How Not To Shop

by Carmen Reid

  'No, I'm sure Elena . . .' Annie began her protest, absolutely sure that Elena and Lana should not share a room. This twenty-two-year-old looked altogether too slinky and calculating to inflict on a 16-year-old teenager with exams ahead of her.

  'That vould be very kind,' Elena smiled, accepting Lana's offer straight away, 'sharing room no problem for me. I always share room, vhen growing up and at university.'

  'You're at university?' Lana asked, ushering her into the hallway. 'What do you study?'

  'Engineering at Kiev University,' Elena replied. 'I get scholarship.'

  'Wow!' came Lana's impressed response.

  'Do you like tea or coffee?' Annie asked as soon as Elena had been shown round the house and set her bags down in Lana's room.

  'Coffee, please. Your house is so big and so beautiful!' she marvelled. 'No-one has money for such a big house in Ukraine.'

  'No-one has the money here either,' Annie had to confide, 'but we just borrow more.'

  'Ah yes. Crrredit crrrunch,' Elena said, settling down at the kitchen table, 've have in my country too. Is hard to get good job as engineer, but I hope maybe I can come back to London vhen I finished and get good job here. Maybe my mother help me to stay here.'

  Annie marvelled at how easily Elena used the term 'mother' although she'd only met Svetlana for the very first time today.

  'You must have thought about your mother a lot? Did anyone tell you anything about her?'

  Elena gave a shrug of her slim shoulders.

  'Only that she very beautiful and she leave country once I am born,' Elena replied.

  'So she had you when she was twenty-three and then . . .' Annie had her back to Elena and was busying herself with the cafetière and the coffee grounds, partly so that Elena couldn't tell how very, very interested she was in this story.

  '. . . you were brought up by relatives of hers?'

  'Ya,' came Elena's reply, a little too short for Annie's liking.

  'Do you know much about your father?' she prompted.

  After giving a contemptuous snort, Elena replied, 'My father is politician. He was forty-eight vhen I was born, married, three sons, a very important man. This is vhy I am secret.'

  'Oh . . .'

  Annie brought the coffee over.

  'Are you having some, Lanie?' she asked her daughter, trying for a moment to imagine not even setting eyes on her beloved girl for twenty-two whole years.

  'Yes please,' Lana confirmed, eyes fixed on Elena. She didn't want to miss a word. Elena was definitely the most interesting thing to have happened in this house for some time.

  'Were the people who looked after you kind?' Annie asked.

  'Ya, but I alvays feel angry about this. I alvays want to know: who my mother? Vhy she leave me?' Elena said, managing in her halting English to convey some of her feeling.

  'Maybe it was hard for her . . .' Annie began but Elena just snorted again.

  'I think my father pay her big, big money to hide baby and go away. Problem solved. So,' Elena took a sip of coffee, 'she is on television now? And my father is big, important politician in Ukraine. I could make lots of trouble.' She gave a mischievous little smile.

  Now Annie understood why she had been handed the Elena-bomb. Because it could go off at any moment, and Svetlana had immediately understood that Elena had to be housed with someone of diplomatic skill.

  If you could tactfully advise long-haired polo-necked women who had been doing long hair and polo necks for thirty-odd years when the last things on earth which truly suited them were long hair and polo necks, then really what was a 22-year-old with a devastating, international pressworthy family secret?

  'Svetlana told me today that your father never paid any money for you,' Annie ventured carefully. Instinctively she wanted to bridge the gap between Elena and her mother, 'she was the one who paid for your care. She had three rich and important husbands . . . maybe she would have liked to meet you, but she didn't want these important men to find out about you.'

  'Ha!' Elena gave another shrug and snort.

  'So, engineering . . .' Annie decided to change the subject to something less controversial, 'I don't know anything about engineering, unless you're talking about bras and corsets.'

  'Mum!' Lana shrieked, embarrassed by her mother as usual.

  'Yes! Bra!' Elena pointed at her own, to indicate that she'd understood this properly, 'much engineering in good bra. Especially big one,' she cupped her hands under her dainty little bosom to demonstrate.

  As Annie and Lana laughed at this, there came the sound of the front door opening, then Owen's voice rang out into the hallway.

  'Mu-uuuum!' he yelled, 'We've got two bags! We've got two of your bags and they've not been touched. Nobody's even looked inside them. Everything's folded and even smells just like the inside of your cupboard!'

  He was in the kitchen doorway now, beaming at her happily.

  Then he caught sight of Elena and dropped his gaze with shyness.

  'Really?' Annie jumped up from her chair and ran over to her son, who had one of the bags clutched triumphantly in his hand. Ed was close behind him with the second. Owen set the bag down on the kitchen floor and undid the zip.

  'Da-nah!' he declared, a little mutedly as there was a stranger present.

  Annie's heart leapt to see three pale cardigans neatly folded on top of a stack of other, cleaned, folded and cherished items. Just as Owen had said, nothing inside the bag had been touched.

  'Oh hello there,' Ed noticed Elena at the table, 'I'm Ed,' he said and gave her a wave. His gaze travelled to Annie's face and they exchanged raised eyebrows.

  So OK, the contents of almost one whole bag were missing, scattered across Oxfams all over London and maybe even on eBay already – but it was still a huge relief to get two bags back. Annie felt as if she could almost cope with the one missing bag. But three would have been a disaster.

  'Owen, thank you!' she declared and put her arms around him. Owen tucked his chin down so that she could hug him, but woe betide if she moved in for a kiss in front of That Girl.

  'If you ever, ever take any of my clothes to Oxfam again,' Annie began in a voice which was jokily threatening, 'I will kill you! I will personally kill you and kick you out of my house.'

  'What? Once I'm dead?' came Owen's practical reply, followed by, 'Mum, can I smell bacon?'

  'No,' Annie told him, 'but is that a hint?'

  'Mmmm, bacon!' he closed his eyes and rubbed his stomach.

  'OK, go sit,' Annie instructed him.

  She followed Ed, who had a bag in each hand, out into the hall.

  'What do you think?' she asked him.

  He understood the question at once.

  'Oh. My . . . Word,' he settled on finally, 'she's terrifying,' he added in a whisper, 'she's Svetlana twenty-odd years ago. No man stands a chance!'

  'I know,' Annie replied. 'I'm going to Glasgow on Monday and I'm scared to leave you here alone with her.'

  'Me too,' Ed replied.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Elena in the changing room:

  Pink and black backless, sideless, strapless dress(River Island)

  Black peep-toe, ankle-strap heels (River Island)

  Armful of bangles (same)

  Black clutch bag (same)

  Total est. cost: £95

  'Vhat I not have is clothes for fun.'

  'I think maybe you should go away and shop on your own!' came Lana's angry response to her mother's comment about the outfit she'd just strutted from the changing room in.

  It was almost four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon in the shopping centre closest to Annie's home. Although she had only spent fifty minutes touring the shops here with Lana and Elena, she was already convinced that it was fifty minutes too long.

  'But don't you need me for the bit at the till?' Annie reminded her daughter, glaring at the skimpy vest and skin-tight PVC trousers she was wearing . . . perhaps because Elena had selected exactly the same ones from the
racks.

  Elena's taste in clothing was . . . well, 'breathtaking' might be the word. Nothing was too tight or too skimpy or too strappy for Svetlana Junior.

  'Weren't you thinking about job interviews?' Annie couldn't help asking when Elena stepped out of the changing room in a dress that seemed to be backless as well as sideless.

  'They have some very smart suits here,' Annie added, without much hope.

  'I have suit,' Elena had airily waved away the advice, 'I have clothes to be warm, I have clothes to work. But my mother give me money and what I not have is clothes for fun.'

  Oh boy . . . just how much fun was the supermodel lookalike planning to have while she was under Annie's roof?

  One look at the growing pile of club wear in the changing room would suggest: a lot.

  It was when Elena started giving Lana advice about what to buy that Annie began to get worried.

  'You have good legs,' Elena had told Lana. 'You must have very short skirt!'

  'No,' Lana answered Annie huffily now, 'I don't need you at the till, I've got my pocket money!'

  Although Annie felt offended, she relaxed at this news. She only gave Lana £5 a week, so how much bad fashion could she buy on her savings?

  'Fine,' she'd huffed back, 'I'll leave you both to it. I'll go and shop for myself and I'll meet you both for coffee at . . .' she looked at her watch, 'five p.m.'

  'Good!' Lana agreed.

  That was how Annie had found herself wandering through several clothes shops with no-one else's wardrobe on her mind but her own.

  Working in The Store had spoiled her, there was no doubt about it. The clothes were all so cheap in here. Look at the hems, so small and tight. And the material was not nearly as nice as she was used to. The jackets all seemed to be made of wool blended with a touch of sandpaper and the blouses were thin and insubstantial cotton, bulked up with fillers which would disappear in the first wash.

  Still . . . oooh! Her hand went to the rail. Now that was a very, very lovely pink silk shirt. She pulled it out and examined the label. Only £45!

  This season, she was in love with every single one of the new colours: the pinks, the oranges, the yellows and the moody greens. She wanted something in every shade.

  If she added just a few new scarves or cotton tops in the right colours, she would be refreshing everything in her wardrobe.

  Mmmm . . . the jewellery here was absolutely delicious too. That glossy fat bangle in pinky-purple? That was just exactly what she wanted. And the magenta batwing jumper?

  She took it down for a closer look. It was so strange when things you had worn in the past, loved, then got over and finally loathed, came back around again. Look at this. She'd had one almost exactly the same in cobalt blue when she was 17.

  Her blue one had had the same slashed neck but longer sleeves. Clearly, the designers had gone back to the drawing board with the batwing and accepted that the only way it worked was with elbow-length sleeves. That way, you could put your arms down and not flap about like an actual bat.

  Looking at this jumper Annie decided she had to try it on, at least for old times' sake. She even remembered the confusion with the old cobalt one: what with the slash neck and the draping sleeves, it was almost impossible to tell which way up the thing went.

  In the changing room with an armful of stuff, Annie went about her shopping professionally, assessing everything mindful of how it looked on her, rather than the hanger, and making a mental list of what it would go with back at home, in the master wardrobe.

  The one thing she didn't really give much thought to was price. There was about £3.26 left in her bank account, so technically she couldn't afford anything. But, she was reasoning with herself, this was chain-store shopping. If she bought a few things here with her overdraft, the damage wouldn't be so bad. And, she narrowed her eyes to think about this, weren't there a few things she could sell lurking about in her cupboards? A few faded gems which could be unearthed and put up on her eBay site to unlock just a couple of hundred quid?

  The jumper and the silk shirt were lovely. As she stared in the mirror at herself, it wasn't the clothes she was having a problem with, or her figure. She knew exactly how to dress this buxom, apple-shaped body which she managed to keep just on the right side of a size 12.

  No, the thing that suddenly attracted her attention was her hair. There was nothing unusual or out of place with the hair today. The golden and ash blonde highlights were totally up-to-date for the TV cameras. The hair was combed back and tightly fastened into a high ponytail the way she always wore it.

  She'd worn her hair like this for years because it totally suited her. She had small features: a pointy chin, a little nose and lips that needed vibrant lipstick to make the most of them. The flippy, bobbing ponytail also suited her quick movements and high energy. Plus it gave her skin a definite tug back. Usually she loved the ponytail and never questioned it.

  In fact, at bedtime when she let her hair down, she looked unusual. 'The Annie only I get to see,' was Ed's frequent comment.

  But now, all of a sudden, the hairstyle bugged her. Just a touch . . . just a moment of doubt.

  She'd worn it like this for years . . . she was struggling to think how long. Could it honestly have been since Owen was born? Twelve years ago?! Was she going to wear her hair like this for ever?!

  Maybe she should change to a chignon? A slightly more formal up-do? That would look the same at the front but be a little more grown up and soigné at the back. Maybe.

  Maybe a short, blonde crop?!

  She terrified herself with the thought. But didn't you have to be tiny and skinny as a rake to get away with really short hair?

  A short, blonde . . . c-rrrrr-o-p.

  Just the word crop scared her. She thought of Tina's haircut and tried to imagine all of her own golden tresses thudding onto the white tiles of the hairdresser's floor.

  No! She gave an involuntary shudder. It was too brutal. Every single time in her teens and early twenties when she'd had her hair cut short, it had taken less than a week for her to regret it completely and a long, long year for the mistake to grow out.

  Still, short hair was meant to be liberating and whacked years off your face. Hadn't she seen it with so many clients? From frumpy bob to knockout crop. Maybe she'd talk about a little change with her hairdresser . . . just talk, just consider the options.

  By the time she got to the till, she'd netted a sizeable haul. There was the batwing sweater, two cotton tops in fuchsia and cobalt blue, the pink bangle, a filmy lime green scarf which she couldn't refuse, and the pink silk shirt so extravagantly ruffled at the front.

  Ker-ching, ker-ching, ker-ching.

  'That's one hundred and eighty-four pounds and eighty-five pence,' the assistant informed her.

  Bringing her overdraft to £181.59. But so many things, all for the price of just one top or so at The Store. It was a bargain here, really.

  In fact, she picked up her bags and headed for the coffee shop feeling very pleased at all the money she'd 'saved'.