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  ‘Ya,’ Svetlana confirmed, ‘booked. Great deal. Sixteen thousand euros, but to get this deal I have to pay him straightaway, so I do bank transfer.’

  Elena’s mouth opened in astonishment.

  For a moment or two, she tried to say something, but words failed her.

  ‘Sixteen thousand euros?’ she repeated when her power of speech had returned. ‘For the launch show? NO! That is too much, that is way, way too much and you’ve already paid. Bank transfer? Upfront!’ In total exasperation, she exclaimed: ‘MOTHER!’

  But Svetlana rushed over to placate her. ‘Elena! Is going to be perfect! We have wonderful show in Le Carrousel du Louvre, beautiful girls. Patrizio book the space, the rehearsal time, the DJ, the models, even the flowers. He has taken care of all the details, we just need to turn up with the dresses. My darling, in business you must learn to delegate. Igor tell me this. Patrizio has given us a great service.’

  Elena did not look mollified in the slightest. Calmly but very sternly, she told her mother: ‘This is the first and the last time that you spend so much of our money without asking me. You could easily have come down the stairs and asked me. I am your partner. This is fifty-fifty. I do not pay upfront, Mother. I pay on delivery. No!’ she corrected herself. ‘I pay weeks after delivery, when I’ve already sold and banked the profit.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Annie’s travel to Paris outfit:

  Violet silk blouse (tiniest trace of baby vom.) (Chloé)

  Cream pencil skirt (Prada)

  Cobalt blue ‘comfortable’ heels (L.K. Bennett)

  Mighty beige control pants (Spanx)

  Sensational black and gold patent-leather croc trim bag

  (Miu Miu)

  Black trolley bag (Samsonite)

  Total est. cost: £1,600

  ‘Why are you still worrying?’

  Ed met Owen at the door to the bathroom; now that the builders had been in residence for fifteen days exactly, everyone was getting used to the early morning crush in the one functioning family bathroom. Not to mention the fact that heavy-duty shoes had to be worn everywhere in the house at all times, to avoid stepping in something muddy, grubby or painful.

  ‘You need to say goodbye to your mum,’ Ed reminded Owen. ‘Apparently she’s going to Paris. And maybe if you wet your hair …’ he suggested, although Owen’s great mop was sticking up in ways which would require a team of hairdressers to control.

  ‘Yeah right,’ Owen mumbled, and then with a weary yawn he disappeared in through the bathroom door.

  Ed was trying to be as positive as he could about Annie’s two days in Paris. She was only away for one night, he kept reminding himself, and although she hadn’t been away overnight since the twins were born, he was going to be able to cope fine. Absolutely perfectly fine.

  Although the kitchen had been cleaned up, there was still a huge hole in the wall covered with just a sheet of tarpaulin, so the room was currently as cold as Siberia. Only cups of tea, bottles of milk, cereals and toast could be made in there because no one had the stamina to stay on long enough to cook.

  The new windows should have been fitted days ago, but they still hadn’t arrived. Al, the man in charge of the small building team, was now shrugging at the mention of the windows.

  They were special triple-glazed Swedish windows which Annie had discovered online. Apparently they were delayed, or there was some problem getting the frames the requested size … something was still in discussion, or up in the air or being remade … In short, the windows were not here and the kitchen was currently an open-plan – no, more like open-air room. Ed liked to go camping as much as the next man, in fact probably more than the next man, but looking after baby twins when you could only stand to be in a kitchen for three minutes at a time was tricky.

  Plus, he had a feeling the twins were about to be ill … again. It seemed as if the diarrhoea had cleared up for about ten minutes before they’d started sneezing and dribbling.

  ‘Ed?’ Annie turned to him now, taking in his anxious face as he came back into the bedroom. ‘Why are you still worrying? You can phone me any time. Day or night. I will have my phone glued to me. If I can’t get reception, I will go and stand outside. You will always be able to reach me, I promise. If for any reason you can’t get me, then the sisters are on standby, I’ve warned them.’

  ‘The sisters’ meant Ed’s sister, Hannah and Annie’s sister, Dinah. Both lived within a short drive and both were perfectly capable with babies and the dispensing of baby advice.

  Ed came and stood right beside Annie. She was looking at herself in the mirror, approving of her violet silk blouse and the luxurious cream woollen skirt she’d paired with it. Not approving of the stomach straining to burst from the magic pants.

  ‘No. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me or about any of us,’ Ed insisted, determined to sound more confident than he felt. He leaned towards her and pressed his forehead against hers so she could see right inside his deep blue eyes.

  ‘You look good,’ Ed had to tell her, ‘shame there’s never the chance to do anything about that.’

  ‘Shame,’ she agreed, ‘but I look like a fat Twiggy,’ she added, fingering her hair. ‘More Trunky than Twiggy.’

  Minnie, lying with her head on Ed’s shoulder, perked up at the sound of her mother’s voice. She turned her head slightly and then with a funny sort of little cough, spluttered out a mouthful of lumpy white vomit. It mainly landed on Ed’s already stained denim shirt, but several bits hit Annie’s blouse too.

  Annie’s reaction to baby stains on her precious clothes amused Ed. He still expected her to jump up and down and freak out. But instead, she soothed Minnie with a ‘There, there, do you feel better now, you poor old thing?’ and stepped over to the bedside table where the baby wipes were at the ready.

  Annie swore by baby wipes. No matter what kind of baby stain she’d been hit by, she firmly believed if she could just treat it quickly enough with a baby wipe, it would be all right.

  ‘OK, there we go,’ she said, wiping off the offending chunks from her blouse first, then getting to work on Ed’s shirt and Minnie’s Babygro.

  Micky was still in the cot, fast asleep, his cheeks wibbling whenever anyone walked past his bed.

  ‘Yes, you’re sleeping now,’ Annie couldn’t help whispering in his direction, ‘now that we’re all awake! This is what you’re supposed to do at night, not dance about in your cot wailing for attention. They are terrible’ – this comment was directed at Ed – ‘Lana and Owen both slept soundly ten, even twelve hours a night from six months. We have got to get this sorted or we are going to go bananas.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Ed warned her as she peered in the wardrobe mirror at the purple circles under her eyes.

  ‘I’m not looking gorgeous,’ she told him, ‘they are ruining what little there is left of my looks. And let’s not even talk about my waistline.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said again, risking another hug, despite the fact that he was still armed with a loaded baby, ‘you are luscious and gorgeous and the sleeping – well, the not sleeping – it’s just a phase. I know this because I read it in a book.’

  Ed was glued, glued to the baby manuals. He was in baby school; he was baby swotting. If there was a baby exam, Ed would come top. ‘What is the optimal temperature for (a) a baby’s bottle, (b) a baby’s bath, (c) a baby’s head?’ He would know every single answer; he would get an A plus in baby theory.

  Annie glanced at her watch: ‘Is everybody up? Has Princess Lana been summoned from her bed? Babes, I am going to have to stop cuddling you and finish packing. My taxi is going to be here in about three minutes.’

  Finally accepting that Annie really was going to leave him, leave the babies and leave the country for two days, Ed went into mini-panic mode: did she have her tickets? And her passport? And her house keys? And a raincoat?

  He went over to the window to establish whether or not it was raining and, pulling back the curtain, he gasp
ed in surprise: ‘It’s snowing!’

  ‘You are joking!’ was Annie’s reaction. ‘It can’t be snowing. I’ve got to get to Paris!’ She rushed over to the window and looked out. To her relief it was just a light dusting, nothing that would stop a taxi or an aeroplane. Hopefully.

  But Ed voiced his one overriding concern: ‘The kitchen is going to be completely freezing.’

  ‘Move an electric heater in there while you make breakfast,’ Annie advised him as she slipped her feet into her most comfortable pair of walking heels. ‘I would stay and help, you know I would,’ she assured him, before leaning in to kiss Ed and her little baby girl goodbye.

  This was the hard bit. This was definitely the hard bit, she thought to herself as she brushed her lip against Minnie’s delicious cheek and inhaled her daughter’s slightly vomity but neverthless lovely smell for the last time for forty-eight hours.

  ‘Don’t you dare kiss Micky and wake him,’ Ed whispered, once they had kissed each other goodbye.

  Annie leaned over the cot and let just her fingertip brush against Micky’s forehead.

  ‘Bye, bye,’ she told them all, ‘I hope the snow stops, because Al’s supposed to be punching that hole into the roof today.’

  Before Ed could react with the full amount of horror that this required, Annie’s raincoat was on, her handbag and suitcase were in her hands, she’d kissed Owen and Lana farewell and she was hotfooting it over the rubble on the stairs and out to the waiting cab.

  Arriving at the airport, Annie opened up a text from Svetlana which read: ‘R u here yet? C u lunch. Paris tres belle!’

  It made her smile. For two whole days, she was going to be allowed to put the babies’ teething, Ed’s anxieties and Al the builder’s shortcomings all to the back of her mind. She was on her way to Paris … for fashion … for TV!

  Wasn’t this just impossibly glamorous? Was this not the kind of thing she’d once dreamed of doing? How jealous she’d once been of the fashion buyers at The Store, who’d travelled to Paris and Milan several times a year to watch shows and select the new collections. More than once, she’d asked to join them, but she’d always been told she was too valuable a saleswoman to be allowed to go away on trips like this.

  She’d tried to argue that she should help to choose the clothes, because she’d know what her clients would want and would therefore be able to sell even more. But the three different managers she’d worked under had never been able to see it that way.

  It was funny how she didn’t miss The Store at all any more. It had obviously been well and truly time to move on and now she was devoted to her new job. She absolutely loved it and could no longer imagine doing anything else.

  ‘Your flight to Paris boards at gate number twenty-two.’ The check-in girl gave her a heavily lipsticked smile. ‘Enjoy your trip.’

  ‘Oh I will.’ Annie smiled back at her. ‘I’m going for a fashion show,’ she couldn’t help confiding.

  ‘Oooh, how exciting! Which one?’ the girl wanted to know.

  ‘It’s a new designer,’ Annie replied, ‘just launching.’

  ‘Oh, that is so glamorous! I’m jealous.’

  ‘Hey, Annie Banannie!’

  Annie felt a heavy slap on her back and turned to see her cameraman for the trip, Rich, with a huge bag of equipment slung over one shoulder and a large, dribbling Big Mac in his hand.

  ‘Oh yeah, non-stop glamour,’ Annie told the girl.

  Rich was the show’s junior cameraman; obviously Tamsin had decided not to send the senior man, Bob, out to Paris for two nights. Bob’s overtime bill would have been too scary. But Bob would probably have been more refined company, Annie couldn’t help feeling.

  ‘I hope you’ve not just left a greasy paw print on my back!’ she warned Rich.

  Rich leaned forward to look more closely. ‘No, you’re fine,’ he insisted.

  But now he was too close, now she could smell the onion and gherkin breath. Rich was twenty-something, a really good-looking guy, but he had all the charm of a chimpanzee.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early for burgers?’ she had to ask as he plonked his camera bag on the check-in desk and began to search through his pockets for his ticket.

  ‘Nah,’ Rich assured her, flicking jaw-length hair back behind his ear, ‘sets you up for the day. That’s what you need. The skilled and intrepid lensman has no idea when or where his next meal will be.’

  He wasn’t going to have to come to lunch with her? Was he? No! Surely not?

  In fact, there was no way Annie was taking Rich to the George V Hotel for lunch with Svetlana and Elena. She would tell Tasmin that the hotel had a strict no-filming policy. Then Rich could join them later at the Louvre for the fashion-show rehearsal.

  ‘C’mon,’ she urged him once his ticket had been checked, ‘we need to trot on down to security.’

  She flashed a glance at her watch; just approaching 10 a.m. If the flight was on time, she would easily make it to the George for 1 p.m.

  Her phone began to buzz in her pocket and, answering it, she was surprised to hear a grumpy voice demanding to know why some camping equipment hadn’t been returned.

  ‘Camping equipment?’ Annie asked, ‘what camping equipment?’

  The woman went through a long list of items and informed her that they had been sent to be considered for approval for the Annie Valentine show.

  ‘This is news to me,’ Annie told her, fumbling in her bag for tickets and boarding card so she could get past the security checkpoint.

  ‘With whom am I speaking, please?’ the woman asked in a very frosty tone.

  ‘I’m Annie Valentine,’ Annie told her.

  ‘Oh …’ The woman sounded surprised. ‘I didn’t expect to get through to you directly.’

  ‘I’m a bit surprised myself,’ Annie told her.

  ‘We’ve sent your show six hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of equipment. If you’re not going to feature it, then we need it back, unused. I think you can understand that.’

  ‘No problem,’ Annie told her, ‘I just can’t understand why it was ordered in the first place. We do fashion; we definitely don’t do camping. Look … I’m at the airport, just about to go through security. I’ll speak to Amelia, the show’s PA. She’ll look into this and call you back just as soon as possible. Can you bear with me? Let me try and sort this.’

  The woman sighed but decided to agree.

  Annie might have remembered to call Amelia straightaway, but the next thing she knew, she was in a tussle with a security guard about the bottle of perfume in her hand luggage.

  The big bottle of Chanel was apparently above the maximum liquid allowance.

  ‘What?’ Annie couldn’t quite believe it. ‘You’re going to make me leave it here? Just leave it!’

  The stony-faced guard was not going to relent for her.

  Once she’d handed over the perfume and walked sadly towards her gate, Annie saw something else which put all thoughts of camping equipment right out of her mind.

  On one of the magazine stands was a cover which, along with Britney, Posh and The X Factor’s latest, had a small photograph set to the side of Connor.

  Connor!

  Her mind reeled. He’d sent her that stinky text but she should still have called him back once he’d calmed down about the lunch date. She should at least have tried to make up with him.

  She walked over to the stand so that she could read what had been written about him on the cover.

  It wasn’t a good photo. The way the wind was blowing out his trousers and his top made him look huge, when he wasn’t at all. He was incredibly fit and buff.

  Annie read the little headline beside the snap: Dumped Manor Connor piles on pounds for Elephant Man role.

  Oh, that was cruel.

  She picked the magazine from the stand and flicked through it to find the story about her friend.

  Scanning the pages, her eyes fixed with horror on a publicity shot of her own. There she was smiling back; it
was a perfectly nice publicity shot taken for the start of the new series, but the words emblazoned over the picture were a different story.

  Next week! World exclusive interview with the man Annie V hasn’t seen for 25 years: her dad!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Svetlana does PR:

  Pink silk shirt dress (Perfect Dress) Purple suede-heeled sandals (Jimmy Choo)

  Diamond earrings (Cartier)

  Diamond and pearl necklace (Bulgari)

  Total est. cost: £460,000

  ‘So good for you and so low calorie.’

  Even though she had Rich sitting beside her in the taxi to the town centre, Annie was still excited.

  ‘Lovely town, innit?’ he kept saying until she wanted to smack him. Annie just wanted to be left alone to open her eyes wide and look and look and drink it all in.

  What was it about being abroad that was still, no matter how many times you did it, so exciting? The thrill of the other. The excitement of being somewhere else, somewhere new where nobody knew you and all sorts of interesting new adventures could happen.

  ‘There’s the Eiffel Tower!’ Rich exclaimed. Annie turned her head in his direction and felt a little jolt when she saw the Tower too.

  She hadn’t been in Paris for years and years.

  Racking her memory, she came up with some glimpses and flashes from her last trip. It had only been a weekend: a crazy, snatched weekend on the way back from Prague with baby Lana and her daddy, Roddy.

  They’d stayed in a plain but somehow très chic and very Frrrrench pension. She remembered a breathlessly giggly trip all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, then lying in a sunny boat on the Seine with her head on Roddy’s chest and her baby sleeping in her arm. There had been a strange couscous dinner in a tiny Moroccan restaurant with brass lanterns and dark pink walls.

  Roddy …

  She only remembered the really good bits now. That’s how it was when someone you had loved so much went and died on you. Your poor, frazzled, frantic mind eventually rewrote the past until all that was left was this overwhelmingly wonderful memory of how good it had been.