by Carmen Reid
‘I’m sorry. But it’s OK, I’m back and it’s all going to get sorted.’
‘There’s a hole in the kitchen covered with tarpaulin and now there’s a hole in the roof covered with tarpaulin. The builder’s in hospital and … good luck!’
‘Janucek, he’ll come to the rescue,’ Annie said hopefully.
‘Please don’t run off with Janucek,’ Lana warned in a teasing voice.
‘Same to you!’ Annie replied. ‘How’s school?’
‘School is fine, I am working like a slave.’
‘Good! Er … and when are you going to come home?’ Annie asked. ‘Should I speak to Greta’s mum? Explain to her that you’re not actually moving in on a full-time basis?’
‘Fix the roof and the kitchen wall, then I’ll come home,’ Lana promised.
Next, Annie tried to phone Connor but when she just got his voicemail, she wondered if he was screening.
‘Hey, Connor, can we talk?’ she began her message. ‘Have you forgiven me yet? I hope so. Love you. I told Vickie from Pssst! magazine that you are wonderful and so much more buff than in that horrible photo on the cover.’
Now, although it was late, Annie also wanted to call her sister.
She listened to the ringing at the other end of the phone. When the voice at the other end answered, sounding so sleepy, Annie immediately apologized. ‘Sorry, sorry, babes, I know it’s late, but I really wanted to speak to you.’
‘Annie! And you’ve woken me up,’ came the grouchy response.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie soothed, ‘I’m really sorry I’ve not phoned you properly for days. That bloody Pssst! magazine say they’ve got an interview with our dad running next week and I don’t know what we should do about that.’
‘What?’ Dinah sounded shocked. ‘They’ve tracked him down?’
‘I think so. I don’t know, all I’ve read is that some sort of exclusive about our dad is coming out in the magazine.’
‘Oh God, this is all my fault,’ Dinah said.
‘No, don’t blame yourself. It’s their fault. They must have realized there was a mystery and they’ve gone off and done a bit of research.’
‘Why have we never done that research?’ Dinah wondered.
‘I don’t know. Maybe we’ve never been that interested. I don’t care about him. I wish he was dead, to be honest. That would be much more convenient.’
‘Annie!’ Dinah scolded, but then she was a much more tender-hearted person. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow. How was Paris?’ she asked with a yawn.
‘It was completely, unbelievably hectic. But I was in a hotel for a night, so I got to sleep for one whole, unbroken, seven-hour stretch. It was incredible.’
‘But how was Paris? The shows? Exciting? Glamorous?’
‘Oh yeah, all of those,’ Annie answered with sarcasm. ‘Didn’t you know that the fashion world is just one long fun-fest?’
‘Models? Catwalks? Amazing outfits? Photographers? C’mon, I want details.’ Dinah was interested now.
So Annie told her sister a little bit about the Svetlana and Elena fiasco and how they were still waiting for their first order.
‘How did Ed cope?’ Dinah asked, once she’d heard enough about Paris.
‘Ah …’ Annie wasn’t quite sure where to begin. ‘Well, he’s had a lot on. The builder made a great hole in the roof—’
‘As well as the kitchen?’ Dinah interrupted.
‘Yeah. Then he fell off his ladder and broke his wrist.’
‘No!’
‘The twins have a virus or something and Ed looks like he hasn’t slept for forty-eight hours and has been living off pizza all that time.’
‘He’s exhausted,’ Dinah pointed out. ‘If he was a new mum, this would be the point where friends would intervene with a nanny, a spa weekend and a hairdressing voucher.’
‘Yeah, and someone would step in and sleep-train the babies. It’s totally impossible. They wake up every two hours!’ Annie added.
‘You need to look after him a bit.’
‘I know,’ Annie agreed, ‘or he’s never going to find out about all the nice underwear I bought in Paris. It’ll just be stuck in its little pink carrier bag for ever.’
‘Have you got a busy day tomorrow?’ Dinah wondered.
‘Tomorrow, no, I get to stay at home tomorrow, for good behaviour. I was going to let Ed sleep all day, look after the babies and rally the remaining builders.’
‘Why don’t I come round about twelve-ish?’ Dinah began. ‘Billie’s going to a friend’s house after school. I won’t have to be home till about six, so you and Ed can have a long afternoon …’
‘Of what?’ Annie wondered.
‘Of you taking him out, of you looking after him, of you getting him out of the house and reminding him who he is again!’ Dinah exclaimed. ‘He needs you to do all the things you did for me when Billie was a baby and I was slightly out of my mind.’
Chapter Thirty
Elena back at her desk:
Pale grey skirt suit (Reiss)
Zebra-striped pumps (Hobbs)
Pencil holding hair up (Rymans)
Unwashed white T-shirt (stolen from Sye)
Total est. cost: £290
‘We just have to turn interest into sales.’
Svetlana and Elena had only been in their office for seven and a half minutes, but already the atmosphere was turning sour.
Elena had powered up her computer; Svetlana had switched on her phone. It was painfully obvious that neither of them had any good news.
The entire £75,000 start-up budget had been blown and there was not yet a single dress order to show for it.
Not a single buyer who attended the Paris show had placed an order and Elena had a horrible, sinking feeling that not one of them would.
No one had said enough nice things about the dresses, no one had even asked questions about the fabrics, the care of the fabrics, delivery times – any of the things that would have marked them out as genuinely interested.
‘This is all your fault,’ Svetlana said, tension getting the better of her as she stalked up and down the office in her heels. She hadn’t considered the possibility of failure. She really, honestly hadn’t considered it. When Svetlana did things, she succeeded. Her life was – well, OK, apart from the divorces – one long, glittering success.
‘Where were you during the cocktail party when everyone important was there?’ Svetlana began nastily. ‘Where were you when I want to introduce you to a man who owns four European boutiques?’
Elena didn’t like the sound of this.
‘You were upstairs in our hotel room, legs behind your ears with some nobody!’ Svetlana spat out.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Elena began, blushing furiously. ‘I spoke to lots of people at the party. I think we have a slot in British Vogue—’
‘We have no buyers!’ Svetlana exclaimed. ‘We have a factory in Hong Kong waiting for our call, expecting us to place an order today! And not one single buyer. We have not even sold one dress. We are worse than a shop assistant. Igor always say making first million is the hardest …’ she added mournfully.
‘We have to turn interest into sales,’ Elena said, wanting the conversation to turn from Sye as quickly as possible.
Once she had said goodbye to Sye and gone to meet her mother in the George V bar, things had not exactly gone smoothly. The store-owner, Dominic, whom her mother was so keen to impress, had already left and Svetlana had delivered a blistering lecture about the importance of selecting the right man at the right time and how Elena had failed on both fronts.
The mood in the little Mayfair office was not helped by the arrival of two newspapers, both of which carried photos of the show, but instead of featuring the dresses, they showed Yvette, the burning wig and veil, plus some fun-poking captions.
The coverage was not flattering and it was hardly going to bring a stampede of offers to the door.
‘Come on,’ Elena said as calmly
and as encouragingly as she could, desperate to ignore her mother’s disapproval, ‘we will divide the buyers who were there between us and we will phone them all. Be positive. Be persuasive.’
Up until now, Svetlana had imagined that selling dresses was going to be just as much fun as buying them. But now that she looked at the list of twenty-two names Elena was handing over to her, she wasn’t so sure.
This was going to be hard.
‘Use your charm,’ Elena instructed, ‘you are a very, very charming woman.’
‘You are a little too charming yourself,’ Svetlana warned, but with a slight smile.
‘The first person to make a sale …’ Elena began, but wasn’t sure what to offer as a prize.
‘Gets champagne with lunch,’ Svetlana finished the sentence.
‘You think we make a sale before lunch?’ Elena asked with a smile.
‘Ya! I make first sale before ten a.m.,’ Svetlana threw down the challenge as she began punching the first number into her phone.
As Svetlana watched Elena reaching for her phone too, she tried to forget about the bedroom scene in the hotel.
Really, she admired her daughter greatly. The girl had grown up in relative poverty in Ukraine, knowing nothing about either of her parents. She’d been clever at school and won herself a university scholarship. Only then had she tracked down her mother and come over to London, arriving in Mayfair totally unannounced.
Svetlana had somehow hoped that by paying a small monthly allowance, she was allowed to forget about this Ukrainian girl conceived by mistake. Then Elena had arrived on her doorstep, real and angry, marked not just with her mother’s beauty, but also her determination. For several weeks, Elena had stayed with Annie because Svetlana couldn’t bear to tell anyone about her.
But then the dam had burst, the truth had come out and … really, it was surprising how well it was all working out.
Svetlana felt as if she was growing closer to her daughter by the day. For the first time in her life, she felt as if she had an ally. A friend. A true friend, who knew her for what she really was and still cared about her.
Svetlana admired Elena’s determination to build a business not just for herself, but for her mother too. If Elena had been anything like her mother was at her age, she wouldn’t have wasted one moment trying to set up Perfect Dress, she would have been out every night at all the best places looking for the very best men to provide for her.
Deep down, Svetlana couldn’t break the habit of looking for the best men, although she’d stopped looking for new men for herself, she was now looking on Elena’s behalf.
But … Svetlana had to admit, she had been divorced three times and each one of those rich men had tried to leave her penniless. Maybe Elena’s idea of building a business and a fortune all of her own was a better one.
‘Hi, Tina?’ Elena began her call. ‘Did you have a good journey back from Paris?’ She tried to sound just as relaxed and as friendly as she possibly could.
‘Oh, we are buzzing with orders,’ she fibbed in response to the question about how sales were going. ‘Everyone is just so impressed with how glamorous but how wearable and totally washable the dresses are. So recessionista … everyone wants an outfit that can just totally multi-task.’
Then she listened patiently to the objections Tina was raising to placing an order. ‘I know, I know, the climate is difficult, no doubt about that. Why don’t you just try a handful? If they don’t sell, send them back to us. You know I am so confident they will sell, I’ll give them to you at a thirty per cent discount off cost price.’ Elena glanced over at her mother and wondered if this was cheating. Maybe they wouldn’t be drinking champagne at lunch. She scribbled ‘30% off cost on first six’ on a piece of paper and waved it at her mother.
‘Oh, wait …’ she heard Svetlana say, ‘I think, just for today, just for you, I’m allowed to make a special opening offer …’
Tina promised to phone her right back, which wasn’t a great result, but despite her protests, Elena wasn’t able to stop Tina hanging up.
Just as the line went dead, an email dropped into Elena’s in-box.
Her heart skipping as she saw who it was from, she clicked to open and a huge photo filled the screen.
It was the photo of her with the silky grey dress slithering from her shoulder as she smouldered at Sye. Her blond hair was draped over part of her face and even Elena, her own harshest critic, recognized that she looked great. The picture came with a caption which read: ‘You’re stuck in my hard-drive. This pic running in Women’s Wear Daily, if you agree. In London next week, please say you can make time to see me. Sye’.
While Elena digested the shock that she hadn’t managed to wipe all the photos from his camera, her mother leaned over her shoulder and took a look at the image.
‘That is very beautiful,’ she said. ‘The photographer take it?’
‘Yes. I didn’t want him to keep any pictures, I thought I cleaned them all from his camera,’ Elena replied.
‘Tcha,’ Svetlana tutted, ‘is there worse to come? More naked?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Elena replied.
‘This photo is very good, very elegant-sexy. We could use it for Perfect Dress.’
‘He’s given this to Women’s Wear Daily, he wants my permission for them to use it.’
‘Say yes!’ Svetlana insisted. ‘It’s very good.’
‘But I don’t want to be the model,’ Elena protested. ‘I want to be the boss!’
‘You are the figurehead. Think of Diane von Furstenburg, she always wear her dress, everyone know her, she just as famous as her dress. Say yes!’ Svetlana insisted. ‘Hey, I make sale. Six dresses at thirty per cent discount. Good idea of yours. Now, unless you make sale, I drink all the champagne.’
As Elena picked up the phone and punched in the second number on her list, she couldn’t take the smile off her face: Sye was coming to London and he wanted her to make time!
Chapter Thirty-One
Babysitter Dinah:
Flowery flared skirt (Toast sale)
Navy leggings (Miss Selfridge)
Patent ballet pumps (same)
Navy scoop-neck top (M&S)
Olive corduroy jacket (Cancer Research shop)
Brown leather crossbody bag (Camden market)
Chunky orange beads (same)
Total est. cost: £110
‘Please go away!’
Ed slept right through the twins’ three night-time awakenings. He totally missed the 7 a.m. alarm clock, breakfast and even Owen’s noisy departure for school. Annie hoovered up plaster dust in the hallway, changed and dressed the twins, then took them out for a walk along with the dog. Returning at 11.30 a.m., she found Ed still asleep.
But when Dinah rang the doorbell at noon, setting off first the dog and then the babies, the noise finally travelled through the duvet over Ed’s head, past the earplugs in his ears and the exhaustion in his brain. Like a swimmer underwater pushing himself up towards the surface, Ed finally willed himself awake.
As he struggled to open his eyes, he felt unusually lightheaded and optimistic. He remembered having the most fantastic, vivid dreams: a jumble of deep red curtains, deep red sofas, guitar music, faces from school … He couldn’t remember many details, but it had been wonderful, so involved and intricate and far away. So very far away from greasy pizza boxes and a hole in the roof and the endless crying and whining of unhappy babies.
At the thought of the babies, his eyes finally opened properly. He lifted his head and looked at the empty bed beside him, the empty cots. Then he took a look at the alarm clock.
When he saw that it was after twelve, he refused to believe it. He shook the clock to establish whether or not it was working and watched the hand travel along for at least ten seconds before he had to accept that it really was 12.06 and he had been asleep for … thirteen hours.
No wonder he felt so amazingly good!
He got out of bed, wrapped his dressin
g gown around him and decided to venture out into the house to see what was going on.
When he padded into the sitting room, he felt almost disappointed at the calm and peaceful scene before him. The twins were playing happily on the floor; Annie was on the sofa drinking coffee with Dinah sitting beside her.
‘Hi,’ Ed said cheerfully in a voice that still croaked slightly. ‘I’ve had a bit of a lie-in.’
‘About time!’ Dinah told him. ‘Hello there!’ she added with a grin.
‘How do you feel?’ Annie asked.
‘Much, much better,’ Ed confirmed, ‘just husky, but nothing hurts. So you’re managing?’ he asked Annie. ‘Do I need to walk the dog?’
Dave, lying on an armchair, lifted his head up hopefully at these words.
‘No, I’ve done that. Just go upstairs and dress nicely,’ she instructed. ‘We’re going to go out for a little bit, just you and me. For the first time since … ummm … before Christmas? Dinah is going to babysit.’
‘Really?’ Ed looked concerned. ‘Are they OK though? Are they over whatever was bothering them?
Annie nodded in reply to both of these questions. And Ed could see for himself that the twins looked much happier today.
‘But do you think they’ll be OK with Dinah?’ As soon as the question was out of his mouth, he realized how anxious he sounded, but he hadn’t been away from the twins for more than an hour or two since they’d been born.
Anxious attachment.
It was a condition; he’d read about it, but it hadn’t occurred to him before that he might be suffering from it.
Annie smiled at him. ‘Babes,’ she said gently, ‘this is Dinah we’re talking about. She may be looking a little art school today—’
‘Ha!’ Dinah protested.
‘But she is a brilliant mummy and a baby-worshipper,’ Annie added.
Dinah smiled reassuringly at Ed. ‘Please go away,’ she urged. ‘I can’t wait to be in charge of them. Look at them, they are totally scrumptious.’ To prove her point, she knelt down on the play mat and tickled Micky till he giggled.
