The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

  She hurried to the telephone, dialled Lana’s number and got straight through to voicemail: ‘Lana, don’t be so stupid, phone me up and let me know where you are.’ Clunk. She put the phone down and began the ringround of all the home numbers of Lana’s friends.

  An hour later, Annie was almost in tears. Despite the soothing words of the six parents she’d spoken to, she was panicking about her daughter.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Greta’s mother assured her. ‘Greta did this a few weeks ago, stormed off to someone’s house and didn’t come back for hours, just to scare me. There isn’t any big problem, is there?’

  ‘No,’ Annie had assured her, ‘I don’t think so. It was just one of those usual stupid arguments.’

  ‘Could she have gone to her boyfriend’s?’ Greta’s mother asked.

  ‘He lives in Essex. She’d have to go to the station, catch a train . . . I don’t know,’ Annie admitted, ‘I don’t have his number, his mobile . . . I don’t even know his surname!’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find out, and if Greta hears anything at all, I’ll phone you, OK. Try not to worry too much.’

  But when Annie put the phone down after leaving another message on Lana’s mobile, she realized she was scared and flooded with guilt.

  It was 11.40 p.m. when the phone rang.

  Annie snatched it up with a hopeful ‘Hello?’

  ‘You’re alone now, aren’t you?’ came the husky voice. ‘I’m alone too and I can’t stop thinking about you and all the things I’d like to do with you . . .’

  ‘Gray, now’s not a good time,’ she told him briskly. ‘Sorry. Lana’s gone out . . . without permission and I’m waiting for her to phone and tell me she’s OK.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘Can I speak to you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem.’ He hung up abruptly.

  If Gray never called her again, it would be Lana’s fault . . . and wouldn’t Lana be pleased? Annie felt a surge of anger. Had she been this unsupportive about Seth? But that was so different! Seth was 17! Far too old for a 14-year-old. Was Lana with Seth now?

  It was almost 12.30 a.m. when the phone rang again and Annie, sitting wide awake in bed, anxiously picking at her nail polish, shot out her hand to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Lana! For God’s sake—’ she began.

  ‘Ermm,’ came a male voice.

  ‘Gray! Not now!’ she snapped.

  ‘My name’s Matthew Laurence,’ the voice informed her, ‘I’m sorry to phone you so late at night. It’s about Lana.’

  ‘Oh!’ Annie felt nothing but blind fear – mind racing with all the terrible things that could have happened to Lana.

  ‘I’m Seth’s dad and she’s here with us,’ Matthew continued calmly.

  ‘Oh, thank God for that!’ The tight squeeze on Annie’s heart began to loosen just slightly.

  ‘Umm, I’m sorry this is so late. I didn’t know she was here because I’ve been out. She was upstairs with Seth and they’ve fallen asleep . . . in front of the TV,’ he added, although this wasn’t allaying Annie’s fears about underage teen sex one little bit.

  ‘I’ve woken her up and told her to give you a call but . . . well . . . she doesn’t want to. I’m guessing you’ve had a row.’

  ‘Oh.’ Annie was suddenly trying very hard not to cry.

  ‘Anyway, I told her I would phone to let you know she’s safe. She can spend the night here, if that’s OK with you . . . she can sleep in my daughter Libby’s room,’ he added quickly.

  ‘I’m so sorry about this,’ Annie began.

  ‘No, honestly, Mrs Valentine. Seth’s our third and we’ve seen it all before.’

  There was no mistaking the loud sniffle Annie now made down the phone.

  ‘It’ll all blow over,’ Seth’s father assured her. ‘I can give her a lift into London early tomorrow morning, she should make it to school in time.’

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to put you out . . .’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ he replied.

  ‘She’s only fourteen,’ Annie heard herself blurting out, ‘I don’t even know if Seth knows that.’

  ‘Well, I’ll make sure he does and don’t worry, we’ll look after her.’

  There was nothing more Annie could do other than trust this kind parental voice on the other end of the line and wish Seth’s father good night.

  When the call was over, she turned her face into her pillow and let out the sobs which had been building all night.

  How did anyone manage to parent alone? How did anyone do it?

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Annie goes yachting:

  White cropped jeans (Tesco)

  Red boatneck top (Joseph)

  Red and white plimsolls (La Redoute)

  Red, white and black scarf tied into ponytail (Tie Rack)

  Thin black raincoat (Miss Selfridge)

  Est. cost: £110

  ‘Does anyone have a plastic bag? Quickly!!’

  Gray came to pick the three of them up in his car. His beautiful, new £45,000-plus red Mercedes with steel fold-down roof, bright red upholstery and a jet black dashboard studded with dials. Annie wasn’t sure what was wrong with the silver one he’d traded in, but apparently every year for the last decade, he’d upgraded his car. Must be an irrepressible male urge . . . just like the one for a new handbag, only so much, much more expensive.

  Since Lana’s runaway stunt, Gray and Annie had decided he should make a concerted effort to get to know her children better and as the attempts to go out for cosy lunches and little excursions round town hadn’t gone so well – Owen silent and Lana sullen – Gray had made a bold new plan for a day trip.

  ‘A friend of mine has a yacht,’ he’d announced. ‘He’s offered to take us all out for a day, as soon as the weather’s good. Ever been yachting, Annie?’ he’d wanted to know, adding, ‘It’s fantastic. Blasts the cobwebs away . . . Might even get a little boat of my own one of these days.’

  Despite her father’s seafaring background, Annie could not recall setting foot on a boat, bar a rowing trip round the Serpentine in Hyde Park or grim ferry rides from London to Calais and back. But ‘yachting’ sounded fantastic. It sounded like sun sparkling on the water, gin and tonics fizzing on deck and everyone clad in Persil-white Ralph Lauren.

  Now that April was well under way, the better weather had arrived and along with it, Gray’s yachting day trip.

  His car swept into their Highgate street early one morning and he came up to the flat laden with flowers for Annie and Lana and an oversized slab of chocolate for Owen.

  ‘You mustn’t always think you have to bring us presents,’ Annie ticked him off.

  ‘Shhh!’ he told her. ‘There are many things you can tell me off for, but this isn’t one of them.’

  ‘Owen!’ she warned. ‘Don’t even think about eating any of that before we get into the car. Go put it in your room.’

  It took some time to load up the Mercedes. Annie had three big cool bags full of picnic stuff and the holdall of spare clothes and shoes that Gray had instructed her to take: ‘It can get very wet on board a yacht.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she’d responded as cheekily as she could, because since the leather sofa moment there had been very little frolicking with Gray and she’d decided she would have to take the matter in hand and do some seducing of her own: ‘Why don’t you let me make you dinner at my house after the yachting trip and stay over?’

  ‘Well . . .’ His eyebrow had twitched.

  So, once the car was packed, she was buckled into the passenger’s seat and Lana and Owen were installed comfortably in the back.

  Gray, in a stunning gesture of child-friendliness, had decided to take the option of the built-in back seat DVD player and screens, so they just needed to agree on a film, put their headphones on and enjoy. Although Gray had insisted the children take their shoes off, so as not to dirty the carpet or the backs of the front
seat. It had obviously pained him to take the polythene covers off the passenger seats and let mere mortals sit on them.

  ‘Erm . . . Lana?’ he was now asking awkwardly. ‘I don’t want any eating in the car, if that’s OK.’

  ‘It’s just gum,’ Lana snapped.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind, but could you take it out? Just in case it somehow by accident lands on the carpet?’ He did ask very nicely, but the sigh it provoked showed how annoyed Lana was.

  For a moment, Annie couldn’t decide who she should ask to back down . . . but the thought that he’d installed back seat DVD players just for her children clinched it.

  ‘Lana!’ she growled.

  Once the offending gum had been deposited, they set off.

  ‘Shame about the drizzle,’ Gray told her as they headed for the motorway. ‘Otherwise we could have had the roof down and fresh air.’

  ‘Don’t know how much fresh air there is in north London, matey,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You should think about moving to the country,’ was his reply. ‘Fresh air, greenery, much more space . . .’

  A light-hearted debate broke out between them as they batted about the pros and cons. Annie felt an undercurrent of excitement because she wondered if he was sounding her out – if he had in mind asking her to move out to the Essex countryside with him . . . one of these days.

  What would she do if he asked her? As she argued playfully with him against long-distance commuting ‘even in a stunning car like this’ she tried to give some thought to her answer.

  The M25 was clogged with traffic, even this early on a Saturday morning, so their progress was slow and jerky, but finally they got onto the M11 and Gray was able to move up through the gears and nose his red beauty into the fast lane, where she belonged.

  ‘Mum, I’m feeling a bit dizzy,’ was the first warning to come from Owen.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Annie looked over at him. He looked fine. Maybe the back seat DVD wasn’t such a great idea. He’d had the odd bout of travel sickness in the past, but it had all settled down now. ‘Maybe you should switch your screen off and just lean back in the seat for a while,’ she suggested.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Gray asked.

  ‘He looks fine,’ she assured him.

  Ten minutes later, when Owen told her he really wasn’t feeling great, Annie was spurred into action by the sight of him. His face was white with an unmistakable green tinge to the edges and there was a faint moustache of sweat on his upper lip. He was going to puke, no doubt about it.

  Sitting bolt upright now, she instructed Gray to pull over: ‘Just as soon as you can!’ but they were on a three-lane motorway, in the fast lane: she could see it would take time.

  ‘Does anyone have a plastic bag? Quickly!! Lana? Anything at all?!’

  She was in such a panic about Gray’s new car seats that it crossed her mind to dump out the contents of her handbag and let Owen use that. But it was vintage Mulberry, with a tartan lining. Surely that had to be much more difficult to clean than car upholstery?

  Annie, and of course Roddy, had learned how to drive in a travel sickness crisis: as smoothly as possible, without any sudden movements or any unnecessary braking. But Gray swooped the car into the middle lane, which made Owen puke down his T-shirt. Gray then made a panicky lunge for the slow lane, causing Owen to vomit harder: all the way down to his knees. The abrupt ABS-induced halt in the hard shoulder . . . well, Owen bravely tried to cup his hands to contain it, but it overflowed, splatting all over the crisp red seat beside him.

  Defeated, Owen let his hands drop and two puddles of vomit dripped to the seat then down his trouser legs and onto the dense black carpet.

  ‘Oh sh-sugar!’ Annie managed to restrain herself.

  A strained expression was pulled tight across Gray’s face. She couldn’t decide if it was a smile or a grimace. Maybe it was a grimace trying to pretend it was a smile.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, aiming it at both Owen and Gray, ‘I’ll deal with this, it’ll be fine. We’ll get as much off here as we can, but we might have to stop at the service station ahead.’

  Gray just nodded: ‘Yes . . . OK,’ he said, sounding in pain.

  Annie shot her blackest look at Lana, who’d begun to have a giggling fit.

  Cars and lorries whizzing past her so fast they shook the car as they passed, Annie opened Owen’s door and surveyed the damage.

  He’d obviously made serious inroads into the chocolate slab. The vomit wasn’t just chocolate coloured, it smelled sweet and sticky too.

  Seeing his pale damp face, she couldn’t be angry with him. But with just a small packet of pocket tissues in her handbag it was difficult to know what she could do in the face of this violent eruption.

  She got her son out of the car and away from the road, she helped him change into his spare clothes, even though this did involve him standing by a motorway in just his pants . . . briefly. She dabbed hopelessly at the enormous brown stains on the back seat with her tissues. Vomit staining was bad . . . chocolate-flavoured vomit staining? Oh boy, there was a pair of cream trousers from Whistles she’d once had . . . they’d been rushed to intensive care at London’s top dry cleaners but even then . . .

  The next forty minutes of the drive were tense. Instead of smelling like new, the car stank of spew. Owen still felt bad, he was curled in his seat groaning into one of the six plastic bags secured for him at the service station. Lana’s attempts to giggle-stifle would fail every so often in a snotty explosion.

  ‘I’m sorry to be just a little ticked off,’ Gray tried to justify his barely contained fury. ‘I was just looking forward to showing the car to John.’ Ah, the man with the 30-foot, interior-designed yacht . . . Ah. Annie understood now. A bit of man-to-man size-comparing had been in the offing.

  The drizzle cleared, the sea sparkled, the yacht bobbed up and down on the water, desperate to play, John appeared in top-to-toe white with a sailor’s cap and a sunburnt face, but still Owen felt horrible.

  ‘I think Owen and I will have to sit this one out,’ Annie, almost sick herself – but with regret – told a dumbfounded Gray and Lana.

  Gray and Lana looked at each other in undisguised confusion. Neither felt they could say: ‘I’m not going with you – without her!

  Annie managed to persuade Gray that she should take the keys to the car and find a valeting service in the little town, once Owen had recovered.

  With hindsight, the day went extremely well: Annie and Owen spent hours walking along the beach, talking, throwing stones, finding shells, enjoying each other’s company, then eating ice-creams on a wall together. (‘At least there won’t be lumps, if you throw up on the way home!’)

  Lana and Gray came back from the yacht trip glowing with excitement and finally comfortable together. Jim of the Washaway Valet had not flinched from the stains on the Mercedes back seat; no, he’d claimed it was an honour to work on a car so showroom new. He’d managed to turn the deep brown marks into something much more biscuity and he’d used a fine internal ‘cleansing’ mist to reduce the nostril-clogging stink.

  That evening, Owen went to bed very early, worn out by holding it together on the journey home. Lana left before dinner in a great full-of-the-joys-of-yachting mood, for her friend’s Suzie’s house for a pre-arranged sleepover.

  So Annie and Gray ate alone together: a gourmet curry meal for two, bought specially from M&S.

  There was a scented candle burning in the room and the string of extremely flattering pale pink flower lights looped above the bed was already switched on. Annie had a sleepover of her own in mind.

  Kissing in the kitchen led to kissing in the bedroom.

  Gray’s cheeks were warm and dry, still salty from the sea. As she licked his neck and began to unbutton his shirt, he excused himself and in the moments he was gone, Annie whipped off her clothes and brought out the brand new lilac satin knickers and bra she’d selected for this little scene, then tied a silky, matching ki
mono on top. Her legs and bikini line were newly done, her room smelled delicious, there was moody jazz on the stereo. She applied lip gloss and arranged herself attractively across her bed waiting for the good time she was determined would follow.

  And waited . . .

  And waited . . .

  Once a full fifteen minutes had passed, she got up and went out into the hallway. Although she’d thought Gray might be trying to slip in one of his many showers, no sound was coming from the bathroom.

  ‘Gray?’ she asked, tapping lightly on the door. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ came a hesitant, slightly strained reply, ‘not really.’

  ‘Are you OK? Can you come out?’ she wondered, really hoping this wasn’t some troubling bowel situation. It was too early in their relationship for all that. It really was.

  There was deep sigh, then she heard Gray’s footsteps coming towards her. He undid the lock and put his head round the door, but for several moments just looked at her, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she assured him. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it . . .’ the painful piles . . . constipation . . . whatever, ‘don’t worry.’

  ‘I forgot my medication, you know, the love drug.’ He hurried the words out, trying to make a little joke of it, but still looked tense.

  Oh good grief, he meant his Viagra. He’d obviously been in here searching his overnight bag ten times over and maybe trying to kick things off naturally on his own.

  They’d had a little chat about the Viagra recently, and he’d assured her it was more of a psychological prop than a physical necessity.

  ‘You’re fine,’ she told him, reaching out to take hold of his hand. ‘Just come into the bedroom with me and we’ll . . . play.’

  There was a strange moment when Annie found herself lying on her back, with her head hanging from the bed and an extremely willing, able and raring to go Gray on top of her. But other thoughts kept crowding into her mind to distract her from fully taking part: she remembered lying right here, but with Roddy, an ice cube squeezed between her breasts . . . and then . . . next thought, reading in a magazine that women should hang their heads from the bed during orgasm because it made the experience more extreme.