Celebrity Shopper (32 page)

‘I don’t think that. Ed …’ She let out a long sigh before breaking the news: ‘I might not get signed up to do the next series.’

‘Of course you will!’ he replied. ‘The show’s doing great … isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but they think it might do even better with a celebrity in my place.’

‘What?’ Ed said, astonished. ‘But you
make
that show. You are the celebrity.’

‘No, a real celebrity. A big name,’ Annie explained. ‘Tamsin wants me to stay on, so the last episode of the series has to be unforgettable.’

‘Good grief … so, no pressure then,’ Ed said. He hugged her tightly with his free arm and kissed the top of her head.
‘Try not to worry. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, we’ll be OK.’

A loud honk outside the window alerted Annie to the arrival of a taxi.

She ran over and spotted the blond sweep of hair in the back seat that let her know Svetlana had arrived.

‘Isn’t she early?’ Annie asked Ed.

‘It’s eleven forty-five,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you supposed to meet your guide at twelve? He’ll be hoping he’ll be back at base in time for lunch,’ Ed teased.

‘Oh, very funny. Is that seriously the time?’ Annie looked at her watch.

With a quick kiss for Ed and each of her babies and an instruction to ‘Please get the other two out of bed, OK?’ she snatched up her video camera and hurried down to greet Svetlana.

When Svetlana stepped out of the taxi, Annie felt a fresh burst of hope at the genius of this idea.

Svetlana looked so dazzling that she almost lifted the gloom of the grey and drizzly day.

She’d managed to make it from Mayfair to the Highlands in a single morning, in high heels and a blow dry that still looked perfect. No doubt it had been chauffeurs and first class all the way, which could only have helped. Still, a hairdresser must have been summoned before dawn to lacquer the Svetlana locks.

Annie looked at her friend in wordless admiration: immaculate blond hairdo – check. Perfect Dress with maximum cleavage – check. Towering heels which made Annie’s look wimpy – check. Raincoat in defiance of the drizzle – check. Unbelievably stunning crocodile Zagliani bag – check.

Annie stared at the bag. Only Svetlana could risk taking a seven-thousand-pound piece of real croc up a mountain.

‘Annah!’ Svetlana thrust a wad of twenty-pound notes at the driver and then moved in to give Annie a hug.

‘Hello, babes, you look beyond beautiful. How is business?’ she wondered.

‘Business is fantastic. More orders in Britain, a new order from Holland and an amazing order from New York. It is so exciting. I never thought making money could be as much fun as spending money. But it is! Where we meet our mountain guide?’ she asked as she brought her phone out of her handbag.

‘Forget it,’ Annie warned her, ‘the last signal I got was on the road. Since then, dead as a doornail. The guide’s coming here any minute to pick us up.’

Svetlana stared at her phone in disbelief. ‘No phone?’ she said sounding horrified. ‘
Nothing?
No email? How I stay in touch with Elena? How I get my urgent calls for today? If I knew this, Annah, I would not have come.’

‘Of course you would have come,’ Annie reminded her. ‘This is fantastic publicity for the dress. Show me today’s number.’

Svetlana unbuckled her YSL raincoat. Underneath was a bright violet dress with a net petticoat underneath to make it as girlie and frilly as possible.

‘Stunning,’ Annie had to agree. ‘I think I need to invest more money with you. This is going to be huge.’

‘Ya,’ Svetlana confirmed with a nod.

As the taxi reversed down the narrow driveway, it met a dark blue Land-Rover trying to turn in. There was a moment of cars backing up and giving way. Then the blue Land-Rover began to rumble up the driveway towards them.

There was a young woman behind the wheel. When she parked up and stepped down from the car, Annie and Svetlana were left in no doubt that this was their guide.

‘Hello there, I’m Morven,’ she began and tried to clear the look of astonishment from her face.

Annie and Svetlana tried to do the same.

It was as if two different species of female were meeting. On the one hand: Annie and Svetlana, fully made up, glossy,
soignées
, dressed with the greatest care and attention to the smallest detail. On the other: Morven, a twenty-something dressed for the hills and for total practicality. Clumpy hiking boots poked out from underneath baggy cord trousers. On top, a great thick fleece top swamped a frame that may actually have been quite dainty – it was impossible to tell. She could have been pretty, but her brown hair was scraped back in a ponytail / bun / scrunchie situation and there wasn’t the slightest trace of anything, not even lip balm, on her rosy-with-weather face.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said and held out her unadorned, slightly rough hand for them to shake.

Annie had kept her hands simple with just a French manicure, whereas Svetlana was sporting long pink talons and two astonishingly large diamond rings.

‘You must be Annie, I recognize you from the TV.’

‘Oh, have you seen the show?’ Annie asked.

‘Yes,’ Morven replied.

Annie waited for the compliment to follow: ‘I love your show’, or ‘It’s great’, even just a little ‘It’s fun’. But none came.

Obviously Morven had watched for research purposes only and was far too serious to have actually enjoyed it.

Annie and Svetlana exchanged a glance.

It occurred to Annie that Morven may have been one of the many women who had taken personal offence at her declaration of war against the clumpy shoe and anorak.

‘Well, I can see you’re a girl who dresses for action,’
Annie said, trying to make it sound nice, although really she would love to take Morven aside and make a few significant tweaks to her work uniform. If her fleece was just a bit tighter and brighter … if she had a nice haircut instead of the scrunchie … at least some lip gloss and a touch of concealer as well as the midge repellent.

‘So,’ Morven said, ‘I hope you’re covered in Jungle Juice. The cloud’s low and the weather’s mild, so the beasties will be out in force. But then’ – she gave a questioning look at their outfits – ‘we’ll not be going far today, will we? That’s why I’ve been given the job,’ she added. ‘The two other guides are looking after a Scout troop.’

‘I don’t know,’ Annie countered. ‘We’re being sponsored by the mile. I thought we could do at least five miles or so.’

‘Ten!’ Svetlana laid down the challenge.

Morven looked dubious. ‘Have you got the stuff you need me to wear?’

Annie held up a bag full of the Everest camping clothes.

‘Well, get into the car,’ Morven instructed. ‘I’ve been told it’s got to look like proper hill-climbing; there can’t be a path or anything too easy.’

‘Ya!’ Svetlana said, urging her on. ‘We are two very, very tough women. Trust me. We do ten, twelve miles and raise thousands of pounds for charity.’

But as Annie watched Svetlana struggle to climb into the Land-Rover, all of a sudden she wasn’t so sure.

This was a woman who couldn’t even open doors for herself. What was she going to make of a mountain?

Action girl Morven:

Base layer (Patagonia)
Wicking fleece (same)
Technical anorak (Everest Camping)
Longjohns (same)
Waterproof trousers (same)
Hiking boots (same)
Total est. cost: £350

‘Then we start heading down on the north side.’

Three entire hours had passed. Only three hours! It was barely believable. Annie felt as if she had been watching Morven’s easy strides marching ahead of them for an eternity. All talk and jolly chit-chat had run dry ages ago. Now the walk was just about marching and hoping: hoping that the madness would end soon.

It had taken some time for the over-dressed walkers to get into any sort of stride, to work out how to negotiate soft Scottish grass, slippery pebbles and rocky outcrops in the shoes and dresses. Not to mention balancing the handbags.

Annie had a large, humiliating grass stain on her raincoat where she’d fallen on her bum in about the fourth minute of the walk.

She’d screamed too – and Morven had looked at her in total exasperation. Plus she’d dropped the video camera and it had been making an odd buzzing noise ever since, although it was definitely still recording.

Occasionally, Annie would manage to say something slightly upbeat into the camera, such as: ‘OK, I think we’ve got the hang of this now. We have to sort of tiptoe forward, especially on the pebbly bits.’

Truthfully, she and Svetlana were hobbling forwards yard by tricky yard and making slow and painful progress. More times than she would like to have admitted, Annie had said to herself:
Why, oh why did I ever mention hillwalking on air? I should just have kept my big trap shut!

But Svetlana was determined not to give in until they’d covered a reasonable distance and Annie wasn’t going to give in first.

Every now and then, Morven would try to cheer and chivvy them along, promising smoother ground ahead or a fantastic view just half a mile from here … but it was obvious she was finding them slow and she certainly didn’t think they’d hit their target of 5 miles, let alone 10.

The last time Svetlana had asked, it turned out they had covered just over 2 miles. This news had been so deeply disappointing that neither Annie nor Svetlana had had the heart to ask again.

They were walking, er, stumbling along side by side with Morven way ahead of them now. She had wound them slowly up a disconcertingly high hill and now they were coming to an edge. A surprisingly sheer and rocky edge.

‘How your feet?’ Svetlana asked.

‘Not so good,’ Annie decided to admit. From what she could feel in her shoes, she guessed she’d shredded through her tights. The raw edges were chafing against her toes. The wet, sticky sensation suggested that blisters had burst and bleeding had begun. She’d already decided she didn’t want to take the shoes off and look, because then she’d just feel worse.

‘I think I pull muscle in calf,’ Svetlana admitted. ‘But you and I two tough girls, Annie. We not give in yet. Ten miles,’ she said through teeth that were slightly gritted. ‘How much money we make if we walk ten miles?’

It was an easy enough calculation. The current phone-in pledges worked out at £5,400 per mile.

‘Fifty-four thousand,’ Annie answered.

Svetlana gave a little whistle. ‘That’s good. Come on.’ She put her arm through Annie’s. ‘We soldier on. Maybe we over halfway already.’

‘Are your parents still alive?’ Annie wondered. It seemed a good moment to ask while they were cosied up together with hours of walking and talking still ahead of them.

‘I don’t know,’ Svetlana replied casually, ‘they not very interesting, I never try to find them, they never try to find me …’

‘I thought my dad was probably dead,’ Annie confided, ‘then he just turned up on my doorstep, like Elena turned up on yours.’

‘Tcha. Is surprising, no? Take some time to get used to. The first two times I see her’ – Svetlana stuck two fingers up for emphasis – ‘I want to kill her! I want to shout, I don’t want to know her or anything about her. This part of my life over. Finished! Now … I think one of best things ever happen to me is Elena.’

Annie shook her head thoughtfully; she could not
imagine anything about Mick’s return working out so well for her.

‘Now I’m worried she fall in love with this American man and leave London for him,’ Svetlana admitted.

‘I thought Elena was in love with business and had no time for men?’ Annie said.

Svetlana smiled. ‘Elena think this too. Is biggest surprise for her.’

Morven, still a good 400 metres or so ahead of them, had come to a standstill. She was on the very edge of the hill, looking out over a view that even Annie and Svetlana, dedicated city-dwellers that they were, could recognize as inspiring.

Much, much higher hills surrounded them here, looming over them with a wild and majestic presence, every slope a slightly different shade of grey, purple or green.

Annie was overcome by the sense of immensity. She felt so small in her little heels with her tiny video camera, which, even when she waved it about the landscape, couldn’t begin to capture the scale. The three of them standing here seemed so insignificant and so alone. There was not another soul to be seen. Annie scanned the hillsides and couldn’t spy another house, cottage or any sign that human beings had ever set foot here at all.

‘Wow!’ she said to Morven. ‘I’ve never been anywhere so wild and so … remote ever before.’

‘Is like the Ukrainian steppe,’ Svetlana said, not sounding as impressed as Annie. ‘Wild and bare. In Ukraine, very dangerous: bandit-country.’

A huge white and black bird flew overhead; with each wing beat, a creaking noise filled the air.

‘Have you ever heard anything like that?’ Annie asked in surprise. ‘It’s so quiet out here, we can actually hear the sound of a bird flying.’