The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  ‘Oh, well . . . that’s very nice, but we could all improve, couldn’t we? Take tips from the masters.’

  ‘You’ve got very good taste, Gray.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ he nodded in agreement. ‘And not just in clothes.’ He kept his gaze trained directly at Annie, until she couldn’t help giggling.

  ‘So,’ he unfolded his hands, ‘you should venture out, start your own big business. How about a shop? A makeover boutique? A chain of personal dressing stores where customers can go to get much more than the usual shop assistant input? Or what about your own clothing collection? The perfect black trousers, smart jacket or white shirt? Annie’s Essentials?’

  ‘A shop?’ she teased. ‘So very last century. You should look up my virtual store some time, Annie V’s Trading Station. Who wants to pay staff and rates and overheads when you can create your own cyber shop-front?’

  ‘You’re very good,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Maybe I should get you to look over my business, see if you can think of any improvements.’

  ‘I’d be delighted. So are you into cosmetic dentistry as well as fillings, extractions and root canals?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he assured her, as their plates were cleared away by an attentive waiter. ‘Teeth straightening, veneers, dental implants, all the high-end stuff. I’m hoping to add Botox® to our range of treatments very soon.’

  ‘Really? But my ladies tell me Botox® is over and everyone’s doing Restylane® now,’ she informed him.

  ‘Yes, well, possibly. I’m looking into that. I’m going over to LA in a couple of weeks to find out what’s on offer in the home of cosmetic surgery. But you’ve not had anything done, have you?’ He was scrutinizing her just a little too closely for comfort.

  ‘No! I’m not ruling it out though. If I wake up one morning and make-up alone can’t save me from looking like a haggard old witch, then I might just come to you to see what you can do about it.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  She’d meant this as a cheeky, flirty comment, but now his scrutiny of her face was too professional for her liking.

  ‘Not everyone looks as fantastic in their thirties as you do.’ It was his turn to purr now, she noticed with a delicious little shiver: ‘But a tiny hit, just in there between your brows,’ he pointed, ‘would work wonders. But what I’d really love to make over is your mouth.’

  No, no, no! This wasn’t sexy. Now she wanted to put her hands over her face and never part her lips again. What was wrong with her teeth, exactly? They weren’t perfect but they weren’t too bad either.

  ‘The overcrowding on the bottom row could be cured with wisdom tooth extraction and a gentle brace. On the top, I’d put in two or three veneers to smooth out those slightly crooked angles, then whiten everything up two or three shades. You’d be stunning. I’d give you a great rate,’ he offered.

  ‘Erm, well . . . that’s very kind of you . . . let me think that one over,’ she hesitated. Despite the tempting offer of a discount, lying back in a dental chair with her tonsils and all her fillings on display didn’t strike her as the best of seducing techniques.

  Annie wondered what he’d had done. Well, obviously his teeth were pearly white and perfect, but she guessed that he kept the other little touch-ups a trade secret, so she didn’t ask.

  As their coffees arrived – both of them had waved away the suggestion of dessert – he turned the conversation from teeth to ask: ‘So you like it down here on the river?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m thinking of buying a flat down here to rent out.’

  Aha, a budding property mogul. Her ears perked with interest.

  ‘I’ve got a viewing at about three p.m. Would you like to come along? You know I’d value your opinion.’

  The flat was smart if a little boxy: maple flooring, recessed lighting, two small bedrooms, two high-tech bathrooms of dark greenish slate, one a wet room with a rain-bath shower. The living area had a glitzy open plan kitchen and big floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of . . . well, another development.

  It was obvious quite quickly that Gray was not impressed.

  ‘That’s a very small bedroom,’ he told the estate agent, then, ‘It’s hardly a view, is it? The kitchen’s part of the living room, I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘This is a very prestigious address,’ the estate agent argued. ‘Excellent area for shopping, eating out, you’re so close to the City – only a ten-minute walk over the bridge to the tube . . .’

  Clearly wherever Gray lived, he was getting a much better deal than this. But he lived out of town. He was a ’burbs man, probably the proud owner of a driveway, a front lawn and French windows out onto his own back garden. This was city living – more luxury, less square feet – and clearly it was a shock to the system.

  ‘What did you think?’ he canvassed Annie’s opinion once they were out of the flat and had bid the agent farewell.

  ‘Complete rip-off,’ she informed him confidently. ‘Don’t touch it with a bargepole.’

  ‘And what makes you so knowledgeable?’ he asked, casually draping an arm over her shoulders, where it sat comfortably, if a little self-consciously.

  ‘Well, Gray, if you offer to drive me home, I might tell you all about my successful scramble up the London property ladder,’ she said, imagining the two of them cosied up together on her big white sofa.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ he agreed. ‘But only if you invite me in.’

  Result!

  As he opened the passenger’s door, so she could climb aboard his sleek, low-slung, silver Merc convertible, she surveyed the black leather seats, high-tech dashboard, GPS navigation device, not to mention the suave gentleman in the driver’s seat and she thought: I could get used to this.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lana at home:

  Black vest top (Miss Selfridge)

  Black jeans (Evisu via eBay)

  Black nail varnish (Topshop)

  Black eyeliner (Chanel)

  Black mood (model’s own)

  Est. cost: £75

  ‘D’uhhh.’

  As Annie pushed open her flat door, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear the sound of the television in Lana’s room and the noise of the kettle coming to the boil in the kitchen.

  ‘Lana?’ she called into the hallway. ‘I thought you were at karate with Owen?’

  Lana in head-to-toe clinging black appeared in the kitchen doorway: ‘He didn’t want to go,’ she said grumpily, ‘I couldn’t make him.’

  ‘No? No . . . well . . . right.’ She tried to keep her annoyance under control. She loved her children dearly and was, on the whole, fiercely proud of them, but the meeting of children with prospective boyfriends was something that had to be carefully managed, not just sprung on her, because of the potentially explosive emotions.

  ‘Well, now you’ll get a chance to say hello to my friend Gray.’ With these words, Annie ushered Gray in through the door, as Lana’s mouth opened and forgot to shut.

  ‘Hello there, Lana,’ Gray offered a hand for her to shake, ‘I remember seeing you at your grandmother’s party – but you were a little busy . . .’

  Lana blushed, shook Gray’s hand and managed a mumbled hello.

  ‘Come into the sitting room,’ Annie offered. ‘I’ll just go and dig Owen out of his room, but he’s a little shy,’ she reminded Gray in a quiet voice.

  He nodded with understanding.

  Owen waved at Gray from the doorway then fled back to his room. Annie left it at that. She was trying to enjoy Gray’s many compliments about her home rather than worry too much about how her children were going to react to him and vice versa.

  ‘Shall we go into the kitchen and have some coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, definitely . . .’ Gray got up from the sofa arm he’d perched on. Annie was still thinking she’d like to push him back onto the cushions and rumple him quite a lot, but the presence of children made that impossible.

  At the kitchen table, Lana was chew
ing at the skin round her nails and texting frantically.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Annie wondered.

  ‘Yeah, fine, everything’s fine,’ she answered, not breaking eye contact with the screen.

  ‘Does Seth still rule?’ Annie couldn’t help herself.

  But she shouldn’t have, she just got a black look and deepest scowl in reply: ‘At least he doesn’t use hair dye and fake tan,’ Lana snapped.

  ‘Hopefully it won’t kill you to be nice,’ Annie whispered at her, just before Gray came into earshot.

  ‘D’uhhh,’ came the great grudging sigh. Annie decided to stay calm. Lana was a confused 14 and the prospect of a real, live man in her mother’s life, rather than a faceless date, was bound to be unsettling.

  Once the kettle was on for the coffee, Annie felt an unusual desire to play domestic goddess. She brought out a tablecloth then shooed Lana and her things out of the way so she could put it on the table. She set out cups, saucers, cake plates and shook almond biscuits out of the packet.

  The milk went into a little blue jug, brown sugar into a matching bowl. She warmed the rarely used cafetière before adding the ground coffee she’d unearthed at the back of a cupboard.

  Then, using the typical parental combination of threats and bribes, she made Owen and Lana sit up at the table properly to meet Gray.

  ‘I hear you’re both at St Vincent’s?’ was Gray’s ice-breaker, once he was settled into his chair. But the question didn’t go down so well.

  Lana scowled, rolled her eyes and came out with: ‘I absolutely hate it.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Annie said with her nicest smile. ‘Tell Gray about the fund-raising website. They’re hoping to make ten thousand pounds for charity by the end of the summer.’

  Lana pulled a face, but then her phone bleeped with a reply text and she pounced on it, snatching it up, eyes lighting.

  Gray and Annie watched as Owen picked up four biscuits and crammed them all into his mouth, forcing his lips to part as he crunched down on them.

  ‘Of course we won’t be at St Vincent’s for long,’ Lana fired out, taking Annie completely by surprise. ‘Mum’s totally broke and we’ll either have to sell the flat or leave school.’

  ‘Or both,’ Owen added for emphasis, spraying crumbs across the tablecloth. Despite her embarrassment, for a moment Annie managed to feel proud that Owen had actually spoken two words despite the presence of a stranger. Just a few months ago, this would never have happened.

  ‘Er . . . well,’ she smiled at Gray and twisted the coffee cup round in her hands. Maybe last night hadn’t been such great timing for the earnest little conversation she’d had with the children about the hole in the family finances. ‘It’s hardly as bad as that.’

  ‘But you said—’ Lana began.

  ‘I may have to free up a little equity,’ she breezed, seeing what she read as concern in Gray’s face, ‘but St Vincent’s is a great school. They’re both going to be there for many years to come.’

  She shot a look at Lana, who slumped melodramatically over her phone. The phone Annie would right at this moment like to rip from her daughter’s hands and toss out of the window.

  Then the landline began to ring and to Annie’s surprise, Owen stood up and ran out of the room to answer it.

  He picked up, said, ‘Hello,’ in a very calm-sounding voice and then carried on something resembling a normal conversation.

  This was very unusual.

  ‘Oh yeah . . . hi . . . aha . . . that’s really cool,’ she overheard.

  Then came: ‘Hmmm . . . Wednesday? This Wednesday? Muuum!’ came the shout.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered.

  ‘Are we doing anything on Wednesday evening?’

  Annie flicked mentally through the following week’s family schedule: Sunday karate, Tuesday Billie babysit, Thursday swimming lessons. Wednesday? Was anything planned for Wednesday? Annie glanced at Gray, in case he wanted to jump in with a suggestion: helicopter trip to Paris for rooftop dinner, perhaps? No. He wasn’t saying anything.

  ‘No,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t think we’re doing anything – but why? Who?’

  Owen didn’t answer her, he was back on the phone: ‘Wednesday’s fine. Great . . . So about seven p.m.?’

  This was positively chatty, startling for Annie.

  ‘OK cool. Yup. See ya tomorrow, sir. OK.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Annie asked as soon as Owen came back into the kitchen, although the ‘sir’ at the end of the call had been a good clue.

  ‘Ed,’ Owen replied.

  ‘Mr Leon?’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was a pause and Annie thought the presence of Gray was going to silence Owen once again, but instead she watched as he took a breath or two to calm himself, as he’d been taught to do but rarely remembered, then he continued, stumbling over the odd word: ‘There’s this singer, Rufus Wainwright, and he’s doing an . . . an . . . acoustic thing at the National Theatre. Ed said he’d look into getting tickets for us. It’s going to be cool!’

  ‘All of us?’ Annie wondered.

  ‘You, me, Lana.’

  ‘Oh no,’ came the groan from Lana.

  Rufus Wainwright wasn’t registering on Annie’s radar. She looked at Lana, to see if she could spot any signs of recognition there.

  ‘He’s gay, took crystal meth . . . folk-type god,’ was Lana’s helpful biog, delivered in tones of deepest uninterest.

  ‘Don’t you want to go?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Oh yeah . . . well, Ed the Shed is so not cool, but Rufus is awesome!’

  Annie worried for about the tenth time that day if her children were watching too much American TV.

  Gray’s contribution to this new turn in the conversation was to ask what crystal meth was, which earned him the kind of scowls and shrugs Lana usually reserved for total losers such as children’s TV presenters, people in anoraks, members of the Conservative Party or the Royal Family.

  This caused Gray to look at his watch (very flashy Tag Heuer) and announce his imminent departure. Annie suspected he still wasn’t over the ‘Mum’s totally broke’ comment and she would have to do something to remedy the situation or she wasn’t going to see him again for dust.

  As he got up, she ushered him through into the sitting room, saying she wanted to show him something.

  ‘Take a look at that building over there.’ She pointed it out from her window. ‘Now that is really worth investing in.’ Her tone was cosy and confidential now: ‘Lovely part of town, great views, good school catchment, right on the tube. It will rent like a dream. I happen to know that the developer is right on the verge of going down the tubes. He desperately needs money coming in to finish the project off. I’m absolutely certain that he’d take a very low bid on a two-bedroom flat, so long as you were willing to pay a big deposit up front, before the place was even finished. I would be investing in that right now . . . except, as my children have so helpfully explained,’ she tried to make light of it, ‘I’m not exactly so flexibly . . . liquid at the moment.’

  ‘Great tip.’ To her relief, Gray was purring again. ‘I’ll look into it,’ he added. ‘And by the way, what are you doing next weekend?’

  Yes!

  ‘Well, let me see . . . There’s the shopping trip to buy gags for Lana and Owen . . . but otherwise . . .’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ed dressing for the occasion:

  Yellow polo shirt (drawer)

  Red polo shirt (drawer)

  Green tweed jacket (can’t remember)

  Baggy khakis (Army and Navy stores)

  Heavy boots (same)

  Est. cost: £45

  ‘Music always gives me an appetite!’

  ‘There you are!’ were Ed’s opening words as Annie, Lana and Owen arrived wet and slightly bedraggled at the doors to the concert hall.

  They were twenty minutes late and now there was barely time to say hello because the performance was just about to begin.

  ‘Sorry, Ed,’ A
nnie began. ‘It’s taken us ages . . . We got totally lost out there.’

  This wasn’t untrue, there had been some confusion about directions, but she decided she’d bypass an explanation about the enormous Lana row which had really held them up.

  Just your standard mother–teenage daughter ‘you’re not going out like that’ argument, which had of course escalated to great, hurtful, all-encompassing insults being tossed around at random.

  Lana: ‘You’re such a cow! I hate you!’

  Annie: ‘You’re just a spoiled brat, I’m not buying you anything, ever again! This time I mean it!’ And so on.

  Owen had quietly put on his shoes and anorak, then he’d gone to stand by the door, headphones in, iPod cranked up, foot tapping to the rhythm, as he’d waited for the storm to finally blow over.

  The sight of him had taken the wind out of Annie’s sails.

  ‘Right, Lana, that’s it, I’m done,’ she’d announced in the coolest voice she could summon: ‘Just put on the sparkly boob tube, skinny jeans and platform boots if you want. I’m not saying another word about it. Just make sure . . .’ See? She was already saying another word about it, but she couldn’t resist: ‘Make sure you’ve got something waterproof on top because it’s definitely going to rain.’

  There. Words her own father could have been saying to her twenty years ago. He’d barely been around enough for her to remember many of his words of supposed wisdom, but she could definitely recall the nagging: ‘Put something warm over that or you’ll freeze.’

  But then wasn’t this the most totally irritating thing about parenthood? Just as you came to appreciate how caring and sensible some of your parents’ advice had been, that’s when your very own little teenage spawn was throwing it all back in your face, exactly as you’d done too.

  ‘We’re going out with your teacher!’ she reminded her daughter. ‘I don’t think we’re likely to bump into the living god that is Seth, are we?’

  In the concert hall, they had to squeeze past twenty people or so to get into their seats: Ed leading the way, then Lana, Owen and finally Annie.