How Not to Shop (13 page)

'Ya. I'm on committee, I tell them you film or I don't pay my big cheque,' Svetlana added.

'OK, this is great. Great! Svetlana, I don't know what we would do without you!' Finn gushed.

Miss Marlise moved her hands to her slim hips and rolled her eyes once again. 'Ha!' she couldn't help exclaiming.

The clipboard was out and Finn was both scribbling notes and leafing through notes he'd already made.

'Today, we start with Annie's shopping session. All right, Bob? Sorry love,' he offered in Annie's direction, 'you'll have to meet the next girl in the shopping centre and take it from there. We're doing the "at home" tomorrow morning. That's the way it's going to have to work. So if you can just pretend that you've already met her, looked through her wardrobe and got to know her a bit, that would be great.'

He flicked through his pages and read out: 'Jody Wilson, same shopping centre, permission hopefully still applies. Nikki if you could ring and check . . .'

Annie felt taken aback by this set of instructions. She'd not even met Jody and now she was going to be sent straight to the changing rooms with her.

Of course, at The Store, she'd done this many, many times before: met women, put them in a changing room, then heard most of their recent life history and seen them in their pants before twenty minutes was up. But on camera? On TV? It felt as if she was stepping out on stage without any lines or a single rehearsal

'Oh and if we could keep the budget down below £200 this time, Annie, I'd be more than grateful,' was Finn's parting shot as Annie and Bob headed for the door.

Bob and Annie met Jody Wilson in a café in the shopping centre. As they said their hellos and Bob explained the filming schedule, Annie carefully sized up this petite new makeover client.

In her very safe, almost expressionless outfit of black suit and black boots, it was hard to get much of a clue about Jody. Annie guessed she was in her late twenties and wondered if she had volunteered herself or been volunteered by friends for the
Wonder Women
treatment.

'What made you contact us?' Annie asked.

'My mum,' Jody replied with a wary smile. 'She heard the ad on the radio and put me forward. I think she's hoping you can wave a magic wand and suddenly I'll be walking down the aisle.'

'Ah . . .' Annie understood: 'the "why isn't my daughter settled down yet?" obsession.'

Jody nodded.

'But you're here,' Annie went on, then added carefully, 'I take it you'd like to meet someone . . .'

'Special?' Jody suggested. 'I would love to meet someone special. But I'm not sure there's anyone special left. The good ones go early and everyone left is fatally flawed,' she said gloomily.

'Ah well, we're all fatally flawed,' was Annie's verdict.

As they set off from the café, Annie wanted to make sure that Jody knew the makeover was leading to a party.

'Have you heard where you're being taken to, once we've found you the outfit?' she ventured.

Jody shook her short, neat bob as a no.

'This amazing Art Ball at the Tate Modern. It's a big event, packed . . . definitely a few famous faces . . .'

She looked over at Jody, who wasn't smiling.
Careful
, Annie told herself, she didn't want to intimidate a second client.

'Oh, but it's not grand and glam,' she added quickly.

'Apparently people turn up in whatever they want. You could wear a ball dress or a pair of ripped jeans covered in graffiti . . . or both! It's all about expressing yourself, Jody.'

'Right.' Jody didn't sound very certain.

As Annie installed Jody in a River Island changing room, Bob set up his camera.

'I know it's hard,' were Annie's words of encouragement to Jody, when she began to stare at the camera with anxiety, 'but you've got to pretend that he isn't there. Think of this as just about us. Focus on me and my face,' Annie went on. 'I'll focus on you and we'll just try and let Bob do his own thing in the background.'

'OK, hang up your jacket,' Annie instructed her, 'turn around, let me see what I've got to work with here and tell me something really important. Who do you want to look like? Who's your fashion heroine? Whose wardrobe would you love to steal?'

'Whose wardrobe would I love to steal?' Jody repeated.

'Yes,' Annie replied, 'that's the best help of all for me. I can easily run round here and bring in a whole bundle of clothes that would suit your figure. But what I really need to know is what will suit your head.'

'If you love bright blue hats and funky jodhpurs,' Annie went on, 'then we have to go out there and find some! Just please don't tell me that all you really want to wear is plain black suits and nothing else, because it doesn't say enough about you. It doesn't give anyone meeting you for the first time nearly enough clues, and clues are vital. How is anyone going to chat you up if they haven't the slightest clue about you?'

'I love Audrey Hepburn,' Jody said thoughtfully. 'Hers is the wardrobe I'd most like to steal.'

'Oh, Audrey Hepburn,' Annie said with a touch of exasperation, 'so elegant but so . . . chilly. I mean, do you really believe that she and Gregory Peck got hot and sweaty and down to it at the end of
Roman Holiday
? No. She was definitely the kind of girl who would have had a headache. What about Amélie?' Annie suggested. 'Did you ever see that French film? The quirky girl with the chic little bob just like yours and cute dresses and little hats.'

'Amélie?' Jody sounded surprised, 'I loved Amélie, but I don't want to seem weird.'

'Why not?' Annie shrugged. 'Maybe your inner weird and wonderful will attract someone else's weird and wonderful.'

Jody looked unconvinced.

'I've been dressing women for ten years now,' Annie told her with a confident smile. 'I think you're just going to have to trust me here. OK?'

Slowly, Jody nodded.

Harry on parade:

Bespoke dinner suit (Daks)
White bespoke shirt (Thomas Pink)
Navy-blue tie with small white spot (Gieves & Hawkes)
High polished black shoes (Church's)
Total est. cost: £1,750

'This is absolutely marvellous!'

The Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall made a stunning party venue. Huge sculptures rose up from the bare concrete floor, dwarfing the swarm of guests. There was something amazing to look at on every wall, in front of every window.

Although billed as an 'Art Ball', it was obvious there wasn't going to be any dancing round the priceless modern art treasures. This party was all about sipping at the champagne cocktails, chit-chatting with the other glamorous guests and posing in your fabulously creative outfit.

When Svetlana had promised that guests could wear whatever they liked, she certainly hadn't been exaggerating. In her first quick sweep of the room, Annie could see ageing aristocratic ladies in full-on taffeta gowns, leggy London girls in cocktail dresses in all the colours of the rainbow and all sorts of mismatched, carefully thought out combos in between. No forgetting the self-styled artists in head-to-toe black or ultra-fashionable jeans spattered with oil paint.

Annie had taken one of her cherished slinky Valentino gowns out of the wardrobe tonight, but carefully dressed it down with a denim jacket, a shell and leather necklace and high-heeled sandals with a chunky wooden heel. She hoped she struck just the right note of dressed up nonchalance which she thought the event would need.

On her arm was Cath, who carried a small black sequined mask on a stick.

'Just as soon as you feel nervous, you hold the mask in front of your face and you disappear, it's just like wearing big sunglasses,' Annie had told her.

Cath was surprisingly taken with the idea. Although she'd been sweaty with nerves as she was helped into her slinky black dress and her make-up, the addition of the mask had allowed her to relax a little.

'No-one would recognize you anyway!' Annie had told her, beaming with pleasure at the finished result. 'Look at that fabulous hair.'

An entire afternoon at the hairdresser's had transformed Cath's stiff, frumpy pudding bowl into something darker, more wispy and modern.

'I'll need a lesson in how to handle a pair of straighteners,' she'd told Annie.

'Happy to oblige,' Annie had assured her.

Once they'd been handed their first cocktails, Bob came up and insisted on taking Cath away from Annie.

'Don't you worry, I'll look after her,' he promised. 'I've got my camera all set up and I want her to do some shots for me before she's had too many cocktails and can't walk in a straight line any more. And by the way,' he said, offering Cath his arm, 'you look fantastic.'

For a moment, Annie was alone. But she didn't mind at all. She just lifted her glass slowly to her lips and drank in not just a mouthful of fizz but the amazing scene all around her. She wished Ed was here; she'd struggle to tell him just how over-the-top and wonderful this event was.

So far, she'd only caught a glimpse of Finn, who was charging about issuing instructions to Bob via his Blue-tooth, acutely anxious not to miss any shots.

'I want celebrities,' Finn had barked. 'If you see someone, anyone you recognize, stick your camera in their face. Our girls look wicked, so make sure you capture every single good angle. And if they're chatting to anyone, get in there!'

'Annah!'

Annie could hear the raised voice rushing towards her and knew she was about to be pressed to a generous, only slightly surgically enhanced, Ukrainian bosom.

'Here she is!' Svetlana boomed. 'This is Annah Valentine, I so vant you to meet her.'

Then Annie was face to face not just with Svetlana, but with a dapper, dinner-suited man she immediately understood to be Svetlana's husband in waiting.

A big smile broke across Svetlana's high-cheekboned face: 'Harry! This is Annah,' she repeated. 'Annah, Harry!'

Harry's beaming face, almost as shiny as his dressy black patent shoes, was split with a generous smile and as he smoothed down his remaining hair with one hand, he extended his other to Annie.

'Annie Valentine, hello, how absolutely scrumptious to meet you,' he gushed in the kind of terribly, terribly posh English which would, once upon a time, have made Annie feel nervous and unsure of herself. Now she took it in her stride. If anything, it made her ramp up her broad, Londoner vowels.

'Annah gave me your phone number, remember, back at the beginning when ve meet,' Svetlana offered generously, anointing Annie as the matchmaker who had brought about this happy union.

'No, well . . .' Annie pointed out quickly, 'another client of mine recommended you, Harry. I was just the go-between.'

'This is absolutely marvellous!' Harry's eyebrows shot up and his grin seemed to grow even wider. 'You mean I wouldn't have met my darling, darling girl without you? I do hope you're coming to the wedding. It's going to be a complete corker.'

'Of courrrse Annah come,' Svetlana purred, before Annie even had time to wonder whether or not she would be receiving an invitation, 'I need her there to make sure dress just so and bridesmaids vonderful. Of courrrse she come.'

In the warmth of Svetlana's beam, Annie felt a wave of gratitude. She may have inadvertently hooked Svetlana up with her next husband, but Svetlana was the one who had inadvertently landed her with the TV opportunity.