Shopping with the Enemy

by Carmen Reid

  ‘Just checking online,’ Gracie said, staring at her computer screen. ‘Oh – not quite,’ she added, ‘I’ve got $1,400 left before I hit my limit.’

  ‘So we need another $600.’

  ‘We can do that,’ Gracie said. ‘We can raise $600, can’t we?’

  ‘Can we?’

  Lana chewed at the skin around her fingernails as she tried to work out how to raise $600. Gracie nibbled at the tip of her pencil.

  ‘Maybe we could hold a stoop sale.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Happens in Manhattan all the time. People get stuff they don’t want any more, bring it all out onto the front steps of the building and sell it off to people walking past.’

  ‘But what will we sell?’

  ‘What do you have that you don’t wear any more or don’t use any more? I always have a ton of stuff. Vintage jewellery, the little felt purses that I make, I’m sure I can find a lot of things to sell on my stoop.’

  ‘Really?’ Lana asked, but she was beginning to think – why not? She could rummage through her belongings and find items to sell. Maybe Elena could give them some things too.

  The phone rang; both girls rushed to pick up, but Gracie got there first.

  ‘Good morning, this is Perfect Dress, how may I help you?’

  ‘Oh hi … hi Parker Bain, how are you?’

  At the unexpected mention of this name, Lana coloured up as her stomach flipped about. Although she knew that Gracie was going to the club opening on Saturday night with Parker, she somehow hadn’t got round to mentioning that she would be there too. Maybe because she was still disappointed that it definitely wasn’t a date.

  ‘Elena’s got your designs, I emailed them to her. They are amazing, by the way,’ Gracie was telling Parker with full-on enthusiasm. ‘We’re just trying to raise some money and then we’re hoping to get a summer collection made up really quickly … Yeah …’

  Lana tried not to listen. She looked back at her to do list for the day and tried to focus on the next task.

  ‘Our fund-raising ideas … well, so far, Lana and I are going to run a stoop sale. Do you want to come by? Yeah, tomorrow … I’ll message you the address. That would be cool.’

  ‘Yes, OK … Lana?’

  ‘Yeah?’ Lana’s head snapped back up.

  ‘Parker wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh … me?’ she asked with a rush of nerves, ‘Right.’ Lana picked up the phone on her desk and hit the connect button. ‘Hi,’ she managed, as calmly as she could.

  ‘Hey, Lana from London, you are still going to come tomorrow night, aren’t you?’

  The sound of his voice was having an unsettling effect on her.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure …’ she began, turning away from Gracie’s questioning stare. ‘We’re going to be really busy getting this new collection together and fund-raising for it.’

  ‘Lana from London, this is the hottest ticket in town tomorrow. There is nothing you can be doing tomorrow evening that would be better than this. So you have to come. I’m not listening to any excuses. Plus I want you to come … I want to see you.’

  She smiled. He was impossible to resist.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll come. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ he replied.

  Her smile widened into a grin. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

  She turned around and put the phone down, still with the goofy grin on her face.

  ‘Oh, are you going to the club opening too?’ Gracie asked lightly. ‘That was nice of him, to invite you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lana wasn’t sure why, but suddenly the air between them felt a little strained. ‘So you’re going to go?’ she asked, trying to keep it breezy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is Bingham coming too?’

  ‘Ummm … no. I think he has other plans,’ Gracie shrugged.

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Milan

  Inge the chambermaid:

  Pink and white striped dress (hotel uniform)

  White lace-up plimsolls (Aldi)

  Simple leather-strapped watch (gift from Mother)

  Total est. cost: €12

  ANNIE PULLED THE towel turban lower over her eyes, then took the big wooden ladle and heaped more cold water onto the bowl of hot stones in the centre of the sauna.

  A dense cloud of steam hissed up and enveloped the small, cedar-clad room. It swirled around her and the two skeletal American women lying on the wooden benches opposite exchanging fascinating gossip.

  Annie knew she wasn’t supposed to be in here. She was supposed to be in her room awaiting the nurse who would take her to the medical suite for her first ever enema experience.

  But as soon as she’d woken up this morning, ravenous after a dinner of broth and a vegetable cocktail, she’d remembered about the appointment and decided that she just couldn’t.

  It was too grim. She didn’t want anyone going anywhere near her with a little hosepipe. She shuddered at the thought of what might go in and what might come out.

  So now, after a breakfast of hot lemon juice and a mere sliver of melon, she was hiding in the sauna listening to gossip and the frantic rumblings of her poor, starved stomach.

  ‘So are you going to Betty’s benefit when we get back to town?’ the woman rocking the teeny Prada bikini, although she must have been approaching 60, asked her friend.

  ‘Oh no,’ her friend replied, nonchalantly rolling her swimsuit down and revealing a pair of boobs so spectacularly perky that Annie instantly decided to start saving for the surgery. ‘Breast cancer is so old hat. All the best parties are being given by the Testicular committee. You know that. Your daughter is doing a marvellous job there.’

  ‘Nice of you to say, but Ellen is such a lamebrain, I don’t think the success of any dance is down to her.’

  ‘Oh dear … so I take it she’s still determined to marry the poet?’

  ‘Not just a poet, a Communist poet. He occupied Wall Street. Can you imagine? And people know. People talk. There are already places where I’ll never be able to refuse a canapé again.’

  ‘Daughters! You have so many hopes and dreams for them when they are small and then they just turn around, grow up, and have all these crazy ideas of their own. It’s tragic.’

  The woman’s words rang in Annie’s eaves-dropping ears. Daughters with their crazy ideas: was it really tragic? Wasn’t it just natural? Mothers might think they knew best, but weren’t daughters entitled to ideas all of their own? No matter how crazy?

  Annie hadn’t had the long heart-to-heart with Lana that she knew she should. She still wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘We have to go. It’s Pilates next. In a few more minutes, they’ll be coming round, checking we’re not hiding in the sauna and missing our treatments.’

  The woman cast a pointed look at Annie. Eeeek!

  Tightly wrapped in her dressing gown on the bed in her gorgeous pink room, Annie listened to the knock on the door.

  She sat tight and didn’t make any response.

  ‘Mizzzzzz Valentina?’

  Annie pulled the dressing gown tighter. If she just sat quietly, the nurse would go away, wouldn’t she?

  There was a second knock. Go away! Surely you were allowed to refuse an enema? If you didn’t want one, they couldn’t make you have one, could they?

  Annie shut her eyes and counted slowly to ten. No other knock followed. The nurse must have gone away. Now she could be left alone to deal with her all-encompassing hunger and pounding headache.

  She’d tried asking for paracetamol tablets at lunch but she’d been turned down. Headaches were apparently a normal part of the detoxification process and she was assured that she would feel so much better after her afternoon enema.

  She gave a shudder at the thought. Help! This was worse, much worse than she’d imagined. Yet every other guest here appeared so cheerful. At lunch, they seemed to sip at their
veggie cocktails with relish.

  It felt as if she was the only person who could actually kill for a cake and a cup of coffee. She was beginning to hallucinate food: a few moments ago, she could have sworn she saw a breadbasket filled with crispy white rolls on her bedside table.

  But no: it was a basket of flowers and not one of them looked edible. Well, there was a rose … rose petals were edible, weren’t they?

  Just as she considered picking the rose apart, her phone began to ring.

  ‘Hello loveliness, how is life in the lap of luxury?’ asked Ed, his voice teasing and warm.

  ‘Oh babes, it’s hell. Hell on earth. I am so hungry and I don’t feel well,’ she whined.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I haven’t eaten anything – anything solid – for nearly twenty-four hours now.’

  She expected sympathy, but instead heard Ed give a loud snort of laughter.

  ‘It’s not funny!’

  ‘Yes it is. You’ve flown all the way to Italy to be starved. Italy? The land of the lasagne, the spaghetti alla vongole, the tiramisu …’

  ‘Shut up, Ed,’ Annie said feeling almost vicious, ‘you’re not helping.’

  He gave another snort.

  ‘Everything’s fine here,’ he said, perhaps hoping to take her mind off the food situation. ‘Dinah has the twins under control. In fact I think she’s taken such pity on us that she’s going to make us a lovely dinner … sorry.’

  There was a brisk tap on the door.

  ‘I have to go,’ she whispered, hoping that she couldn’t be heard.

  ‘Now what? Have you spotted an unattended dessert trolley and you’re about to launch an attack?’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she hissed and clicked the phone off.

  She huddled under the dressing gown and hoped the person who’d just knocked would go away. But the knock came once again.

  She held her breath.

  The sound of a key being put into the lock. Oh no! Oh help! This was it. A team of them were out there. They were going to pin her down and carry her kicking and screaming to the enema room. Maybe there were laws in Italy, and if you were a certain weight medical people were allowed to seize you for treatment.

  She dived onto the floor and rolled under the bed. They wouldn’t take her without a fight.

  The door opened and Annie saw a small pair of white plimsolled feet pad into the room. A trolley and a vacuum cleaner followed.

  Her eyes widened. A vacuum cleaner?! Oh dear God, was that what they used?!

  The door closed.

  Annie wondered if she could make it to the bathroom and bolt herself in.

  But frozen with indecision, she waited. Only when she heard the vacuum cleaner being plugged in and turned on did it dawn on her that it was the maid, come to clean her room.

  With a sigh of relief, she popped her head up over the bed.

  ‘Hello!’

  The maid gave a scream of surprise.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, I was just down here. I was just … hiding, to be honest.’

  The maid looked totally shocked.

  ‘I come back,’ she stammered at last.

  ‘No, no, it’s OK, honestly,’ Annie insisted. ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ the maid replied in an accent which Annie recognized.

  ‘Are you from the Ukraine?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Romania.’

  ‘Hello, I’m Annie.’

  ‘I, Inge,’ the maid replied.

  ‘Hello Inge, your English is good.’

  ‘My Italian is better.’

  ‘It’s good,’ Annie told her.

  ‘I watch some English television,’ Inge said.

  ‘What do you watch?’

  ‘Hercule Poirot,’ Inge replied with a smile.

  ‘Oh yes, with the little moustache.’ Annie twiddled her fingers up at her lip to convey the idea.

  ‘Why you hiding?’ Inge asked.

  ‘Oh …’ Annie wasn’t sure if she wanted to admit to this, ‘I … erm … I didn’t want to see the nurse.’

  Inge burst out laughing.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Oh yes, we all know about this, the water in the …’ she pointed to her bottom and laughed again, crinkling the skin around her eyes. She was a little older than Annie had at first thought: maybe mid to late forties. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Life might have taken its toll on a chambermaid from Romania.

  ‘This hotel is very strange,’ Annie admitted: ‘so expensive and nothing to eat. I am so hungry. I would give anything …’

  A bubble of hope was forming in her head. Could Inge possibly …

  The maid smiled but shook her head: ‘I cannot help. I cannot give you food. This is lose job. Immediately.’

  ‘No. No, I understand.’

  A brisk knock on the door brought their conversation to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Mizzzzzzz Valentina?’

  It was the nurse – she was back! She had probably been searching the entire hotel for Annie and this time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  ‘Under bed,’ Inge hissed.

  Annie didn’t need to be told twice; she hit the carpet and rolled under the bed as quickly as she could.

  Meanwhile, Inge opened the door. Annie could see the white rubber clogs of the nurse at the door. She gave a little shudder of anxiety.

  Some Italian was exchanged, too quickly for Annie to make out. Then, to her vast relief, the door closed and she and Inge were alone in the room.

  ‘Is safe,’ Inge told her, ‘I say room is empty.’

  Annie came out from under the bed. ‘You are my new best friend,’ she declared. ‘Now I know you can’t give me food, but you can tell me where to hide when the nurse comes back again tomorrow.’

  Chapter Twelve

  London

  Elena means business:

  White blouse (Banana Republic)

  Grey pencil skirt (Calvin Klein)

  Grey suede high heels (LK Bennett sale)

  Tiny diamond pendant (Tiffany’s from Seth)

  Metallic blue nails (Chanel)

  Total est. cost: £460

  ELENA WAS SITTING in the small basement office of her mother’s house, firing out emails from her laptop. She was still seethingly furious with her mother.

  How dare she turn all their ideas down without even listening, without even looking properly, without even asking one single informed question!

  Svetlana was so stubborn and so pig-headed. Everything had to be done exactly her way, or it couldn’t be done at all. Compromise was not a word which had ever entered into Elena’s mother’s head.

  No wonder she’d run into so many divorces. She was a complete tyrant.

  She hadn’t even wanted to talk to Elena properly again. As soon as Elena’s presentation was over, Svetlana had busied herself with her trip to Italy and then, after leaving a great long list of instructions, she’d been driven off to the airport early in the morning.

  Elena cared passionately about Perfect Dress. She wanted it to grow and to thrive. She wanted it, one day, to be a leading international label. In Elena’s opinion, Svetlana did not care nearly enough about the label. For Svetlana, Perfect Dress was just a hobby, something she’d been happy to create to keep Elena busy.

  Was Svetlana really bothered if Perfect Dress survived for another season or not? Elena didn’t think so.

  Svetlana would still have her mansion, her millions, her London social life, her dazzling jewels, and no doubt she’d be quite happy to give Elena a little allowance and then begin her insatiable quest to marry her off to the richest Eastern European man she could reel in.

  Ha.

  For a brief moment, Elena stopped raging and thought about the very important man in her life: the non-Eastern-European, non-multimillionaire Seth.

  Seth was another reason that Elena needed to make Perfect Dress a success. If she didn’t have an office and a business in New York, then she w
ould have to come back to London and say goodbye to Seth – which was impossible to imagine.

  Her handsome photographer boyfriend was the best guy she’d ever met; maybe the best guy she would ever meet. He’d been with her since she first moved to New York, in fact he was part of the reason she’d moved. She didn’t have any doubts that they were very much in love but a move back to London might ruin everything.

  Did Svetlana care?

  Did Svetlana even consider her feelings for one moment?

  Did Svetlana realize how serious she felt about this business and this guy?

  No, no and no.

  Fingers slamming against the keys, Elena was back to raging once again. She would show Svetlana. She would have the new dresses made up and she would make them fly!

  A timid tap on the office door let Elena know that Maria was on the other side.

  ‘Hi Maria, come in.’

  Elena liked and respected Maria and often wondered how Maria had managed to put up with Svetlana and all her demands for so long.

  ‘So sorry to disturb,’ Maria began, with an apologetic little bow.

  ‘No don’t worry about it. Is everything OK?’

  ‘The tennis coach is here for the boys. He has the right password, I recognize him and the boys know him, but …’ Maria hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He says the boys are playing in a tournament all day today. I do not know about this. He says he tell Miss Wisneski and maybe she forget to tell me.’

  ‘Well, she was so busy packing and making arrangements for her Italian trip, maybe she did forget to tell you.’

  ‘He say the boys need to bring their passports to register for the tournament. I do not like this. You know there is problem with Mr Igor and taking boys out of the country … so I don’t know if this is right.’

  ‘Is this the coach they go with all the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He knows the password.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He probably just needs the passports to prove their age.’

  ‘Yes, he says he comes back with the boys and their passports at 6 p.m. tonight.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ Elena said, giving her most reassuring smile, ‘don’t worry about it. Poor Maria, always worrying.’