Late Night Shopping Read online

  Before she could change her mind, she reached down and grabbed it. Her fingers quickly tore through the brown paper, then she smoothed out the single sheet and scanned over the words.

  'Final demand', '£10,199.28' and 'within thirty days' stood out in bold.

  It took a moment or two for the shock of this news to register properly.

  She was going to have to raise £10,000 in thirty days? Ten thousand pounds?! That was about twice as much as she'd expected.

  Could she earn it in thirty days? No way! Her eBay trading made £600 in a good week . . . make that an outstanding week. Maybe she could borrow it? No again. Her three credit cards were all too dangerously close to their limits for her to do that. Anyway, did HM Revenue & Customs even take Visa?

  Obviously she couldn't steal it. Even if she'd known who to steal it from, Annie was cursed with very high scruples: she'd never stolen so much as a sweet from the Woolworths pick and mix.

  One thing was clear: Ed wasn't to know anything about this. He had such an old-fashioned view of money, debts and borrowing. 'If you haven't got it, don't spend it' was one of his completely irritating sayings. Annie's attitude couldn't have been more different with her 'win some, lose some', 'got to speculate to accumulate' ideas.

  But there was no way round it, raising £10,000 in thirty days was going to be a . . . she batted away the words 'nightmare' and 'impossible' as they reared up in her mind, and made herself think, 'challenge'.

  It was time to power down the laptop and head for the bedroom.

  As Annie approached the door, she saw the light was dim. Just the little string of flower lights over the mantelpiece was on. They cast a low, romantic light, perfect for going to bed. Perfect for looking at one another appreciatively before the touching and the stroking and the kissing began.

  'Ed?' she said in a low voice as she came into the room.

  'Here I am.'

  He was lying on his side with his back towards her. Oh, the tease. Broad, soft white shoulders sloped down to a narrow waist, then a quite spectacularly attractive, peachy bum and muscular fuzzy legs.

  'I'll just take off my clothes,' she purred at him, quickly unzipping her dress and letting it drop to the floor so that she was standing in front of the bed in underwear, holdups and her black ankle boots. Sensational ankle boots, she couldn't help thinking, taking another admiring little glance at them, even if they were a pointy, three-inch-high, toe-massacre to walk in.

  Ed wasn't moving. Oh well, if he was in a huff with her now, she felt sure that the boots and underwear combination would help him get over it really quickly.

  'Baby,' she said, kneeling on the edge of the bed. Slowly she began to trace a finger over the outline of his shoulder and down his side.

  'Babes?'

  She leaned over his damp hair and looked down at his face. There was no mistaking the closed eyes and heavy breathing.

  Ed had fallen asleep.

  Annie unhooked her bra and tossed it over a chair, then unzipped her boots and peeled off her stockings. Finally, she loosened her long blonde bob from her trademark tight ponytail. She might as well get to sleep too. Tomorrow was Wednesday, the first of her busy, busy four days in The Store and there were some very interesting clients booked in over the next few days.

  She turned off the flower lights and got into bed, pulling the covers over the two of them and moving in as close as she could to his warm naked body. Years of boarding-school dormitories had trained Ed to sleep very deeply, and he didn't even stir.

  Closing her eyes and settling down into the darkness, Annie found her mind wandering almost at once towards The Handbag. The one sitting in prime position in the ground floor accessories department. The one with the four-figure price tag and the come-hither smile. The violet patent tote with subtle golden hardware that winked at and wooed her whenever she happened to pass by.

  She already knew exactly how big and how scrunchily soft it was. How well it sat on her shoulder. How comfortably capacious it was inside. How tender the black suede lining felt and how many clever compartments it had. She even knew how many hours had gone into stitching it all together. It was fashionable and glamorous and current without screaming 'it' bag. It was chic and French and Yves Saint Laurent.

  But she also knew that it could not be hers, because it cost far, far too much. She'd made a promise. She'd told Ed that from now on she would consult him on all purchases over £200. Anyway, she had enough handbags, and this bag cost nearly a month in school fees. There were so many reasons why she had to say no, absolutely not and tune that arm candy right out of her head. But tomorrow it would surely still be there, wouldn't it? On its shiny glass plinth, calling out to her.

  She sighed quietly to herself. There just wasn't enough glamour in her life, she thought, not for the first time. Although she worked around all the lovely things The Store had to offer, even with the staff discount she could only afford to buy a few choice items there. She still had M&S undies, tops from Oasis, skirts from Jigsaw, and she was still a regular visitor to the Topshop rails.

  Although she advised the glamorous elite on their wardrobes, Annie's life still involved commuting on foot and by bus instead of by limousine. She still had to make packed lunches and do the supermarket run. And there certainly wasn't an army of housekeepers to help her out.

  But if she owned that bag with its very expensive, shiny allure, she would be so much more glamorous. With that wonderful bag over her shoulder, she'd feel like a film star even at the bus stop. Taking her purse out at the supermarket check-out would be an impossibly elegant event if it involved this bag.

  But how on earth did you explain that to a man who thought the battered old briefcase he'd had since he was thirteen was 'absolutely fine'?

  No, as Annie drifted off to sleep she knew she would never be able to convince Ed that she had heard the call of the bag . . . that she really had heard it whispering, 'Annie, have me. Buy me. Only you can love me like I need to be loved.'

  Chapter Two

  Bronwen's first visit to The Store:

  Blue and yellow patterned sweatshirt

  (made in New Zealand)

  Brown cord skirt (made in New Zealand)

  American tan tights (petrol station)

  Slouchy brown sandals (made in New Zealand)

  Total est. cost: £95

  'I just want to be comfortable. That's how I sold 27,000

  toilets a quarter: people were comfortable with me.'

  'You know I only ever buy MaxMara and there's no point trying to sway me,' bossy Elizabeth Maxwell told Annie sternly as she sifted through the rack of coats brought up for her to try in The Store's personal shopping suite.

  The suite was a luxurious sanctuary of snowy carpet, velvet curtains and super-sized changing rooms on the second floor. It was as bright and dazzlingly lit as every other square inch of The Store, so that the gorgeousness of each item for sale could be fully appreciated.

  From the sparkling beauty and accessories 'playground' on the ground floor, shimmering metal and glass escalators and elevators carried customers up to floors one, two and three where at each level prices expanded and exquisite creations vied with one another for attention. Rack on rack, designer concession on designer concession . . . there was almost too much: too much colour, too much brilliance, too many clothes, too many choices, too many price tags, too many zeros. It was an over-stimulation of the senses.

  New, uninitiated customers often found themselves turning up at the Personal Shopping suite unannounced because they needed help! They needed a guide; they needed someone to make sense of the fashion jungle out there on the sales floor. Not that it looked like a jungle of course, with every collection pruned and honed and displayed to perfection. Even The Store's hangers were specially designed in shiny chrome with just the right amount of padding, just the exact angle of slope on the shoulders to hang every item to its most fabulous advantage.

  'But Elizabeth, what about this one?' Annie coaxe
d, pulling a silvery-grey Armani cashmere from the rack and holding it out to the stocky, fifty-something barrister who was here to buy her autumn/winter essentials in a flurry of organization. 'It would go so beautifully with your hair,' Annie went on, 'and it's long too. So cosy and so this season.'

  'Well . . .' Elizabeth had her hand on the fabric now. It was as smooth and supple as a puppy's ear and just as tempting.

  'Slip it on, just for me,' Annie urged. She didn't exactly like Elizabeth Maxwell. No, make that she couldn't really stand Elizabeth Maxwell. But nevertheless she was a client who came to the personal shopping suite at least four times a year and spent big, so like everyone else who paid for Annie's expert attention, she would leave with bags packed with clothes guaranteed to make her look as sensational as possible.

  'Remember the silvery dress you bought in the spring?' Annie had leafed through Elizabeth's file before this session. 'Wouldn't that look amazing under this coat? And you've got to have . . .' Annie turned to the table she'd stacked with accessories: 'this!' she insisted, draping a pale violet and lilac velvet scarf around Elizabeth's neck.

  'Oh yes,' Elizabeth agreed, her eyes fixed to the image of herself in the mirror. 'Yes, that is very nice. I'm going to be in Paris so much more now. Don't you think this is a very French look?'

  Paris?! Elizabeth was going to be in Paris so much more now? Annie wondered again at the differences between her life and those of her clients.

  'So what's happening in Paris?' Annie asked, trying not to sound too wistful.

  'Oh, haven't I told you?!' Elizabeth began brightly, 'James . . .'

  Ah! How could Annie have forgotten? The twins! Elizabeth's children James and Georgia were her . . . well 'pride and joy' was probably an understatement. As James and Georgia had taken their A Levels this summer and had now left school, Annie braced herself for some serious maternal boasting.

  'James got four As and a starred A in music, so . . .' Elizabeth paused for effect, eyes widening with excitement, 'he and his violin are heading for the Conservatoire in Paris. Isn't that wonderful?!'

  'My goodness,' Annie agreed enthusiastically, 'brilliant. And how about Georgia? What's she moving on to?'

  'Oh, Georgia got into Harvard!' Elizabeth exclaimed. 'We're just thrilled!'

  Annie knew enough super-wealthy London parents to understand that the Conservatoire and Harvard were amongst the ultimate accolades. Oxford and Cambridge were now considered 'over' and 'full of the children of foreign billionaires'. These days, sending your children to university abroad proved you were cultivated, had stunningly clever offspring and you were rich enough for transatlantic airfares and tuition fees to be utterly irrelevant.

  'And how are yours doing?' Elizabeth Maxwell added, almost as an afterthought, as she turned around to gaze again at her reflection.

  'Well, Lana sits her GSCEs next summer,' Annie began, 'so fingers crossed she's going to settle down and work hard for them. Owen's doing really well, especially with his music. He plays the violin too, and the guitar.'

  Perhaps because Elizabeth seemed so uninterested,

  Annie felt a familiar prickly worry return. Was she doing enough for her children? Was it really OK that Lana was only going to sit eight GCSEs and not ten like a lot of her classmates? And Owen . . . was he spending too much time on his music, to the detriment of everything else?

  'And they're at St Vincent's, aren't they?' Elizabeth asked, perhaps wondering how a sales assistant could afford fees like that. But then she had no idea how hard Annie worked. 'It's good,' Elizabeth added approvingly. 'Any thoughts about where they'll go afterwards?'

  'Oh no. Not yet,' Annie told her. Thinking that if it was going to be the Conservatoire and Harvard she'd either have to marry Richard Branson or, more realistically, be running an incredibly successful business of her own.

  'Very expensive business, university education,' Elizabeth added, 'some sacrifices will have to be made . . .'

  Uh-oh. This was hardly music to a personal shopper's ears.

  The barrister began to unwind the scarf, then unbutton the Armani.

  'Let's take a look at the black MaxMara,' Annie said.

  'Annie?' There was a voice behind the changing room curtain. Annie excused herself and stepped out.

  Paula, one of Annie's assistants in the suite, a tall, rangy black girl, slim and elegant as a runway model, had come to let her know that the next customer was waiting. Standing next to Paula, Annie couldn't help feeling even more average-sized and chunky, not to mention more pale, than usual. One glance at Paula's feet and the reason became clear: the shoes were very, very high, in deepest pink with a purple suede trim all the way around. The curving straps, crossed artfully at the front, were held in place with tiny purple buttons at the side. They were a masterwork. A beautiful, lovingly crafted masterwork.

  'Look at your shoes! Oh my God, your shoes!' Annie gave a whispered shriek. 'Those are absolutely perfect. We have to speak about these shoes,' she warned Paula, before heading back into the changing room.

  'Time to choose!' Annie instructed Elizabeth, putting on her most friendly smile and turning to the clothes rail they'd stocked with the 'definites'. Running a hand through the chunky knitwear, slubby silks, rich colours and tweedy textures, Annie had to admit to herself how much she loved the very start of autumn, when bikinis and kaftans were pushed out of the way to make room for camel coats, conker brown boots and knitwear in dark jewel colours.

  High summer and the Christmas countdown were the worst months for Annie. Even in The Store, they were the fashion pits. But March and September were the pinnacle months of a fashionable life. This was when the serious buyers came in to shop ahead.

  Annie found it a little hard to sympathize with women who turned up in freezing February looking for coats, hats and gloves and found themselves gazing at chiffon wedding outfits in dismay. Did they know nothing? November is the last possible moment to buy something warm. After that it's sparkles, snowflakes and boxed sets only. Don't even try looking for a smart summer dress in August, when there are just bikinis and sunglasses and everything else is sagging on the sale rail.

  The clothes displayed up on Elizabeth's rail were beautiful: grey flannel wide-leg trousers, creamy silk and plum blouses, wide supple leather belts, knee-length cardigans hand-knitted with complicated stitches. Layering tops in grape and salmon pink. A slightly racy brown leather skirt.

  'I think you should take the coat . . .' Annie wheedled, 'it will be cold in Paris, and in Boston. It's very cold in Boston. My boyfriend Ed was at Harvard last summer and he couldn't believe how well turned out everyone was – even the students!'

  Elizabeth had her fingers on the coat again.

  'I love the way it's so neat and snug over the shoulders and waist, then flares out so beautifully,' Annie added gently.

  She had another reason for wanting Elizabeth to buy the coat: all this talk of the cost of a university education was freaking her out. She was going to put the commission from the coat sale into a separate account and start saving for Lana and Owen right now.

  'Oh well . . . as they say over there,' Elizabeth conceded, 'what the heck!'

  'Bronwen! Hello my love, welcome to the suite, nice to meet you!'

  After just a nanosecond in her little cupboard of an office, where Annie had gulped down the small black coffee waiting for her, thanks to Paula, spritzed herself with some sort of energizing aromatherapy spray Ed had bought her as a present and re-applied her lipstick, Annie was as fresh and ready as she could be for her next ninety-minute session.

  Even the most casual of observers could tell this was Bronwen Tomlinson's first experience of Annie's shopping expertise. But in one long, careful look, Annie appraised the stunningly frumpy outfit and could tell Bronwen was a special case. An unusual client.