The Personal Shopper (3 page)

‘Donna! Hi there!’ Annie did a passable impersonation of a friendly greeting. ‘Sorry, we’ve both got clients in at the moment, but can I help you with anything?’

Donna, who’d been Retail Manager, Women’s Fashion, for five months now, did not take her short ‘squoval’ orange nails from the keyboard. She carried on typing, eyes in narrow black Prada frames, fixed to the screen in front of her.

Despite the charming floral Issa dress wrapped round her lithe
body, Donna,
hair sc
raped back from her face,
looked ready for the kill.

‘Annie V’s Trading Station,’ she snarled. ‘My goodness, what a lot of items I recognize here. Isn’t that one of our latest Mulberry bags? And look, it’s about to be sold
for a hundred and fifty pounds
more than its RRP.’

‘It’s come from a client who’s fed up with it already,’ Annie explained. ‘You
know how fickle some can be
. Look, this is all totally above board, Donna, I can even show you my Trading Station tax returns.’

‘Of course, I’m sure it is. There’s just one slight problem, Annie.’ Donna turned to glare at her now, her Botoxed brow doing its best to scrunch into a stern warning
.

‘You’re doing this at work,’ Donna snapped. ‘And you’ve already had two verbal warnings from me about this.’

‘Verbal warnings?’ Was snakewoman trying to insinuate that previous conversations about Annie’s internet activity counted as official warnings?

‘We’ve had several
discussions
about this, yes,’ Annie agreed, wishing some ball-breaking lawyer, maybe one of those slick American ones from the TV, was by her side. ‘And I’ve explained to you that I am not doing this at work. My computer is on, open at the web-page. When I have the odd moment, you know, tea break . . . nipping out for lunch . . . I have a quick look. I’m not
 
causing my work a problem in any way whatsoever. Why don’t you look over my sales figures for this month, Donna?’ Annie dared her. ‘Complain to me if there’s a problem there.’

‘It’s not just about sales figures,’ Donna countered. ‘You’re setting other members of staff a bad example. So I’m giving you this.’ She picked up a white envelope and handed it to Annie. ‘It’s a written warning, so we’re both clear.’

‘What?!
’

It had been obvious to Annie from Donna’s first week that she was the kind of manager who actually felt threatened by a really good member of staff, rather than supported. But much as she suspected Donna would love to be rid of her, so she could rule the roost without the slightest opposition, Annie had always thought her
 
awe-inspiring sales power would protect her. Now, holding a written warning in her hand, she wasn’t so sure.

‘And what about Paula?’ Donna launched straight into a new line of attack. ‘She’s not pulling her weight. You have another month to train her up properly for this job or we’ll have to find someone else.’

Considering Paula had been c
hosen for the position by Donna
this was somewhat unfair, but Annie had come to expect nothing less from her.

The mobile beside the computer began to ring. Annie had two mobiles and as this was her business phone, her heart sank as Donna snatched it up and barked: ‘Hello?’ into the receiver.

‘Yes .
. . aha . . . oh really?
Well, that’s very interesting . . . No. I’ll get her to call you back.’ Donna clicked off the phone and glared at Annie: ‘That was your estate agent. He wants to talk to you about a “very exciting new investment opportunity”. I suggest you call him back when you’ve read your warning and finished for the day.’ There was no mistaking the withering look which came with this.

Just then, Svetlana appeared at the office door. ‘Ahnnah, we are ready to leave,’ she said, demanding immediate attention. ‘Could you arrange for everything to be taken to the back door? Olga and I will go and meet the car.’

Annie kissed Svetlana and then Olga four times, the Russian way, and thanked them profusely for their visit. She was thanked profusely in return.

Svetlana, as if noticing Donna for the first time, asked her: ‘Are you Ahnnah’s boss?’

When Donna gave a curt nod in reply, Svetlana enthused: ‘She is wonderful. The best stylist in London. Rrrreally. Be nice to her, because if she ever leaves The Store, I will leave with her.’

Donna’s expression darkened, but she did her best to force a smile.

Then, in a small, carefree gesture of thanks, Svetlana handed last season’s Chloé handbag to Annie with the words: ‘I don’t want it any more. You have it. For your business. I am very admiring of your enterprise.’

‘No, no, darlin’, I really couldn’t . . .’ Annie began.

‘Yes, of courrrrrrse,’ Svetlana insisted, ‘and there’s something inside for you. Special information, Ahnnah, because it is time for you to find New Husband. It’s not good to be alone for long time.’

Before Annie could even say thank you, Svetlana had swept out of the suite towards her packed limousine and her luxury life in Mayfair.

The look of genuine pain on Donna’s face was a joy to behold, but it didn’t stop her from snapping: ‘What a walking cliché that woman is.’

Chapter Two

Becca Wolstonecroft at Parents’ Evening:

Grey T-shirt (M&S)

Pink fleece (M&S)

Grey (formerly black) chinos (Gap)

Grey (formerly white) underwear (M&S)

Short black socks (husband’s)

In misguided attempt to disguise the above:

Cream fake fur coat (Xmas gift six years ago)

Total est. cost: £220

‘Good God! How much?!!’

Just
before closing time, Annie left The Store with
two luxurious handbags over one
shoulder:
her own pumpkin-coloured bag which now held Svetlana’s gifted bag
inside. She hadn’t decided yet
whether she was going to keep the gift
or
re-
sell it.

Over Annie’s
other s
houlder was an enormous tote
filled with
more of the day’s
treasures: three Tupperware boxes crammed with leftovers from the staff canteen for supper, eight bottles of Clarins facial oil (out of date), twelve (last season’s) Estée Lauder lipsticks, one pair of (damaged) men’s trousers, bought at a snip. She’d fix them herself and sell BNWT.

Donna’s warning letter, which told her she faced dismissal for any further ‘irregular activities’, had been read then scrunched up in fury. It was now buried underneath
all the other items because Annie was doing her best not to think about life without her job at The
 
Store. She was her family’s sole provider. Yes, she worked very hard to supplement her main income, but if Donna pushed her off the tightrope, there was no safety net.

Her personal mobile began to ring in a rap version of the
Star Wars
theme, because her nine-year-old son, Owen, had doctored it again. On the line was her 14-nearly-15-year-old daughter Lana (what you get at 35 if you think babies are soooo cute when you’re 20 and madly in love).

‘Hi, Lana,’ Annie answered, ‘you’re reminding me, aren’t you? But I haven’t forgotten, honest. I’m out on the dot and I will be sitting down with your form teacher at seven fifteen p.m. Honest, honest, cross my heart and
 
hope to die. I will not be late,’ Annie assured her daughter, ‘promise.’

‘And you’re to get me out of the charity thing, OK?’ Lana was using her whiny voice. ‘Speak to Owen’s teacher about that.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Annie told her, not promising anything further.

She trotted briskly, on two-and-a-half-inch heels, towards the underground station, passing the kind of fashion mistakes that made her want to stop people on the street: ‘Darlin’, skinny jeans? Tucked into boots? That can make Kate Moss look a bit porky. On you, it’s
 
the Tamworth Two: a pair of pigs fighting to break free.’

‘A furry gilet, babes?
Three years after all the other ones were rounded up and shot?’

Annie was heading for Highgate, one of the nicest and oldest parts of north London, where she lived at last. Hundreds of years ago, Highgate had begun life as a hamlet and there were still flagstone pavements and listed Georgian houses with lumpy glass windows and sagging oak beams. Although it was now bisected by a main road permanently clogged with nose-to-tail traffic, Highgate still felt (ah! She could hear the estate agent’s pitch) ‘villagey’. The high street had real shops as well as a Tesco Metro, banks and estate agents. People moved there, fell in love with the place and tended to stay, making it slightly more neighbourly than many other parts of London.

Annie had always wanted to live in Highgate, despite the outrageous prices, and she’d achieved the cramped three-bedroomed flat she shared with her two children through her personal property development programme.

It was testament to her unflagging energy, not to mention her dislike of settling down or staying still, that she’d moved home eight times in the past ten years. Always buying the run-down, junky places no-one else wanted and using cheap tradesmen, her own basic, but
 
tireless, DIY skills and, above all, her unerringly great taste to turn in a profit and move on to something just a little bit better and a little bit closer to her dream destination.

Rotten carpets, mouldy bathrooms, dodgy roofs, rattling windows, rodent infestations, dry rot: none of these things could frighten Annie any longer, she’d lived through them all and come out the other side with equity.

In her current flat, she’d just had a fabulous (heavily discounted) limestone bathroom installed complete with rolltop bath and steam sauna shower; now she was preparing to sell for maximum profit in the spring and move on to the next doer-upper, even though she’d be really sorry to say goodbye to the shower. Well . . . in fact, she’d be really sorry to say goodbye to this flat, for many reasons, and she
suspected it was going to be hard to convince the children it was a good idea . . . but, like it or not, she needed the money.

Heels clacking on the pavement, she headed from
 
Highgate underground station, not in the direction of her home, but towards St Vincent’s, the excellent, although totally exclusive and smug, private day school her two children attended.

Sending her children to St Vincent’s at a cost of over £2,000 a month was what kept Annie focused and motivated through her long days of wheeling, dealing, advising and selling. She’d been brought up, the oldest of three girls, in a much less inviting corner of London by a single, non-stop-working mother who had sent her
 
girls to the local primary and then the local comprehensive until one by one they’d hit the critical age of 14. Then, chiropodist (although she preferred ‘podiatrist’) Fern had used her overtime, her savings and their natural intelligence to secure them places at the
 
extraordinarily upmarket Francis Holland School for Girls to ‘get their exams’ and ‘a bit of polish’.

For Annie, Francis Holland had been the Promised Land, the Holy Grail: a fantasy school for the rich and glamorous which, in a slightly limited way, she’d been allowed to join. Yes, she’d suffered a degree of taunting for living in the wrong part of tow
n and having the wrong kind of accent
. But mainly she’d attracted a big friend and fan base because she was street smart, savvy and cool and because she knew so many, many boys.