Late Night Shopping

by Carmen Reid

  Annie looked at the book in her hand. 'Fantasy Footwear,' she informed Ed and bent down to pick up the torch, which had fallen down between them.

  'I need some tissues,' Ed told her.

  'Come and sit down,' she said, walking into the sitting room ahead of him and guiding him towards the sofa. 'Sit. I'll get some cold water and a facecloth.'

  'And tissues,' he instructed.

  'And I'll try and put the lights back on.'

  'Yeah . . . OK.'

  Several minutes later, the side-light and the TV jumped back on again and Annie appeared carrying a small bowl, a flannel and a tissue box.

  'Let's see,' she said, approaching Ed, who was still sitting with both hands now cupped over his face. The nose didn't look too bad. The edge of the book had broken the skin at the bridge, so blood was trickling down from there as well as from the nostrils.

  'It's a bit like Connor's Italian injury,' she told him, wiping gently at the cut with a wet corner of the cloth. 'He thinks it helped him get the part – you know, in the film.'

  'Oh the film, yeah, he was telling me about that at . . .' but Ed's sentence tailed off as if he wasn't desperate to relive Bryan and Dinah's party, however briefly.

  'Just pinch here,' Annie instructed, putting her fingers beneath the bridge of her nose to demonstrate.

  'Yes I know,' Ed snapped. 'I teach First Aid at school.'

  He looked huffy again.

  She took a good look at him . . . pinching his nose with one hand, balled-up bloodstained hankies clamped against it with the other. He was dressed like a burglar in dark trousers and a dark hoodie. He also had a touch of stubble and unusually bluish rings under his eyes. Tired. Just like her. No bloody wonder. It was close to midnight and they were still up.

  'Why are you here?' she wondered out loud. 'I mean it's your house and everything . . . obviously you're allowed to come back . . . but I think you could have warned me.'

  'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you a fright. Did you think I was the taxman?' he managed to joke.

  'I've paid that bill, thank you very much,' Annie replied sourly.

  'I'm sorry . . . it was just a . . .' Ed suddenly seemed at something of a loss, 'a spur of the moment . . . kind of thing . . .'

  Annie wondered what this meant: spur of the moment drop in and pick something up? Spur of the moment chat about estate agents?

  'I didn't think you'd be asleep, I didn't realize it was so late,' Ed added, rolling up a tissue and stuffing the tube into his bleeding nostril. 'That ought to do it,' he said.

  There was a pause, during which Annie looked at him expectantly. Surely he was going to give her some sort of explanation for turning up after 11 p.m. and scaring her half to death.

  Ed, feeling that he was required to say something, told her: 'I wanted to talk to you about Owen's birthday party.'

  'Oh . . .'

  She didn't add, 'Are you out of your mind? Couldn't we have done this at ten in the morning tomorrow like normal civilized people?'

  'Why is your duvet down here?' he asked, as if he'd just noticed it on the sofa.

  'I was just dozing, in front of the telly.'

  'Can't sleep?' he asked, turning to her with his very familiar, gentle concern. Before she could deny this, so as not to seem too vulnerable and troubled, he added, 'Me neither. Far too much to think about. You still haven't signed the estate agent's agreement form.'

  'Neither have you,' she reminded him quickly, not wanting to dwell on why she hadn't been able to bring herself to do this yet.

  'No . . . it feels very sad.' He made a scratchy sort of throat clearing. 'Losing my mum . . . losing the house . . . and losing you.'

  Now her throat felt very scratchy too. For a moment, all she could think about was how many hours she'd spent scraping the layers and layers of blackened varnish off the stair banister before polishing it up to perfection. And she'd done this willingly because she'd thought she'd be here to enjoy every corner of this lovely house for years and years to come.

  'And it was about Connor, funnily enough,' Ed started up, almost out of nowhere. 'That was what I wanted to ask you about too.'

  'Connor?' she said, sounding surprised, swallowing down the scratchy throat, 'has he been talking to you?' Not that this would have been so surprising. Connor, just like Dinah, still couldn't understand why she had finished with Ed.

  'No. But I think Connor is the hole in your argument.'

  Ed sounded quite detached, almost a little teacherish, as if some problem was going to be discussed, weighed up and counter-argued.

  'Connor? What argument? What hole?' she asked as if he'd gone mad. What was he talking about? Had she knocked him too hard with the shoe book?

  'You love Connor, don't you?' Ed asked, 'and you didn't use to feel like that about him. Not before Roddy died. Do you see? Do you see what I mean?'

  'No,' Annie told him, 'I'm not in love with Connor. That's not why I—'

  'No!' Ed broke in, 'that's not what I meant. It's this . . .' He took a deep breath and, though muffled slightly by the hanky, began, 'Why is Connor allowed to be an honorary member of your family, when I'm not? Why do you let yourself love him? Why was he allowed in? Was there a cut-off point?

  'Did I miss the date of entry and now the gates are closed and no one else will ever be allowed into your family again? I've been thinking and thinking about what you said, and I understand it from your point of view, but what about me?' Ed's voice was straining with the effort of these words. 'Where's my family? When do I get to be part of a family again? My mum and dad are dead and my sister's got a family of her own. So what am I supposed to do?'

  Annie could not take her eyes from his face as he put a hand gently on her shoulder and told her once again, just to make sure, because he had to make one more attempt at this, 'I love the three of you. I accept that I do not love you as much as if I'd lived with you for years, but I love you enough to want to start to love you that much.

  'Can you understand what I'm saying?' he asked, knowing that his heart was right out there on his sleeve. 'You're the only family I've got now and you've got to let me in. Because I promise, I just absolutely promise that I won't let you down.'

  'But how do I know that?' was all Annie could say in reply.

  'Because I really mean it,' Ed said and took hold of her hands.

  There was a long, loaded silence before Annie, in a frightened whisper, managed to voice the question which was scaring the life out of her. 'But what if you die too, Ed?'

  Ed's answer was to put his arm round her shoulders and pull her in tightly towards him. 'Oh Annie,' he said into her hair, 'Annie, Annie.'

  For a moment they just held each other and Annie recognized how warm and how safe and how right it felt to be here.

  'There can't be any new leaves without old leaves,' Ed said into her hair, 'but you've got to stop. How are you ever going to fall in love with me if you're busy picking out my coffin?'

  When Annie was finally able to speak again, she leaned away from him, wiped hard at the tears on her face and told him, trying to make it sound jokey, but really meaning every word, 'If we're going to get back together, you've got to promise that you won't die first, Ed, that's the deal. You're not allowed to die first.'

  Ed took her hand in his and told her solemnly, 'I will never cross the road without looking very carefully. I will never, ever overtake without being able to see a full mile ahead on the other side of the road and I will never, ever get on a plane if I know there's a terrorist on board. Is that OK?'

  'I don't know!' she said, feeling yet another tear drip from the end of her nose, 'I don't know if that's enough.'

  'We might get really, really old together,' Ed reminded her, trying to sound light-hearted too, 'and then you might kick me out because my bum's too wrinkly and there's a hot new waiter who thinks eighty-year-old women are funky. And it might all end very happily for you.'

  'It never ends happily,' Annie told him darkly.

&n
bsp; 'Annie! Please! Put the coffin catalogue down!' Ed exclaimed. 'Baby, can't we just seize the day and all that? Enjoy today? Maybe you need to see someone professional.' He put a finger gently on her forehead: 'maybe you need to put your busy mind at rest. No amount of shopping is going to fix what's going on in there.'

  Laying her head down on his comfortable chest, where she could hear his heart beat slowly and reassuringly, Annie told him gently, 'You're all right, Ed. I think I could quite get to love you, you know . . . once the tissue plug comes out of your nose.'

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Morning Ed:

  Blue pyjama bottoms (vintage M&S)

  Matching blue jewellery box (Tiffany)

  Total est. cost: classified.

  'Oh, Ed!'

  On Sunday mornings, there was a new routine at number 8 Hawthorne Street. Ed and Annie slept in. Late. Ten o'clock late. Eleven o'clock late. Disgustingly, filthily late. Then finally, when Owen and Lana were completely restless and bored, they knocked on the bedroom door and brought in coffee.

  This Sunday, there was something very special to go with the coffee: a gooey, homemade, Ed-baked, triumph of a chocolate cake. It was decorated with eleven candles. When Owen brought it into the bedroom, the candles were already alight and Owen was singing, 'Happy Birthday to me!' loudly.

  'Happy birthday! Hello! Good morning!' Annie roused herself from the pillows and gave both her children a hug. Slowly, with a bit of poking and tickling, Ed came round as well, perking up remarkably at the prospect of chocolate cake for breakfast.

  Once the candles were blown out, Ed began to cut slices and Owen fell on the pile of presents waiting for him in the corner of the bedroom. He was going to get to the big box first – that had to be the Celestron! The white phone at the bedside table burst into life and Owen snatched it up. 'That'll be Grandma.'

  But no, after he'd said hello and listened to the request on the other end of the line, he handed the receiver to Annie. 'For you, sounds like work,' he announced.

  Probably Mr Woo, Annie thought, reaching over for the phone. The man never took a day off work and had not yet picked a good moment to phone. Still, the shoes were going to be trialling in four House of Fraser stores next month, so there were plenty of last-minute snaggles to attend to.

  'Hello, Annie speaking,' she said.

  And then someone began to talk to her and what he was saying was so extraordinary that she only seemed to be able to take in little bursts of it. 'Donnie Finnigan . . . TV producer . . . so sorry, Sunday . . . Kelly-Anne's husband . . . looking terrific, ten years younger, much happier . . . makeover show . . . auditions . . . Svetlana Wisneski . . . think you'd be perfect . . . you and Svetlana . . . prime-time TV. Need to come and meet us. Just say when and we'll send a car. What do you think?'

  When Annie finally put the phone down she stared at her family in shock before screaming out, 'I've got an audition to go on TV! There's a new makeover show! Me and Svetlana! They think we'd be perfect!!'

  * * *

  Some time later, when every one of Owen's parcels had been torn open and greeted with rapturous enthusiasm (well, apart from the remedial-looking pyjamas from Aunty H), every cake plate had been scraped clean and Annie had relayed the conversation with the TV producer at least five or six times, Ed, in his pyjama bottoms, hopped out of bed and began to rummage around in his wardrobe.

  'I've got a little, teeny, weeny present,' he announced. When he came back to the bed, he opened his hand to reveal a small, pale-blue box.

  'Ooooh,' Lana, cuddled in beside Annie, was the first to comment, 'from Tiffany!'

  'Oh, Ed!' Annie gasped, but she kept a rein on herself. They sold all sorts of things at Tiffany's. Yes they sold engagement rings with perfect round, white diamonds cut in the trademarked Tiffany way. But she didn't know if she and Ed were there yet. They were somewhere. They were somewhere very, very nice. They were settling into a new phase: one where Annie was learning to be truly open, was realizing that there was nothing she needed to hide from Ed any more. Nothing of herself she needed to protect or hold back from him.

  Ed was beginning to understand much more about really talking and not storming off and sulking when he didn't know where the dialogue was going to go next.

  But anyway, back to the little blue box which Annie was holding tightly in her hand . . .

  She was reminding herself that at Tiffany they also sold Elsa Peretti pendants in sterling silver, chunky silver rings, decorative gold bracelets . . . but then the box was too small for a bracelet. Could it be earrings?

  This might just be a present, which would be lovely. Very, very sweet. No doubt about it. This might not be the great, romantic gesture which . . . did she want? Did she not want?

  'Mum!' Lana urged her with a nudge. 'Come on! Open it!'

  'Yes!' Owen agreed

  Annie stole a glance at Ed. His steady gaze was on her and there was a smile of expectant happiness on his face.

  If this was a proposal ring . . . was it going to be a fabulous diamond or something much more modest? Looking from Ed to the box and from the box back to Ed, Annie suddenly realized that no matter how many times she'd told herself before that she was only going to settle Svetlana-style for the real deal, the mega engagement ring, she knew just looking at Ed that no matter what was inside, she was going to love it.

  Because she loved him.

  She really did. Maybe not as much as she'd once loved her husband. Not yet. But there was plenty of time for that. They had their whole grown-up lives ahead of them.

  So she pulled off the ribbon and lifted open the lid.

  'Oh! Oh babes,' she said, eyes shining and with a smile that lit up her face. 'Oh, Ed! That is absolutely perfect! Perfect!'

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  Yes, I know, it's that kissy, kissy, luvvie darling moment at the back of the book, but how else do I let everyone know how wonderful they are?

  I am always so grateful for the kind advice and input of my wise agent, Darley Anderson, and for the support of the lovely people who work with him: Maddie, Zoe and Ella.

  A very special thank you to my new editor Sarah Turner. It has been a pleasure to work on LNS with you. You've nipped and tucked my story with charming brilliance! As has copy guru Judith Welsh. Annie's latest adventures would not be as sparkling without you both.

  I feel very lucky to have such a fantastic team behind Late Night Shopping. The covers, the website, the adverts, the sales pitch: all genius! Thank you so much for all your hard work on my behalf, I really do appreciate it hugely.

  And finally, my home side: a ginormous thank you to Thomas, Sam and Claudie for putting up with all the stressy deadline weeks and to my Mum and Dad for their very hands-on help. Big hugs to my special scribbling amis, Shari Low and Lennox Morrison, and not forgetting the Wednesday night vino and kino club!

  THE PERSONAL SHOPPER

  by Carmen Reid

  Meet Annie Valentine: stylish, savvy,

  multi-tasker extraordinaire.

  As a personal shopper in a swanky London fashion emporium, Annie can re-style and re-invent her clients from head to toe. In fact, this super-skilled dresser can be relied on to solve everyone's problems . . . except her own.

  Although she's busy being a single mum to stroppy teen Lana and painfully shy Owen, there's a gap in Annie's wardrobe, sorry, life, for a new man. But finding the perfect partner is turning out to be so much trickier than finding the perfect pair of shoes.