The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  ‘Oooh, very . . . Mediterranean,’ Annie had greeted her sister.

  ‘Shut up!’ an extremely over-tanned Dinah had told her through gritted teeth. ‘I know, I know, I’ve overdone it. I’m the Fake Bake sheikh.’

  The first fake tan of the season (March had just arrived) was always an initiation. Dinah had forgotten how much bloody scrubbing had to be done beforehand and just how little of the stuff was needed.

  ‘Do I look different?’ Annie had asked her sister.

  ‘You look great,’ Dinah had assured her, ‘I always love you in that dress.’ She surveyed the black crêpe Diane von Furstenberg wrap approvingly.

  ‘Yeah but look closely, babes,’ Annie instructed.

  Dinah peered into her face: ‘Hmmm . . . something’s a bit . . . Annie! You’ve not had an injection or something, have you?’

  Annie fluttered her eyelashes: ‘Clue,’ she said.

  When Dinah just stared back blankly, Annie explained: ‘I’ve had eyelash extensions. Aren’t they gorgeous?’ Flutter, flutter went the lashes.

  ‘Eyelash extensions!!’ Dinah had never even heard of such a thing. ‘You’re absolutely mad. What was wrong with your lashes before?’ she’d exclaimed, but the questions had quickly followed: ‘It cost how much!?’ ‘They use glue and sharpened tweezers?’ ‘How long does it last anyway?’ ‘You have to trim them when they get too long!’

  ‘I went with Connor,’ Annie had explained, scanning the foyer like a twitchy bird of prey, as they went in.

  ‘Connor?’

  ‘He needs them for his close-ups, apparently. It makes all the grannies swoon when McCabie bats his lovely long lashes in soft focus.’

  ‘Ha. Will you stop looking round like that?’ Dinah had hissed. ‘You look like you’re wanted by the Mafia or something.’

  ‘I can’t see him.’ Annie had begun to worry. Maybe Spencer wasn’t coming. Maybe she’d scared him off.

  Although they were amongst the last to take their seats, she still hadn’t spotted him; no sign of him in the interval either. It was distracting her immensely from Connor’s clever, comic performance. But then she’d always thought acting was a bit of a scam: if you wanted to be a star, you just had to choose roles in which you could be a totally over-the-top version of yourself. Here was Connor on stage, being just as devastatingly handsome and witty as he’d been in her front room a few weeks ago and a rapt audience of thousands thought he was acting!

  But just as the lights were starting to dim for the third act, Annie’s eyes alighted on a promising-looking head of gunmetal grey hair and she watched as Spencer – minus the glasses – glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Bingo!’ she told Dinah and began to plan for the ‘accidental’ meeting at the end of the show.

  ‘Spencer, hi!’ she called, frantically treading on toes in her rush to get out of her row and greet him.

  ‘Oh, er . . . hello,’ he managed once he had got her into focus. Maybe he hadn’t sorted out the contacts yet.

  ‘Did you enjoy the show? Wasn’t Connor great?’

  ‘Oh, Connor McCabe, is he the actor you . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, yes . . .’ And who was this woman by his side, so obviously with him? Who was this attractive, raven-haired sophisticate in a sleeveless silk shell with an elegant grey pashmina draped over her arms?

  The woman was waiting expectantly, possibly wondering something similar.

  ‘This is my sister Dinah,’ Annie offered as Dinah came up behind her. ‘She’s been on holiday.’ Well, it seemed necessary to offer some sort of explanation, although the urge to add in her bathroom was dangerously strong.

  ‘Oh really, where’ve you been?’ Spencer asked politely.

  ‘Dubai!’ Annie answered for her, inspired by the sheikh comment maybe, but also because it was the hottest and blandest destination Annie could think of that she was, fingers crossed, certain Spencer wouldn’t have been to. And really, what follow-up questions could ‘Dubai’ provoke? ‘Did you like the sand?’

  ‘Nice,’ Spencer said. And left it at that.

  The elegant one cleared her throat slightly.

  ‘Oh, Louisa, this is Annie. I met her just the other day, we were . . . um . . . introduced by a friend.’

  Ah! Outwardly trendy, inwardly square Spencer was obviously embarrassed he’d been personally shopped for. Ah! It wasn’t that Louisa was the object of his new affections, new love of his life or whatever . . . Annie felt a fresh burst of hope.

  ‘This is Louisa, my date.’ He turned and smiled shyly at grey pashmina girl. ‘You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?’

  Louisa beamed.

  Hopes dashed.

  ‘Why don’t you come backstage with us and meet Connor?’ was Annie’s fresh new idea. ‘He’d love it. He’s so vain, I have to keep him convinced he has an army of fans who are held back by security cordons every night.’

  Spencer didn’t seem so sure, but fortunately Louisa looked at him and said, ‘I’d love that. It would be so glamorous. Go on, Spencer . . . I mean, if you’re sure it won’t be any trouble.’

  Connor was slightly taken aback by the rapturous ‘Darling, you were wonderful’ and full-on mouth kiss that Annie treated him to when she arrived in his dressing room. ‘You were brilliant, honestly! Connor, this is Spencer, and his lovely date Louisa.’

  At these words, Connor understood his role completely.

  ‘Pleased to meet you! Very nice of you to come backstage to say hello.’ He shook their hands and casually folded Annie in under his arm, hugging her tightly round the waist.

  ‘You really did enjoy it, did you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ they both gushed.

  ‘I think Noël Coward has so much to say to twenty-first century audiences and he always says it so wittily . . .’ Connor began.

  And so it went on for quite a time, getting luvvier and luvvier by the minute, until Spencer took a glance at his watch and warned that they would have to make a move or else they’d be too late for the table he’d reserved at the Ivy for dinner.

  Ha! The Ivy for dinner, huh? Annie couldn’t help feeling a stab of jealousy. ‘How lovely,’ she said. Declaring that she and Connor were snuggling up for a cosy evening at home – ‘Aren’t we, darling?’ – was probably taking things too far.

  ‘What on earth were you two playing at?’ Dinah wanted to know when Spencer and his date had left.

  ‘Oh Dinah! You are just so sweet!’ Annie teased her. ‘Luckily Connor understands. It’s just the same with handbags.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You only want a handbag if somebody else has it or if it’s hard to get hold of, a limited edition, or collector’s item preferably with a waiting list. If we have twenty-five handbags sitting in a pile with seventy per cent off emblazoned across them, we can’t shift a one. I promise you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’m expecting a message from Spencer on the Personal Shopping suite’s answering machine tomorrow morning, guaranteed,’ Annie told her.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Dinah couldn’t help feeling this was a tad optimistic.

  Chapter Nine

  Fern’s dazzling retirement outfit:

  Salmon pink and white lace jacket (John Lewis)

  White silk camisole (John Lewis)

  Long salmon pink taffeta skirt (John Lewis)

  Unspeakably awful beige, sensible-heeled slingback sandals (John Lewis)

  Pale pink nail varnish (Chanel)

  Total estimated cost: £290

  ‘I’ve invited someone very interesting, just for you . . .’

  ‘Woooo hooo! We’re so hot, we’re smokin’! Every single one of us is going to pull tonight . . . Especially Owen,’ was Connor’s verdict as the party of four got out of the car and launched themselves – arm in arm, as he’d insisted – across the dark gravelled courtyard towards the country house hotel Annie’s mother had chosen for her retirement party.

  Annie smiled proudly at her children. Lana, negotiating heels, bag, f
luffy bolero, way too much purple eye shadow and the lace dress (in navy), returned the smile a little nervously, but Owen grinned. He’d gone for a hired mini dinner suit with wing collar and red satin bow-tie. Connor had helped him gel his hair into the kind of perpendicular quiff belonging to junior Hollywood royalty and he was strutting his stuff.

  Connor in black leather kilt, ruffled shirt and black leather waistcoat looked unforgettable: 100 per cent Highland hunk. He may have originally come from Lancashire but he was dressed for the ceilidh.

  ‘Now remember, Owen, the fact that you are a man of few words is going to stand you in great stead tonight,’ Connor was confiding in his youngest friend. ‘The ladies love a bit of mystery. I could really take some tips from you. I am always saying far too much, shooting my mouth off, getting into all kinds of trouble and that’s why I am sooo single.’

  Owen giggled at this.

  ‘Lana, you are a knockout,’ Connor assured her. ‘Obviously I’ll have to be your bodyguard for the evening to keep the swarms of suitors at bay.’

  ‘Oh ha ha,’ she told him, but a smile was breaking at the corners of her mouth and threatening to run away across her face.

  The sweetheart, Annie thought.

  With her hair piled up glamorously, bright lipstick and highest heels, Annie felt the soft pink velvet of her breathtaking dress stroke comfortingly against her. There were going to be many people at this party that she hadn’t seen for several years, that she hadn’t seen since her sudden, devastating transformation from happily married to single, and she wanted to show them how together she was now, how happy, how successful and how well she was coping. The dress was her suit of shining armour, although she would be selling it on . . . tonight, hopefully.

  And anyway, while Annie awaited Spencer’s phone call – two weeks had passed and still nothing! – and her next Discerning Dinner, what harm could there be in checking out the party talent? Not that she suspected there’d be much, despite her mother’s best intentions.

  ‘I’ve invited someone very interesting, just for you,’ Fern had told her, when they’d met up three days ago for a pre-party nerve-calming afternoon. Fern had had to put her outfit on yet again just to make sure she was totally happy with it. Annie had been on hand to soothe and recommend make-up.

  ‘Uh-oh!’ was Annie’s reaction to ‘someone very interesting’. ‘I’ve told you, Mum, our tastes in men are a little different. Me: under fifty, all own hair, teeth and seriously solvent. You: under eighty, good sense of humour, not yet incontinent. Is your fancy boy coming?’ she’d asked, which had caused her mother to hoot with laughter.

  ‘Is he?’ Annie prodded. ‘Mr Lubkin and his zimmer frame?’

  ‘Walking stick, Annie!’ Fern had corrected. ‘He broke his leg hang-gliding and now walks with a stick. And he’s a friend.’

  ‘Ooooh, fancy. Mum . . .’ Annie had asked her next, ‘do you ever mind that you’re still on your own? I mean you must have minded so much when we were younger – but do you still mind?’

  ‘No, no,’ Fern had insisted with a smile. ‘We’re all on our own at some point, sweetheart.’

  ‘But I never wanted to be on my own,’ Annie had confided. ‘This is not the way I thought my life would be. I always thought there would be someone else to share it all with.’

  ‘Men always let you down . . . one way or another,’ Fern had replied.

  ‘Do they?’ Annie had countered.

  Fern had fixed her eyes on Annie’s and insisted: ‘Yes, they do – even when they don’t mean to. Anyway,’ she’d gone on, ‘I was far too busy to find someone else when you were growing up, and then I was too bossy and now I’m too old. Past it.’

  ‘Sixty is not the same as dead, Mum,’ Annie had told her.

  ‘To most men it is,’ Fern had replied.

  Annie had considered telling her mother: ‘I think you’ve missed out. You never got all the really good stuff about being a couple.’ She was even tempted to blurt out: ‘I’m not fine like this, I’m not fine at all and I don’t want to be fine. Some days I feel like I’m missing an arm . . . like I’m hardly even alive!’ Instead, she’d kept quiet, but Fern had seemed to read her feelings and had soothed:

  ‘You’ve had a very hard time, sweetheart. It’ll take a long time to begin to feel normal again. But you’ll get there. I know you will.’

  ‘I’ve brought you a present.’ Annie had surprised Fern, handing over a wrapped, pink-ribboned box. ‘I’m treating you . . . and I want you to know I paid full price, you old moo, because you’re worth it.’ Then, in a much more serious voice she’d added: ‘Thank you, you know, for everything. You’ve been such a help to me . . .’ and they’d both had to hug very tightly and squeeze back their tears.

  Her mother’s reaction to the pale cappuccino-coloured suede heels inside the box seemed to be very positive. She’d tried them on underneath her pink skirt, she’d looked at herself this way and that, oooohed and aaaahed, had said many, many thank-yous and had given Annie a kiss. But Annie still wasn’t convinced her mother really liked them.

  Fern had always been a grade A dresser. Since her twenties, she’d followed the fashion rules usually ascribed to Parisians: sensible, slightly stuffy, but always, always supremely elegant.

  She lived in wool trousers, silk blouses and little cashmere cardigans, occasionally donning a mid-calf skirt. A fabulous coat or jacket completed the classic look. Oh, and not forgetting the mock croc bag, Gucci watch, string of pearls and weighty gold bracelet.

  Now that the days of scraping together school fees were long behind her, Fern, whose mission in life had once been to economize, now had a little more money to herself. She lived in a modest bungalow but bought top quality clothes, drove a classic Jag and had never, ever been seen with her legs in need of a wax or with one single grey millimetre of root emerging from her blond bob.

  Even when she was gardening, it was in well-cut jeans with a spanking white Joseph top, her blue Hunter wellies and a trug.

  ‘If I’m not wearing lipstick, you’ll know I’m dead,’ she’d once told her daughters. Such was her dedicated work ethic, she never took a day off from looking good. This was a woman whose pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers and washbag all co-ordinated.

  But Fern did have one fatal dressing flaw, which Annie was constantly trying to correct. Because Fern was a podiatrist, a healer of cracked heels, balm to bunions, carer of corns, she dealt with so much footwear-inflicted misery that she would never, ever wear pretty shoes. Even her most delicate of outfits was finished off with duck feet: sensible pumps, low squared heels, or worst of all, those white comfy slingbacks, the ones which came in an extra-wide fitting, and were a great favourite with HM The Queen, a woman Fern greatly admired, by the way.

  Annie, shocked by the beige, orthopaedic-looking things her mother was intending to wear with her party outfit, had decided the only way to persuade her otherwise was to buy the alternative footwear herself.

  Now, with Connor on one arm and Owen linked to Lana on the other, Annie went through the foyer of the swanky hotel and into the tasteful drawing room, already swarming with guests.

  Dinah spotted them before anyone else: ‘Hey, Annie and the gang are here!’

  ‘Oh, Billie, look at you,’ Annie cooed.

  Billie in pink ballet slippers and a tutu obliged with a twirl while Dinah rolled her eyes and explained: ‘Yes, you have a party dress, don’t you, Billie? That we bought specially for Granny’s party, but you changed your mind, didn’t you? About ten times! As for you, Annie Valentine, you are wearing a sensational new dress . . . you bad girl!’ Dinah wasn’t so much teasing as disapproving.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m going to sell it tonight, so it’s OK,’ Annie informed her.

  ‘You are not!’

  ‘Watch and learn,’ Annie said with a wink. ‘Is that Nic, our lawyer, over there? She looks . . . not bad, considering she picked that dress herself!’

  Nic was their middle sister, the lawyer, who t
hey hardly ever saw because she lived in Cornwall and was extremely busy, being a lawyer. Oh and by the way, had she mentioned Nic was a lawyer?

  ‘C’mon, I’ll take you over.’ Dinah offered Annie a bare arm with only the merest kiss of fake tan.

  ‘She’s brought her new man, Rick,’ Dinah whispered. ‘And guess what, he’s a lawyer.’

  ‘No! Nic and Rick?! That’s amazing, because you’ll never guess? Nic’s a lawyer too!’

  As soon as Nic caught sight of Annie, she screeched a hello, holding out her arms towards her.

  They did their hugs, hellos, how are yous, how are the children . . . then Annie was properly introduced to Nic’s new man and immediately asked how they’d met.

  ‘Oh, through work,’ came the reply.

  ‘Aha . . . maybe I should retrain. Do you think I’d make a good lawyer?’ Annie joked.

  ‘No,’ Nic told her, ‘but you’re a wonderful shopper. Tell me about this dress. I love it. Love it! Much better than this disaster.’ She gestured at her long-sleeved navy and silver matronly frock – there wasn’t a better word to describe it. Good grief, unless Annie was actually in the shop with Nic, telling her what to buy, she got it wrong every time.

  ‘Feel.’ Annie held out her arm. ‘Feel the sleeve, go on. Silk velvet. Mmmmm. And isn’t this just the perfect shade of salmon pink for our skin colouring, babes?’

  Nic’s fingers were rubbing against the material: ‘That is gorgeous. Where is it from? It looks like one of our favourite labels.’

  ‘No, no, no, you don’t, Nicky. Look at her.’ Annie winked at Nic’s really very impressive Rick. ‘She’d have the clothes off my back. She was always like this. Stealing stuff out of my cupboard.’

  ‘Did not!’ Nic protested. ‘But I do like that dress. It’s a Dries, isn’t it? What do you think, Rick? Would I look nice in that, or not?’

  Rick looked slightly uncomfortable at having to scrutinize a woman he’d only just met and imagine her dress on his girlfriend.

  ‘This is not for sale!’ Annie insisted.