by Carmen Reid
'Annie, I have to phone you back,' he'd told her and abruptly, the line went dead.
* * *
'You're always 100 per cent professional to me my dear,' Mrs B-P told her, 'that's why I can't buy anything by myself any more. I'm totally dependent. An Annie addict. Now come on, cheer up. Unless it's fatal, I don't think you should cry about it. That's my new motto. And even if it is fatal, at least you're not dead yet!'
Annie put her hand on Mrs B-P's skinny, narrow shoulder. 'Are you going to be OK?' she asked her. 'Are you properly in remission now?'
'Darling, we are all in remission,' Mrs B-P smiled at her serenely. 'It's going to come and get us all one day. Worth remembering that.'
'Is that the spirit of the Blitz?' Annie asked with a smile.
'I'm not that old!' Mrs B-P reminded her, 'but damn right! Now take this bloody thing away.' Mrs B-P passed her the sputnik hat and picked up the deep red pillbox trimmed with a huge silk rose and a spunky little red net veil, 'I think this is much more like it.'
'Everyone's fine, everyone's great. Owen's already in his pyjamas, Lana's doing her homework and I have to run,' were Dinah's words of greeting when Annie arrived back at her home that evening.
Annie gave her sister a big hug of gratitude and asked, 'No phone calls or anything?'
'No, Ed has not phoned,' Dinah told her, 'but Annie, you need to do something. You're the grown-up! You're the one who's been married. You know how these things work. You'll have to step in and sort him out. Or he's going to wreck this.'
Annie didn't even have her feet properly inside the door, didn't even have her coat off and she was already being bombarded with Ed advice.
'Dinah, not right now, babes. Not right now . . . are we all organized for tomorrow then? And by the way, your face! Your face looks lovely. The rash went right away!' Annie enthused.
'You owe me eighty-five pounds, Annie,' Dinah said huffily. 'That's how much it cost to see Connor's dermatologist.'
'It was worth it,' Annie told her. 'Shall I give you a bag instead?'
'No, I would not like a blinking bag! I have to go. Bryan's got squash.'
'So tomorrow,' Annie began. 'Lana, Owen and Billie are going to Mum's first thing, I'll come and get Billie and the car seat. We are then left to spend the entire day at the spa, then we get dressed up at my house and meet Bryan at the hotel for the surprise "dinner" he thinks you think he's arranged.'
'Oh God,' Dinah looked properly nervous all of a sudden, 'you do think it will be OK, don't you?'
'It is far, far too late to worry about that now, you might as well just enjoy,' Annie told her, adding, 'I've booked you in for the full top to toe at the spa, by the way.'
'What does that mean?'
'Look, you're in there, you might as well go for the works: facial, mani, pedicure, all the waxing. The more you have done, the cheaper it gets. This is not the time to economize,' Annie pointed out. 'The second-biggest party of your life is happening tomorrow night. There won't be many more jamborees in your honour before your funeral probably, so make the most of it. You might not be looking your best at the next one.'
'Oh please!' Dinah said, gathering up her things and heading out of the door. 'See you tomorrow.'
As Annie was coming down the attic stairs after chatting to the children, her mobile beeped with a text.
She fished it out of the bag she still had draped over her shoulder and eyed the number, registering the little hope that Ed might be getting in touch.
'Speaking to Marie-Claire, what to wear???! Danni xxxx'
Annie carried on down the stairs and then made straight for the spare room and her stack of cardboard boxes. She delved into them for the beautiful red pair of Timmi Woos in Dannii's size four. The ones with a light tan trim. They were high heeled, shiny crimson red with a low strap, and a nice little red and tan button to hold the foot in place. All in all they were the sexiest, classiest shoes Annie had ever seen.
Dannii should definitely wear these. What she would wear with them was just a detail. A detail which Annie would be able to sort out inside an hour at The Store on Wednesday, and she texted Dannii back to say as much.
Annie leaned back against the comfortable male arm under her neck and wriggled in a little closer to the warm body lying across the length of the sofa beside her. She picked up her nearly empty wineglass and pushed it up into the air: 'To you,' she said once again, 'what would I do without you?'
'Get a dog, maybe?' came the reply. 'You could snuggle up on the sofa with a dog. If it was a big one.'
Annie slapped Connor's thigh. 'You're not my dog,' she told him.
'Yeah, but you're my bitch, girl,' he said, making himself laugh.
She had heard every last detail of Connor's meeting with Sam Knight, including the catastrophic outfit, which she was sure had clinched him the part.
'A retro "Withnail and I" kind of feel,' Connor was repeating again. 'Annie, if I'd worn the Ralph Lauren blazer, I wouldn't have got the part. Even the scab on my nose helped!'
'I didn't like the blazer,' Annie reminded him, 'that was Dale from Menswear's idea, remember? I didn't think it said "creative". It was more "accountant on day off". You're right, what you wore screamed "creative". You were very clever,' she teased, digging him in the ribs, 'and he's going to make your character gay . . . you're a star!'
'Drink up' – he pointed at her glass – 'because you know I'm about to ask you about your boyfriend.'
'Oh no, not my boyfriend!' she grumbled.
'Are you two OK? Why is he not staying here at the moment? And what are you doing about it? And how do you feel?' were the questions Connor fired at her.
'How do I feel?' she repeated wearily. 'I feel as flat as a hedgehog on the M25 and I have no idea how we're going to work this out . . . but there is one thing I want to ask you . . .'
'Anything you like,' Connor assured her.
'Was Roddy ever unfaithful?'
There was a time not long after Roddy's death when Annie and Connor had had to talk about Roddy constantly. Roddy's wife and his best friend, who hadn't even been very close before, had felt obliged to discuss every memory, every little joke, conversation and nuance. They'd been determined to keep Roddy as alive as possible in their minds. They'd almost been frightened to stop talking about him, in case they forgot some detail when they were knocked sideways by grief and desperate to remember everything.
Now it was an occasional treat to talk about Roddy: not nearly so desperate or painful as it had once been. They could reminisce bittersweetly, just once in a while.
Annie listened for several moments to Connor breathe.
'You know,' she went on, 'you were away together filming when I was back at base with the babies. I've worked on film sets, I know how incestuous they get on a long shoot.'
Still Connor said nothing.
'You have to tell me, Connor, because if you don't say anything, I'm just going to suspect the worst.'
'Why do you have to suspect the worst?' Connor asked, breaking his silence.
'For some reason, I think if anything ever happened, it happened on that four months you were in Romania. Did it?' Annie prompted him.
'Annie,' Connor began, hauling himself up so he could look at her, 'why are you asking me this?'
'So he did, then,' she said in a small, flat voice.
'No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that at all. But why are you asking me about it?'
'It just seems important! I'm looking back at my marriage and thinking no one and nothing can ever match up to it. But maybe I'm totally wrong,' she tried to explain.
'OK. Well, here's what I'm going to tell you.' Connor swirled the remains of the wine around in his glass and drank it down: 'In Romania there was this girl. A Romanian girl, Irena. She was very pretty, very sparky and she was absolutely besotted with Roddy. She always arranged to sit beside him and talk to him and do his costumes and be with him. She did all the running, and he wasn't interested.'
&nb
sp; 'Oh really . . . not at all,' Annie's sarcasm was obvious.
'OK, he was flattered,' Connor had to admit, 'he was flattered . . . and we were over there for four months . . . and I think,' Connor hesitated, then decided to say as gently as he could, 'I think there might have been a very, very little . . . thing . . . but as far as I could see it was over before it had even begun and he was not interested. He felt really, really guilty . . .'
'Oh well, that's all right then,' Annie snapped. She looked dangerously as if she was going to cry. Connor decided to plough on.
'And Roddy was horrified when this girl started phoning him once he was back in London. He didn't want you to find out anything about it. Because,' and now Connor's arm went round Annie and held her tight, 'he didn't want to spoil anything with you and with the children. He didn't want to do a single thing to hurt his family.
'Annie don't you dare cry about this, because it's nothing. You and the children were the most, most important thing to him in the world. Annie' – Connor was looking exasperated now – 'Don't tell me you've forgotten that? That would just be an insult!'
And because Connor looked quite genuinely upset as he said this, Annie had to agree with him. Really, she knew it was true anyway. And she knew, really, that of course this wasn't important, not in the scheme of things.
'I don't know why you're asking me about this. Just forget it, please.' Connor was now overcome with remorse that he'd mentioned a word about the girl.
'Irena?' Annie was asking now. 'You know, I think I've met her. Jesus, Connor, I think she came into The Store and had a session with me.'
Connor looked completely taken aback.
'Before we went to Italy! A Romanian girl called Irena came in for a consultation and she asked all sorts of personal questions, about the children . . .'
'She knew who you were?' Connor sounded incredulous. 'And where you worked?'
'Roddy must have told her. She must have known he'd died, someone must have told her that.'
'I told her,' Connor admitted straight away.
'Oh Jesus. Well . . .' Annie stumbled, 'that was nice of you.'
'Annie,' Connor began, 'she phoned me up soon after it happened, saying she was coming to London, she hadn't heard from Roddy in ages and she wanted to contact him. And I told her . . . and she was quite upset.'
'Obviously – what with them being such close friends.'
'Annie, he's the one who told Irena all about you, all about the children. That wasn't me.'
Annie sank back against his arm, realizing that she could find a lot of comfort in that.
'And no,' Connor added, kissing her on the forehead, 'your marriage was great, but it wasn't perfect. No one's is. We have to make do with the best we've got. So get off your bum and go and phone Ed. Do whatever it is he needs you to do, or you're going to be a very sad and lonely lady all over again, and we can't have that – not when I can't look after you because I'm away filming,' he shot her a grin. 'Meanwhile, I'm going to go and investigate the contents of your fridge.'
'Good luck,' she called after him. 'There's a soya yoghurt, a quorn sausage and a diet quiche. They're all mine, I have a party dress to get into. Owen ate everything else.'
'It's a nightmare in here, you need Ed back!' Connor shouted from the kitchen.
'What about you?' she shouted back. 'If no one's perfect and we've got to make the best of what we have, why don't you get off your bum and go and see Hector?'
'I'm going to do that,' Connor said, speaking through a mouthful of diet quiche as he came back into the room, 'right now. He's not home till 11 p.m. God, this is disgusting!'
'Better get used to it, Hollywood boy!' And suddenly Lana was standing at the sitting room door in her pyjamas.
'Hey babes,' Annie greeted her, 'I thought you'd gone to bed.'
'I did, but I forgot to tell you . . . I spoke to Ed today and he said he's at a concert tonight, that he can't get out of . . . and he'll see you tomorrow.'
'But I'm spending the day with Dinah tomorrow,' Annie replied.
'Maybe he means at the party then.'
Chapter Twenty-eight
The fifty-something woman on the swing:
Long below-the-shoulder gunmetal grey hair (herself)
Extensive waxing (The Spa)
Sparkly pink nail varnish on all twenty nails (MAC)
Total est. cost: £95
'Even being naked is expensive.'
Dinah walked into the sauna with one thick white towel wrapped around her head and another round her body. She was brandishing a long, chilly glass of champagne and as soon as she spied Annie, she announced, 'I cannot believe how much that hurt! I am never, ever doing that again.'
Annie tried hard not to burst out laughing at Dinah's shocked face. 'Babes, it will be so worth it. Think of the surprise Bryan will get tonight. His baby's had a Brazilian.'
'I don't know how good it looks, though,' Dinah confided, 'I'm not exactly twenty any more. I've given birth, there are baggy bits, purplish bits . . .'
'Enough!' Annie screeched. 'Once the swelling goes down, you'll be fine.' Annie patted the space on the bench beside her, although there was no one else in the tiny Swedish pine cabin right now, 'So . . . ten years!'
'Yeah.'
'You should know that the next three years are really, really tough, according to all my clients. Best to be prepared. Apparently it's when you pass through the: shall I really stick with this man and all his many faults and flaws for the rest of my life? Or shall I get out while I still have some looks left and a slight hope of attracting someone else? '
'Thanks, Annie.' Dinah nudged her. 'That's so cheering.'
'Do you know in which year a divorce is statistically most likely to happen?'
'No, but you're about to tell me, aren't you?' Dinah swigged her champagne.
'Year eleven.'
'No! You are lying!'
'I'm not. That is the truth, I promise you. And I bet it's because the wives didn't get good enough anniversary presents. Seriously! They're thinking: I put up with you for TEN YEARS and you give me a rubbish little AMBER PENDANT which cost about thirty pounds. I think if you want to guarantee another ten years of bliss, you have to fork out big on your tenth. Spend even more than the engagement ring.'
'You would say that because you're so materialistic,' Dinah said, with a quick smile at her sister.
'And you would say that because you're so . . . so . . . untainted!' Annie countered. 'It's not materialistic, it's about wanting to be properly appreciated.'
'Bryan appreciates me,' Dinah said, 'and I don't need some bit of rock dug out of the ground by some poor, exploited, Third World miner to prove that. He's having this party for me, isn't he?'
'Yes,' Annie agreed quickly, 'I think it's great! I think it's fantastic you've been married for so long. You always seem really happy.'
'We are happy,' Dinah said thoughtfully, 'we are definitely happy enough. We've fallen in and out of love so many times. That's the difference between people who stay married and people who split up: we just hang on in there, convinced it's going to get better. And it does. No one tells you that . . . that you can fall in love with someone all over again, and even be desperate to be with them all over again. It's the work of a lifetime to learn how to live very happily with someone else.'
