The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine) Read online

  Personally, she never bought anything at full price: not a haircut (her hairdresser came to all her sale pre-previews), not a bottle of shampoo (bulk buy on the internet), not a tin of beans (she knew what was on offer at every supermarket and cash and carry within a 20-mile radius of her home), not a car (secondhand, Christmas Eve, fantastic deal). And she was generous with her knowledge: family and friends all benefited from her bargains. Everyone who knew her well had a cupboard at home stuffed with tinned tomatoes, disposable barbecues, Christmas cards, jumbo boxes of nude hold-ups, all kinds of things which she’d secured for them at knockdown rates.

  ‘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 scraped 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 chosen 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 shoulder 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 t
wo-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 town 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.

  Annie had left four years later with several defining attributes: the qualifications necessary for art school (not medical school, much to Fern’s disappointment), the firm conviction that if she ever had children they’d go to a school like that from day one, no matter what the cost, and finally, perhaps most importantly, she’d learned that even if you didn’t fit in, you had to be yourself, because people responded so much better to down-to-earth reality than to nervous, put-on airs and graces.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Valentine, lovely to see you. And how are we doing?’

  The headmaster, Mr Ketteringham-Smith, ramrod straight and severely smart in his light grey meet-the-parents suit, was greeting at the main door in person with a charming-verging-on-the-smarming smile.

  ‘Top form, headmaster,’ she assured him with her best smile. ‘And how about you? You’re looking fit.’

  ‘Oh, well . . . am I?’ He was flustered by the compliment.

  ‘Definitely, you look like you’ve been coaching the rugby single-handed.’ This, admittedly, was going a tad far, but at least Lana was not around to be humiliated to death by her mother flirting with the head.

  ‘Well . . . erm . . . like to keep my hand in, now and again,’ came his reply.

  She restrained herself from the cheeky answer to this because although there were many interesting men to be found wandering the corridors of St Vincent’s on a parents’ evening, slightly balding Mr Ketteringham-Smith was not one of them.

  Annie, perhaps understandably, had a thing about dads. Well, first of all, she’d never had much of one. Who had Fern chosen to give her heart to? Fern had picked a cargo ship captain. What an obvious mistake! Cargo ship captain? The warning was in the title. Mick Mitchell was always away. Not just at work, an hour’s commute away, but on the other side of the world away: places like Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. The brief times he was home, he still liked to be captain, which infuriated Fern, who was used to doing everything for herself and by herself when she was without him. But it was the all-too-regular medical evidence (requiring hefty doses of antibiotics) of the other women in the other ports that finally sank his boat.

  Owen and Lana’s dad, Roddy Valentine – mischievous and funny, a Celtic blue-black-haired heartthrob – had been so much better at family life at first. But then he was an actor, away a lot, and despite his assurances Annie had not been able to stop herself from wondering about the possibility of other women. However, nothing had prepared her for the abrupt and shocking end to her marriage. Overnight, Roddy had become history and she’d had to deal with it, somehow get over it, use every ounce of strength to pick herself and her two devastated children up and carry on.

  How had this happened? It was a story that she didn’t like to tell. It was a story that somewhere in her head she didn’t really believe. She still didn’t like to hear his name unexpectedly, as it made her jump. Although Roddy had left over two and a half years ago now, she still woke up most mornings and looked across the bed for her handsome husband, momentarily convinced that it had all been a terrible dream.

  A schoolboy handed her an information sheet and she scanned it over, checking the order of events and the rooms she should be heading towards.

  An hour and a half had been allocated for form teacher talks, then it was into the hall for the headmaster’s speech and the performances. Would anyone notice if she skipped the main event?

  ‘Annie! Hello! How are you?’ Becca Wolstonecroft was bounding over, a plump, curly-blond-haired, friendly face, mother of four. Either fabulously rich sending four kids here, or fabulously broke, Annie hadn’t yet figured out which.

  ‘You’re looking wonderful – as usual,’ Becca said, kissing her on the cheek.

  ‘Oh that’s sweet of you,’ was Annie’s response. ‘Maybe you need new glasses, babes.’

  ‘No, no. Now that’s it, Annie, I’m going to have to get you to make me over one of these days. Look at me!’ Becca tipped her chin down and gestured with her arms. ‘I look like a bloody Labrador.’

  Annie choked back the laugh this deserved. Not just because it was funny, but because, yes, blond knee-length fake fur wasn’t perhaps the best look for Becca’s short, stocky physique.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Annie insisted. ‘It’s cuddly and . . . so . . .’ she struggled . . . ‘warm.’

  ‘Oh yes well, a warm, cuddly Lab then!’ Becca exclaime
d.

  ‘Right, OK. Do you do anything on a Tuesday evening?’ Annie asked.

  ‘No,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Next Tuesday evening, then.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Becca sounded confused.

  Annie had already whipped her pink mock croc Filofax out of her handbag – she didn’t hold with electronic diaries, having crashed too many of them in the past. She also didn’t hold with handing out her business card and expecting people to call: they never did, you had to get them to commit while you had them by the short and curlies. She never left a St Vincent’s event without netting at least one new client.

  ‘Next Tuesday evening,’ Annie began. ‘Me in your wardrobe sorting you out, telling you what to keep and what to bin. Explaining in detail, with pictures, what and where you need to buy to make sure you always look amazing from now on.’

  Becca was looking very doubtful: ‘Erm . . . well . . . What do you charge?’

  ‘Probably just a bit more than the value of your current outfit,’ Annie teased.

  ‘And what do you think that is?’ Becca looked down at her furry coat.

  ‘Hmmm . . . all in, including the M&S shoes . . . two hundred and twenty pounds?’ came the guess.

  ‘Good grief! How much!?’ Becca looked genuinely horrified.

  ‘It’ll be mates’ rates,’ Annie assured her. ‘We’ll be all done for less than a trolley dash round the M&S food hall.’

  ‘Well, er . . .’

  ‘Look, I’ll pencil you in. What’s your telephone number and I’ll phone to confirm a few days before?’

  ‘OK, great.’ Becca brightened up, obviously under the delusion that when the call came, she’d be able to play for time. But Annie happily scribbled the number down knowing perfectly well that on the phone, she would win.

  ‘C’mon.’ Becca dived for a change of subject. ‘I want to get Eric’s teacher out of the way first. Shall we go up to Godzilla’s room together?’