by Carmen Reid
Both Ed and Owen had their arms around her waist as they walked away from The Store, while Lana kept up a cheerful commentary on her impressions of the evening.
'How are you doing?' Ed wanted to know.
'I'm OK,' Annie tried not to sniffle, 'I'll be fine . . .'
'You were great,' he reminded her. 'What did Helena call you again? Annie V, queen bee of shoppers. Here – ' he held out a crumpled, but clean, man-sized tissue fished from his trouser pocket, 'I came prepared.'
'Thank you.' Annie pressed it to her eyes.
'So, TV star, are we going home by taxi or by limousine?' Ed joked.
'Oh look!' Annie began to break into a jog, 'there's the bus!'
Chapter Four
Ed's school uniform:
Tweed jacket (can't remember)
Thin silk tie (Cancer Research)
Checked shirt (Hackett's via Annie)
Chinos (Gap)
Battered briefcase (his mum)
Total est. cost: no idea
'It's my turn to bring in the biscuits.'
'So when you say you don't know what to wear, what do you mean exactly?'
Ed was still lying in bed, although the alarm clock had gone off exactly seven minutes ago.
Annie was already up. She'd slept restlessly and woken early. She'd spent a whole forty minutes in the bathroom, twiddling with make-up and tweezers and re-doing her ponytail about twenty-seven times until it was satisfactory.
Because today was the first day of her new life. Today, at 9 a.m. sharp, a car was arriving to whisk her off to the studio where she would meet the rest of the production team and make the very first steps towards filming.
The night before, Annie had thought it was all sorted, her crucially important first outfit of the first day. She'd laid it out so carefully: the new Chloé blouse, a tight red skirt, purple tights and the black patent shoe-boots which had looked just so sexy, so slinky and so perfect then. But now, as she held the boots and the skirt up in front of the full-length bedroom mirror, she wasn't so sure. Was this outfit not a bit over the top? A bit too much for day one? There wasn't going to be any actual filming today, it was 'team talk' and 'getting to know each other' sort of stuff. That's what Finn had told her.
'You're not wavering, are you?' Ed asked, propping himself up on his elbow to get a better look at her, 'You've spent hours and hours over the past few days organizing your TV wardrobe haven't you? And weren't some very expensive purchases involved?'
'I'll be taking some of those back,' she reminded him.
'Yeah . . . might be an idea,' he agreed.
The night she'd returned from Svetlana's house with news about the TV deal and her slim salary, she'd needed to pour them both a generous glass of wine.
At first Ed had been even more shocked and disappointed than she had.
'Do you still want to do this?' he'd asked, but then answered the question himself: 'Of course you do. You've left The Store and it's a great chance for you.'
'Can we manage?' she'd wondered. 'It's just three months and I'll try and sell some stuff on eBay . . . at least make a few pounds that way. But we still have the mortgage and school fees and . . .'
'You have to give TV a try. We'll manage,' he'd assured her. 'I've got some savings that will help tide us over.'
'You have savings?' she was astonished.
As a woman who lived on the very extreme edges of her budget, whose credit card bills were a source of monthly concern, the idea of savings was just so alien. But then this was Ed, a different kind of person altogether.
'Why do I know nothing about your savings?' she'd asked.
'I wonder!' he'd answered with a smile. 'Maybe because I don't want my savings to be translated into "really great investments" like Miu Miu shoes or Hermès handbags.'
'Oh Hermès!' she'd informed him, 'Hermès is so over, only corporate lawyers carry those things.'
Facing the mirror now, with her tight orangey-red skirt in one hand and her ankle boots in the other, Annie had to confess, 'I'm having a last-minute panic. It's not so unusual, you know.'
'No,' Ed agreed. He pushed back the duvet, and went through his endearing morning ritual of yawning, stretching his arms up, then running a hand through his tangled mop of brown, curly hair before coming over to stand naked behind her.
He put his arms around her waist, kissed her neck, then they looked at each other via the mirror in front of them.
'Please stop fussing,' he told her, 'you're going to look great, because you always look great.'
'But that's because I fuss!' she told him.
'Well, I know, but try not to worry. You're going to be brilliant at this. I just know it,' he assured her, 'you're really, really good with people and you'll be a natural on TV.'
With Ed's warm hands on her stomach, Annie's churning nerves calmed. With Ed's warm hands holding her, she could almost believe his soothing words. With Ed's support, she sometimes felt she could do just about anything.
'You're great,' she told him, putting her hands over his, 'I really don't know what I would do without you.'
'You'd be just as fantastic,' he insisted.
'No, I definitely wouldn't!' she objected. 'And you need to know that.'
She held his hands tightly in hers for a few moments. 'Thank you for having so much faith in me,' she told him: 'it helps. It definitely helps.'
'Wear the boots,' he urged, 'and I love you in that skirt, it makes your bum look like a ripe . . .' he pinched her buttock to make the point.
But that was it: she dropped the skirt on the floor in horror. If the camera was going to add ten pounds to her already quite ripe enough behind, the skirt would be staying here.
'Let's just try not to burn too big a hole into my savings over the next few months,' Ed warned as he watched the skirt being tossed aside.
'No! Definitely not, I'm going to be working so hard,' she said, 'I won't have the chance to go shopping or spend anything.'
At this, Ed's eyebrows shot up and a broad smile broke over his face. 'Right well . . . this will be very interesting,' he said, certain that just because Annie didn't work in a shop any more, that was hardly going to stop her being seduced by beautiful things.
'And no cheating with your credit cards,' he warned. 'You're on a tiny budget!'
With a parting kiss, he went to take a shower, leaving Annie, still in a frenzy of indecision, in front of the mirror.
'KIDS!' she directed a loud shout at the ceiling, because Owen and Lana had attic bedrooms directly above, 'GET UP!'
It was ten past eight when Ed, Lana and Owen were finally dressed, breakfasted and ready to walk to school. Annie stood at the front door to kiss each of them goodbye.
Ed was first in his music teacher uniform of tweedy jacket, thin silk tie, slightly too baggy chinos, holding a battered brown briefcase. His hair was still all over the place because he liked it that way but Annie made him stand still so she could take off his little gold-rimmed glasses and clean them for him.
'C'mon,' he hurried her, 'I have to get to the staffroom early today . . .'
'Ooooh, the headmaster's handing out big new promotions,' she winked at him.
'No, it's my turn to bring in the biscuits.'
'Ah.'
'High powered, eh?' He put his arms round her waist and kissed her firmly on the mouth.
'Good luck, you're going to be great.'
Then it was Lana's turn.
'Bye-bye, babes,' Annie told her, kissing her on the cheek. She was very proud of her daughter right now. The sulky, Gothy, irritating phase seemed to be over and in its place Annie had a model teenage daughter. Maybe this was a phase too. But, please, please, let this phase last for ever.
Lana's long, dyed black locks had been replaced with a natural brown choppy bob, her uniform was neat and ironed and her skirt was respectably within sight of her knee. Plus, she was working impressively hard for her exams. She'd even gone straight to her room to do homework as soon as th
ey'd come in from the party the other night.
Annie knew who she had to thank for this improvement. Lana had had this charming boyfriend Andrei (yes, yes, Annie perhaps hadn't appreciated his charms as much as she should have done when Andrei was around) but although Lana and Andrei had called it a day, his swotty, sporty influence seemed to have had a very good effect on Lana.
Owen, now 12 was maybe in need of a good influence of his own. As she bent down to kiss him, she couldn't help noticing his overgrown, unbrushed shock of hair and his anorak, half on, half off with the hood twisted inside the collar. Even his bags were in a muddle; his rucksack and his swimming bag had got tangled up together in the journey to his shoulders. On his feet were shoes as scuffed and muddied as they'd been yesterday morning when she'd decided to give them a good clean. And they were still fastened with Velcro because Owen coping with laces in the rush to get to school had tipped everyone close to the edge.
'Lunches!' Annie remembered and ran back to the kitchen to get the three lunchboxes.
They were easily capable of making their own packed lunches, but this was Annie's thing. Usually, she wasn't home in time to make dinner, plus Ed enjoyed doing dinner, so Annie's love and nurturing were channelled into the lunchboxes. Every day there was a freshly made sandwich and a yoghurt, then a selection of extras: fresh fruit, berries or raw vegetables sliced up in little Tupperware boxes. Or nuts, dried fruit, cartons of juice and always a little something. A wrapped sweetie, a square of chocolate, a tangerine with a love heart carved on the side, a row of kisses drawn on a napkin. She wanted them to know that, although she was busy, she didn't stop thinking about them.
Handing Owen his lunchbox, Annie had to ask her son, 'Why are you carrying a placard?' even though Ed was holding the front door open and it really was time to go.
'Raffle tickets,' Owen answered.
'Yeah, I noticed that,' Annie informed him, because the words RAFFLE TICKETS had been drawn across the placard in large capitals then coloured in orange, red and yellow, 'but tickets for what?'
'I'm in the eco-committee,' Owen said breezily.
'Are you?'
This was the first Annie had heard of it.
'Yeah!' Ed confirmed, 'hasn't he told you? He's really chuffed, they're having a big sale—'
'To raise money for the WWF,' Owen confirmed.
When Annie looked at him questioningly, Lana filled her in with an exasperated sigh: 'The World Wide Fund for Nature, Mum.'
'We really have to go,' Ed reminded them.
'Well that's great,' Annie said proudly, 'but why am I always the last to know these things?'
Ed gave her a reassuring wink. He didn't like her to beat herself up. She was a good mother, just a bit busy – like almost every other mother he knew.
'Your mum will buy ten quids' worth of tickets tonight,' Ed promised Owen as he ushered him out of the door.
'Hey, I thought I was on a budget!' Annie warned them.
'Will you go and get dressed?!' Ed ordered, pointing at his watch.
As soon as her family had gone for the day, Annie fled back upstairs to the bedroom. A frenzied burst of wardrobe ransacking followed in which at least twenty different outfits were chosen, put together, even tried on in some cases, and then discarded.
This was the curse of being a personal shopper and wardrobe adviser: there was too much pressure on Annie to wear the perfect outfit.
The problem was, she felt totally unsure about today. This was her first meeting with everyone . . . was she supposed to dress up? Dress down? Look authoritative? Or friendly? One of the gang? Or the star? It was enough to make her scream.
Carefully, she studied her latest outfit in the mirror and wondered if it was right. Having tried on five different dresses and several skirts, she was now in trousers, which was highly unusual. She was a dedicated dress wearer. But the wide-legged grey trousers with heels, a waistcoat and this funky pink blouse looked pretty good, and she'd add a long trailing scarf plus necklaces. Would that be TV-ish? A little bit creative? Arty?
Maybe not.
No.
She'd change – try something else.
The loud honk of a car horn blasted through her thoughts.
They were here! This was her car! It was now or never, she had to get her bag and go. She looked in the mirror and hated the trousers. Hated them. This was all a terrible mistake. Nevertheless, she grabbed her favourite, most luxurious handbag, threw in her purse, and headed out of the front door.
At the side of the road, waiting for her was a rather beaten-up looking estate car. The man in the driver's seat was waving to her cheerily. As she approached, he slid the window down and called out, 'Hello glamour puss, you must be Annie Valentine then?'
'Hello,' she replied, 'Are you taking me to the studios?'
'Yup, Bob Barratt, Wonder Women cameraman at your service,' he gave a jokey salute and leaned across the front seat to open the front passenger's door for her.
'Come sit up front with me, it's nice and friendly and that way you won't get tangled up in all the clobber on the back seat.'
Annie jumped in and shook Bob's hand enthusiastically. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the entire back seat and boot of the car was filled with equipment: cameras, camera bags, tripods, cables, lights and a selection of jackets – waterproof, waxy, down, plus a pile of baseball caps.
'I like to travel light,' Bob joked as he fired up the engine, 'so . . . it's a forty-minute journey. Time for us to get acquainted.' He turned to shoot her a cheery smile and pushed up the brim of today's baseball cap to get a better look at her. 'You were sort of on my way, so Finn suggested I pick you up. Saves him a taxi fare, I suppose. I think saving will be the name of the game on this show. Mind you, it's like this all over TV now . . . I've been in the business for twenty-eight years and I've never seen anything like it.'
'Twenty-eight years? You don't look nearly old enough,' Annie was quick to tell him.
'Aha!' Bob laughed the compliment away.
If he'd started at 18, that would make him about 46, she guessed. He was a fit-looking 46, carrying his slim jeans and rugged brown leather jacket well. Gunmetal grey hair curled out from beneath his cap, and laughter lines were deep set into his darkly tanned face. He either went on holiday a lot, or he was a very outdoorsy, weather-beaten kind of guy. He seemed relaxed, quick to smile and joke, so Annie tried to relax too.
'So you're new to TV?' Bob asked as the car pulled out into the stream of traffic.
'Yeah, first day,' she confided.
'Well, the number one rule is to be very, very nice to the cameraman,' he joked. 'I'm the one who picks which angle to shoot you from, Missus. I can make you look like Marilyn Monroe or Marilyn Manson. So be nice.'
'OK,' she agreed, 'now if you could just tell me everything else that I need to know . . .'
It took a full fifty minutes to get to the studios. The traffic was bad, plus Bob insisted on pulling over at a drive-thru to get them both cups of coffee and a breakfast bun: 'You never know when you'll eat next. Have to have a good breakfast,' he insisted.
Finally, the car was parked up and Bob unloaded the heavy camera bags and tripod.