going to need to sell a serious amount of dresses.’
Elena entered the kitchen in her by now very familiar micro floral dressing gown.
‘Hey, Lana, I have message for you,’ she began, after a lengthy yawn. ‘Taylor give me his number for you. He make interview at New York Central Library today, he say if you come at 12.30, you can get special visitor library tour with him. Exciting, no?’
Lana sat up in a shot. ‘Really? Really! He wants me to come?’
The grin on Lana’s face was a joy to behold. Even though Annie thought Taylor was dangerously handsome and far too full of himself.
‘Uh-oh,’ Annie couldn’t help teasing, ‘very handsome young blond alert. Shark in the water, swim for your life.’
‘Muuuuum! Shut up!’
‘No, honestly, I think that’s lovely. A date in a library. A library tour – that sounds incredibly sweet, it sounds like the kind of date a mother dreams of her daughter going on.’
‘We talked about the library … but he never said anything about me coming along … what time, Elena? 12.30?’
Lana was already getting out of bed. She looked touchingly panicked.
‘Ya,’ Elena confirmed.
‘You can always call him to check,’ Annie suggested. ‘Take the number he gave Elena and call him after breakfast – even though I didn’t think he looked nearly nice enough for you.’
‘Muuuum! You didn’t even talk to him,’ Lana protested, ‘how can you tell what someone’s like just by looking at them?’
‘Life experience, darlin’,’ Annie said, but then immediately felt 100 years old. ‘I’ve met enough men to be able to size them up in seconds. Just based on their haircuts and taste in shirts, I can tell you so much about them … but you – you’ve got to get out there and meet many more before you can make judgements as quickly as me. So you have to call him.’
Lana looked at her in astonishment.
‘What?’ Annie asked. ‘It’s not as if I’ve asked you to marry him … just call him. No big deal.’
‘Ya. NBD,’ Elena added.
‘I have a date, at the New York Central Library with a writer who’s working at Vogue. This is way cool. This is beyond cool,’ Lana gasped, then she began to rummage through her things in search of her mobile.
‘Let me guess? There are some important people who need to be kept up to date with this exciting development?’ Annie asked.
‘Definitely! Susie is not going to believe me. I’ll have to take pictures to prove it. Do you think you’re allowed to take pictures there?’
‘No idea,’ Annie replied.
‘What’s your hot date outfit?’ Elena asked.
When Lana looked blank in response, Elena kindly offered: ‘You can come look in my room, see if something you like.’
‘Not too …’ Annie began, but then bit her lip, it was just too strange when you heard warnings your own mother had once made issuing from your lips. Not too short, not too tight, not too sexy … was, of course, what she wanted to say. But Lana was almost 18, she had the total hots for this boy and probably wanted to wear the shortest, tightest, sexiest thing she could get her hands on.
‘Not too … ?’ Lana asked her mum with a mischievous smile.
‘Not too fashion,’ Annie replied, ‘boys don’t understand fashion.’
‘Even if they work for Vogue?’
‘Oh yes … he works for Vogue. Well, that’s different then.’
‘Come and help me choose something,’ Lana offered and then made Annie’s heart melt by adding: ‘you’re always good at helping me decide what to wear.’
‘Aw!’ Annie said and in an instant all the stand-up rows she’d had with Lana in changing rooms right across London were forgotten. Well … temporarily.
As Lana and Annie stood on the threshold of Elena’s tiny bedroom for the first time, they realized that they didn’t have a hope of actually entering. The sliding doors of her fitted closet were open and a mountain of clothes was spilling out. Plus every inch of floor space was taken up with bulging carrier bags, piled on top of each other in untidy heaps. In on corner of the room they reached all the way up to the ceiling.
‘Whoa, I don’t want to see your excess luggage bill when you head back to London,’ Annie said jokily, thinking, Unless this is all sample dresses in sample sizes … then hello, we have a problem.
Some of Elena’s helpless shrugs and despondent moods were making a little more sense to Annie now. How could someone living in a room like this ever feel she was going to get anything done?
Maybe Elena was feeling a lot worse than Annie had imagined. Everyone had a weakness, everyone had a thing they did when they were stressed out and all was not going well. Annie had somehow become a stress eater. Elena was possibly a stress shopper.
Lana gazed at the room in silence. Her own room back home was, on occasion, messy, just like any self-respecting teenage girl’s. But this … to Lana this was a crime. She knew Elena must have loads of fabulous things to wear in this room, but how on earth could she even find them?
‘You know what? There’s a pair of cute capris in my bag and a lovely shirt to go with them. I think I’d really like to wear those,’ Lana announced, not wanting to stand and look at this chaos any longer, let alone be invited into it.
‘Why don’t you get dressed too, love?’ Annie suggested to Elena. ‘Tomorrow, we have a factory to visit, upstate. Today, I have three fabric warehouses in Brooklyn on my list. You have to come with me because I’m definitely going to need your help to find enough fabric to make 300 dresses for £3,000.’
‘Impossible,’ came the response.
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing is impossible and you have to believe me here because I’ve got so many ways of proving that.’ Annie shot her a little wink, then closed the bedroom door, so Elena could get dressed in her clothes whirlwind in peace.
Annie suddenly felt a rush of maternal feeling for Elena. She was only 23, she was trying to run a big and brave new business and she had a pretty unusual family backdrop. Svetlana was her real mother, but had only been in her life for a couple of years. Elena could probably do with all the support she could get.
Annie went back into the little sitting room and tidied away the sofa bed, waiting for Lana to emerge from the bathroom.
‘A triumph!’ Annie declared when she set eyes on her daughter, who was in a pink ruffled shirt and mint green capris, her face all dewy lip gloss and blusher.
Sexy? Yes, as the shirt was unbuttoned low, but she was still sweet and perfect for a library date … even one with a Vogue writer.
Annie smiled as she realized that, back in London, Lana had only ever worn black.
Chapter Thirteen
Elena over-dressed in Brooklyn:
Pink, yellow and green dress (Missoni via Svetlana)
Brown belt (Gap)
High green suede sandals (Gucci via
Designer Shoe Warehouse)
Purple tote (Marc Jacobs sale)
Total est. cost: $450
‘Eighteen per cent.’
The subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn was underground all the way downtown and underneath the East River but it came up out of the tunnel at Carroll Street station. From here, it moved through the streetscape of this New York neighbourhood giving Annie and Elena a view of everything that was going on.
All around Carroll Gardens, the beautiful old brownstone buildings were cleaned up, repaired and restored to their former glory. There was fresh paint, gleaming front doors, window-boxes, bright green gardens, and along the sidewalks nannies
pushed babies about in designer prams. The play parks were full of small children, water fountains and yummy mummies.
But within a stop or two, the landscape began to change. Still the same brownstone, picturesque, nineteenth-century four- and five-storey houses. But here they looked shabby and run-down. Windows were broken, hung with towels or boarded up. Graffiti sprawled across abandoned play parks. On the street corners, gangs of teen boys hung about looking tough.
‘I thought Brooklyn was all fashionable and up and coming?’ Annie asked Elena.
‘Maybe only has one nice part?’ Elena suggested.
The two women looked out of place in the subway car now. For a start they were white, when every other person was black. Plus, they were just too showily dressed for a trip to this part of town. For the first time, nice shoes, nice bag, nice dress made Annie feel vulnerable instead of powerful.
It hadn’t escaped her attention how segregated parts of New York were compared with London. According to Elena, even Central Park was carved out into black, white and Hispanic areas. There were no fences, it was all voluntary, but people just kept to their respective areas and seemed to feel more comfortable that way.
As the train pulled up, Annie stood up and took a long look out of the window. It was a grey and grimy urban scene. Low brick warehouses were decorated with loops of barbed wire on their roofs and graffiti murals all over their walls.
‘And I thought working in the fashion industry in New York would be sooo glamorous,’ she told Elena as they stepped out onto the platform and took surreptitious glances at their map, so as not to look like total victims.
‘Bet there are places much tougher than this in the Ukraine?’ she asked as they walked out of the subway station and towards Discount Fabric Warehouse number one.
‘Ya, of course, and I stay away from them,’ Elena answered. But she was carrying herself tall and confidently all of a sudden, like a girl who knew just how to act when she was in a rough street.
Not that this part of Brooklyn looked terrifying. It was broad daylight, grannies were out with their small grandchildren, shopping in the tiny Korean stores. It just looked shabby and poor.
‘So where did you grow up? Did you have nice people looking after you?’ Annie asked. She’d never dared to ask Elena this before, but now that they were walking along together with their mission ahead of them, Elena seemed slightly more at ease and more approachable.