Celebrity Shopper

by Carmen Reid

  The five models arranged themselves in a group to the left of the altar, the idea being they would pause here for a few moments, letting the music and the mood wash over the audience, giving a good chance for the dresses to be admired, then they would walk back along the side of the church, make a lightning change in the hall, then head back in for round two.

  Annie faced Elena and Svetlana and read the surprised relief on their faces.

  Now that the lights were on, the music was playing and the models were dressed up, the women in charge of Perfect Dress could see that this stood a chance. It really might be possible for a group of total amateurs to pull off a show and convince some important people that the dresses were fantastic.

  ‘What do you think?’ Annie couldn’t help asking, desperate to hear their reaction.

  But before either Svetlana or Elena could answer, there was an audible crack. The music came to an abrupt halt and the lights went out, plunging the church into pitch darkness.

  ‘Oh shiiiiit,’ came Rich’s pithy response, ‘I think we’ve blown up.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Owen at home:

  White and blue T-shirt (Quicksilver)

  Checked shirt (Asda)

  White tracksuit bottoms (Primark)

  Brown sandals (Birkenstock)

  Total est. cost: £65

  ‘It’s snowing inside the house!’

  Ed put his lips to Minnie’s forehead. This was the way Annie had taught him to estimate a baby’s temperature. If the baby’s forehead felt hot to the touch of your lips, the baby was probably running a temperature.

  The forehead felt hot. Ed was hardly surprised, Minnie was crying so hard that her face was red and tears were spilling from the corner of her eyes.

  Teething?

  Her nose was all blocked up and snotty, so Ed thought there was more to it than tooth pain. He was thinking ears: the dreaded earache, especially as she seemed to be rubbing her fist against the side of her head.

  ‘Oh, Min Pin,’ he said, holding her up closely against his face and rubbing her back, ‘poor old Min Pin. Let’s go and get some medicine.’

  Micky set up a fresh wail too, but this was because he was still buckled into his high chair at the makeshift table in the sitting room. They were eating a late supper of mashed avocado and yoghurt, because the kitchen was far too cold to hang out in for any length of time.

  Ed wasn’t sure if he, Owen and Lana were going to enjoy a meal of toast, mashed avocado and yoghurt quite as much as the babies though.

  Lana had been in a fury ever since she’d stepped into the house. ‘It’s absolutely freezing!’ she’d complained. ‘What the bloody hell has Al the idiot done now? Brought half the house down?’

  Owen had rushed upstairs to survey the damage, even though Ed had warned him not to: ‘Be careful, more might still come down. It’s a hard-hat area up there!’

  ‘Cool!’ Owen’s voice had drifted down from the attic floor. ‘It’s snowing inside the house!’

  Ed measured out the medicine and, once he had given Minnie her dose, decided to risk phoning Annie.

  Yes, she was busy and she was stressed, but so was he and he wanted her advice on earaches. At what point were you supposed to phone the doctor? he wondered. He’d read horrible things about burst eardrums and permanent deafness.

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘Hi,’ she answered. She could have told him that now was not a good time; now she was in a pitch-dark church with a crowd of very angry, very baffled and quite frankly mutinous people around her, but she could hear Minnie’s breath in the phone too, so Ed must be holding her right up against his shoulder.

  She listened. Minnie’s breathing sounded snuffly.

  ‘I think Min’s got a sore ear,’ he told her.

  Annie put one hand over her other ear so that for a moment she could block out the complaints, the cries and the threat of a fresh crisis threatening to engulf everyone all over again.

  ‘Poor old Min, have you given her medicine?’

  ‘Check,’ Ed answered.

  ‘Keep her warm with lots to drink. Is Micky OK?’

  ‘Seems to be so far. Annie, how do I know if she’s getting worse, though? How do I know when to call the doctor? And how do I keep her warm when there’s a great big bloody hole in the kitchen wall and now the roof?’

  ‘Oh, I’m really sorry …’ Annie began.

  Elena was crying again; even in the pitch darkness with one hand over her ear, Annie could hear her. But she needed to concentrate on her family for a few minutes. ‘Ed, Minnie will scream and scream if it’s really bad, that’s when you call the out-of-hours service because she’ll need stronger pain relief and maybe an antibiotic.’

  ‘What if her eardrum bursts?’ Ed asked. His voice was full of angst.

  She tried to soothe him. ‘It usually takes days to build up to being that bad. There’s an electric heater in my office, why don’t you plug that into the bedroom and get it all warmed up for bedtime? But are Lana and Owen going to be warm enough?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe you should all go to Dinah’s or Hannah’s …’ Annie wondered out loud, but she knew that neither sister had enough room for Ed and his four children. ‘Warm up the bedroom,’ she repeated. ‘If the worst comes to the worst you can all sleep in there. I’m going to have to—’

  ‘Go. I know. Are you still working?’

  She laughed at this: ‘Oh yeah, I am still working. Still trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Phone me later, yeah? Tell me how it’s going.’

  ‘I love you,’ he told her.

  And suddenly she felt tears jump up at the back of her eyes.

  ‘This is completely bloody ridiculous,’ was Lana’s verdict when she heard about the avocado toast and the baby’s ears and the plan to all huddle up together in the big bedroom. ‘I have a mock exam tomorrow, I can’t be up every five minutes all night long with the stupid babies.’

  ‘That is a bit harsh, Lana,’ Ed told her sharply. ‘Things are going wrong. Things are not going to plan. We may just have to pull together and battle it out for a bit.’

  ‘No!’ Lana had stormed. ‘I’m phoning Greta and I’ll stay there for the night.’

  Ed had just sighed in response to this. He didn’t want to argue with Lana, firstly because he hated arguing with her and secondly because it wasn’t really such a bad idea. At least that would be one less person to try and cater for, one less person to worry about keeping warm.

  Ed, Owen and two much calmer babies ate their strange supper, supplemented with whatever could be found in the fridge, and then they listened to Owen play the violin for a change instead of the electric guitar.

  ‘Are you just being nice though, Owen?’ Ed wondered. ‘Are you playing the violin for you or for me?’

  ‘Oh, totally for you,’ Owen assured him without the slightest attempt to cover anything up. ‘I mean I don’t mind the violin, but my heart is really with the electric guitar.’

  Ed felt more than winded at this news. He was the one who’d first taught Owen to play both the acoustic guitar and the violin. He’d hoped that somehow the violin might win through, because Owen was naturally very good at it.

  When Ed decided that it was time for all four of them to brave the bedroom and bunk down for the night, Owen went into the room first.

  ‘It is absolutely bloody freezing in here,’ was his verdict.

  ‘Don’t say bloody,’ Ed warned.

  ‘But it bloody is,’ came Owen’s reply.

  Ed gave another long-suffering sigh. ‘The electric heater is rubbish.’

  ‘I have some things in my room …’ Owen began.

  What was he going to come out with next? ‘Firewood?’ Ed joked.

  ‘No, I’ve got a bit of camping kit.’

  ‘Camping kit? I thought that was all packed away in the boxes in the attic for the summer.’

  Ed and Owen had spent many a happy night together under c
anvas. Funnily enough, their love of camping had been one of the things that had brought Annie and Ed together in the first place – but that was another story.

  ‘Well, yeah, our kit is packed away in the attic, but I’ve got some new stuff.’ Owen spoke with caution; he didn’t want to land himself right in it.

  ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘Well, some really nice new arctic kit. I was supposed to test it out – for Mum’s show.’ He hoped this would be the end of the questions.

  ‘Oh. Right. Sleeping bags?’ Ed wondered.

  ‘Yeah, really big sumptuous ones. You can zip them right open – you can even zip them together,’ he explained with enthusiasm. ‘If you, me and the babies all get into bed under the duvets and the arctic kit, I reckon we’ll be all right, but we’ll leave the heater on low all night.’

  ‘That is brilliant, Owen,’ Ed told him. ‘Bring it on in.’

  Owen disappeared off to his bedroom, and when he reappeared his arms were full of all the things he’d managed to … er … ‘source’ from the Everest Camping Company. The sleeping bags and the down-filled jackets were so thick and pillowy he could hardly see over them. Then there was thermal underwear bundled into his arms and from one hand dangled a camping stove.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing the camping stove,’ Ed told him as he dropped everything down on the bedroom floor.

  ‘Why not?’ Owen wondered.

  ‘I don’t think we want to cremate ourselves, do we?’

  An hour later, the twins were fast asleep in the middle of the bed under a comforting layer of duvet and sleeping bag. Owen lay in bed on one side of them, reading a book and occasionally yawning. Ed lay on the other, so exhausted he couldn’t read anything and was already dozing.

  ‘Dad?’ Owen asked quietly.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Ed managed to answer.

  ‘You won’t mention the camping stuff to Mum, will you?’

  ‘What camping stuff?’ was Ed’s sleepy reply.

  ‘You know, the sleeping bags and everything, just don’t tell Mum about them.’

  Sounding a little less tired now and a little more anxious, Ed had to ask: ‘Why not?’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Model Annie:

  Red shirtwaist dress (Perfect Dress, borrowed)

  Control pants (Spanx)

  Blue heels (L. K. Bennett)

  Chunky gold and silver necklaces (Topshop)

  Total est. cost: £180

  ‘I don’t think that was just a little fuse …’

  It was so dark in the church after the bang that at first no one could even see their own hands in front of their faces. But, slowly, their eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  ‘What just happened?’ Annie’s voice rang out in the darkness.

  ‘What have you done?’ came Svetlana’s sharper and more accusing question.

  ‘Il y a un plomb de sauté quelque part!’ was the angry response from DJ Paul in the corner of the room.

  ‘I don’t think that was just a little fuse …’ Annie said, speaking as a veteran of dodgy fuse-boxes and blown plugs.

  ‘No,’ came Rich’s verdict out of the darkness over on the other side of the church pews. ‘I’ll try and find a torch, then I can maybe change the fuses on the lights. They probably come with spares. But that sounded a lot more serious than a little fuse. It sounded like we blew the whole bloomin’ box.’

  DJ Paul let out a blast of angry-sounding French, which was met initially with silence as no one in charge knew what he meant.

  ‘Anoush?’ Annie asked, hoping she could provide a translation.

  ‘He say it sometimes happen,’ she began from her spot near the altar, ‘the courant in the building not enough for all his equipment, plus the lights.’

  Then DJ Paul switched on a powerful torch, which proved that he was prepared for disasters like this and, with the beam in one hand, he began to pack up with the other.

  He fired out some more sentences in rapid French, which Anoush began to translate with embarrassment: ‘He’s going to go now. Er, he’s not going to come back tomorrow. He thinks this problem will take too long to fix and it is too much trouble for him.’

  It was time for Elena to let out her by now familiar howl of despair.

  Eyes adjusting to the darkness, Annie could see that Elena had covered her face with her hands. Even Svetlana’s proud posture seemed to have slumped. Svetlana was not used to problems, she was used to clicking her fingers or bringing out her credit card and making every little hitch that ever dared to get in her way disappear.

  There was a baffled sense of shock in the church now; no one seemed quite ready to believe that a mere electrical problem was going to ruin everything. They had come so far in so few hours: they had found a new venue and reorganized all the guests; they had found models; they had made head-dresses and veils; they’d had a DJ, even a borrowed lighting rig … and now it looked as if it was all going to be over again.

  Annie was desperate to suggest something. Anything. Her mind was racing. Couldn’t they bring in a thick power extension cable from the hall?

  ‘A CD player?’ she asked out loud. ‘With batteries?’

  DJ Paul seemed to understand her suggestion and he just laughed out loud at it. ‘Pas moi,’ he told them with a shrug. Not me.

  If anyone was going to be standing in a church playing a battery-operated CD player, it wasn’t going to be DJ Paul. He had almost finished his dismantling work and Annie had a feeling that once he walked out of the door, it was going to be hopeless. Once one of them had given up hope, the feeling of doom and gloom would settle over the others and they would all walk out on this show.

  ‘We have to think of something,’ Annie said out loud, as encouragingly as possible. ‘If we’ve got this far, we can solve this little problem. C’mon.’

  For a few moments, everyone was totally silent. The DJ finished his packing by torchlight.

  Once he was gone, Annie thought wildly, they wouldn’t even have torchlight. They would be totally in the dark.

  Then Grand-mère stood up.

  ‘My grandmother needs to go home,’ Celeste said, suddenly remembering.

  ‘Of course,’ Svetlana replied.

  Celeste stood up too and prepared to follow Grand-mère.

  Grand-mère walked out of the pew, but then she turned, not towards the church vestibule and door, but instead in the direction of the altar. Once there, she made a left before disappearing through the small side door.

  ‘Where’s she going?’ Annie asked Celeste.

  Celeste shrugged.

  ‘Is this her church?’ Annie wondered.

  ‘Yes,’ came Celeste’s reply, ‘she comes here all her life.’

  Grand-mère shuffled out several moments later with two small cardboard boxes in one hand and a wrought-iron candle holder in the other.

  The candle holder was one which had been designed to carry row after row of little votive candles.

  Grand-mère set the items down in front of the altar, then she went back into the room and came out with another three candle holders in her hands.

  ‘Voilà, la lumière,’ she said.

  Celeste was about to translate, but Elena was the one who said in English: ‘Here is our light.’

  Then Grand-mère walked calmly before the altar, pausing to make a little genuflection in the centre, and disappeared through the second tiny door on the other side of the church.

  For a moment there was silence, then a terrifying blast of organ music reverberated round the church, shocking everyone back to their senses.

  ‘The organ!’ Annie exclaimed.

  Grand-mère appeared once again and said simply: ‘Voilà, la musique.’

  Celeste gave a little clap and began to speak to her grandmother in French. Then she turned back to the others and asked: ‘What you think? She say she have friend who could play organ music here tomorrow.’

  Elena and Svetlana appeared to be too surprised to be able
to speak. They were looking at each other in the very dim light.

  ‘Will the candles be enough? For taking pictures?’ Annie asked Rich.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘it’s a very dark church, even in the daytime. It’ll be very moody, but you know, the photographers will use flash and as for me, I’ll just put the camera on the night-time setting and … hey, it’ll be something different.’

  Suddenly Elena seemed to be galvanized once again. Springing up from her hard wooden seat, she exclaimed: ‘Come on, we light up all the candles we can find and we see how it look.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The fashion buyer:

  Multi-coloured knit dress (Missoni)

  Simple grey wool coat (MaxMara)

  Grey heeled boots (Chloé)

  Aqua blue patent shoulder bag (Mulberry)

  Prescription sunglasses (Boots)

  Total est. cost: £2,800

  ‘What on earth …?’

  ‘Did you survive the night, babes?’ Annie asked gently down the phone when she woke up at 6.30 a.m. in her hotel room the next morning.

  Unlike Svetlana and Elena, who would be waking up in the luxury of their George V suite, Annie and Rich were staying in rather more functional rooms at a business hotel on the edge of the financial district.

  ‘Yeah, we survived,’ Ed sleepily assured her, ‘but I’ll take Minnie for a check-up at the doctor’s this morning. How about you?’

  ‘It was a very, very late night,’ Annie said and gave a yawn as if to make her point. ‘I’m just about to get dressed, put on my TV face, then Rich and I are heading over to the venue first thing to help get it all set up.’

  ‘Put on your TV face?’ Ed repeated. ‘What? No make-up artist?’

  ‘No! No Ginger, and even the multi-skilled Amelia didn’t come with us in the end. Too much to do in London for Tamsin, apparently. How will I cope? No, don’t worry, we’re filming by candlelight, no one will get to see me in all my truly hideous detail.’