The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  ‘I know,’ Gray told him, shaking his hand, ‘I’ve seen you on TV. An honour to meet you.’

  Connor looked close to purring, but then Annie gave him the kind of raised-eyebrow look which warned him to make his excuses: ‘I just have to go back inside for a moment, check on my . . .’ with a little wink at Annie, ‘Armani.’

  ‘His what?’ Gray wondered once Connor had left them.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing, just his idea of a joke. So . . . you must know my mother through the Golf Club?’ was Annie’s starter for ten.

  ‘No, no. Too busy for golf.’ He smiled at her, flashing teeth even whiter and straighter than Connor’s. ‘I’m her new dentist. I’ve taken over the Wilson and Anderson practice.’

  ‘Oh, right . . .’ This had to be the ‘interesting man’ her mother had lined up for her tonight. Her flashy dentist. He wasn’t bad, not bad at all, although a view of old Mr Anderson’s hairy nose poked disturbingly into her mind.

  ‘I knew Mr Anderson well,’ she told Gray. ‘So he’s retired then?’

  Gray nodded, then to her surprise, he offered her his arm with the words, ‘Can I take you back inside, Ms Valentine, and find you a fresh drink?’

  She’d never expected such quaint old manners to feel so charming. But, half expecting him to bow or maybe click his heels next, she curled her hand into the crook of his elbow and allowed herself to be led back inside, momentarily feeling as if she was in a remake of Gone With the Wind. Such olde worlde courtesy suited her velvet dress perfectly.

  Sadly, the effect was spoiled by the sight of Nic and Dinah at one window watching them and cackling.

  Then, passing a second window, Annie spotted Owen and another boy each holding a beer can, pointing at them and laughing.

  Well, on the one hand, Owen had made a friend, which was a good thing. He had spoken to a stranger. But on the other hand, good grief, nine was too young to be playing with beer: she would have to go and investigate.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kuwaiti ‘princess’ daywear:

  Lollipop pink suit with short skirt (Chanel)

  Ruffled pink, green and white blouse (Chanel)

  High pink suede heels (Jimmy Choo)

  Top-to-toe jilbab (definitely not The Store)

  Total estimated cost: £3,000

  ‘Do you have it in white? Oh and yellow too!’

  Annie had just finished an extended shopping session with her two favourite Kuwaiti princesses – never before life in The Store had she realized what sometimes went on under a modest, Muslim jilbab: YSL, Chanel, Pucci, short tight skirts with stockings and killer heels.

  The princesses usually greeted something lovely from Chanel with the words: ‘Do you have it in white? Oh and yellow too!’ with the intention of buying all three: great customers to have.

  Now she was taking a moment of ‘rest’ in her office before her next appointment. Annie’s idea of a rest meant placing eBay bids on fifteen different items and reapplying lipstick as she listened to the messages on her business phone. She regularly collected unwanted clothes, shoes and bags from many of her clients to sell on for them – taking a little slice of commission, obviously. The clients were grateful for the ‘pocket money’, which usually part-funded their designer habit.

  Tonight, she’d have to take her Jeep on a London circuit of pick-ups and Trading Station deliveries. There was also a voicemail message from a woman wanting an at-home consultation: when was Annie available? Today, for the right price, was Annie’s motto. She dialled the woman straight back.

  ‘Annie!’ Her office door opened and one of the floor assistants, Samantha, was there looking anxious. Annie suspected she knew what was coming next.

  ‘We think we’ve got a lifter,’ Samantha informed her. ‘She’s been down in handbags, there’s something missing from the display and she’s on our level now.’

  Annie ended her call, flipped her mobile shut, stood up and smoothed down her smart tunic dress. No-one else on the floor was as awesome in the presence of shoplifters as Annie, which is why she usually got called in.

  ‘Do Security know?’ she asked.

  The girl nodded. ‘They’ve got her description, they’re standing by the doors.’

  ‘OK, let’s go then.’

  She followed Samantha out onto the shop floor where the suspected lifter was surreptitiously pointed out.

  ‘Oh yes, I see her – pale blue raincoat, bags over shoulder,’ Annie whispered.

  Shoplifters had to be stalked carefully. They could only be ‘detained’ by the security guards and arrested by police if they were caught in the act of leaving the shop with unpaid items. The guards were only allowed to stop and bag-check customers who had been seen taking things, not just suspected of theft.

  ‘Is she working with someone else, or on her own?’ Annie wanted to know.

  ‘Solo, we think. She did the bag counter on her own, anyway.’

  ‘What did she take?’

  ‘A Marc Jacobs, it’s the second to go this week. Nita’s going to lose her job.’

  The woman was smartly dressed in black trousers with high-heeled boots, the tailored blue raincoat and armful of big shopping bags possibly hiding the stolen handbag.

  Now she was flipping through the rails, casually, just like any other shopper, holding out the odd item, checking the tags.

  Maybe she was stealing to order, Annie thought. Occasionally several thieves at once would descend on The Store and take as much as they could of specific labels. The resale market, which she knew all about, was so good and so easy nowadays that stealing designer items was more lucrative than it had ever been.

  But now the woman seemed to have tired of looking. She was starting to walk towards the escalator . . . no-one had seen her take anything yet, so maybe she’d travel down all four escalators, head out of the front door and get away with the £650 handbag scot-free, costing Nita’s job in the process.

  Time to move in.

  Annie strode confidently after the woman: ‘Madam, it’s your lucky day!’ she told her brightly, taking a light hold of her arm.

  The woman turned abruptly, freeing herself: ‘I’m sorry?’ She looked haughtily down at Annie, who suddenly felt her confidence waver. What if this wasn’t a shoplifter? What if this was a very prestigious libel lawyer on her lunch break who would sue Annie right out of her home and onto the pavement for making this accusation?

  ‘You’re our four hundredth customer this month and that entitles you to a free style consultation in the Personal Shopping suite,’ Annie offered, thinking fast.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ the woman said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Annie wheedled. ‘It won’t take long, it’s a lovely treat and there’s a brilliant goodie bag,’ she said, wondering what she could cobble together from the back of the cupboards if this woman turned out to be no thief.

  The woman considered for a moment, looked at her watch and finally relented with a grudging: ‘Oh, OK then.’

  Annie led her to the suite and then towards one of the changing rooms. She watched as the woman set down her shopping bags carefully. Annie couldn’t make any glance or guess as to what was inside them, but then she saw a chance.

  She got in behind the woman and, as she loosened her coat from her shoulders, Annie took hold of it with a brisk ‘Let me get that.’

  It was too late for the woman to refuse the help even if she wanted to.

  In Annie’s hands, the raincoat felt too heavy, her confidence returned and she was now sure she had a shoplifter who could be confronted.

  Quickly she turned the coat upside down and gave it a vigorous shake.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re—’ the woman began angrily.

  But a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses fell to the floor, price tag still attached. Followed by a small pair of wire-cutters, two fat bottles of Aveda shampoo and a selection of chunky necklaces.

  ‘I’d just like to get back the things you’ve taken which belo
ng to us,’ Annie told her firmly, ‘I’m not interested in arresting you, in having to hang about a courtroom for hours waiting to give evidence against you, in hearing about the distressing personal circumstances which led you to act “completely out of character” in a “moment of madness”. I just want you to give back the things which are ours. Then I’d like you to leave The Store and not come back. Ever. Does that sound reasonable to you?’

  The woman glared at her furiously, cheeks flushing. Undeterred, Annie bent over and reached boldly into the biggest one of the shopping bags on the floor. Her hand came back up with the Marc Jacobs bag, new season’s exquisite handwork in palest lemon yellow.

  ‘Look,’ Annie began, ‘down in the handbag department is a girl called Nita. She’s from Poland, she works nine hours a day here, six days a week, because she always wants the overtime. She sends a big cheque home to her family every week because her little sister’s ill. If she’d sold you that handbag, she’d have made an extra thirty pounds. Because you’ve stolen it from her, she’s going to lose her job.’

  ‘This shop can afford the odd loss,’ the woman hissed. ‘The prices are high enough.’

  ‘You’re not just stealing from the shop,’ Annie insisted. ‘You’re stealing from the staff. We all work very hard here. If you want the finer things in life, then maybe you should try working hard for them too. You’ll enjoy them so much more, I promise you,’ she added triumphantly.

  ‘Nita’s not from Poland!’ Samantha told her, when the lifter had emptied out all her bags and pockets, as instructed by Annie, and sloped out of The Store, ears ringing with the telling-off she’d been given. ‘She doesn’t have a baby sister either.’

  ‘I know.’ Annie winked at her. ‘I may have laid it on a bit thick there, but I hate thieves.’

  ‘Annie Valentine!! You’re keeping me waiting, you should know better than that. I won’t have time to spend as much money with you!’ a familiar voice rang out from the suite.

  ‘Got to go,’ Annie told Samantha, ‘Mrs B-P – one of my favourites.’

  ‘You always say that!’

  But Mrs Tilly Brosnan-Pilditch was not just one of Annie’s favourite clients, she was a favourite creation.

  Mrs B-P, as Annie liked to call her, had arrived in The Store’s Personal Shopping suite on Annie’s third day in the job. She hadn’t made an appointment, she’d just wandered in looking for help, because ‘It’s terrifying out there,’ she’d confided.

  Mrs B-P wasn’t even Mrs B-P back then, she was Tilly Cathcart, an art lecturer in her early fifties, not shy exactly, but reserved, as if she was watching, listening, thinking it through before joining in.

  When she walked in that day, she’d been dressed in self-conscious bohemian head-to-toe black: a retro astrakhan coat, big velvet beret, flat boots and long skirt.

  ‘I have a problem,’ she’d said, once Annie had settled her down on the suite sofa with a cup of tea. ‘I’m about to get married.’

  ‘Oh, congratulations,’ Annie had offered. ‘Lucky man.’

  ‘Yes, a lovely man who is unfortunately . . .’ she’d lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘quite wealthy.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Annie had winked.

  ‘Everyone has a fault, don’t they?’ Tilly Cathcart had winked back, and they’d felt themselves warming to each other. ‘I’m trying my best to overlook it.’

  ‘Good for you!’ Annie had encouraged.

  ‘This lovely, unfortunately quite wealthy man understands many of my anxieties about becoming his new wife, about taking part in his public life of business lunches, trips to the opera, corporate things,’ she’d sighed, ‘and he thinks they’ll be helped by a great big shopping trip . . . by dressing expensively for the part.’

  ‘But you’re not so sure?’ Annie had suspected.

  ‘No. I’m not at all sure. I’ve been independent for so long – and I want to stay independent within our marriage. We’ve talked till we’re blue in the face about what he’s allowed to pay for and what he isn’t allowed to pay for. I don’t want to suddenly be dressed from head to toe in his money, in status symbol clothes. I can’t mutate into a Nancy Reagan lookalike,’ she’d insisted. ‘I need to remain me. And he wouldn’t argue with that. That’s what he would want too.’

  As Annie was to learn time and time again in her new job, it was rarely simple. It was rarely a case of enter wealthy woman, exit carrying bags and bags of expensive clothes. Dressing was always fraught with all sorts of issues, meaning and hang-ups.

  After Annie had heard out all the concerns of Mrs B-P-to-be she’d taken her on a tour of all three floors of women’s clothing and accessories.

  ‘At which college do you teach?’ Annie had asked. On hearing the answer, she’d nodded and mentioned her own time at art school.

  ‘The fashion school. Ever visited there?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve been to the end-of-term shows, marvelling at the creations, just like everyone else.’

  ‘You know, there are some amazing hats you should see.’ Annie had steered her in their direction: ‘We’ve taken a chance and bought them directly from a student who graduated this summer. He’s done some clever little bags for us as well . . .’

  And thus had begun Tilly Cathcart’s transformation, not into status-laden trophy wife, but into generous patron of the arts, supporter of creative students.

  Mrs B-P stood before Annie today in a funky Vivienne Westwood green and red checked skirt-suit they’d bought together, a magnificently arty, embroidered bag, her trademark overblown beret – in olive green velvet – and wonderful red shoes which exactly matched her red lipstick.

  ‘You’re an art expert, you can be painterly about the way you dress,’ Annie had encouraged her.

  Definitely not Nancy Reagan. Still the intelligent, creative, thoughtful art teacher Mr B-P had fallen in love with when on a whim – his doctor having advised him to take up a stress-relieving hobby – he’d joined a night class on Medieval Painting Techniques.

  ‘This is going to be a long session,’ Mrs B-P warned Annie as they sat down together and drew up a list of her requirements. Three years into marriage, Mrs B-P wasn’t quite so uncomfortable about spending her clothing allowance.

  ‘I’m giving up suits,’ was the first instruction, ‘I want very soft, comfortable clothing: sensational pyjamas, loads of cashmere, but in lovely colours, wraps, shawls, your best slippers.’

  ‘Are you going into hibernation?’ Annie wondered

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly it – a spring hibernation. A rebirth, a renewal.’

  ‘Aha! Spa visit?’

  ‘Something like that . . . Come on, take me out there.’ Mrs B-P put her arm in Annie’s. ‘Show me what you’ve got!’

  Palest pink silk pyjamas met with Mrs B-P’s approval. Then there were the embroidered sheepskin house-boots which she threatened never to take off again. Teal blue cashmere jogging trousers joined the pile of possibilities, an aqua green cashmere long-sleeved top, a pale yellow cashmere dress. Mrs B-P couldn’t get enough cashmere. She kept putting the woollens against her cheek and rubbing gently with her eyes closed.

  ‘Oh delicious, so cosy and soothing.’

  During the trying-on session, it didn’t escape Annie’s notice that Mrs B-P had lost weight. Her slim figure was now verging on the slight.

  ‘You’re the only person who needs to go to a spa to fatten up,’ she told her. ‘I hope you’ve picked one with sticky toffee puddings on the menu, darlin’. Get a little meat on your bones.’

  Mrs B-P wasn’t just shopping for herself either, she wanted birthday presents for her two stepdaughters.

  ‘What’s happening in your life anyway?’ she asked Annie as they made their way down to the accessories department. ‘Any news from the love life front, or is it still a no-man’s-land?’ she teased.

  ‘Now funny you should ask about that,’ Annie confided. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve met someone quite interesting.’ She then proceeded to
give an intrigued Mrs B-P the rundown on Gray.

  ‘We talked and talked for the rest of the evening. He’s promised to call and take me out to dinner . . . he is charming, good looking . . . I’ve got high hopes for this one,’ Annie enthused, ‘because I’m definitely ready to meet someone else . . . move on . . . have someone there for me again.’

  ‘Of course you are.’ Mrs B-P smiled at her. ‘I can’t think of anything better that could happen to you.’

  They were standing in front of a display of the most exquisite velvet devoré scarves. Each one hand painted, hand embroidered, with patterns painstakingly burned into the velvet and monumental price tags to match.

  ‘These are beautiful . . .’ Mrs B-P ran her fingers slowly over the pile. ‘This is just what I want for Georgina and Ellie. Pinks and pale blues for my blonde Ellie’ – she slithered the wide work of art scarf around her own neck – ‘greens and gold for Georgie. Yes! This is just right, Annie, perfect. Then I’m going to Cartier to buy them something . . . solid.’

  Annie took the two scarves and folded them carefully: ‘Are you all right?’ she asked finally, putting a hand on Mrs B-P’s arm, intuitively worried that something was not right at all.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I just have to spend some time in the damn hospital.’ Mrs B-P turned to look her directly in the face with her sharp, blue eyes. ‘Oh, it’s so boring, Annie, totally dull . . . I need a mastectomy, chemotherapy and all that dreary stuff. I’m going to need a lot of interesting hats and scarves, I can tell you.’

  She brushed away Annie’s shocked look of concern with: ‘It’s very, very early stages. And I’m going to recover, my dear. Totally. Fully. One hundred per cent. Not a single question about that. I’m not even entertaining the possibility of not recovering. You think I’m exiting now? Just when it’s got this good?!’

  ‘I know,’ she acknowledged Annie’s slightly tearful eyes. ‘Bummer. Now come on.’ She took up Annie’s arm again: ‘There’s a time for weeping and wailing and complaining about how unfair it all is. But now is not that time. “Chins up and straight backs,” as my mother would say. Now is the time to buy a wonderful new handbag. You’re to choose. I’m leaving it entirely up to you. When I’m shuffling from home to hospital and back, I want to have Archie on one arm, and something just as fabulous on the other.’