The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

She felt the prickle of stubble at the corner of his mouth . . . her hands moved to his warm neck, then underneath his jacket, under his arms and down to the small of his back. Her tongue quite of its own accord ventured past his teeth.

  Yes, this was definitely kissing.

  Owen’s class teacher’s hand was on her behind. There may have been a raincoat, a skirt, tights and a pair of knickers to go, but Ed had definitely moved his hand onto her derrière.

  This was a situation fraught with problems. Totally off-track. It could even have something to do with telling Gray this afternoon that she was going to move in with him. Surely this was a reaction? A strange and unexpected reaction . . . but nevertheless a definite reaction.

  But there was no chance of stopping to think it through for even a moment because she was enjoying this so much. Her toes were curling in her boots, there was a hungry tingle starting up in the very pit of her stomach and it was threatening to get warmer, hungrier, tinglier and to spread.

  Her hands had pulled up his shirt and were now against the very soft, warm skin at his sides. How had this happened? She was in the process of undressing the poor man in the stairwell.

  Ed was squeezing at her bottom in a particularly tickly and quite fascinating way. She did not want him to stop. But he really should stop . . .

  Finally, she broke off from the intense exploration of his mouth and briefly leaned her head against his shoulder.

  But she found she wanted his mouth again, the warmth of it, the way his tongue moving against hers made her body tingle spread. So then they were kissing again. With urgency.

  Her fingers wound themselves into his tangly hair. His hands behind her back pulled her closer towards him.

  When she realized her hand was on the smooth leather of his belt, sliding along towards the buckle with intent, with a purpose all of its own, she opened her eyes.

  She pulled back from the kiss and took a small step backwards. His eyes were very dark blue now, his lips not just full and pink but also damp. His cheeks were flushed, but there was no frantic blushing, a smile was just about to break and he was much, much better looking than she’d noticed before. Now she got a glimpse of what all the fuss was with the St Vincent’s mothers and Ed. He was genuinely cute . . . when he didn’t have a yellow cagoule tied around his head, obviously.

  ‘Ed,’ she said, trying to keep her voice as level as she could, ‘I think we may have overstepped the parent–teacher relationship here.’

  ‘Completely,’ was his reply. His eyes were still on hers and he gave a little smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ she said abruptly, suddenly not wanting to be in this situation at all. For goodness’ sake, she’d just agreed to move in with Gray . . . what was she playing at? Did she want to sabotage the new happiness she was so sure was just around the corner for her?

  As quickly as she could, not looking back, not giving him any reason to think she might want him to follow, or call after her, or in fact do anything at all, she hurried past him, out of the stairwell door, pulling it firmly shut behind her. Because really, anything else would have been far too complicated.

  With great care and attention, Gray reversed his red, still slightly smelly, Merc into the slightly too small parking space in front of Annie’s block. It took him three attempts to make the manoeuvre and he could feel sweat pricking from his armpits by the end of it. He would not miss visiting this cramped corner of London for one moment. Thank God she’d agreed to move.

  On the passenger’s seat beside him was the enormous bunch of flowers he’d ordered as soon as she’d phoned him with her decision. He’d considered having it delivered to her home, but then he’d decided it would be far, far more romantic to take the flowers in person.

  He locked the car with the remote, then, flowers in one hand, bottle of champagne in the other, he strode along the pavement to her door. There was a guy ahead of him who was approaching the block as well. A scruffy-looking bloke: washed-out jeans, baggy shirt and a godawful green cord jacket, he needed a haircut as well. This man too was carrying a bunch of flowers but it was the sorriest, scrappiest bunch Gray had ever seen. Limp weeds from the back of the garden compared with the fat lilies, prime pink roses and scented stocks packed into his bouquet.

  ‘You after the Valentines?’ Gray asked, noticing the man’s finger head towards Annie’s buzzer.

  ‘Yes I am. You too?’ The man turned to face him for the first time and moved his hand from the buzzer without pressing it.

  ‘Oh! Are you the music teacher? Ed the Shed? That’s what they call you, isn’t it?’ Gray was trying to remember what Annie had told him about this character: one of those slightly nutty professor types by the look of him.

  ‘I’m Owen’s teacher . . . yes,’ Ed replied, ‘Ed Leon. I’ve not heard the other name before,’ he added with some irritation.

  ‘Have you got a lesson on?’ Gray asked.

  ‘No. No. That was earlier in the evening. I was just . . . ermm . . .’ He lifted his bunch of flowers slightly.

  ‘Those aren’t for Lana are they, mate?’ A note of concern had entered Gray’s voice now. ‘Annie’s very protective of Lana and you wouldn’t want to give either of them the wrong idea.’

  There was a very cool tone to Ed’s pointed ‘No. These aren’t for Lana.’

  As Ed hadn’t offered any further explanation, Gray felt compelled to ask a baffled ‘Are they for Owen?’

  ‘No!’ Ed really didn’t want to add more, but felt forced into admitting, ‘They’re for Annie.’

  Gray managed to check the laugh he wanted to make in response to this and lifting his own extravagant bouquet and champagne bottle up slightly said, ‘These are for Annie too, she’s agreed to move in with me. Her and the children. So I’ve brought these to celebrate.’

  There was a pause as Ed seemed to struggle slightly with his response to this. He put his hand to his head and scratched at an imaginary itch.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Gray leaned in chummily. ‘Would you like me to take yours up too? Save you the journey?’

  ‘No, no,’ he waved the offer away; his grip on the flowers had loosened and they were now pointing towards the ground. ‘It’s just a bunch from the garden, I’ll pick some another day. No big deal. I was just passing. If you two are celebrating . . . I’ll leave you to it. Honestly.’

  ‘Sure?’ came Gray’s question, friendly now.

  ‘No, no . . . congratulations. She’s a . . .’ Once again he found himself struggling for the words. ‘They’re a . . . lovely family.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Donna on the warpath:

  Red and white tunic (Anna Sui)

  Linen trousers (Whistles)

  White heels (Gucci)

  Gold tassel necklace (Erickson Beamon)

  Est. cost: £730

  ‘Flouncing round here like you own the place.’

  Fern had a wedding to go to. Annie’s mother always had weddings to go to. As soon as the summer loomed, she was in need of one new wedding outfit or, at least, new accessories to ‘refresh’ older wedding outfits.

  Annie never went to weddings any more: her friends had either been married for years or had no intention of ever marrying. Annie went to divorce mop-ups rather than wedding celebrations.

  Whereas Fern had a busy schedule of remarriages and the weddings of her children’s friends, at least three, sometimes even five or six a year.

  Fern was that woman of a certain age in a wonderful hat who propped up a wedding, who could be counted on to give an expensive gift from the gift list – not something radical and alternative – who would look good in the church and good in the photos without in any way upstaging the bride, bridesmaids or, more likely, the bride’s and groom’s mothers.

  She was a moral support guest, who understood her role as part of the glamorous backdrop. She was your classic third guest on the left, who enjoyed every wedding she attended.

  ‘I’
m not shopping in your shop,’ she’d instructed Annie on the phone. ‘Even with your discount, the prices are absolutely ridiculous. Jaeger, Annie. That’s where we’ll go. I want something beige . . .’ Before Annie could groan in response, Fern added, ‘I’ve got this sensational hat, cocoa straw with a wonderful cream gardenia, you want to smell it, it’s so lifelike. A beige jacket will be just the thing.’

  Jaeger turned out to be a disaster though. ‘Just office clothes,’ Fern had sniffed at the selection. ‘Black and white, white and black, black stripes, black spots, geometrics, where’s the fun in that? And so brutal on the complexion.’

  Annie’s mother was a faded brunette. She’d once had creamy skin, auburn brown hair and sumptuous brown eyes, so she’d never liked black. She’d always set herself off in plum, fuchsia, red, beige, white and dusty greens.

  As she’d gone grey, she’d also begun to highlight with caramel blond. The colour change had demanded new lipsticks and new clothes colours.

  Plum had been replaced by burgundy and rust, fuchsia with rose pink, red with pale orange and egg yolk yellow.

  Fern had an enviable understanding of which colours suited her. Most of the people Annie dressed had never got to grips with colour and wondered why they always looked so washed out or so flushed . . .

  As Annie shopped with her mother, she enjoyed another admirable trait: her mother never once uttered the words: ‘I look so’ – insert derogatory word – ‘bad’, ‘fat’, ‘hippy’, ‘short’, ‘stumpy’, ‘frumpy’ (you name it, Annie had heard it) ‘in this.’

  No. With Fern it was always reversed: the garment was to blame.

  ‘Annie! Look how badly they’ve cut the back,’ or ‘Oh these seams don’t sit well at all’, ‘The shoulders are a disaster’, ‘This colour does nothing for me.’

  It was another message Annie tried to impart to her more timid, understated shoppers.

  ‘Blame the clothes! Not yourself! Let’s find the right thing. The cut and the colour that does you justice. And if it’s still not right, you know what? We’ll get it altered.’

  Her mother pulled back the curtain and came out onto the shop floor in a beautiful creamy-beige suit. A very simple cut: nipped-in jacket, no lapels, a just-below-the-knee panelled skirt.

  She would wear her hat, the inevitable hideous sandals, a pink rose corsage and a ruffle-necked blouse underneath.

  ‘Maybe in pink as well?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Or cocoa . . . so as not to be too matchy? What do you think?’

  ‘Cocoa . . . or creamy, something to highlight the gardenia? Or beige, toning, so’s not to introduce too many colours?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Fern contemplated herself carefully in the mirror, taking in all the angles.

  ‘Handbag?’ Annie wondered.

  ‘The little brown alligator, you know, the secondhand shop one you gave me. It’s a treasure. It goes with everything.’

  Annie felt the nice glow of giving the right gift.

  ‘Oh, I met the dentist’s wife, you know. Marilyn,’ Fern said all of a sudden.

  ‘Oh right, yes . . .’ Annie tried to sound as casual as possible, but could not have been more interested. She’d still not even seen a photograph of Marilyn but imagined her as this impossibly slim, glamorous, fragile Jackie O type creature so weak with hunger and fraught with mental torture that she rarely had the energy to get off the sofa for anything other than a taxi ride to the shops.

  ‘Because you’ve been out with Gray a few times, haven’t you?’ Fern was still turning herself carefully before the mirror.

  ‘Aha . . . yeah.’ Annie had not exactly kept her mother up to speed with the rapid developments on the Gray front. Why? Maybe just because she didn’t want another opinion on it. Her own vacillations and Dinah’s strident views (‘You’re going to do what?! You’re moving to Essex for him?! Are you out of your MIND?!!!!’) were quite enough to be getting on with.

  ‘Well, Marilyn did not have one good thing to say about him,’ Fern forged ahead. ‘And you have to admit, Annie, he may be charming, but he is a pernickety fusspot. I mean, those are good qualities in a dentist, but not necessarily in a man. I know I invited him to that party for you . . . but with hindsight. Anyway, Marilyn was terribly upset. She’d always assumed Gray was going to sell their house and split the proceeds with her. In fact she has lawyer Ronald on the case – so you can be sure she’ll be getting as much as she possibly can.’

  Ronald being another family friend. In fact, Fern went to their youngest daughter’s wedding just last year.

  ‘So Gray’s decided not to sell?’ Annie prompted her.

  ‘According to Marilyn, Gray has told Ronald he has a new partner, it’s serious, they’re getting married just as soon as the divorce is through and he’s moving this person into the house as soon as possible. So he’s claiming he needs the house, this new person has children . . . it’s his asset, he’s paid for it, he’s keeping it.’

  ‘Well, he has a point,’ Annie decided to wade in on behalf of Gray. ‘Marilyn has no children and has never worked.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Her mother sniffed just a little, as if this was absolutely no excuse for anyone to be turfed out by their husband.

  ‘He’s not exactly planning to leave her destitute . . . I’m sure,’ she added quickly, not to make it seem as if she had too much insider information on the case.

  ‘No. I’m sure there’s a valuable settlement to be made. Gray is a very wealthy man. You’ve no idea how much money there is to be made in dentistry. It’s not just fillings, you know: veneers, implants, bleaching. People are going quite crazily American about their teeth.’

  There was a moment’s pause and Annie was just about to take that deep breath and tell her mother that she was Gray’s new woman, that she was seriously considering the move to Gray’s rooftop-jacuzzied corner of Essex, when her mother added: ‘Of course Ronald, whom I met out at dinner the other week, at Eloise’s, you know, the Clarks, wonderful cook . . . really, superb food. Although pumpkin risotto as a starter is not my absolute favourite, bit autumnal, quite heavy —

  ‘Ronald?’ Annie reminded her, sensing the danger close at hand of having to hear Eloise’s entire menu for the night.

  ‘Yes, Ronald is convinced it’s a total scam by Gray. Move some poor woman in, keep the house, then ditch her again.’

  ‘I thought you said he was a charming man!’ Annie could barely contain her outrage.

  ‘Well, people do get funny about money though, don’t they? Always brings out the worst in everyone, arguing about money.’

  ‘So what do you think?’ Annie wondered. ‘You know him fairly well, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, God knows. I’ve not seen him for months. I’m overdue a check-up in fact. Maybe I’ll book in and try and hear it from the horse’s mouth.’

  Move some poor woman in . . . keep the house . . . then ditch her . . . Just the thought of this happening . . . just the thought of people thinking it might happen. It was totally riling her.

  ‘Mum. It’s me,’ Annie blurted out. ‘It’s us. We’re moving in with Gray.’

  ‘What!’ Fern exclaimed, looking astonished at this news. ‘My God, why haven’t you told me anything about this? Last I heard, you were dinner dating and then . . . you know . . . you went all quiet about him and I didn’t like to ask. Good grief, Annie, isn’t this a bit soon? I mean you have to think about the children.’ She sat down abruptly on the changing room stool.

  ‘Of course I’ve thought about the children. A big part of the reason I’m doing this is for them. But you know, it’s a trial period. I’m going to rent our flat out for six months and see how it goes.’

  Her mother did not look impressed.

  ‘Is he serious though, love? You don’t think he’s doing this for the money?’ she asked.

  ‘No! Of course I don’t. Maybe he’s a bit desperate for the company. Maybe he’s speeding things along for that reason, but you know . . . we get on very well,’ came Annie’s reply.
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br />   What Annie didn’t add was how much she wanted the company too. The best thing about moving in with Gray was that she would no longer be the only adult in the household. She would have someone to kiss good night, someone right there next to her when she woke up every morning.

  There would be someone to sit and open a bottle of wine with, someone to really talk to. She would no longer, every day, have to cope and battle and try to pretend that everything was just great and she was getting along just fine. If she moved in with Gray, she would have back-up. A security net. Her children would no longer have to rely on just her. Right now, these reasons were more important to her than anything else.

  Back at The Store after shopping with her mother, Annie was hardly pleased to be told on arrival at the Personal Shopping suite that Donna wanted to see her. She climbed the escalator and tried not to worry too much about what Donna might have to say to her today. Like it or not, she was still Donna’s very best sales assistant and that had to count for something.

  She knocked on Donna’s office door and was asked to come in.

  One look at Donna’s sucking-on-a-sour-plum face and she felt her heart sink. This wasn’t going to go well, she just knew it.

  ‘You’ve been taking The Store’s customers to other shops,’ Donna began.

  Before Annie could even get a question in, Donna continued: ‘Don’t even bother trying to deny it. Apparently you were doing a consultation in Jaeger this morning, during time you’re employed by The Store.’

  ‘I had a couple of hours off this morning to meet my mum,’ Annie defended herself. ‘She’s shopped in Jaeger since I was knee-high, I’m not going to stop her now.’

  Undeterred, Donna carried on: ‘I’ve seen you leave our shop with customers so you can take them somewhere else. I’ve seen you, Annie. I saw you leave with a male customer who bought nothing in the menswear department, and head off for Jermyn Street.’

  For a moment Annie was confused. Then it dawned on her that Donna had seen her with Ed that day.