Celebrity Shopper (9 page)

‘So in the next week or two, hopefully.’ Tamsin was tapping on her notebook, calling up her schedule. ‘We can’t send a whole crew to Paris, way too expensive. I want to come in under budget for these episodes just to impress everyone and up the profit margins. You, Bob and his camera and maybe Amelia – because she can look after just about everything that you two can’t – should go over to Paris for two days and bring us back lots of really exciting footage. Have you recovered from your shopping stalker incident?’

‘Oh, she was hardly a stalker,’ Annie protested.

‘I’ve looked into the cost of getting you some security,’ Tamsin added.

Annie’s response to this was an astonished snort, followed by: ‘You have got to be joking me.’

‘No. After what happened, I think when you go round the shops for us, you should have someone with you – discreetly. Joe the driver, perhaps, he’s ex-army. But we’ll pay for that. Obviously on your own time, you’ll have to decide what you want to do.’

‘No!’ Annie was shocked. ‘Even Svetlana doesn’t have security and she’s loaded.’

‘Yeah but you’re a TV star.’

‘I am not.’

‘You are,’ Tamsin insisted, ‘you’re a
celebrity
now. What happened with the suicidal lady was scary. What if she’d had a kitchen knife in her handbag instead of packets of pills?’

‘Then I’d definitely have made the cover of
Pssst!
magazine,’ Annie joked.

‘That’s bound to come soon,’ Tamsin warned.

‘Plain Jane the Brain was harmless, she was just upset,’ Annie said, ‘and I felt quite touched that she thought I could help her.’

Annie cast her mind back to the fraught changing-room scene. Just as she and the shop assistant had exchanged nervous glances, wondering what on earth they were supposed to do next, Jane’s phone had rung. Annie had decided to pick it up as Jane had been in no state to answer.

It had been Jane’s sister and as soon as Annie had explained where Jane was and how upset she was, the sister had dropped everything to come and get her.

Annie had stayed for the forty minutes it had taken for the sister to arrive, curious to see the svelte and pretty contrast who had dressed Jane up as ‘an ugly toad’.

The sister hadn’t been any prettier at all, which didn’t
really surprise Annie. How many sibling rivalries were based on absolutely nothing at all? But you just needed one parent to express a mild preference for one child’s hair or eyes or length of leg and the damage could be done.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Annie assured Tamsin. ‘If things get really bad, I’ll just start wearing a dark wig in public. It’s probably time I discovered my inner goth.’

As soon as Tamsin had finished the call, Annie saw that she had voicemail. She dialled up the message and listened to it in some confusion.

‘Hello, this is Christine from Everest Camping. We trust the package arrived safely. Obviously we hope you’ll be able to make use of the items, but if not, please return them at your earliest convenience.’

Annie listened once again, stared at her phone in surprise and decided this must be a wrong number. Camping stuff? She’d definitely never ordered any camping stuff.

Glancing out of the window, she did a double take. There was Lana, she was sure of it, striding along, her dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail and her pale, pretty face wrapped up in thought.

‘Oh! Can we pull over?’ she asked the driver with a polite tap on the window.

‘Your wish is my command, ma’am,’ he replied, smoothly manoeuvring the large estate car to the side of the road.

Annie flung open her door and called out: ‘Lana! Want a lift, babes?’

Lana looked up, her face full of surprise. ‘Hello, darlin’,’ Annie greeted her, treating her to a hug and a kiss.

‘Hi, this is nice!’ Lana settled herself and her bags down on to the plush black leather seats.

‘Let’s travel home in style and you can tell me all about your day,’ Annie instructed.

So Lana did. She began with the school news, grumbling about all the work and the homework assignments.

‘Oh, you’re studying so hard!’ Annie sympathized. ‘I do wonder if it has anything to do with a certain charming, handsome boy who is now at Cambridge?’

This caused a confused blush to spread up over Lana’s face. ‘I… erm… well,’ Lana began awkwardly, ‘he’s emailed a bit … but I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘You should,’ Annie encouraged her.

‘You weren’t exactly very nice about him when we were going out,’ Lana reminded her mother.

‘Well, no, I know that. But you were much younger then,’ Annie defended herself, ‘and maybe I was wrong. No, I
was
wrong … but there was the Ed-and-the-under-the-bed incident.’

Annie turned to look at Lana; Lana turned to look back. They caught sight of the expression on each other’s faces and suddenly burst out laughing. It was still the most embarrassing thing Lana had ever done: being caught by Ed under Annie and Ed’s bed with Andrei in a state of … well, semi-undress.

‘That was a long time ago,’ Lana reminded her.

‘Yeah,’ Annie had to agree, ‘but, Lana, you do know that you might not make it to Cambridge …’

‘Yeah, yeah, of course, don’t be silly,’ Lana said quickly as her fingers went up to fiddle with her hair.

‘And it’ll be fine, not getting into Cambridge, not even applying for Cambridge,’ Annie added. ‘Andrei’s great, but you’re not allowed to make any big decisions based on him. In fact, it’s probably time to play very hard to get. That always works, I promise you.’

Lana gave her mother a non-committal smile. She didn’t look convinced. Still, it was nice to be in the back seat of the car, having her mum all to herself. She couldn’t think when they’d last spent even ten minutes alone together just talking.

But then Annie’s mobile burst into life.

A glance at the number told Annie that her sister Dinah was calling; she must have picked up Annie’s long apologetic message.

‘Annie—’ Dinah began.

‘I’m sorry,’ Annie interrupted her, ‘I should have phoned you back much sooner, I’m so sorry about your job and I’m a cow who should not be dropping on her own family from a great height. I’ll come round and see you tonight, if you like.’

‘Oh, save it, I know you’re not really a heartless bitch who wouldn’t phone her about-to-be-unemployed sister back, not really,’ Dinah said, brushing the apology aside. ‘I’ve just had a call from this journalist wanting to know stuff about you and our family. It was weird.’

‘Who?’ Annie asked in surprise.

‘Some woman called Vickie … ermmm … Plummer or something? She was asking what I knew about Dad.’

‘Dad?’ Annie repeated, horrified. ‘Why on earth does anyone want to know anything about him?’

‘Well, it’s a family secret – family scandal, isn’t it? To a journalist anyway.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Well, I tried to say nothing,’ Dinah said with a touch of reluctance.

‘What do you mean you tried?’

Lana glanced over at Annie, wondering what was wrong.

‘I kept trying to put the phone down, but she’s a very persistent woman.’

‘Dinah, did you give her his name?’

‘Annie, she already knew that, plus his date of birth, plus the address his most recent credit card was registered to.’

‘You have got to be joking.’

Ed frazzled:

Torn rugby shirt (St Vincent’s lost property box)
Baggy joggers (not exactly sure)
Socks (Hackett via Annie)
Tartan slippers (Christmas)
Total est. cost: £0

‘No! I don’t think that would be a good idea …’

‘Things are a bit messy at home.’ Lana decided she’d better warn her mother as they both got out of the car. ‘It’s not the way it usually is when you come home in the evening. That’s why I went out for a walk. To get away from stuff.’

‘Oh!’ Annie could hardly keep the excitement from her voice. ‘So the builders have started, have they?’

‘Oh yeah!’ came Lana’s dark warning. ‘They’ve definitely started.’

‘With the bathroom?’ Annie asked impatiently. ‘Or with the windows in the kitchen?’

‘Let’s just say they’ve decided to do both at the same time,’ Lana replied.

‘Great! It will all be over so much quicker like this.’

‘Hmmm …’

They were at the front door of the house by now and as Annie pushed it open, two things struck her at once: the strange smell and the overwhelming mess.

The entire hallway floor was thick with footprints, which looked as if they’d been created from a mixture of white plaster dust and brown mud. The trail of multiple footprints led from the back of the house to the front and then up and down the carpeted stairs to the bathroom.

Fine plaster dust was hanging in the air – well, all the dust that hadn’t already settled, coating everything in sight. The stairs, the banisters, the skirting boards, the floor, even the walls seemed a shade greyer because of the dust.

But Annie’s eyes returned to the footprints. They spread all over the carefully sanded and polished wooden hallway floor and crusted up her beautiful striped stair runner.

‘Didn’t they use tarpaulins?’ she heard herself exclaim. ‘Didn’t they think to cover the floors before they removed a bathroom and—’

‘Demolished a kitchen wall.’ Lana finished the sentence for her.

‘They’ve made a hole in the kitchen wall already?’ Annie looked at her daughter in surprise. ‘But we weren’t ready for that. We hadn’t even packed the kitchen up. Surely …’

Annie began to hurry towards her kitchen.

As soon as she opened the kitchen door, her eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You are joking! You have got to be joking me!’ she exclaimed.

A huge hole, surely far too big for the new windows, had been punched into one of the kitchen’s walls. It was a gaping, jagged hole with rough edges and bits of plaster hanging from it. The rest of the room looked almost normal, except the pots and pans, the shelves, the plates,
the cutlery and even the dishes drying on the draining board were all covered with a thick layer of plaster dust.

Ed had obviously not had time to tidy away one single thing before the builders had come in and bulldozed out a chunk of wall. Not even the cereal boxes had been put away, Annie saw with disbelief. They were standing in a row on the kitchen table looking as if they’d been spray-painted grey.

A chill wind whistled about the room, stirring the dust, because only a blue tarpaulin tied loosely over the outside of the hole was protecting it from the elements.

‘ED!’ Annie called at the top of her voice. ‘Where is he?’ she directed at Lana.

Lana gave a shrug. ‘Maybe upstairs,’ she offered.

‘ED!’ Annie repeated, heading out into the filthy hall.

She took the crusty stairs two at a time, pausing to gasp in surprise at the bathroom. It was a shell, stripped right back to the brickwork with bits of spindly copper pipework dangling from the walls. One pipe was dripping water on to the floor and a grubby cloth had been put underneath it to try and catch the drops.

Annie could hear one of the babies crying in the main bedroom, so she headed towards the noise.

As soon as she opened the door, she could tell that things were not calm.

The bedroom was in chaos. Mud from the stairs had made its way on to the pale carpet in there. The bed was unmade and littered with baby clothes, bits of cotton wool, two bowls of water, Babygros and vests.

Micky was standing up in the cot, his face red with the effort of crying. Minnie was lying on the bed having her nappy changed, also in tears.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Annie soothed.

Ed looked round at her and she saw at a glance how flustered he was too. His hair seemed to be sticking up even more crazily that usual. Good grief! His hair had got so grey …
overnight
? How had this happened? Why hadn’t she noticed? As she got closer, she realized with relief that Ed’s hair too was covered in a clinging layer of plaster dust.

‘I bet your day’s been interesting,’ Annie began.

Ed shook his head, releasing a fine cloud of dust into the air. ‘Don’t ask,’ he replied, before adding: ‘They’ve both got diarrhoea and Micky’s bum: one great big, burning, red disaster area.’

‘Oh dear,’ Annie sympathized and went to pick Micky up, although Minnie was bawling for her too.

‘Yes, I know,’ Annie said, leaning over Minnie once Micky was in her arms, ‘I’ll cuddle you too, just let Daddy finish your nappy. The house is …’

‘I know,’ Ed said, shaking his head again, ‘you don’t need to say anything.’

‘Oh, I think I do,’ Annie told him, ‘I think I need to phone Al’s mobile number right now and shout at him. A lot. I don’t think I’ll really be able to calm down until I’ve done that.’

‘The bulldozer arrived a day early apparently,’ Ed began. ‘Al said if he’d sent it away, to come back tomorrow, that would have been an extra four hundred pounds.’