The Personal Shopper (38 page)

There was almost a smile playing about Donna’s lips. Annie would love to have smacked her, right there and then.

‘I suppose I could tell HR you left for personal reasons . . . a personality clash, maybe?’

‘Well, that wouldn’t be a lie, would it?’ Annie retorted. Then as something of the enormity of losing her job of
 
six years, when she was the sole provider for her children, began to dawn on her, she suddenly found herself appealing: ‘You can’t do this, Donna. Are you really going to sack me? I’m your best sales assistant. Couldn’t you at least give me time to find something somewhere else? I’ve got my children’s—’

‘School fees to pay . . . oh yes, yes, Annie, my heart bleeds,’ Donna snapped. ‘No. I’ve had enough of you. Flouncing round here like you own the place, like The
 
Store owes you a living, like everyone should be constantly doing you a favour, giving you a discount, letting you claim all the damaged goods and sell them right under our noses because we should all feel so, so sorry for you . . . just because your husband . . .’ She broke off abruptly and the rest of her words hung in the air.

‘Donna,’ Annie said, pulling herself up straight, feeling her fight and her fire return, ‘I might be many things and wrong in many ways, but at least I’m not a heartless, ruthless bitch like you.’

Chapter Twenty-four

Gray at home:

Pink V-neck golfing sweater (Pringle)

Beige chinos (Gant)

White T-shirt (Gap)

Crested velvet slippers (Jermyn Street)

Est. cost: £270

‘But they’re comfortable!’

Gray’s immaculate house was not looking quite so good these days. His hotel-tidy master bedroom was lined with the racks and stacks of clothes, accessories and items currently for sale on the new and improved Annie V Trading Station. His once super-orderly walk-in wardrobe was crammed as Annie’s many, many belongings fought with his for shelf and rail space.

The guest bedrooms had become home to Owen and all his paraphernalia – most of it still in cardboard boxes – and Lana and her endless clothes, make-up, CDs, DVDs and currently atrocious teen tantrums.

Several things had gone wrong at once for Lana: Seth had finally snipped off their budding romance, plus her allowance had been severely docked for her part in fencing the stolen bag which had cost Annie her job at The Store: ‘
Suzie’s boyfriend!? The bag came from Suzie’s dodgy boyfriend?!
’ Annie had shrieked at her. ‘
Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t it cross your mind that there might be something not right about it? Boyfriends don’t just show up with six-hundred-pound bags! I thought it was from some loaded St Vincent’s mum.
’

It was obvious from Lana’s long face and even longer sulks that she missed Highgate, especially the regular after-school visits with friends. Having a friend over was now a weekend-only event involving an overnight stay.

‘Give it a chance here,’ Annie kept urging her. ‘You’ll meet some people. Maybe you should join the tennis club? You love tennis.’

But suggestions like this were met with slammed doors and shouts of ‘It’s OK for you, but what about us?’

At least Owen seemed fine, but then he’d always liked the company of his family and himself best. He was playing the guitar a lot, listening to music and could sometimes be found at the very top of the apple tree in Gray’s garden.

Gray was finding family life something of a change. He had never experienced noise or mess on a scale like this.
 
Because it was a school holiday, the children were
always around, underfoot, when he came back from work. He stumbled about his home, tripping over new piles of stuff in unexpected places. He found his sofa already occupied, his plasma TV screen blaring out endless reruns of
Friends
, his jacuzzi filled with three embarrassingly nubile teen girls, his kitchen utterly void
 
of anything edible, although it was now stacked with Annie’s cash and carry treasures: industrial sized boxes of clingfilm and tinfoil, 80 rolls of kitchen towel, 1,000 bin bags. His new live-in lover was surprisingly unavailable: either on her mobile, at her computer or out
 
again, making another round of house calls, consultations, drop-offs or pick-ups.

Ever since she’d left The Store, Annie had woken up every morning ready to hustle. Within four days, her flat had been stripped of everything personal, redecorated with the vigorous application of Dulux Once, and she and the children had moved to Gray’s while tenants paying top dollar had moved in.

With her mortgage payments covered, Annie had turned her attention to earning enough money to keep the children at St Vincent’s and her with the monthly income she was accustomed to. This meant a rapid expansion of the Trading Station and her own Dress to Express makeover and personal shopping service.

Things weren’t looking too bad; she was learning that Gray’s corner of Essex was ripe with well-heeled women who hadn’t the slightest clue how to accessorize and weren’t shy about recommending her services to all their friends. The only downside to drumming up all
 
this business was that Gray didn’t seem to like it very much.

‘You know, Annie, I don’t really want you to work so
 
hard,’ he was telling her again, one evening over a glass of red wine as they sought sanctuary out on the garden terrace from the noisy goings-on in the sitting room.

Several days ago, he’d suggested she become his PA; now he was bringing the subject up again.

‘You could help me with my admin, keep track of all my meetings, appointments . . .’ he said. ‘It won’t keep you as busy as you are now, so you’ll be around a lot more, for me and your children. Obviously, I’ll keep on my secretary at work . . . and I’ll pay you.’

Of course the idea of not working so hard was appealing, but did she want to work for Gray? Would that be a good plan? There were quite enough teething problems: arguments about food on the sofa (last night’s) and
not
using a spoon for the jam (this morning’s) without Annie risking a move into Gray’s work life and being told off for not doing things quite the way he wanted there as well.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said. ‘What would you pay me anyway? . . . What!?’ was her undisguised surprise at the figure. ‘How do you expect me and mine to survive on that?’

‘Well’ Gray was flustered, taken aback by her reaction. ‘Now that you live with me there are lots of things you don’t have to pay for. I don’t expect you to pay anything towards the house, I’m happy to pay the bills, groceries, this is money just for you.’

‘My pin money?’ she’d asked with more than a touch of sarcasm.

‘Well, that’s a bit old-fashioned,’ he replied. ‘What I mean is . . . Marilyn was my PA, she spent her wages on herself and I paid for everything else—’

‘Gray . . .’ Annie cut him off, ‘don’t misunderstand me, it’s lovely that you’re well-off and that you want to help us out, but Marilyn did not have two children of her own to keep in school. I have always,
always
supported myself and the children and often Roddy too when his parts were few and far between and his shitty employers took months to pay. Relying on you to pay for us and to give me a tax-deductible little allowance is out of the question.’ She drained her glass, set it down on the table between them and gave him the stern look which he was learning meant: no further discussion.

In slight need of a change of subject, he decided to ask: ‘Are you doing much tomorrow?’

‘I’ve got a home consultation in the morning, but I’m
 
not too busy after that. I’ll just be at my day job, buying and selling.’ With a smile she added: ‘I’m a stockbroker of used commodities. Like my job description? Anyway, why? Have you got something planned for tomorrow?’

‘I’ve invited my parents round. I mean, I said I’d check with you first, obviously . . .’

‘For drinks?’

‘Well, no. I think I might have said dinner . . .’

Annie had not yet met Gray’s parents, although she’d heard plenty about them. They were in their early eighties, but apparently this had not dimmed their sharp opinions, pointed criticism of and interminable stream of advice to their precious one and only son.

‘They were very fond of Marilyn,’ he had warned her earlier. ‘I’m afraid moving you three in has put them in a huff. It’s going to take weeks to talk them round.’

Now, obviously, they had been talked round and were to meet over a civilized dinner – which Annie was to provide, presumably, as Gray had a full day’s work ahead of him.

‘Why don’t we all go out for dinner?’ she suggested.

‘Well, I just thought for Lana and Owen’s sake . . . they can go off and do their own thing . . . won’t have to sit and listen to us talk all evening.’

He had a point.

‘I mean, if it’s a problem . . .’

Hadn’t Gray noticed that she couldn’t cook? Hadn’t he realized that most of her meals came in a plastic tray with a wrapper ready to be heated in the microwave?

‘No, no, it’s not a problem,’ she insisted, wondering in which removals box one of her three barely touched cookbooks might be found – and what kind of simple, but nevertheless impressive, dish could be served up for six.

‘I’ll go and phone them then?’ Gray asked. ‘They’re looking forward to meeting you.’

‘Oh yes. I bet they are. Are you feeling cold?’ she wondered. ‘Why don’t we go inside?’

Such was Gray’s horror of the mess and mayhem going on in his sitting room that he replied: ‘No, no, I’m fine, but I can bring you out a jacket if you like.’

Annie didn’t make it back to Gray’s house until after 2
 
p.m. the next day, later than she’d intended, considering his parents were due at seven. The home consultation had been long and involved: a woman in her fifties who had found it very hard to see
beyond navy blue and even harder to see beyond her – admittedly substantial, but hardly disastrous – thighs and hips.

‘
I don’t have any tricks to disguise hips
,’ Annie had informed her. ‘
That’s not my thing, darlin’. What we want to do is bring your lovely blue eyes to the fore, your shapely calves and wrists, not to mention your beautiful pale neck and upper chest and when we’ve done all that, you’ll find the
hips quieten right down
.’

After the consultation, Annie had rushed over to one of her latest suppliers to secure her trump card for tonight.

Laid out across the back seat of the Jeep, carefully wrapped in many layers of damp newspaper, was a whopping great fish.

In her regular trips to the cash and carries of Essex, her endless quest for trade suppliers, discount outlets and bargains, she’d made quite a few new friends. One
of them
had supplied tonight’s centrepiece at a superb price.

An enormous line-caught wild Scottish salmon. The beast was so long and so heavy, she’d barely been able to wrestle it into the back seat. The plan was to make new potatoes, a lovely salad, hollandaise sauce – if Dinah was available to talk her through it step by step on the telephone – then strawberries, cream and meringues to follow.

She would start on the meringues just as soon as she
 
got back. She would keep calm. She had a full four hours ahead of her. It was simple enough, nothing too complicated. There was plenty of time for everything to turn out fine. What could go wrong?