Celebrity Shopper (40 page)

‘That’s nice,’ Dinah told her.

‘What were you going to say?’ Annie asked next.

When Dinah looked confused, Annie tried to jog her memory: ‘When we both started talking at once. What were you about to say?’

‘Oh … oh!’ Suddenly a very mischievous look crossed Dinah’s face. ‘The bag!’ she blurted out. ‘I’ve seen the Annie Bag!’

Personal Shopper Paula:

Multi-print silk blouse (DVF, store discount)
Blue wide-leg trousers (Chloé, store discount)
Blue patent ballet flats (French Sole)
Mustard-yellow nails with diamanté (Blaxx Salon)
Total est. cost: £390

‘Give yourself time.’

Annie squeezed Paula tightly in her arms for a long time, even though hugging Paula always made Annie feel like a big, squidgy oink oink. Paula was so long and so lean and so lithe. To add insult to injury, she existed on chocolate brownies, hot chocolate with cream on the top and never lifted one perfectly manicured talon to do the slightest bit of exercise. She didn’t even do stairs! She always took the escalators! It was so stinkingly unfair.

‘It’s my genes,’ Paula would say casually.

Annie would kill, would actually hunt, stab or garrotte, for genes like that. Instead, she was stuck with genes which thickened her middle a little bit more every day, despite
the sit-ups and all the other humiliations of the gym.

Annie was back at The Store for only the fifth or sixth time since her leaving party over two years ago now. It felt both strange and ridiculously familiar. Maybe what was strange was that it felt so familiar.

She’d come in through the beauty department, noticing how many counters and faces behind them were still the same.

‘Oh Annie! I watch your show every single week. It’s brilliant!’ Sandra in handbags shouted over to her.

Annie immediately had to go over and have a little discussion about how good this season’s Celines were looking before Nina at Bobbi Brown stole her away for a brisk mini-makeover.

‘I have to go upstairs,’ Annie had insisted, once Nina’s dabs and touches were nearing an end. ‘I have an appointment with Paula, because … she’s been looking out wedding dresses for me!’

This started up a whole hum of excitement on the ground floor.

‘When’s the wedding?’

‘Where is it?’

‘Will it be on TV?’

‘What’re you wearing?’

To which Annie had answered in turn: ‘In six weeks’ time. Register office. No, definitely not on TV, are you mad? And I don’t know yet. That’s why I need to go up and see Paula now.’

Once their greetings were over, Annie asked Paula: ‘Have you got in the one that I’m really thinking about?’

‘Oh yeah, girl, and in a twelve.’

Annie sucked in her stomach. ‘Do you really think I can squeeze back into a twelve?’

‘You’ll have to, they don’t make it any bigger,’ Paula
warned, ‘but I’ve lined up a whole rack of other possibilities, plus you can go out there and search the rails, see what else you like.’

‘Yeah,’ Annie agreed, fingers almost itching to go out on to the second floor and look around the clothes rails she once used to lord it over, ‘but let’s go and take a little peek’ – her voice dropped almost to a reverential whisper – ‘at the Williamson.’

Together they walked through the Personal Shopping suite where Annie had once reigned. The carpet had been replaced since she was last here; it was now a rich, royal purple, but still lusciously deep pile and spoiling. The fuchsia velvet curtains hanging in front of each changing room were still the same though, along with the pink velvet sofa in the middle of the space.

The huge white-framed mirror, where she’d stood for year after year admiring her transforming handiwork with her clients, was also still there.

But now she was going to be the client standing in front of it. This was such a strange, strange new thing.

‘This is so exciting,’ Paula began, ‘the TV show and now the wedding – and how are the babies?’ she asked.

‘The babies are fantastic,’ Annie told her. ‘Oh my holy sainted hallelujah …’ she gasped. There it was, the dress, hanging on the rail in the central changing room, waiting for her.

It was absolutely breathtaking. Unbelievably beautiful. Much lovelier in the flesh than it had looked on the internet.

Deepest, loveliest fuchsia satin, hanging in ripples from just below the bust to ankle. Well, she didn’t want to go long, otherwise how would anyone see the knockout shoes she planned to be wearing?

A band of multi-coloured beading, reds, oranges, greens
and golds, circled the empire line, then the deep pink flowed up into a halter neck anchored with another collar of the amazing beads.

‘Oh, it’s so beautiful,’ Annie gasped.

‘You are going to look like a total peach in that, I just know it,’ Paula assured her.

There was nothing else on the rail Paula had set out that would do for Annie at all. Everything else was white or pastel pink, peachy or mint green, nothing had the jaw-dropping verve of the Williamson.

‘That’s the one that I want!’ Annie exclaimed, pointing at the gown. ‘Let’s get it on. So this is definitely the biggest size?’ she asked, looking at the narrow empire line with some concern. ‘Do you think I’ll get in?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Paula told her. ‘Do you want me in or out?’

‘Stay in,’ Annie instructed, ‘and we can laugh at my tummy disaster together. I’m going to New York in a couple of months,’ she added, taking off her shoes and unbuttoning her blouse. ‘Have you heard about Svetlana’s new label, Perfect Dress? Of course you have, you’re going to be selling some very soon.’

‘Oh yeah, I’m liking the Perfect Dress,’ Paula replied. ‘I think I’m going to get one in orange.’

‘Do that,’ Annie told her. ‘I’m now making … ummm .03 per cent of every Perfect Dress sold because I invested early.’

‘So what are you doing in New York?’ Paula asked, busying herself with taking the Williamson off the hanger, unzipping it and getting it ready for the try-on.

‘I’m going to be the Perfect Dress roving consultant,’ Annie said with a smile of glee, but trying to sound casual. ‘So I’m just flying over to New York in between shooting schedules to go to a fabric fair with Elena. We’re looking at
material for the new range. Get me!’ she exclaimed, casualness forgotten. ‘My life has suddenly got so glamorous it’s unreal … but I still look like this!’

Both Annie and Paula considered Annie’s reflection in the mirror. She was down to her bra and support knickers now.

‘It’s not right,’ Annie added.

The arms and legs were fine, the boobs more luscious than they’d ever been in Annie’s entire life, bar pregnancy. But the stomach …

‘I think you need to up your crunches, girl,’ was Paula’s matter-of-fact advice.

‘Yeah,’ Annie agreed, thinking:
Oh God, it’s hopeless. How many crunches would you need to do to shift a mountain of marshmallow like this? Ten thousand a day, probably
.

‘C’mon,’ Paula soothed, ‘give yourself some time. You’ll get there. I see it all the time. You’ve been in my job, you know mummies take a lot longer than a year to get their groove back.’

‘Some of them never do,’ Annie warned.

‘And we dress them beautifully, just the same,’ Paula reminded her. ‘Come on, get this baby over your head.’

Annie held up her arms and Paula slid the dress over her head. They smoothed it down into place and Annie breathed in as the zip was pulled up.

Then they both looked in the mirror to study the result. It was beautiful. It looked just as fabulous as Annie, in her wildest dreams, had hoped.

‘Here comes the bride,’ Paula said.

‘Oh my,’ Annie sighed, ‘that is stunning. Just stunning.’

She turned to the left, and then to the right, taking in all the angles in the changing room’s clever mirrors.

The dress draped over the troublesome tum. It stopped just below her calves, making her legs look as slim and
shapely as possible. It did something very clever and flattering with her boobs and the beading round her neck was just delicious.

She thought of all the shoe possibilities. Red? No, gold? Even orange? Or green?

There was just this tiny little twinge … something was threatening to rain on her parade.

‘It’s perfect,’ Paula told her.

‘Annie! Are you in here?’

Annie recognized the male voice straightaway: it was Dale, from Menswear.

‘Hi!’ she called out. ‘Open the curtain, Paula, we’ll get a second opinion.’

When Dale saw her, he fell down on to his knees and pretended to cry. ‘Oh my gosh,’ he blubbed, ‘it’s too much. It really is her and she looks divine!’

Then Sandra and two other assistants from the second floor were in the room as well. No one seemed to be able to resist coming to have a look at Annie’s new dress.

‘Oh Annie,’ Sandra blurted out, ‘that’s amazing! You look really beautiful. And I have a gold clutch downstairs made for that dress. Absolutely made for it … YSL,’ she added.

All of a sudden, Annie felt it was too much. Too much approval, too much pressure, too big a decision and possibly – her eye caught the dangling tag – too big a price.

‘OK, guys, I’m closing the curtain, I need to think about this on my own,’ she told them.

She swished the curtain shut, leaving even Paula on the outside now.

Alone in the changing room, she tried to work out what it was that was bothering her.

She’d known the dress was very expensive before she’d tried it on. But it wasn’t the most expensive dress
she’d ever bought. She held the tag in her hand and looked at the eye-watering four-figure price. She earned a lot of money now, though, she could afford it.

But … but … The ‘but’ was this: on her wedding day, her second wedding day, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be swanning about in a three-thousand-pound dress. She wanted to be able to hug people, laugh and cry, spill champagne, hold the babies, be squeezed to death by Ed and not worry about the designer-label dress. She didn’t want the day to be all about the dress.

Plus, wasn’t she always telling her loyal TV fan base that you didn’t need to spend thousands of pounds to look fantastic?

Well then, wasn’t she just going to be a big, fat fraud if she bought this dress?

And somehow, she wanted her fans to be involved in choosing the dress … and Lana … and Dinah and even Billie too.

‘Paula,’ she called from inside the changing room, ‘I’m about to turn into your nightmare customer.’

‘What do you mean?’ Paula asked, more than a little concerned.

Annie stuck her head out of the curtain and gave it to her straight: ‘Babes, I’m going to ask you to put this on hold.’

‘NOOOOOO!’ Paula exclaimed. ‘You can’t! I won’t let you.’

‘But, Sandra,’ Annie added, ‘I’m definitely coming downstairs to talk to you about the gold clutch.’

Visiting Nic:

Pale green linen dress (Phase Eight)
White leggings (Tesco)
White flip flops (Birkenstock)
Sunglasses (Zara)
Total est. cost: £140

‘I didn’t fling my arms around him …’

In the warm sunshine, Annie scraped the last crumbs from her plate and wondered if
two
slices of chocolate cake could form part of an acceptable diet for a bride just weeks from her wedding day.

‘That was fantastic, clever Nic.’ She winked at her sister, her other, older sister, sitting on the opposite side of the garden table from her. ‘Isn’t Mummy clever to make such a delicious cake?’ she asked her adorable little niece, Tara, who was sitting on Nic’s lap.

The toddler with the tumble of brown curls giggled and clapped in response. She was the only child currently in Fern’s garden because Ed and Owen had
wheeled the babies off for a walk and hopefully a snooze.

Ed had another reason for wanting to be out of the garden: Mick was due to pay a short visit at 3 p.m. and he had a feeling that maybe Nic and Annie should get on with this without him.

Annie had eaten the second slice of chocolate cake out of sheer anxiety.

‘How did it go yesterday, when you first met him?’ Annie asked her sister.

Although the question was out of the blue, Nic didn’t need Annie to explain whom she was talking about.

‘Well’ – Nic gave a shrug – ‘what can I say? I didn’t fling my arms around him and scream: “Daddy, you’re back.”’

‘No.’ Annie’s foot was tapping restlessly and she was seriously considering a third slice. ‘I think it would be easier if he just went away,’ she said. ‘You know, he was in a box in my head and I don’t want him out, running about here wanting me to deal with him, but Mum …’

‘Mum seems quite pleased to see him,’ Nic finished her sentence.

‘I think she’s forgotten to be angry with him, she’s forgotten about every horrible thing he ever did and she just seems to want to reminisce about the good old days.’