How Not To Shop

by Carmen Reid

  Harry was without doubt the most considerate lover she had ever had. Well, for decades, anyway. Not since she was young and foolish had there been a man as kind as this in her life.

  She was, even she had to admit it, going to make love to him for her sake. Not just for his. For her sake, because she really wanted to, because her body was now moving towards him and his touch.

  Unlike any other lover she'd had before, nothing seemed to satisfy him as much as knowing she had come. Nothing made him happier than feeling her come strongly inside, right with him. Right against him. Pulsing with him. Whenever she'd faked it with him, in their early days, he'd shaken his head and told her lovingly, 'Please don't do that. I can tell nothing is happening down there. We'll just have to try something else until you come too.'

  This had been a surprise to her. And she'd been so sure that she would be the one teaching him everything that she had learned.

  Just as Harry had put his face against her navel and begun to bite lightly, just the way she wanted him to . . . Svetlana heard the strident blast of the doorbell.

  'What now?' she snapped, moving Harry's head away and sitting upright.

  She certainly wasn't expecting anyone to call. Her boys had gone to their Chinese lesson (their father's idea) this morning, then they were having lunch with Igor.

  Svetlana heard the front door being opened and a brief conversation taking place. Then the door was closed and Maria began to walk up the stairs towards the door of the sitting room.

  Svetlana adjusted her dress and tied the belt back on firmly. She smoothed down her hair and tucked the loose strands in behind her ears. Not that she cared what her maid thought . . . but maybe there was someone at the door who might have to be shown in.

  Maria came into the room. 'Miss Wisneski, sorry I disturb. But there is a girl downstairs who say she need to talk with you.'

  'Who is she?' Svetlana asked.

  'I not know. She say only she need talk with you. Urgent.'

  'What does she look like?'

  'She young and foreign,' was all that Maria volunteered.

  'Oh!' Svetlana put her feet back up on the sofa, 'she vant vork with me, huh? Tell her to leave her CV, I call her if I like the look of it. Maybe she see me on the television. Clever to get address and everything,' Svetlana had to admit.

  It was slightly unsettling as well. Svetlana wondered how many other people would now be able to work out how to find their way to her door and start begging for one favour or another.

  Maria made a little bow, then closed the door and began to trot down the stairs again.

  The front door opened as Harry and Svetlana resumed their excited embrace. But Svetlana could hear that the conversation down at the doorstep was taking longer than she had expected. The two voices were now becoming slightly more raised.

  The front door closed once again and then came the sound of Maria beating a fresh path up the stairs.

  Svetlana gently pushed Harry back as the knock at the door sounded.

  'Yes!' she commanded, a little irritated now.

  'Miss Wisneski,' the maid looked anxious, 'she not go away! She say she stay on doorstep all night – all next day if have to. She has bags,' the maid added nervously, 'I think she camp here. You must tell her to go. She not listen to me. She very angry-looking girl,' the maid added.

  'Tcha!' Svetlana swung her feet down from the sofa and checked the belt of her dress again. She strode determinedly to the door, more than a little curious to find out what this was all about.

  Secretly, she quite admired a girl who wouldn't take no for an answer. Was that not how she had been all her life?

  'Stay here!' she barked at Harry, who was anxiously intent on following her.

  'I vant to deal with this, stay!' she commanded and held out her hand like the traffic police.

  'I'm right here if you need me,' he assured her and made for the window, planning to at least look down on the scene.

  Even in her heeled mules, Svetlana took the stairs at a speedy pace. Rounding the corner into the hall, she caught her first view of this prickly visitor. The girl was tall, very thin, a spectacularly striking blonde with a pale and angry face.

  Now Svetlana's curiosity was roused. This girl was far too pretty to be a domestic: maybe she had come to London to be a model. Immediately, Svetlana hoped the girl was clever enough to stay away from all those creeps who promised modelling careers and lured girls like this into lap-dancing and much, much worse.

  'Hello,' Svetlana's voice rang out as she approached the threshold of her house, 'I'm Svetlana Wisneski, why are you bothering me?'

  The girl began to speak in Ukrainian.

  She didn't say many words, but a passer-by would have been shocked by the effect they had on the stunning woman in the pink taffeta dress. She visibly paled, then slumped slightly to the side and had to lean against the door frame for support.

  If the passer-by had also, by chance, been able to speak Ukrainian, he'd have understood the devastating words spoken by the girl.

  'Hello, I'm Elena, I'm twenty-two years old and you are my mother.'

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Oxfam lady:

  Orange suede pinafore (Oxfam, Camden)

  Blue blouse (Oxfam, Highgate)

  Blue tights (M&S)

  Brown cowboy boots (Camden market)

  Total est. cost: £74

  'Would you like to take a leaflet about us?'

  So far, Annie had spent almost four hours of her precious Saturday morning trying to locate her missing clothes.

  Ed had made numerous phone calls to teachers, to the school building, even to the school janitor in search of the precious items that had accidentally been swept up in the great charity clearout.

  Hundreds of bags of unwanted clothes, bedding, books and toys had been collected by the St Vincent's pupils. Everything had been gathered into the school gym and was now being sorted out and moved on to the relevant charities.

  'Most of the clothes are going to Oxfam,' Ed had been able to tell Annie. 'The north London branch has had a delivery of stuff from the school, so that might be a good place to start. I'll keep phoning and let you know if I hear anything else that's useful.'

  No sooner had Annie heard these words than she'd jumped into her Jeep and headed at speed for the shop before the early-bird, eagle-eyed shoppers started walking out of the place with some of her choicest belongings.

  Unfortunately the woman behind the counter at the shop couldn't answer any of her questions, but when she saw Annie's agitation, she decided to phone someone who'd been on duty the day before, to see if they knew more.

  Looking round the shop, Annie had started at the sight of one of her flowered Paul Smith skirts dangling on a rail.

  She rushed over and checked the size. Yes! This was hers. Definitely.

  She'd rushed to put it on the counter.

  'This is mine!' she'd told the assistant.

  Finding the skirt had given her hope, but her relentless rake through the other racks hadn't turned up anything else.

  'Would you like to see if your bags are still in the back?' the woman had suggested.

  So Annie had been led through to the back shop, where she could see at once that there was no life-saving stack of bulging laundry bags containing all her treasured belongings.

  Pointing to the huge mountain of old clothes, the woman said helpfully, 'Well, if the bags have been unpacked, the things will have been put in there, ready to be sorted out. Sorry, we're a bit behind at the moment, we've been short-staffed.'

  Annie had looked at the mountain. It would take all of the morning to search through this. This was where clothes came to die. Surely nothing of hers could have ended up in this rubbish dump?

  'OK,' she'd agreed hesitantly, but just as she put her hand onto the first shrunken, bobbly and stained top from Zara, the shop's phone had rung.

  The assistant came back in and informed her: 'Good news! Janice, who was in yesterday,
says only your skirt was unpacked here. When they saw how nice everything was, they took the bags down to Oxfam Style – that's our sort of premium store in Camden.'

  Snatching her skirt from the counter, Annie had headed at speed for the door.

  'But you'll need to pay for that!' the woman's voice had rung out behind her.

  So that was that. She'd had to pay £45 to get her own skirt back. Good grief! What if all her other belongings were already hanging out on the racks at Oxfam Style with price tags attached?

  'Can you phone ahead for me?' she managed to ask as she was leaving the shop. 'Stop them from putting out anything they haven't already?'

  But when she'd finally made it to Camden she'd only been able to find two summer tops. 'Almost' everything else had been set out, according to the assistant.

  Now it looked as if almost everything else had gone.

  'But I had Prada sandals in there! You sold my Prada sandals in Oxfam Style?'

  'Erm, yes.' The assistant looked a little nervous, 'I think they went for thirty pounds.'

  Annie hadn't been able to say anything, she'd been so astonished.

  Thirty pounds! Those shoes had only been worn three times! Someone had scored themselves the bargain of the year!

  'You've made us lots of money, even if you didn't mean to,' the earnest young girl behind the counter went on. 'Would you like to take a leaflet about us? At least you can find out where the money's going to. It might make you feel a bit better.'

  The girl had given her sweetest smile and said, 'They're only clothes – it's not a matter of life and death.'

  She really didn't understand.

  'I used to work at The Store,' Annie tried to explain, 'I used to have a fantastic staff discount and there were so many lovely things I was able to buy. But I don't work there any more, so I won't be able to go out and replace all of those things . . . replace any of those things! They were treasures, all unique, one of a kind, very special . . . and they were all in my size,' she said, her voice almost breaking with these words.

  'Why don't I phone our other branch in Notting Hill?' the girl offered kindly. 'Maybe one of the bags went on to them? And there's always eBay,' she added, a little hesitantly, 'good things from our shops are always popping up on eBay with people trying to sell them for more than they bought them.'

  'Yes,' Annie said a little snappily now, 'I know about eBay, I will keep an eye on eBay, but the problem is I don't have an inventory, a list, I don't really know what's gone. I won't know until I'm getting dressed and wonder where's my . . . and it's all going to dawn on me slowly, bit by bit, just like when people are burgled,' she said, with emphasis, glaring at the girl.

  That was just what it felt like: a burglary.

  Only her own son was to blame. If he was standing in front of her right now, she would find it very, very hard to be nice to him, no matter how much she really did love him.

  Annie's phone began to bleep. Taking it out, she saw that she had a new text from Ed.

  'Urgent. Phone me.'

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Elena arrives:

  Tightest jeans (Primark)

  Black and white scoop jumper (market stall)

  Stilettos (market stall)

  Lucky gold letter necklace (ex-boyfriend)

  Total est. cost: £35

  'You certainly have plenty, don't you?'

  Svetlana spent several long, shaken moments just looking at the girl. She searched her face thoroughly; saw the shape of the nose, the determined set of the mouth and the glassy clearness of the eyes and knew that what the girl said was true.

  Not all of the features were hers; some were unmistakably those of Elena's father.

  'You need to come back later,' was the first thing Svetlana asked of her daughter, in her native Ukrainian.

  'No,' Elena replied coolly and crossed thin arms over her chest, 'you'll have called a guard by then, or the police.'

  'No,' Svetlana began. 'There's someone here in the house now. A visitor. I need to see you alone.'

  'Then I'll wait on your doorstep,' Elena replied fiercely.

  'No!' Svetlana felt panic rising in her chest. Harry was not to see this girl. Harry was not to know anything about her. Nothing. And not Igor. Never Igor!

  At the thought of the documents she'd had to sign to get her divorce, her boys, her house and her allowance, Svetlana felt sick. She'd promised no future scandals and no past secrets. She had promised! She had to get Harry out of the house and Elena as far away from her as possible. Before there was a terrible, terrible disaster.

  'Maria will show you to the kitchen,' Svetlana said, making a snap decision. 'Please go quietly downstairs and wait there for me.'

  An unexpected smile broke out across Elena's face and, grabbing her two bags, she bundled them in through the front door then followed Maria down to the basement.

  'What was that all about?' Harry wanted to know as soon as Svetlana came back into the sitting room.

  'Very determined Ukrainian girl look for job,' Svetlana breezed as casually as she could. 'I decide Maria can give her cup of coffee and take her details.'

  'Are all Ukrainian girls very determined?' Harry asked.

  'All the ones who've made it over here, yes,' Svetlana confirmed with a throaty laugh.

  'My darling, darling girl . . .' Harry began, 'please say we going to get married?' It was the question he'd been burning to ask ever since he'd arrived at the house.

  He put his arms around her and she looked into his kind eyes. With Harry she felt safe.

  Svetlana's life had been one long struggle with powerful, overbearing personalities and when Harry looked at her like this, she remembered why she'd been so determined to marry him in the first place. When Igor had tried to take everything away from her, including her children, Harry was the one who had come to her rescue. He had fought for her in the courts.

  'Fair and square,' was how he'd described the victory.

  And when he'd fallen in love with her, he'd been the first man to ever, ever think about what she wanted.

  'Yes,' she told him confidently, 've get married, Harry.'

  Immediately her mind turned back to Elena. There was a time bomb down in the kitchen just waiting to go off. How would Harry ever forgive her for keeping such a dark secret when so much was at risk?

  'Maybe ve bring wedding forward?' Svetlana asked with her most charming, winning smile.

  'Well, well,' he laughed, 'that might prove to be a bit tricky. People have invitations, the venue has to be booked in advance. I'm not sure we can just move the whole show forward.'

  'You try for me, Harry,' Svetlana wheedled. 'I must be your vife as soon as possible.'

  He planted a long and loving kiss on her mouth, hoping they would be able to pick up from where they left off earlier. But Svetlana pulled away telling him, 'You need to go now, my love.' She glanced at her watch and effortlessly lied, 'I have hairdresser in fifteen minutes.'