The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  ‘What about that kiss?’ he wanted to know. ‘Before, on your stairwell. The one I’ve been thinking about maybe ten, twenty times an hour ever since.’

  She let out a shriek of laughter at this then told him cheekily: ‘I put that one down to hunger. I was on a detox that week, it can have strange effects.’

  They turned, rolled into one another and began to kiss again.

  ‘It’s after two p.m.,’ she told him, raising her arm to catch a glimpse of her watch behind his head.

  ‘You’re going to be very late,’ he warned her. ‘Better phone Lana, tell her to walk over here with Owen very, very slowly.’ He was licking at her again.

  She put her hands against his cheeks and pulled his face up to look into it properly: ‘Do I really know you?’ she asked him. ‘You seem different in bed.’

  ‘Do I?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘But I like you. I do, definitely, like you.’

  After the second time came not a spellbound silence, but tears.

  Annie curled away from Ed in the bed and couldn’t stop herself from crying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He leaned over her, stroking her arm, desperately concerned.

  ‘Please don’t go away now,’ she heard herself say, although she hated how small and sad her voice sounded. ‘Don’t leave me now . . . You’re going to be away for ages and what if something happens?’

  What was she saying? Suddenly, she was going to pieces! She wanted to stop herself but instead, found she was wailing, ‘What if I lose you too?’

  But Ed’s arm was around her, holding her together through this, just as it had done before. What was it about this man? Without ever asking, he seemed to bring her defences down every time.

  He got to her. Got through to her. Connected. Got past the shell she’d built tightly around herself and saw how she really was. Drew the inner Annie out and made love to her. In a way no-one had since Roddy. That’s why it felt so breathtaking. So private and close. So real.

  ‘I’m away for four and a half months,’ he was telling her gently, kissing her hair. ‘I’ve always wanted to do this trip and I think I should. I think it’s good . . . for . . . us.’ He said the word as lightly as possible, hardly daring to use it. ‘You shouldn’t be rushed into anything, Annie,’ he said and tightened his grip on her. ‘You should take things very slowly. ‘I’ll come back and visit you at half-term,’ he added. ‘That’s just ten weeks away. No time, no time at all. You can come out and see me . . . if you want to.’

  ‘But I’ll miss you . . . we’ll miss you so much.’ She was still crying. Still feeling great confusion about why she suddenly cared so very much about this man. This morning she’d have waved him off happily at the airport: now she felt prepared to lie down in front of the plane.

  He brushed her tears carefully away and held her close for several long, quiet minutes. Then he got down from the bed and went round the room retrieving her clothes.

  ‘Time to get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Come on – I want to show you where Owen and Lana can sleep, before they get back here.’

  ‘I’ve already planned it,’ Annie told him as she pulled on her clothes and tried to sound brighter than she felt. ‘Owen and I will share your room, Lana can have a sofa bed in the sitting room.’

  ‘No, no,’ Ed told her. ‘There’s some space upstairs.’

  ‘Oh.’

  This was obviously one of those wonky conversions where neighbours had done deals in the past and a cupboard full of stairs would lead to a stairwell converted into a poky little room.

  Once they were both in their clothes, Ed un-shyly led her by the hand to a door in the sitting room: the cupboard full of stairs, as she’d guessed.

  He opened the door and a stone staircase, lit by a window from above, was in front of them.

  ‘This connected the basement kitchen to the dining room, back in ye olde days,’ he explained.

  She followed him up and they came out into a big, pale yellow room, flooded with light from the tall Georgian windows at both ends

  Plaster from the small holes in the ceiling had splattered the bare floorboards, but she didn’t dwell on that. It was a fabulous room, and so empty compared with the rest of Ed’s flat.

  ‘There’s a roof problem,’ he began, ‘I’ve had to take loads of stuff downstairs from the other rooms.’

  ‘Other rooms?’ Annie repeated.

  ‘Yeah, there’s this dining room, well, it was Mum’s sitting room, then there’s her kitchen next door and then her bedroom upstairs and two little attic bedrooms.’

  Annie gaped at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging – not entirely flatteringly – wide open.

  Finally, when her power of speech had returned she asked him in utter amazement: ‘You own the whole house?!’

  ‘Well, I owe my sister a third . . . Mum helped her buy her flat . . . so the arrangement was Hannah would get a third when it was time to sell up.’

  But Annie didn’t seem to take this in.

  ‘You own the whole house?’ she repeated. ‘A whole house, on my favourite street . . .’ Annie was heading towards the dining room door, eager to see the rest of the rooms. ‘Ed, baby,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘do you realize? All this time you’ve been hiding your most attractive feature from me!’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The Preppie returns:

  White cotton button-down shirt (Brooks Brothers)

  Slim-fit khaki chinos (Banana Republic)

  Midnight blue cashmere V-neck (Brooks Brothers)

  Hiking boots (some things are harder to change)

  Est. cost: $390

  ‘Are you sure, Annie? I mean, are you really, really sure?’

  ‘You look brilliant. Absolutely fantastic! Completely shaggable – and take that as a big compliment because I’m a gay man. Very gay,’ Connor added, waving a copy of the Daily Mail at them.

  Right across the top of page five was a photo of him and Hector attending a film première in matching kilts with the caption: The Manor’s Connor McCabe shows off the new man in his life.

  ‘Shut up will you!’ Annie shot at him. ‘You were supposed to stay in the kitchen with Dinah and keep out of our way.’

  But Annie’s favourite Ukrainian client, Svetlana, was laughing: ‘Is fine,’ she said in her melodious alto. ‘I miss a man’s opinion of how I look.’

  ‘OK, come and see in the mirror,’ Annie instructed, stepping back to admire her handiwork.

  She directed Svetlana towards the huge three-sided mirror in the corner of her bright white office. The room, which had once been Ed’s tatty sitting room, was now transformed. There was a desk with computer and telephone in one corner with a filing cabinet next to it topped with a monumental stack of fashion magazines. The room’s centrepiece was a comfortable pink sofa, with close at hand the mirror and several all-important clothes rails on wheels. The rails were for clients to hang up their many, many clothes: the ones they’d bought with Annie, the ones they’d dragged from the back of the wardrobe, the ones they needed help to part with or help to dare to wear.

  ‘Oh this is very good,’ Svetlana declared as she took a careful look at herself from all possible angles.

  She was in a tight white Chanel suit with black trim on the jacket lapels. Black and white T-bar shoes and a small black patent bag completed the look.

  The gas baron’s soon-to-be-ex-wife had her hair pulled back, soberly but softly, and her make-up had been under-applied by Annie in a way intended to make her look beautiful but vulnerable.

  This was a dress rehearsal for her day in the divorce court. Annie liked to clothe her very wealthy divorcees in white Chanel, telling them: ‘White is a rite of passage colour. Chanel is as smart and appropriate as you can get, plus a couture suit costs reassuringly more than your wedding dress did. And it always seems to have a winning effect on every judge: male or female.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Annie agreed with Svetlana, smoothing the back of the jacket
down. ‘You go kick Igor in the balls tomorrow. Just make sure,’ she added with a twinkle, ‘that you do it . . .’ her voice dropped low, ‘sexy but ladylike.’

  This made both Connor and Svetlana laugh. Then Svetlana’s eye fell on the big black and white framed portrait photograph which dominated one of the white walls.

  She walked towards it: ‘A client?’ she asked. ‘He is very handsome, no?’

  ‘Oh yes, babes, isn’t he?’ Annie agreed and felt . . . well . . . She walked over to stand beside Svetlana, so they were both looking at the photo of the roguish man in a black leather jacket leaning his chin on a balled-up fist, suppressing a grin and unmistakably hamming it for the camera.

  ‘That’s Roddy,’ Annie said and she felt OK. She was even able to smile proudly and add: ‘That’s a gorgeous photo of my late husband, Lana and Owen’s daddy.’ She looked at Svetlana and gave a wink. ‘We were very lucky to have had him. Weren’t we, Connor?’

  That’s how Annie thought of it now. She had made peace with the reality that Roddy was no longer with them; now she was able to appreciate all the time they’d had together. She felt blessed to have had him. She tried to think of his life as completed, rather than tearing herself to pieces with the thought that it was unfinished. Only very recently had she begun to really believe that just as much happiness as she’d once had would come her way again.

  There was something else Svetlana wanted to ask: ‘Are you going to come back to The Store, Annah? Or are you staying here in your lovely office where we have to come to you?’

  In all honesty, Annie hadn’t decided.

  Paula was the one who had phoned first to announce Donna’s demise with the words: ‘Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!’

  ‘Maybe two or three days a week,’ Annie told Svetlana. ‘Maybe something like that can be arranged, but I don’t know yet . . . I like working for myself. I like taking clients to whatever shop I think will suit them best. And I love bossing them about in my office!’

  When Svetlana had left (by taxi – although getting her driver back was one of her top settlement priorities), it was time to see what Dinah and Billie were doing in the kitchen upstairs.

  The former dining room had been transformed into a modern, glamorous kitchen (but by using only the finest discount suppliers, Annie had come in under Ed’s careful budget).

  ‘How’s the cake? Oh Billie, what a brilliant idea! Is it a boat?’ Annie asked looking at the grey, knobbly sausage of mauled icing Billie had plonked into the middle of the iced ‘welcome home’ cake.

  ‘No, stupid!’ came the insulted reply. ‘It’s a plane.’

  ‘Aren’t you changing, Annie? You know . . . to look your most fabulous?’ Dinah asked, expecting Annie to have a whole top-to-toe outfit planned for this big reunion moment.

  ‘Something from your New York trip,’ Connor urged. ‘It was three weeks ago and you’ve not shown off a single thing.’

  ‘Ah, New York!’ Annie gave a sigh. ‘I told you, Connor, it was a total shopping disaster. There I was in the shopping capital of the Western world with three empty credit cards and I never got round to shopping! I never even got up the Empire State Building! I . . . we . . .’ and all of a sudden she felt slightly shy in front of her two best friends in the world.

  ‘Shall we take that to mean that you and Ed were a little bit too busy to go shopping?’ Connor asked.

  ‘Errm . . . maybe,’ was all the answer she made.

  ‘Is that the sound of a taxi engine outside?’ Annie ran over to look out of the window. ‘It is! It’s him!’ she shrieked. He must have landed early.’

  As Annie flew to the stairs, Connor winked and said, ‘I don’t think she’s really very keen on him, is she?!’

  Annie pulled open the front door and launched herself at Ed. First of all, he concentrated on her, but then he also had to come inside and gasp with admiration as he saw his transformed home for the first time.

  ‘It looks incredible!’ he told her. ‘Absolutely incredible. Unbelievable.’

  ‘So do you,’ she said, arms tight round his waist.

  ‘Cashmere!’ she noticed immediately. ‘You bought yourself cashmere? The sales assistants over there must be even better than me.’

  ‘Yeah, they are,’ he teased. ‘But you’re the one I wanted to rush back to.’

  Later that evening, Annie curled up with Ed on the sofa. There was still an endless amount to talk about but it was difficult trying to have a conversation while Owen and Lana seemed to be trampolining to something loud and blasting in their attic bedrooms upstairs.

  ‘Shall I go and tell them to keep it down?’ Annie asked.

  ‘No, no,’ Ed insisted. ‘I like it! They’ve picked a good song,’ he said approvingly. ‘And anyway, it makes this old place feel alive again. Like a proper home. I hated it when upstairs was all shut off and empty.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s alive and then there’s trashed,’ Annie warned.

  ‘You really do like this house, don’t you?’

  ‘I love it,’ Ed admitted. ‘It’s going to be such a wrench to sell it, especially now that you’ve made it so beautiful.’

  ‘And what if you didn’t have to sell?’ Annie wondered. ‘What if someone bought a third of the house, so that you could buy your sister out?’

  ‘Sell off the basement and maybe the garden as a separate flat, you mean?’ Ed asked. ‘Do you think that would raise enough?’

  Annie shook her head and waved a rectangular piece of paper in front of Ed’s face.

  ‘I have a plan,’ she told him mischievously, as he took the paper from her hand and saw that it was a cheque for a hefty six-figure sum.

  ‘I’ve sold my flat – to the tenants,’ she began. ‘And with that money and a mortgage, that’s how much I could offer you for a third of your house, which I think is generous,’ she added, ‘and then all four of us could live here . . . together.’

  She realized her heart was beating very fast as she waited for the enormity of this offer and all its implications to settle on Ed.

  She felt as if she was proposing to him – and in a way she was: ‘What do you think?’ she finally had to ask when he still hadn’t made an answer.

  ‘Oh . . . goodness!’ he managed at last, with the hand-in-hair rummage which she knew meant he was nervous. ‘Are you sure, Annie? I mean, are you really, really sure? What about the children? This might be too fast for them.’

  Holding his hands tightly, she took the time to explain to him that she was making the offer because of the children. She’d talked it through with them at length. They were the ones who didn’t want to leave, who loved their rooms, who felt at home here and, most importantly, who deeply approved of Ed. (Provided he acted like their teacher and absolutely nothing else at school . . . in fact if he could practically ignore Lana at school if possible . . .)

  ‘They are very, very into the idea,’ she assured him. ‘Owen told me the other day that Roddy would have really liked you. Lana and I agree.’

  There was a pause while Ed took this, their ultimate compliment, on board.

  ‘So you all want to live here with me?’ he asked and when Annie nodded at him, she saw that he was moved to tears.

  ‘And definitely you?’ he asked, just to make sure.

  Annie nodded: ‘Definitely, babes.’

  ‘That’s great . . .’ he said, blinking hard. ‘I really love your children. I mean . . . Owen is great, I find him really easy to understand and get along with . . . I’ll need your help to get a much better handle on Lana.’

  ‘Good grief, Ed!’ Annie smiled at him. ‘We all need help to get a handle on Lana. She’s a fifteen-year-old, now. No-one understands her, not even Lana! And what about you?’ she asked him. ‘Is this what you want?’

  Ed pulled her in close. Although he’d wanted to say something, he now found he was too choked to do anything other than nod.

  ‘Excellent! That’s all decided then,’ Annie said gently against his ear.
‘Now, apparently if I make you the children’s legal guardian, they get a fifty per cent discount at St Vincent’s.’

  When he laughed at this, she told him, ‘Hey, babes, I never, ever joke about discounts, you should know that about me,’ in such a serious voice, he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  His grip on her grew very tight as he asked her: ‘So you’re going to stay with me then?’

  She nodded slowly in response to this, then told him gently, ‘Babes, you are in need of serious modernization and upgrading, but I think you’re an excellent investment with long-term potential.’

  ‘I am so glad you spotted that,’ Ed said as he squeezed his arms tightly around her.

  ‘You’re the real thing, a unique, one-off and no-one else had spotted you, so I got you for a snip,’ she added.

  ‘I’m very, very glad you got me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, well . . . I’ve always, always had an eye for a bargain, babes.’

  THE END

  Links… Another five Annie Valentine stories.

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