by Carmen Reid
No good came of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing only the wobbly bits, the saggy bits, the still purplish stretch marks. No good came of it at all. But here, stripped to her pants in a Parisian changing room, she felt as if she might cry. This was horrible. Now that she had released herself from the beige spandex which kept her middle permanently under control, she looked from armpit to hips like a burst blancmange.
She would have turned around to take a look at her wobbly bum too, but the curtain was pulled briskly back and the shop assistant entered armed with … oh, quelle horreur! A tape measure!
Madame met her eyes and instinctively understood the distress. Then, just as Annie would have done if she was the shop assistant here, Madame smiled encouragingly.
‘Ce n’est pas mal,’ Madame insisted, ‘ce n’est pas un désastre.’
‘Oui,’ came Annie’s reply, ‘c’est un catastrophe!’
She was measured, just as efficiently and professionally as she had measured all her clients who’d been in a state of confusion about their sizes.
As the woman told her the numbers in French, Annie tried to make sense of them, her mind reeling in further horror … Her waist was a hundred and something? Then she realized this was centimetres. Not inches. Her only comfort came from the fact that she didn’t know how to divide centimetres into inches, so she couldn’t work out how bad it had got down there.
‘Attendez,’ Madame instructed and swished the curtain closed.
Annie was left alone with the mirror and her critical thoughts once more. For so many years now, she’d been in a happy place about how she looked. She’d never expected this. This deep-seated distress, especially when she was such an expert disguiser, camouflager, dresser of good points.
But having twins … it was fine when you were pregnant, looking like a ship in full sail, billowing with a purpose, but now, when everyone – including her – expected her body to have returned to at least something close to what it was before, she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmingly disappointed.
She hadn’t shifted one ounce of the baby weight. She put her fingers round the blubber of her stomach and wobbled it with disgust. Maybe she never would. She hated exercise, despite the offers of help from Dinah, and as for all that low-carb, high-GI, de-toxing stuff … she could not be bothered. She was too busy and she was too tired. She ate Ed’s meals in the evening and whatever she could get her hands on during the day.
The curtain swished open once again and Madame returned, her arms draped with a confection of satin, lace, chiffon, red and black.
At the first frilly pale pink bra and matching knickers held up, Annie just shook her head. She wasn’t even going to bother trying that on. It was hideous; whatever kind of underwear she bought, she knew it wasn’t going to be frilly.
The next suggestion from Madame was a red satin corset with black lace trim at the edges. Madame stood behind her and hook by hook, gathered Annie in.
The effect was … a bit too saloon girl, Annie thought, looking at herself critically. Plus, the problem with a corset was that she couldn’t put it on herself, so where was the surprise element for Ed?
Annie with many English and clumsy French words, not to mention actions, tried to explain this to Madame.
‘Ah oui, ah oui …’ Madame agreed with much sympathetic nodding.
She handed Annie a black satin corset with ribbons over the shoulder which cleverly became ties running down each side. Annie had to raise her arms and let it slither down over her torso. The material felt smooth and cool to the touch. She busied herself tightening the ribbons on one side while Madame did the other.
When it was pulled tight, she surveyed herself in the mirror with something just slightly closer to approval.
With the supportive boning and the sweetheart neckline, the heavy post-breastfeeding boobs looked pale and luscious, rather than huge and shapeless. The boning held in the worst of the stomach bulge and the shiny black fabric suited her skin.
Madame suggested a little black satin thong underneath the corset and a pair of fishnet stockings. This had potential, Annie couldn’t help thinking. It was very Chigaco, the musical; maybe she’d get some tap shoes to go with it. This could be the very beginning of feeling sexy once again.
‘You mus’ feel good,’ Madame tried to explain in English. ‘You mus’ like or no good.’
A black satin corset, it was a classic: the LBD of sexy underwear.
Madame disappeared from the cubicle and when she returned, she was holding multiple packets and boxes of fishnets in her hands.
‘Voilà,’ Madame instructed, handing over the boxes. ‘Essayez … try dem …’ she added in shy English.
Then Annie was alone again, looking through the handful of offerings. The first pair of hold-ups … too long. A second was a much better fit. She went up on tiptoes in front of the mirror and strutted a little, imagining the outfit with high heels. This felt better. This felt possible.
One box, larger than the others, was different. It was a fishnet body stocking. She hadn’t tried on one of those before.
Unlacing the black corset, she decided to give the body stocking a go. Pourquoi pas?
She laid the corset carefully down, catching sight of the price tag tied with ribbon on to the label. Expensive … but then it was half the price of the Chanel shoes, and Ed would probably appreciate it so much more.
Opening the packet with the body stocking, she unravelled it and worked out that it pulled on much like a pair of tights, so she started with one foot, then the next and rolled her way slowly up, over the belly, over the boobs, then pushing both arms down into the sleeves.
The effect was startling. The mesh was fine and small, hugging tightly to her curves. The crotch was … open. Bien sûr.
Lying on the pile of things Madam had brought in was an eight-inch-wide patent and elastic belt with four buckles at the front. This must be to go with the body stocking; obviously it would act as a sort of stomach brace.
Annie buckled on the belt just as the phone in her bag began to ring.
As she answered she stood up in front of the mirror.
The belt was genius.
‘Hi,’ she said into the phone.
‘Annie, it’s Tamsin.’
‘Oh, hello.’ Annie felt instantly guilty, although she couldn’t think of anything she was supposed to be doing for work right now. Plus she’d already told Tamsin in detail about how amazing the show footage promised to be.
‘Where are you?’ Tamsin asked.
Annie looked at herself in the mirror. She liked, she actually liked the way her boobs looked encased in the fishnet, but she thought it was probably a detail her employer could be spared.
‘I am sneaking in just the tiniest bit of Parisian shopping,’ she confessed.
‘Is Rich with you?’
‘No, I left him at Svetlana’s hotel; he needed some more background shots.’
‘Oh … but I was just thinking, if he got some footage of you shopping in Paris, maybe that would make another little featurette for us. Make your trip over there extra worthwhile.’
Annie did not want Rich filming her in her new underwear, that was for sure. Maybe at the Chanel shop? But then the thought of missing her flight out tonight, or, even worse, Tamsin commanding her to stay here another night … No, she really had to nip this little idea in the bud. No matter how much she wanted series three.
‘Tamsin, it’s’ – she looked at her watch – ‘nearly five thirty already, everything is about to shut here and I’m going to have to come home tonight.’
And not just in order to try on this outfit with high-heeled black boots, she thought as she looked herself over almost approvingly once again.
Elena woke abruptly from the brief sleep she’d fallen into in the warm luxury of the king-sized bed and the arms of Sye.
For a moment, she couldn’t recall where she was, but when she felt the arm around her, the strand of hair brush her shoulder, she
remembered exactly. Everything. Every single little thing. She felt a rush of nervy excitement.
She looked down towards the floor and saw the tumble of clothes scattered about. There too was Sye’s camera; alone and unguarded, the brightly coloured strap rumpled into a heap. As quietly and as carefully as she could, Elena slid from her side of the bed.
Sye stirred slightly as the pressure of her body moved from his arm, but the exertion of the past two hours, not to mention all the late nights and very early mornings of the past fortnight, meant that his sleep was deep.
Elena picked the camera up from the floor; then, wrapping a hotel robe around her, she slipped through the doors and into the suite’s sitting room.
On the table she and her mother had set up as a workspace, Elena saw her phone flashing at her angrily. Although she suspected the messages would all be from her mother, she still picked it up and checked, in the hope that maybe someone, somewhere wanted to place a dress order.
But no, the four messages were all a variation on the same theme: ‘Come and see me as soon as you are finished in our room. I am in the hotel bar.’
Elena removed the memory card from Sye’s camera and slipped it into her laptop, then she downloaded all the photographs he had taken of her in her George V bed.
Her eye was attracted to the many frames he’d shot of her with her dress slipping from her shoulders as she sat on the rumpled bedclothes. Although the pose was sexy, it was also extremely elegant, because the dress was a sophisticated gumetal grey silk. There was one photo in particular that she really liked. An image like that would be great for a Perfect Dress marketing campaign.
Once the pictures were safely stored on her computer, Elena erased each and every one of them from Sye’s card. Despite her very good first impressions, she kept telling herself that she didn’t know him, so therefore she couldn’t possibly trust him.
Elena was just slotting the cleaned-up memory card back into the camera when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Tut, tut, and I thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship,’ Sye teased.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ed in bed:
White T-shirt (Boden)
Boxers (present from Owen)
Thick towelling dressing gown
(White Company via Annie)
Pocket contents (tissues, breadsticks, dummies)
Total est. cost: £90
‘Croak …’
When Annie opened the front door of her family home, the first thought that struck her was how quiet it was. Then she considered the cold.
Usually, pulling open the front door meant being hit by a blast of noise, warmth and often the smell of something delicious already cooking.
It was one of Annie’s favourite moments of the day. Arriving home, she could feel her shoulders relax and her face soften into a smile as she prepared to see all her favourite people.
But today the house was silent and as cold as an empty church hall.
‘Guys?’ Annie shouted out. ‘Where are you?’
They had to be in, it was 10.30 p.m. Where else would they be?
Now Annie could hear Dave burst into a volley of barks. It was coming from upstairs.
‘Guys!’ Annie called out again. ‘Are you upstairs?’
She dumped her bags in the hallway, stepped out of her shoes and began to head up the stairs.
Going up without shoes on turned out to be a mistake. How could she have forgotten about all the little lumps and chunks of plaster all over the place? Now that she was on the first floor, Annie decided before going in to see her family, she would just take the few extra stairs up to the attic floor to see what had really happened to the roof.
When she got there she was astonished at the damage.
The hole in the ceiling and, above it, the roof, was at least three feet square; there was a great rotten rafter dangling down dangerously and the large blue tarpaulin which had been hastily rigged up seemed to be bulging ominously with rainwater.
A big chunk of plaster had been gouged out of the wall where Al’s falling hammer had struck against it with force.
Annie might have sworn, but somehow, what with having tiny children and being on TV, she’d got out of the habit, so the only words that issued from under her breath were: ‘Oh. My. Good. Grief.’
‘Annie?’
She heard Ed call her from their bedroom so she left the scene of the roof disaster and headed back down to the first floor.
Opening the door, she was taken aback at the scene in here as well.
Ed was in the centre of the big bed in his pyjamas looking utterly exhausted, and, as an added attraction, his hair was practically standing on end with the amount of dirt and dust it had accumulated in the thirty-six hours since she’d last seen him.
Lying on his chest was Minnie, who looked up at Annie, displaying a snot-caked nose. To Ed’s left was Micky, already asleep, but making the wheezing, rattling snores of a baby whose lungs are full of phlegm.
On Ed’s right was Dave – up on the bed! – snuggled next to Owen, who was also in pyjamas, with a remote control in each hand. These were pointed at the small TV which Annie recognized as the one from Lana’s room.
It was stiflingly hot, the two electric heaters plugged in beside the bed had obviously been running all evening.
The bed was piled high with duvets, sleeping bags and several large cardboard pizza boxes. There was also a white polystyrene box. Coleslaw? she wondered. Well, at least they’d been eating their greens.
On the bedside table stood a cluster of empty milk bottles and … unbelievable … jars of baby food with the spoons still stuck inside the remaining orange goo at the bottom.
Jars? Jars! Ed had obviously lost it. Ed would never, ever dream of feeding his precious, pampered babies jar food unless he was at his wits’ end.
The schedule … the baby Mozart … clearly things had not exactly been running to plan today.
‘Hi,’ Annie said gently, ‘how are you all doing?’
‘Great!’ was Owen’s enthusiastic response. ‘Totally great. We’ve all moved in here, apart from Lana who’s moved to Greta’s. We’ve got telly, we’ve got pizza, it’s finally warmed up. Minnie and Dad aren’t too perky, but otherwise, we are great. Aren’t we, Mickster? Oh …’ Owen could now see that his buddy had zonked out.
Annie came and sat down on the edge of the bed. She kissed Owen on the forehead; she ran a hand over Micky’s head, Minnie’s hot little cheeks and finally Ed’s face.
‘Blimey,’ was her verdict, ‘so is this what happens when I go away for two days? You revert to bachelorhood – go feral? And all catch a virus?’
Ed tried to say hello or make some kind of response to Annie’s arrival but all that came out was a volley of coughs so sudden it made Minnie cry.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ Annie removed her damp raincoat, flung it at a nearby chair, took Minnie from Ed’s arms and realized that she’d better get busy. ‘Have we got medicine for the twins?’ she asked Ed. ‘Have we got honey, lemon and aspirin for you? Is Mum OK? Her lights are out, otherwise I’d have gone down.’
Ed croaked back a ‘Yes’ to her in reply to all of these questions.
‘Can we move one heater so that Owen can at least get some peace and quiet in his room?’
‘Oh!’ came Owen’s groan. ‘I don’t want to go to bed.’
Another ‘Yes’ was croaked at her.
Annie spurred herself into a frenzy of activity. The twins’ sheets were stripped and replaced. The babies were put into fresh nappies, fresh pyjamas, dosed with medicine, sponged and finally put down to sleep.
Then Annie stripped her and Ed’s bed and sent Ed for a hot bath and hairwash, despite his croaks and protests.
When he finally came back into the bedroom, he was tucked in with medicine and a hot drink.
‘Maybe you’re just exhausted,’ she told him. ‘Maybe if you could just have a really, really long sleep, you’d finall
y wake up feeling better.’ She handed him the present she’d bought for him at the airport: a pair of hi-tech travellers’ earplugs. ‘Wear these,’ she instructed. ‘When the twins wake up, I’ll deal with them as quietly as I can and you sleep. OK?’
Ed was too tired to protest. In clean, ironed pyjamas, he climbed into clean, ironed bed-linen. This was like a dream. The crying had stopped, the pizza boxes were gone, the rumpled, sweaty, hairy bedclothes and sleeping bags had disappeared.
Annie had brought order, calm and quiet back with her from Paris.
She also smelled delicious.
‘Did you buy new perfume?’ he asked. ‘Duty free?’
Annie thought of the beautiful rose-pink packaging carefully tied and taped around the things she had bought in Paris. On the journey back, before she’d realized how bad things were at home, she’d imagined herself showering and then, when the children were asleep, treating Ed to a little fashion show of her own.
She’d not thought at all about the roof hole, the viruses and the general chaos that awaited her.
‘No,’ she told him, running a hand over his still damp hair, ‘I bought something much, much more exciting than perfume. I think you’re going to like it.’
‘Mmmm …’ Ed said, not able to raise his head or even flicker his eyelids at her. Within moments, he was fast asleep.
Annie went out of the room and into her little office because there were three calls she wanted to make before she unpacked and showered off the long day.
‘C’mon, boy,’ she urged Dave, who was now trotting at her heels. He was a people dog and didn’t really like to be left alone for too long.
Annie’s first call was to Lana.
‘Hey, you,’ she said as soon as her daughter answered.
‘Hi, Mum, are you back?’ came the reply.
‘You didn’t fall out with everyone at home, did you?’ was Annie’s first question.
‘No, I just couldn’t stand it there any longer. It’s absolutely freezing, the babies cry all the time and Dad and Owen just want to eat pizza.’
