The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  His tongue moving against hers had felt breathtaking; she’d opened her mouth wider, twisted her tongue against his and wanted to eat him up, right there in the hallway.

  Of course they’d gone to bed together. She’d expected to feel nervous, but instead found herself running up the stairs, not stopping to turn on the lights, and throwing herself on top of him.

  Kissing her busily, he’d felt for the gap between her top and skirt, put cool fingers against the bare skin of her back, then moved them slowly to her stomach.

  But still talking to her, joking, charming her all the way. ‘Hello, I think I love you, what’s your name again?’ he’d sung in a giggly whisper against her ear, running a finger teasingly round the rim of her belly button. Then two fingers had begun to walk from her knee upwards, taking the hem of her skirt with them.

  ‘No, no,’ she’d giggled back, pushing his hand away.

  So the fingers had moved back to her belly button, circling round, playfully persuading.

  When he kissed her, whenever their lips had brushed together, she’d felt an electrically charged tingle.

  ‘You so want to. You do,’ he’d told her, moving his hand slowly up her leg again, taking big wolfish bites and licks at her mouth and neck.

  He’d smelled spicy, sweaty, grassy and delicious. She’d been unable to recall wanting anyone more, was ravenously hungry . . . starving.

  ‘Nah ah, no,’ she’d protested, but she’d been laughing and pushing closer, had begun to unbuckle and investigate him, both of them totally focused on each other.

  His fingertips had moved . . . just there, yesss . . . softly, insistently against her as his tongue licked down her neck and his leg wrapped in behind hers.

  It had got much more heated, deliciously desperate . . . frantically moving, probing fingers and mouths until they were naked and moving, sweating, gasping together, Annie determined to have him, make up for all the time she’d lost, cram in every sensation she’d been so deprived of.

  Finally they’d fallen asleep in the not so small hours, they’d kept each other awake so long. He’d held her, whispered to her, been unbelievably tender and she had so, so fallen for him. But in the cool light of the morning, he’d already seemed detached – had to hurry off – left a number which when three days later she finally ventured to call turned out to be wrong!

  ‘I’m emotionally scarred and vulnerable!’ she’d shouted at the receiver once she’d hung up. ‘It’s against the rules to treat me like this! You total wanker!’

  Her best friend, Connor, had christened Oscar the One Night Wonder and tried to make a joke of him ever afterwards, to ease Annie’s pain as quickly as possible. Now, whenever she thought back to that little episode, she tried to remember just the very good bits (not so hard) and hey, Oscar had broken the ice, hadn’t he? He’d been the first person she’d ever slept with since her husband. Not that he deserved the honour.

  Annie was now as expert at reading the Lonely Hearts as she was at the property ads.

  ‘Successful businessman’ meant ‘runs corner shop’, ‘discreet fun’ was always ‘adultery’, ‘tall’ equalled ‘giant’, for ‘bubbly’ read ‘on horse-strength antidepressants’.

  ‘You’re going to meet your next Mr Right one of these days, you’re going to bump smack bang into him when you’re not even looking,’ Dinah soothed her. ‘You’ve just got to give yourself time to let it happen.’

  Annie gave her a sympathetic look. Her sister was touchingly sweet and naïve in so many ways. Did she really think something this important could be left to chance? To fate? That she should rely on Mr Perfecto waltzing into The Store one day, setting eyes on her and declaring that she was the one?

  In Annie’s experience, men were nothing like that. Even when they were madly in love with you, they rarely did anything about it. They had to be seduced, cajoled, reassured: in short, hunted down.

  Even securing Roddy, hardly one of life’s shy and retiring types, had been hard work. Nineteen-year-old Annie, wildly in love, convinced this was the man for whom she was destined, had had to keep a constant track of his nightlife via a friend to make sure she turned up at all the right places, accidentally, looking as sensational as possible for the early nineties when everything came from Gap, was black or grey or plaid, and the highest heels were kitten. (See the first series of Friends for details and try to imagine: the hair-straightener hadn’t even been invented!) But the plaid miniskirts had worked and finally she had landed the prize. And there’s nothing, nothing in the world as wonderful as the one you’ve longed for, dreamed of, ached over, suddenly turning all his dazzling attention on you. Full beam.

  The very depressing thing about blind dating was that she’d not yet met anyone who even came close. Instead of bringing Annie a sexy new life full of glamorous, hot men and sizzling romance, the hopeless encounters made her miss Roddy and every moment of comfortable, intimate married life even more.

  But never mind. New plan. Whenever her thoughts turned for too long to happy years in the marital bed, she shooed them away with deliberate reminders of Roddy’s tatty tartan trouser bottoms and farts under the duvet.

  When she met the next Mr Wonderful, he would definitely, definitely not fart under the duvet.

  Annie turned back to her sister: ‘Dinah, I haven’t given up the chase, babes, I’ve just discovered a much, much better hunting ground. I’ve been trawling the bargain basements for a man, when I should be looking for a really class label.’ With a flourish Annie brought out the glossy brochure she’d found inside Svetlana’s cast-off handbag. ‘One of the wealthiest wives in London gave this to me,’ she explained, ‘so it’s got to be a very good idea.’

  ‘Discerning Diners?’ Dinah read aloud from the cover in a tone of disbelief: ‘London’s most exclusive dinner dating experience . . . Oh Annie, I don’t know . . .’

  But Annie brushed her sister’s reservations aside and eagerly spread out the profile pages of the ‘dynamic, single, hand-selected guests’ who would be coming to next week’s five-course, five-star ‘dining experience’. No more meeting crappy men in crappy bars. Annie was going in search of someone top of the range. This agency came with Svetlana’s personal recommendation (‘I meet my second husband there’). If Svetlana was now with a billionaire oil baron, surely Annie could manage a man with nice clothes and a six-figure salary.

  ‘Isn’t this going to be very expensive?’ Dinah worried.

  ‘That’s the point!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘I could meet not just the man of my dreams, but the very wealthy man of my dreams.’

  Dinah rolled her eyes. ‘Annie, I think you may have watched Disney’s Cinderella once too often during your formative years. This is the twenty-first century, rich men do not gallop in and solve all your emotional and financial problems. They come with problems of their own . . . and pre-nups and anyway . . . For goodness’ sake, Annie! What you’re telling me is you are now looking for a rich man.’ There was no hiding the irritation in her voice. ‘You know, not a nice man, or the right man, or someone you could fall in love with again, but Mr Moneybags.’

  ‘No, no. Of course I want to fall in love again. I just think I should be looking for the right, really nice Mr Moneybags,’ came Annie’s reply, but when she saw the sceptical look on Dinah’s face she added, ‘Would it really hurt to look? The world’s available men aren’t divided into “Nice” and “Rich”, you know. There’s overlap, there are some great men who aren’t short of a bob or two. Would that be so bad?’

  ‘But the money issue is just going to colour your judgement, Annie,’ Dinah insisted. ‘You’ll pick a creep because he’s loaded and supposedly going to solve all your problems.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dinah,’ Annie snapped. ‘That’s really helpful.’

  ‘Why do you have to do this anyway?’ Dinah picked up the brochure and looked as if she was about to throw it across the room. ‘You’ll meet someone, when the time is right. Why are you trying to for
ce it like this?’

  ‘I need someone else. You have no idea. I want someone to be here for me, someone to share some of the pressure. I want to live somewhere nice—’

  ‘You do live somewhere nice,’ Dinah broke in.

  ‘But I want to be able to afford to stay!’ There. Annie hadn’t meant to spell it out quite so clearly to her sister, because now Dinah would worry for her, but it had just come out.

  ‘Oh Annie!’ Anxiety was already crossing Dinah’s face. ‘There are other solutions. There are always other solutions.’

  ‘I want someone . . .’ Annie’s voice was quieter now and she slumped back into the sofa. She wanted to try and explain it to her sister properly, but it was hard to do and besides, she didn’t like to admit all this need. She liked everyone, even Dinah, to think she was all together and just perfectly fine.

  ‘I want to find someone soon,’ Annie went on, ‘because I really, really want to get over Roddy and I think someone else would help. I mean, it’s going to be three years soon. But I was with him for so long before, that three years feels like nothing. I think it’s going to take another five before it even begins to feel less . . . raw. And I’m thirty-five, I can’t let all that time pass me by while I just wallow!’

  Dinah’s expression softened now, to one of great sympathy.

  ‘And I’m so pissed off Roddy left us just after he’d landed the soap part!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘Just as things were about to get so good for us. A year into that job and we’d have been minted! Absolutely minted and all these problems wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t have any of them. Not a single one. I wouldn’t even need to work, I’d probably be swanning off to the hairdresser’s and the tennis club every morning. Can’t you understand how cheated I feel?’

  ‘I know,’ Dinah soothed, putting a hand on Annie’s shoulder and wondering how many more times she would have to hear her sister make this furious speech, ‘I know. It was very unfair. Really, really unfair. Of course you deserve someone else, someone new – just for you. I just worry about you. I want you to find someone great, Annie, and not settle for anything less. If you want to go to this dinner thing to have a look, well, you know . . . maybe you should go and I should just shut up.’

  ‘Oh babes, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ Annie sat up and wiped her eyes.

  ‘No, don’t be silly. What would I do without you? Come on, what have you got there? Details of your fellow Discerning Diners? Show!’

  ‘Bet you I get a great date on my first dinner,’ Annie challenged.

  ‘Bet you don’t.’

  Chapter Four

  Discerning Diner Annie:

  Rose pink strappy cocktail dress (Monsoon sale)

  Sequinned evening bag (Accessorize sale)

  Purple suede Manolo heels (The Store’s sale preview day)

  Yellow cropped swing jacket (Valentino, eBay, used but flawless)

  Total est. cost £380

  ‘I thought we were supposed to dress up!’

  ‘Open the door!’ Annie shouted to her children from her bedroom at the top of the stairs. ‘That’ll be Mr Leon.’

  It was 6.45 p.m. and she was having a last minute fret about her hair. She’d decided not to scrape her blond locks into the usual slick ponytail for her first Discerning Diner dinner but to wear them loose. Now that the hair was falling down about her face in the artfully artless way caused by careful application of the tongs, she didn’t know if she liked it.

  She looked so different. Pretty . . . yes. Maybe too pretty. Curly blond locks and a pink dress. Maybe it was too much. Despite over-exposure to Cinderella, she preferred herself all sharp and fashionably focused in darker shades with a sleek head.

  But this was dating. High level, designer dating. And wasn’t she always, always telling clients that they had to dress for the occasion?

  She pressed her pink glossed lips together, slung her yolk-yellow Valentino over her shoulders and picked up her evening bag. Heels trip-trapping on the shiny oak stairs, she headed down to say hello to the music teacher.

  Ed Leon with his hefty woollen overcoat and bright red guitar case was filling up the entire hallway as he chatted to Lana and Owen.

  ‘Yeah, basic chords,’ he was telling them. ‘So easy once you’ve got the guitar tuned. But tuning the guitar, really tuning her up beautifully, that’s the difficult bit, a real skill, no, an art, I’d say . . . Lana, why don’t you join us?’

  Ha! Good luck trying, Annie couldn’t help thinking. Lana had moaned and scowled from the moment Annie had come through the front door about ‘that geek Mr Leon’ coming round.

  ‘D’you know what he’s called at school?’ Lana had said.

  ‘Do I want to know?’ Annie had warned.

  ‘Ed the Shed,’ Owen had butted in. ‘Because he smells a bit parky,’ and when Annie had rattled with laughter, he’d added: ‘You have to admit, it’s funny.’

  ‘We’re going to do some chords,’ Ed the Shed was telling Lana down in the hallway. ‘We might break into a bit of 1980s retro guitar . . . hey, Owen? Have a little Michelle Shocked, Billy Bragg moment. C’mon, Lana, just listen in.’

  ‘Who?’ was Lana’s response, but to Annie’s surprise her daughter seemed to be showing some signs of interest.

  Then Annie was on the stairs where she caught Ed looking up at her and doing an obvious double-take at the heels, the hair and the dress, definitely the dress.

  ‘Hello, Mr Leon, great of you to come.’ She smiled a welcome. ‘I’m leaving the three of you in peace and going out to a dinner party,’ she explained over his insistent ‘Please call me Ed’.

  ‘OK, Ed,’ was Owen’s response. Immediately he turned bright pink, but he was smiling, obviously pleased with himself that he’d managed to say something so early into the tuition session.

  ‘Owen!’ Annie scolded, but gently, with an encouraging smile, ‘I’m not sure Mr Leon meant—’

  ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s fine,’ Ed cut in, then gave a dramatic and unexpected sneeze.

  ‘Bless you,’ Annie and Lana chorused. Lana immediately picked up the box of tissues on the hallway table and offered them. She had a slight horror of nose issues, which might undo Ed’s good work persuading her to join in with the lesson.

  ‘Very kind,’ Ed mumbled from behind a hastily snatched tissue.

  ‘Into the sitting room,’ Annie directed her children. ‘Ed, can I have a tiny word?’

  She came down the last of the stairs until she was standing beside him and said in a low voice, ‘We’ve not talked about payment for these lessons.’

  ‘No, no . . .’ He was waving his hand.

  ‘But don’t be silly,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve come over here, you’re giving up your time to do this. You need to be paid.’

  ‘Definitely not. I want to do this for Owen and . . . well . . . I do have the interests of the school orchestra at heart as well.’ He held up a small brown violin case that Annie hadn’t noticed before.

  She studied him for a moment: he had a kind face, slightly too kind. He was definitely the sort of dreamy, well-meaning twinky who would get himself into a situation where giving music lessons was costing him rather than making him some extra pocket money.

  ‘Now look, Ed,’ she told him a little firmly, ‘I can understand if you don’t want to be paid for the lessons, but I’m giving you something, OK? Don’t bother saying no again,’ she insisted when he began to shake his head. ‘Are you a wine man or a beer drinker?’ she asked, thinking that the ancient woolly overcoat suggested wine, but the guitar was definitely real ale.

  ‘Emm . . .’ Ed seemed unsure and slightly taken aback at the question. ‘Well both, really – but red wine probably has the edge.’

  ‘Well then, that’s easy,’ she told him. ‘One lesson equals two bottles of red. Do we have a deal?’ She held out her hand.

  He offered his and they shook on it, his face creasing into a smile. ‘If you insist,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I bloody do .
. . and don’t be too impressed. They’ll be cheap bottles. Come on in then,’ she said and opened the sitting room door. Ed followed her into the room.

  ‘Nice room,’ was his enthusiastic response: ‘So much space. Very nice,’ he repeated and she suspected he now thought she was much wealthier than he’d expected, and there he was offering her children free music lessons. ‘Bet you’ve got one of those terrifyingly high-tech kitchens as well.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she replied. ‘It makes you dinner, then washes up and gives you a massage. Who needs a man?’

  ‘Ha. Very good.’ He nodded and began to take off his coat.

  Annie took it from him, noting that he wasn’t in his usual tweedy schoolwear, but in very well-worn jeans and an ancient dark blue Guernsey jumper, fraying at the cuffs. A desperately unironed shirt was peeking out at the collar and hem. This was obviously Ed doing casual. He looked like a refugee from a badly dressed war.

  ‘So you’re heading out?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Yeah. A party . . . dinner . . . thing.’ She didn’t want to be specific about the dating scene she was venturing into.

  But Lana’s acutely perceptive teen antenna flicked on and she didn’t hesitate to inform Ed: ‘Mum’s going on another blind date.’

  ‘Well, it’s not quite like that . . . Lana!’ Annie warned her daughter with a look.

  ‘What do you mean “not quite like that”?’ came Lana’s testy response. ‘Forty single strangers are getting together for dinner tonight and you’re going to be one of them.’

  ‘Well! What can I say?’ Annie forced a smile onto her face and gritted her teeth.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ she managed instead.

  ‘Right,’ said Ed. He looked astonished, which made Annie feel slightly ridiculous and irritated. ‘Best of luck,’ he added.

  ‘I’ll tell you how it goes,’ she tried not to snap, giving Lana a pointed glare. ‘Anyway, a friend of mine, Connor, will be round later on. He’s babysitting because I don’t like to leave them alone at night. Do I, babies?’