by Carmen Reid
She disappeared off into the store and came back with several accessories.
The dress was tried on again, but this time with a white vest underneath, brown footless tights and flat gold pumps.
‘Oh yes! Yes. So much better!’ was Martha’s verdict.
Then Annie handed over the killer accessory. The power bag which would ensure that even if Martha turned up at her office in the unspeakable parka, she would still have a shred of cred: a Chloé tote bag – big, astronomically expensive in a go-with-everything tan leather.
‘No, no!’ Martha backed away and didn’t even want to hold it.
‘It comes in six different colours,’ Annie wheedled. ‘Just try it, girl, get it onto your arm . . . it won’t bite.’
Annie handed it over and was too fascinated to see what Martha would think of herself with a bit of almost four-figured kit in the crook of her elbow to notice Donna stalking into the suite.
Martha was holding the bag, this way and that, staring back at her reflection. ‘I have a handbag morality,’ she explained. ‘I draw the line at two hundred pounds. You should be able to get a fantastic bag for no more than two hundred pounds. When I see price tags above that, I just think: this is madness! I can’t walk about with a month’s salary slung from my shoulder, inviting muggers from far and wide to have a go. I certainly can’t carry my packed lunch in it, or baby wipes, or beakers.’
‘OK . . . well, then you know where you have to shop?’
‘Where?’ Martha wondered.
‘EBay! You could probably get this bag for two hundred pounds on eBay, but you have to accept that it’s a fake. Hopefully the kind of really, really clever fake that even Ms Chloé herself might be pushed to spot. Worth thinking about. Or then again, downstairs we have wipedown PVC Orla Kiely bags, very, very popular with the Yummy Mummy. But I love you in that bag!’ she added.
Annie also did not see Donna stalking out of the suite with an expression on her face that was hard to read: part sour, part satisfied.
‘The bag is absolutely stunning, baby.’ Annie took it back from Martha and held it up to her: ‘A real investment . . . But no pressure. I’ve got three lovely raincoats here for you to try on while you think about the bag. Orange? Great with that dress. Or classic light beige? Or maybe both?’
‘Annie, stop! You are so good, you are very, very bad. I’m going for a strong, sobering coffee before I decide about the bag. Maybe I’ll buy a fake like you said.’
‘It’s just not the same though, babes, you’ll always know . . .’
‘Yeah, but if I buy the real one, my husband will always know – and kill me.’
‘But you’re back at work,’ Annie wheedled. ‘There have to be some compensations . . .’
‘Coffee,’ Martha insisted. ‘I’ll buy the dress, the tights, the flats, probably a raincoat too . . . but I need coffee for the bag decision!’
‘OK, OK.’ Annie smiled at her. ‘You know where we are!’ She heard the swish of the metal bead curtains at the entrance to the suite parting, then Ed Leon was standing there, looking sheepish. ‘Sorry, am I a bit . . . erm . . . early?’ He looked as if he was about to walk out again.
‘No, no. Take a seat,’ Annie instructed. ‘I just have to sell this nice lady here a raincoat, then I’m all yours,’ she told him.
When Martha had paid for the purchases she was certain about and gone for her bag-decider coffee, Annie was able to turn her attention to the dweeby teacher, perched, a little nervously, in skinny cords on the suite sofa.
‘So,’ she said, settling onto the sofa beside him, ‘tell me all about your tailoring requirements.’
‘Top-to-toe overhaul,’ was Ed’s verdict. He’d chosen a worn navy blue jacket today, instead of his typical tweed, as if in the spirit of dressing up and making an effort. But it looked cheap and didn’t fit.
‘Where do you usually shop?’ she wondered.
‘Oh’ – he shrugged his shoulders – ‘here and there,’ was all he could manage.
‘Where?’ Annie pressed the point.
‘Well, er, Burtons . . . and what’s that place? Mister Byrite. There’s the Highgate Cancer Research once in a while, it’s pretty good . . .’ Watching her melodramatic eye roll, he didn’t like to continue. ‘You’re not impressed, are you?’
‘It’s OK, you are here now,’ she told him, teasing slightly. ‘I’m here to cure you of the madness. This is where I begin to convince you of the merits of investment dressing. I have an investment dressing lecture, if you’d like to hear it.’
Ed leaned back in the sofa, crossed his ankle over his knee – tricky in those cords, surely – and said, ‘I’d like to hear any lecture of yours very much.’
In the cool and quiet menswear department, Annie assembled suits, shirts and ties for Ed, while he was held hostage, stripped to his underwear in the changing room.
He kept appearing at the fitting room door in a slightly alarming pair of crinkled purple boxer shorts and short red socks to ask how it was going.
Annie couldn’t help catching a glimpse of his unexpectedly muscular stomach and the flash of white skin over his hip bones where the boxers had slipped below his tan line.
‘Do you work out?’ She tried to keep the incredulity from her voice.
‘No!’ He was equally incredulous.
‘You look . . . fit,’ she justified her remark.
‘Rugby coaching . . . keeps the gut at bay,’ was his reply.
In every one of the suit, shirt and tie ensembles, Ed would step out and Annie would give a businesslike appraisal: shoulders too broad or too tight, jacket too long . . . trousers too tight. He was proving a difficult figure to fit.
Finally, a deep navy blue suit, matched with pale pink shirt and blue tie, ticked every box in Annie’s checklist.
‘Goodness!’ was Ed’s verdict as he walked around the shop floor a little, then surveyed himself in the full-length mirror. ‘Look at that! Old Ketteringham-Smith won’t recognize me. I hardly recognize myself! Just wait till I get my hair cut, then all traces of the old Ed Leon will be erased. I might have to post up a new photo on Facebook.’
Annie was looking at him closely, professionally. There was no denying that the jacket shoulders were a perfect fit; that the straight trousers brought his legs into better proportion, that pink and blue were a great colour combination for him. He had bright blue eyes, summersky blue, and she’d not noticed that until she’d held shirts up to his face to check for colour matching.
He also had rosy cheeks and very pink lips. These details hadn’t come into such sharp focus before. No. Before the blue suit and pink shirt effect, she’d seen only Ed’s woolly hair, bushy eyebrows and tweed.
‘Haircut?’ she asked, not sounding convinced.
‘Yup, short back and sides. I’m taking this very seriously. Do you have any idea how much I’d like to go to Boston?’
She tried to imagine how his hair would look short. He’d be certain to go to a £5-a-pop barber who’d massacre it, so she told him firmly: ‘No. Definitely no haircut – and you know what?’ This wasn’t exactly good business, but she felt she had to say it: ‘I don’t think you should buy this suit either, Ed, because it’s just not you. In fact it’s so not you that I’m really not sure what I was thinking.’
Just as Martha had looked great in the high-heeled boots, so Ed looked good in the suit. Really, she’d been quite taken aback with how good he looked. But it was as if she’d extinguished everything that was Ed. Everything that was sparky and quirky about Ed was buried now that she’d put him into this regulation dark blue suit, teamed with the required pink shirt and plain tie.
How was anyone going to know the slightest thing about him in this outfit? How were they going to know that he could play ten different stringed instruments? Or that he had a folk and blues LP collection to rival any New Orleans DJ’s?
Worst of all, he looked uncomfortable. He kept tugging his cuffs and smoothing his lapels. The stiff black shoes h
e had on his feet weren’t helping either. They seemed to weigh him down; he’d had a funny, lolloping spring to his step before, a bounciness which went with his mad hair.
She checked her watch: ten past five. She could slip out early. There were other places . . .
‘I think we need to try somewhere else. C’mon.’ Her instructions were brisk: ‘Put your things back on and we’ll head out.’
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘I’ve never been in and out of so many clothes in my life.’
‘Babes, I’ve only just got started on you,’ she warned.
From one of The Store’s side exits, which just happened to be overlooked by Donna’s office, they set off in the direction of Jermyn Street to an enormous corner building entirely devoted to the fitting out of ‘gentlemen’.
‘We’ll just wander for a little,’ Annie instructed him as they went into the shop. ‘Tell me if anything catches your eye.’
She loved this place. It was living, breathing proof of the very different way men and women approached clothes. Whereas women wanted to know what was new and what was now and didn’t care what it was made of, how it was sewn, how tight or ill-fitting it was; men wanted the traditional, the familiar, the hard-wearing, the long-lasting, the comfortable and the practical.
The difference always struck Annie most at black tie events when men wore beautiful suits they could put on year after year, which made them look fantastic but kept them warm and allowed them to enjoy the food to the full. Whereas women flitted like butterflies in wonderful chilly creations they couldn’t sit in, let alone eat in, only intended like Cinderella’s dress to last till the stroke of midnight.
In this shop there were socks in cotton, wool or cashmere blends, available in three leg lengths, eight different sizes and twenty different colours. There were racks filled with the kind of suits and overcoats which would last for the next twenty years and beyond.
The ties didn’t just come in a multi-hued rainbow of colours, they came in different widths, different silks, different weaves.
There were scarves, gloves and hats, waistcoats, button-down shirts, winged-collar shirts, cutaway collars, half-cutaways, Windsor cutaways. Only the sober, quietly spoken male assistants could possibly know the full range of collars available here.
‘If sir requires any assistance, he should not hesitate to ask,’ came the gentle instruction from one of the impeccably dressed staff.
‘Yes, erm . . . right,’ was Ed’s tense reply.
Sensing he was out of his depth now, Annie stepped in and directed him towards the long rails packed with tweed jackets.
‘Have a look through . . .’ She was running her hand along their rough cloth. ‘See if anything jumps out at you.’
There was a small check in beige and brown with an accent of maroon, which she homed in on, pulling the jacket out with its hanger.
‘Like this, maybe?’ she wondered.
‘Nice,’ he agreed. ‘Very nice.’ He put his hands on something way too yellowy with a bold black check.
‘I dunno,’ she warned him. ‘Rupert Bear?’
‘You might be right.’
Together they picked out jackets and toning checked shirts and moleskin trousers. She let him rifle through every tie, engaging the salesman in earnest tie discussion and tie comparison.
Long minutes passed as they discussed knot count and the superiority of the traditional English ‘worsted’.
In and out of the changing room Ed went, as Annie checked everything over for fit, for colour, for proportion.
The blinds were being drawn on the shop windows, the tills were being closed down and counted out for the night, but their salesman insisted: ‘No trouble, sir, take your time. One must have the right apparel. Seize the day.’
Finally Ed and his stylist were finished. Their work was done, their creation was complete.
Even the salesman, George, as they’d come to know him, admired the effect: ‘A little eccentric, but very pleasing, sir.’
Ed stood before them smartly and appropriately dressed but also still totally Ed.
‘Brilliant!’ Annie allowed herself to grin at the outfit; no more frowning and letting the furrows form between her eyebrows.
Ed was in the beige, brown and maroon tweed jacket, the very first one Annie had picked out, a white with a pale brown check country shirt underneath. A very thin finest spun silk golden tie with ducks flying upside down was tied into his trademark tight knot at his neck. Most striking of all were the close-cut bright maroon moleskin trousers. Very rock and roll star retires to country estate, Annie thought.
The long trouser legs rested and rumpled against softest caramel suede boots. And on top of all this was a swinging short beige mac with a bright green padded lining and a scarf: sober beige wool on one side, crazy paisley maroon, gold and orange patterns on the other with long silky orange fringing.
The ensemble broke all of Annie’s rules – few things matched, well, OK, the maroons and the beiges matched just enough to hold it all together – but it looked fantastic.
Ed was going to buy two more checked shirts, a maroon tie and a pair of beige moleskins, on Annie’s instruction, to make sure he had plenty of different ways to wear the jacket.
He was also going to buy another pair of glasses – small gold rims – and a ‘really funky bag’, she had informed him.
Turning to look at himself in the mirror, he told her: ‘You’re really good at this, you know. Have you ever thought about doing it for a living?! I look just like myself . . . but much better.’
He’d wow them, he’d definitely get the post, she knew.
‘Ed,’ she made eye contact with his reflection, ‘you’re hot, baby.’
Ed began to blush, then didn’t seem to be able to stop. He turned a deep burgundy red.
‘Steady on!’ she instructed him. ‘George! I think you might have to loosen his tie!’
Annie’s phone began to ring.
When she answered, she heard Gray’s voice on the other end of the line: ‘Annie, what beautiful flowers,’ he began in a low purr. ‘You shouldn’t have. You really shouldn’t have . . . Now how am I going to make up to you for that fiasco the other day?’
‘Oh Gray, hello. I’m sure I can think of a few ways.’
Chapter Twenty
Connor’s friend Henrik:
Bright pink polo shirt (Ralph Lauren)
Jeans (Paul Smith)
Top-stitched loafers (Office)
Est. cost: £220
‘Hey, Connor, my man, you’ve made my day!’
‘Now, we know all about your first attempt and the trip to casualty with the tent pole . . .’ Connor was talking quietly as Annie and Dinah moved their heads closer to catch what he was saying. ‘But the million-dollar question, what Dinah and I are gagging to know is, have you and the dirty dentist done the deed yet? We know you went to his place again last weekend, Annie, so come on . . . time to confess. How was he? Does he have an impressive instrument?’
Annie just smiled as Dinah ticked him off with the words: ‘Hey! This is an old-fashioned romance. It’s progressing nicely, slowly, in a ladylike and gentlemanly way. Keep your overactive sex drive out of it.’
Connor just snorted.
Their first courses arrived, delivered by a waiter with a pert behind and a quite Parisian level of rudeness.
‘The soup?’ he snapped and dumped the dish in front of Connor, so that the liquid slopped over the edges of the bowl.
Annie was not sure about this restaurant. It was in its first week and had been opened by friends of Connor’s who’d had the novel idea of combining a hairdressing salon with a restaurant. As you walked in there were chairs and smart white-linen-covered tables ready for diners, but on a raised platform beyond were chairs, mirrors, washbasins and all the accoutrements of a hair salon. It didn’t make for a happy combination.
Annie could not imagine wanting to be spotted in a headful of highlight foils
by people eating their lunch.
Nor would she want to eat in a place filled with the smell of hair dye, with hair clippings on the loose.
‘Do you dare me to tell the waiter there’s a hair in my soup?’ Connor whispered at them.
But this plan was thwarted by the appearance at their table of one of the owners. ‘Hey, Connor, my man, you’ve made my day!’ came the greeting from the tall, very blond, tight-pink-T-shirted man now hovering over their table.
‘Henrik!’ Connor greeted him like a long lost friend, standing up to give him a big hug. ‘This place is great!’ he gushed.
Henrik wanted to know what Connor and his guests thought of the food, the décor, the venue, everything.
All three told him as many complimentary and flattering things as possible until finally he went away, promising the chef would be out to meet them later.
Connor tried to look as thrilled as he could at the prospect of this.
‘So, c’mon,’ Connor urged Annie, ‘cough! It’s Sunday afternoon, you arrive at Gray’s house for lunch and . . . ? Take us from there.’
‘OK, OK . . . Gray was looking good,’ she relented. ‘He’d obviously made a full recovery from . . . the Jacuzzi incident.’
‘Wearing?’ Dinah asked, suppressing a smirk.
‘Black,’ Annie replied. ‘Black jeans, black shirt, black leather flip-flops and really nice feet.’
‘Mmmm.’ Connor was impressed with the detail. ‘And how’s his hair? Real? Or rug?’
‘It’s just dyed,’ Annie replied, a little coolly, ‘I’ve already told you that.’
‘Never mind, anyway, Annie gets the hots . . . for Mr ‘Grecian 2000’. Excellent!’ Connor noted. ‘So did you get down to it straight away or was there alcohol involved first?’
‘You don’t have to tell him!’ Dinah insisted.
‘Yes you do!’ Connor insisted. ‘We’re family. Think of all we’ve done for you. We deserve to know about Annie’s first romantic encounter in ages.’