Late Night Shopping

by Carmen Reid

  Annie could hear the trill of her mobile from her office. Secure in the knowledge that Paige was happy and definitely about to buy quite a few things, she asked if it would be OK to take the call.

  As she picked up the phone, she checked the screen. The number was unfamiliar and it certainly wasn't one of Ed's.

  'Ahnnie!!! How are you?'

  Annie was delighted to hear the booming tones of Mr B coming to her all the way from Italy.

  'Your bags are with the courier,' he told her. 'Did you speak with Harrods?'

  The completely true answer to this was, to be precise, 'No'. But because Annie was sure that she would speak to Harrods and that Harrods would at least want to see her, she didn't think it was so far-fetched to answer, 'Yes! They're going to see me next week.'

  'Fantastico!'

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Nic's new look:

  Black, lime and cream tunic (Dorothy Perkins maternity)

  Black pencil skirt with elasticated tummy gusset

  (Formes maternity)

  Black boots (Hobbs)

  Lime bag (Hobbs)

  Total est. cost: £380

  'I can't believe I'm going to go through the whole turning

  into a hippopotamus thing again.'

  As Annie smoothed down Owen's hair and kissed him goodnight, he quietly asked the question he'd been meaning to ask all evening.

  'Mum, is Ed coming back?'

  'Oh babes, I hope so,' Annie told him. 'Would you like him to come back?'

  Although the bedroom was dark, Annie could see that Owen was nodding.

  'So, what's happened?' Owen asked next.

  'We've had an argument . . . that's all, really.'

  'Well can't you just make up? I have arguments with Lana all the time.'

  'I know, but we're grown-ups . . . we're much more . . .'

  'Stubborn?' Owen offered when Annie struggled for a word.

  'Maybe,' she agreed with a little laugh. 'Did you see Ed in school today?' was her next question.

  'I saw him and he waved at me and smiled, but we didn't have a lesson with him, so I never got to talk to him. I walked home with Lana, like you told me. I like that you're going to come home early now that Ed isn't here.'

  'Oh, well . . .'

  Arranging several days of temporary cover so that she could leave work at 6.30 and come home to look after her children hadn't exactly been easy and she didn't know how long she could keep it up. A week at the most. Then there was the lost commission to consider. Surely she and Ed would have made up by the end of the week? This couldn't go on for much longer, could it?

  'Don't worry about us, OK?' she told Owen. 'Sleep tight and I'm sure it's all going to look different in the morning.'

  'G'night,' Owen yawned and gave her a sweet little kiss on the cheek.

  Closing the door on Owen's room, Annie considered knocking on Lana's but then decided she would leave it for a bit. Their suppertime conversation hadn't exactly gone brilliantly. Annie hadn't meant to bring up Andrei or ask anything upsetting at all. But somehow she'd asked about school and Lana had mentioned Greta and before either of them could stop themselves they were talking about Andrei and whether or not it was true about Daisy, and Annie soon heard herself declaring, 'If it is true, don't even bother making up with him. I definitely don't want to see him again, even if you do. He's not welcome here. Anyone who hurts your feelings totally hurts mine.'

  Which resulted, as she could have predicted, in Lana shouting, 'I don't want to talk to you about this!' storming out and heading for her room, declaring that she had 'tons of homework' to do.

  'I'm sorry, Lana,' Annie called to her daughter on the other side of the closed door.

  For a moment she heard the frantic keyboard-bashing stop, but then it started up again, so Annie decided it would be best to try again later. Right now, she would stick with her plan to go downstairs to the main bedroom, where she would fling open the doors of her wardrobes, haul everything out and get busy in there.

  Half an hour later, great armfuls of clothes were heaped all over the double bed, a huge tangle of colours and fabrics, styles and labels, impulse buys and 'investments', cheap thrills and expensive flings. There were a lot of dresses, because Annie hated suits, was 'so over' jeans and didn't seem to suit any of this year's trouser styles. Anyway, dresses were her thing right now. They could be smart. They could be casual. They could be warm as well as cool. And buying a dress meant you didn't have to worry about choosing a skirt and three different tops to go with it.

  So she began to look through the dress mountain critically. Anything with bell-shaped angel sleeves was going straight to eBay. She'd decided after three – no . . . five – dresses that it was a loser look on anyone over fifteen. Plus the sleeves dangled, they got into the washingup bowl, they scooped up ketchup from the corner of your plate; even more alarmingly they got singed on the gas when you removed the pasta from the hob.

  Much, much better was the balloon sleeve, preferably three-quarter length with a narrow cuff holding the fabric in check. Now that was elegant, especially if the top of the sleeve was tight and it ballooned from just above the elbow. Yes, all of those dresses were staying. Along with the Michael Kors shirt dress and the Chloé shirt dress . . . but no, no, the zebra print D&G, that was off. It was so tight and so short. What was she thinking?

  She held the dress up and remembered exactly what she'd been thinking. She'd bought this at a whopping great discount to wear at home . . . just for Ed.

  She tossed it quickly into the 'sell' pile.

  The bedroom phone burst into life. It was an old-fashioned one, black with a dial. It had been Ed's mother's, one of the many, many things already in the house that Annie had had to make room for during the renovation of the place. There was no telling what the number was. She let it ring three, four times – then snatched it up, breathing in tightly.

  'Hello, it's Annie.'

  'Annie! It's me,' she heard her mother's voice at the other end of the line. 'I've just been speaking to Aunty Hilda,' Fern continued. 'What's going on?'

  'Oh . . . hello, Mum,' Annie began, sitting down on the edge of the bed, 'did you have a good holiday? I didn't know you were back yet.'

  'Just got in. Lovely,' but she didn't want to be sidetracked.

  'What is all this? Hilda says she came back early with Ed because you're carrying on with some Italian . . .'

  'What!' Annie broke in. 'Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick! She's an old lunatic that woman, she really is.'

  'No,' Fern insisted. 'She says she and Ed saw you with this man and that's why he came home with her on Sunday.'

  'WHAT!' Annie exclaimed. 'Oh, this is just stupid. The man sells handbags. I'm going to buy some handbags from him to sell on. Ed knows all about it. Ed's in a total huff about it . . .' Annie added. 'It has nothing to do with me "carrying on" with anyone.'

  'Well Annie, she seems to think that she definitely saw you and this other man, together,' Fern emphasized the word.

  'Vicious old bats like Hilda see what they want to see,' Annie snapped.

  'There's no need to be rude. Have you and Ed sorted all this out then?'

  The easy thing to do would be to tell her mother yes. She didn't want Fern's interference right now, she didn't want Fern's opinion or advice. All of a sudden, Annie understood exactly how Lana must be feeling.

  'We're having a bit of a row . . .' Annie began carefully. 'I'm sure it's going to blow over. I'm sure we're going to sort it out . . . but at the moment, he's gone to his sister's—'

  'Oh Annie!' Fern was horrified. 'For goodness sake! What is this all about?'

  So then Annie had to tell her about the Italian bags and the Chinese shoes and the taxman's £10,000 bill and the mortgage extension . . . and her plans to turn it all around.

  'I just don't know,' was Fern's verdict when she'd listened to it all. 'If Ed doesn't think it's such a good idea—'

  'But what does Ed know?' A
nnie burst in. 'He's a schoolteacher. What he knows about fashion or selling things I could fit on the back of a stamp in very big letters.'

  'Yes, but he's your partner,' Fern insisted, 'you have to work these things out together.'

  'Oh and you'd know all about that, of course,' Annie blurted out. Fern had ditched Annie's feckless, reckless and generally unreliable father so early on that Annie had only the vaguest memories of him.

  'There's no need for that,' Fern told her briskly.

  'Mum, you're a very strong, very independent person,' Annie reminded her, 'you brought us up all by yourself, you worked so hard and sent us to a great school. I can't believe you're telling me to shelve my ambitions because of what Ed thinks!'

  'Annie,' Fern began quietly, 'I never found anyone else. Maybe I would have done things differently if I had. Maybe the way I did things wasn't the best, how do I know? All I can tell you is that Ed makes you happy. I know that. I can see that. You need to think very, very carefully before you throw that away.'

  'I'm not throwing it away,' Annie insisted.

  'Good,' Fern said, not wanting to add any more. She knew exactly what happened when you poked into the hornet's nest of other people's disagreements. You got stung.

  'Who'd have thought . . .' Fern began, on a fresh track, 'that I'd be going to Dinah's tenth wedding anniversary party while you and your big sister carry on in your forties like a pair of teenagers?'

  'I am not in my forties!' Annie retorted.

  'Won't be long,' Fern reminded her.

  'Yes it will! Anyway, what's up with Nic?'

  'Haven't you heard? She's pregnant.'

  'No! That's not carrying on like a teenager! Well, I suppose it is where you grew up.'

  'Annie!' Fern sniffed.

  'Nic's pregnant! Well, that's nice. She and Rick make a great couple.'

  'She's forty-one,' Fern said, 'I can't believe she wants to go through all that again – babies, broken nights, toddler tantrums.'

  'I know,' Annie agreed, but she felt a pang at the thought of it. She'd absolutely howled when Owen had left nursery school because the days of toddlers and beakers and chubby little faces overcome with delight to see 'Mummy! ' were so finally over.

  'I'll see you next Saturday then. We're meeting at the Parkes Hotel for dinner, which sounds nice,' Fern added.

  'I think it's a bit more than dinner,' Annie warned her. 'We're being told it's a family dinner, but that's just to keep Dinah in the dark. It's a big party.'

  'Oh how nice. But . . . organized by Bryan?' Fern asked a little doubtfully.

  'Don't worry, secret helpers are involved.'

  'Do you know more than you're letting on?'

  'Mum, even Dinah knows more than she's letting on.'

  'You take care . . .' Fern added. 'You can always phone me.'

  'Hilda is OK though?' Annie thought she'd better ask.

  'Yes, she's at home, walking with a stick. You managed not to do her any harm in Italy, thank God. One of those home helps pops in every day to check on her.'

  'Ah well, that's coming to us all,' Annie added.

  'Oh aren't you full of cheer!'

  One forty-minute conversation with her big sister Nic later and Annie was still miles away from completing the cupboard clearout.

  'I'm huge!' Nic had complained. 'I'm fourteen weeks pregnant and I'm the size of a bus. I can't believe I'm going to go through the whole turning into a hippopotamus thing again!'

  'Babes! It's brilliant!' Annie had scolded her. 'And everyone does fantastic maternity clothes now, so spend the money! You'll wear all that stuff for at least a year. No one I've ever met has stopped wearing their maternity clothes until at least five months after the birth.'

  Once the phone call was over, Annie looked at the untidy heaps she'd made on the bed and the bedroom floor and realized she'd bitten off far more than she wanted to chew tonight.

  She lifted up the telephone receiver again to check if any messages had been left while she was speaking to Nic. Nothing. In her handbag, her mobile was reporting the same news. Nothing. Not a voicemail, not a text, not a beep. He hadn't tried to phone, and that was that. For a long minute, Annie toyed with the idea of phoning him but then decided she had tried enough yesterday. He knew where she was. He knew she wanted to talk to him. It was up to Ed to make the next move now.

  She would have to start putting these clothes back. Leave the organizing of the Annie Valentine autumn/ winter collection to another quiet evening . . . well, looked like there were going to be a few of those coming up.

  It was when she approached the empty rail with the first armful of clothes to hang back up again that Annie caught sight of the Box. It was down there, at the bottom of the wardrobe, partially hidden by two handbags and a box of shoes.

  But tonight there was no ignoring it. It wasn't that she didn't know it was in there; she did know, somewhere at the back of her mind. It was just some time now since she'd thought about it or looked at anything inside it.

  Once she'd hung up the clothes she was carrying, she bent down, lifted away the handbags and the shoes and then gently took hold of the box and pulled it forwards. It was large, the size of three shoeboxes together side by side, but it wasn't heavy.

  Once it had been slid out onto the floor, Annie wasn't sure what to do with it. She didn't know if she wanted to lift the lid or not. It had been a while. She could picture almost every item inside quite exactly . . . but there was always, every time she looked, something unexpected that still managed to take her by surprise and bring her to her knees.

  And then the box was open: she'd grabbed the lid and moved it away quickly, before she could think about it too long.

  With a little gasp of pain, she caught sight of her wedding photo, staring up at her. She took it in her hands and brought it up close to study it. Look how pretty she was then! And how deliriously happy. Her hair was all piled up with ivy leaves and tiny snow roses pushed between the tresses. And that wonderful gold dress. So beautiful, so elegant . . . and to think she'd bought it second-hand from a theatre costume sale, then just made some alterations herself . . . then had to make a few more because she was three months pregnant with Owen.

  Just look at that lovely man she was cuddled up against. They were cheek to cheek, laughing and flushed with happiness. They'd broken off kissing for this photo . . . she could remember that.

  He was so handsome! With his quiff of dark hair, deepblue eyes and movie star jawline. Looking at this lovely photo, she thought how lucky they were not to have been able to see into the future. How would they have been able to smile at the camera like this, so broadly and proudly and with such wild optimism, if somehow they'd known that in just six years' time Roddy would be dead?

  It was a blessing to have loved him for every day she'd had him without the slightest shadow, the slightest hint of how quickly it was all to come to an end. That was what she told herself, because four years on, she had made some kind of peace.

  She had finally come through the rage, the furious injustice, the helpless and hopeless denial and all the other tormenting emotions which had stalked her after that terrible day.

  Annie set the photo aside and now saw the blue and gold box with their wedding rings inside. Annie had only put hers in here, alongside his, a year ago when she'd moved in with Ed, because finally it had felt as if it was time to move on, to no longer be a widow in mourning.