Late Night Shopping

by Carmen Reid

  No, she'd just have to brazen it out . . . keep her back to the wall, always walk behind them . . . and if worst came to worst, tell them she'd sat on a Ribena stain on the tube. Hey, it could have happened to anyone.

  Even the Harrods accessories purchaser must occasionally sit on a dodgy chair, rub against a bit of chewing gum, spill a coffee, miss a step. They were only human, after all.

  Coming up to the surface in Knightsbridge, Annie felt much better. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the shoppers were gorgeous, their expensive bags and jewellery glinting in the sunshine. Manes of below-the-shoulder hair swishing and every single one – man, woman, even delicious OshKosh B'Gosh baby in Bugaboo Frog – wearing sunglasses.

  Annie took hers (Chanel, but via eBay . . . possibly very, very good fakes, hard to tell) out of her bag and strode forward, head high, knowing that this was the way you walked in Knightsbridge.

  She was buzzed through the Harrods office intercom and shown into a pleasant waiting room.

  'Tom Dickinson has been called away . . . very last minute . . . accessories purchasing manager . . . her office, waiting to meet you . . . show you straight through,' were the words Annie, suddenly overcome with nerves, was able to pick up from the receptionist.

  Annie clutched her three, no four, handbags.

  'No, after you,' she insisted when the receptionist held open the door. 'No, no really. I insist.'

  'No, after you.'

  'After you.'

  Finally the woman gave in.

  'And what's her name?' Annie asked as they approached a smart wooden door. There was a nameplate on it, but the receptionist pushed open the door before Annie could read it and then she was standing at the threshold of the office, looking directly into the face of the one woman she'd hoped never to see again.

  Oh no. No, no, no! Not here. It just couldn't be!

  Annie almost dropped every one of her bags straight onto the floor.

  There, standing in front of her, was Donna Nicholson, her former floor manager at The Store. The woman who'd once made a part of every day miserable. The woman who'd had Annie dismissed on completely spurious and unfair grounds, the woman she'd danced a little victory dance about when she'd heard of her resignation. Annie had only returned to The Store when 'ding dong, Donna the wicked witch was dead'.

  'Ms Valentine to see you,' the receptionist announced.

  Donna didn't look quite as surprised to see Annie as Annie was to see her. Tom Dickinson must have mentioned her name, of course.

  'Thank you, Celia,' Donna said, raising an eyebrow at Annie and saying with totally mock politeness, 'Come in, Ms Valentine and take a seat.'

  'Shall I bring in some tea or coffee?'

  'I think we'll be fine, thanks,' Donna answered and Annie was sure she could see the woman's eyes glitter.

  As soon as the door closed on Celia, Annie knew Donna's gloves would come off and the nastiness would begin. How could she have been so naïve? Why didn't she check with Tom Dickinson? Why hadn't she asked who else she was going to meet? It wasn't so unlikely, was it? Donna had held a high-powered position at The Store, where else in London would she go? Harrods, Selfridges or Harvey Nichols had to be the top choices. The chances of Annie opening the door to find Donna in the Harrods accessories buyer's chair had in fact been: too high!!

  'So, Annie Valentine . . . still moonlighting from The Store, are we? Or have you told your new boss about this?' Donna couldn't help snarling as she stalked across her little room, ultra-stylish light grey trouser suit swishing about her as she went. 'Maybe I should give her a call? I used to work with Raquel.'

  Annie didn't even want to show Donna the bags. She just wanted to get out from under her poisonous glare as soon as she possibly could.

  Putting on a horrible baby voice, Donna asked, 'Shall I have a look at Annie's special little handbaggies?'

  'I don't suppose there's any hope of you being professional, just for once?' Annie asked as calmly as she could when she'd found her voice again.

  'No!' Donna snapped, 'I don't think so. Not when I've got you here at such a pathetic disadvantage.'

  Annie could suddenly remember, in far too much detail, her final conversation with this woman on the day Donna had sacked her. Annie had definitely called her a bitch and it had been very ugly. Donna certainly wasn't going to be rushing to sign up a deal with Annie and Mr B's handbags, Annie could swear to that.

  'I think I should just go,' Annie told her.

  'No, no, I want to take a look. It's only fair, after you've brought them all the way here.'

  Donna's hand went out for the bags, which Annie still had clasped to her side. For a moment, there was almost a slight tug-of-war, until Annie decided to let go.

  Let Donna see them, she reasoned, let her see what fantastic stuff Annie was proud to be representing.

  She handed the bags over, pulled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She had no reason to quail under Donna's vicious gaze.

  'Nice,' Donna said, running her hands over the leather and holding them up one by one to admire the shape and the colours, 'very nice.'

  For a moment Annie felt a whiff of triumph. Even her one and only enemy had to admit that the bags were good.

  Donna had the burnt orange one in her hands now and she was opening it, popping the satisfyingly large magnetic metal button.

  'Nice lining,' she said, stroking over the pink quilted satin.

  'Yeah,' Annie tried to sound just the faintest bit enthusiastic. She might as well play along, she thought.

  'And the price?'

  'Negotiable – but extremely reasonable for the quality.'

  'Shame no zip, though,' Donna added with the happy glint back in her eye and the very beginning of a smile on her face. 'I mean selling handbags in central London, you can't sell them without zips. No one would buy them. Thieves everywhere, pickpockets. A handbag without a zip is a bit of a liability.'

  'No zip?' Annie repeated. 'Yes, there's a zip!' She stood up to look closely at the top of the bag.

  Where the bloody hell was the zip? There had been a zip in the factory bags, she had checked. She had double-checked, because what Donna had just said about pickpockets was totally true.

  'No zip,' Donna assured her with a wicked smile and a look of pure evil.

  Annie, the bag clutched between her hands, searched frantically for the zip. But there was no sign of one.

  'There must be some mistake,' she said.

  'Yes,' said Donna, 'there certainly is. The mistake is you coming in here trying to persuade me that you know something about handbags when in fact you don't.'

  Annie could not believe that, once again, she was going to be shot down in flames by Donna. This could not be happening. Please, please no. The fate of Mr B's handbags at Harrods surely could not rest in the hands of this most horrible of harpies.

  'I know about handbags,' Annie's voice was low but clear, 'believe me Donna, I know about handbags. The first women to start carrying handbags were the ancient Egyptians. In medieval Europe, the quality of a bag's embroidery and leather revealed your social status – so not much has changed there, then. The handbag proper began life in eighteenth-century France where it was called a reticule.'

  'How very entertaining,' Donna sneered. 'Bye-bye, Annie Valentine.'

  But Annie didn't move. 'Louis Vuitton opened his first shop in Paris in 1854. In 1856, Thomas Burberry set up shop in Basingstoke. Together they are responsible for the most copied luxury goods in the world.

  'Coach of Manhattan: established in 1941. Hermès of Paris began to produce the handbag now known as the Kelly back in the 1930s, a good twenty years before Princess Grace ever carried it. Jackie O preferred the Hermès Constance, and in 1981 the iconic Birkin was designed for actress Jane Birkin, who blames its weight for her tendonitis.

  'In the 1970s in Somerset, Roger Saul started his Mulberry workshop. When he sold out over twenty years later, deciding to run a hemp-seed oil farm instead, the brand w
ent global, with prices tripling. But purists will still tell you that a Saul bag, with its tartan lining and oiled brass zips, is better than the modern Mulberry.'

  'Good bye Annie, take your bags off to Primark, where they belong,' Donna said with a dismissive wave.

  'Mrs Thatcher's handbags were Ferragamo,' Annie went on, determined to finish. 'Princess Diana preferred Dior, who returned the compliment by creating the Lady Dior in her honour. The average thirty-year-old British woman owns twenty-one handbags and will buy a new one every three to four months, owning about 160 in her lifetime. My Italian bags are vegetable-tanned using a process perfected in Italy over five hundred years ago.'

  Annie paused for breath. 'So, don't tell me I know nothing about bags.' With that, she picked up her samples and, head held high, tried to leave the office with her dignity at least intact.

  But, just as she'd turned to make for the door, Donna's voice rang out with glee. 'Oh Annie, I think you've sat in something.'

  'It's Ribena,' were Annie's parting words. She gave the door as hard a slam as she could manage and stomped down the corridor straight past the reception desk.

  'Nice boss,' Annie managed, heading straight for the stairs.

  Sunglasses back on, shoulder bag lowered awkwardly over the Ribena stain, out on the pavement, Annie struggled to regain her composure. 'You are not going to cry about Harrods,' she told herself, 'you are not going to cry about Harrods.'

  And anyway, if the Harrods accessories department was run by Donna, then it was bound to be awful. And she wanted nothing to do with it.

  Sod the expense, she was going to treat herself to a taxi home. She stepped off the pavement and stuck out her arm at the next passing cab with its light on.

  In the back of the taxi, face firmly towards the window, Annie watched the street scene in front of her eyes become blurry. Then she brushed the tears away from her cheek.

  'All right, love?' the taxi driver asked her.

  'Yeah . . . just one of those days,' she told him, trying to snap a smile back into place, 'I'll survive.' She smiled even harder, fishing in her handbag for emergency lipgloss and the other thing she found helped crying outbursts more than anything else. She popped two slivers of extra strong chewing gum in to her mouth and bit down.

  Blinking hard, she cleared the blur from her eyes and told herself there were plenty of other shops. All over London. Just look out of the window! There were shops on every corner selling women the four handbags they bought every year.

  The taxi was cutting through the side streets, shortcutting the clogged main arteries of London and winding them up towards Camden now, heading north to Annie's home in Highgate.

  Yes, she was supposed to be going back to work, but she'd decided to go home, drop off her handbags, drink coffee, change out of the Ribena dress and recover before braving the shop floor again.

  The taxi came to a halt in a side street. A big, silver four-by-four had stopped right in the middle of the road, put its hazard lights on and now the passenger's door was opening.

  'Act like they own the blooming place,' the taxi driver complained.

  Out stepped the passenger and Annie recognized her at once by the soft and sexy short bob and the glamorously foxy outfit. It was Svetlana's hairdresserphobe friend, Kelly-Anne.

  The passenger door shut and the driver fired up his engine again. From her cab window, Annie watched as Kelly-Anne ran her fingers through her hair and walked happily down the pavement, her touchy-feely pale grey knitted coat, belted at the waist, hugging her cosily. She looked great and that made Annie feel a lot better. She would miss styling women when she was a shoe and handbag mogul.

  The taxi pulled out and into the top of Camden High Street where, under umbrellas opened to offer shade against the bright autumnal sunshine, café-goers were sipping their drinks.

  And there was Ed. What!? Her head snapped round so she could take a second look. His coffee cup was in mid-air and he was laughing over the top of it . . . and right beside him, laughing back, was a very attractive woman.

  Who the hell was that? And what was he doing having coffee in Camden High Street anyway? Shouldn't he be at school?

  Annie, passing briskly in the cab, had not had the chance to have a proper look at his companion. The only details she'd taken in were that the woman was pretty, with dark hair and a delighted-looking laugh. Annie certainly didn't recognize her.

  'Maybe she was Italian?' she wondered, panicking. Maybe it was Giovanna? Maybe this was why Ed was back at his sister's and not making any attempt to contact her. He'd lured Giovanna back from Italy . . . and now he wanted to move her back into his life.

  No. She was being ridiculous. She was being irrational. Ed was allowed to have coffee breaks. He was allowed to meet women that she didn't know. There was probably a completely innocent explanation. That woman was probably a supply teacher who'd been assigned to the music department . . . and Ed was buying her a coffee to be friendly. But in Camden? So far from the school?

  There had been no word from Ed since he'd stormed out of the house on Wednesday night. Since then she'd tried very hard to shut him out of her thoughts because the situation was making her very tense. Hadn't he realized yet that nothing was solved by silence? Did he seriously think she was just going to phone him up one day and say, 'Come back, I totally agree with you, I'm going to do everything you want'? If he thought that, he was deluded. She was too far along the road now. The Timi Woos were flying off the eBay site. She'd already made nearly £400 in profit and she was about to place a new order with Mr Woo.

  As the taxi wound uphill into Hampstead her phone began to ring and she delved into one of her bags. Ed? she wondered nervously. Mr B, wanting to know about Harrods? That was going to be an awkward conversation. But where were the zips? What had he done with the zips? She snatched up the phone and looked at the screen. To her relief, she saw that the number was Connor's.

  'Hello you!' she greeted him, trying to sound as bright as she could.

  'Hello gorgeous girl, did I just see you whiz past me in a taxicab? You looked bloody miserable. And how come you're whizzing past in taxis while I have to walk everywhere?'

  'Yes I am in a cab,' Annie told him, 'I thought you were so famous now that you had a car and a driver to take you everywhere.'

  'As if . . . are you all right then?'

  'Oh I'm fine . . . Ed seems to have another woman. But I couldn't be better.'

  She was both surprised and hurt when Connor replied, 'You know what, my agent is on the other line, I'm going to have to call you right back. Sit tight.'

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Ralph Frampton-Dwight does lunch:

  Light grey suit (vintage Gieves & Hawkes)

  Pink shirt (same)

  Pink silk tie (same)

  Pink silk socks (holiday in Sorento)

  Brown leather slip-ons (same)

  Total est. cost: long forgotten

  'Where the bloody hell are you?'

  Connor was on his way home. He'd been partying at a friend's house, which had involved staying up drinking and gossiping until 5 a.m., kipping on the sofa for several hours and then leaving before noon. He'd still managed to dash out before the host emerged and roped him into clearing up.

  Hell, he'd been rude. Never mind, he'd take the guy an extra-nice bottle of something the next time he went round. Hector had been at the party, just briefly for half an hour or so; in fact as soon as Hector had realized Connor was there, he'd left.

  Once Hector had gone, Connor had felt, for the first time in a very long while, lonely in a crowd and without giving it too much thought, he'd turned to the wine bottle in front of him for comfort.