Celebrity Shopper (13 page)

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!

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.

As if that could somehow compensate for the tragedy of losing him.

‘What’s up?’ Rich wondered. ‘You’re looking glum all of a sudden.’

‘No, no.’ Annie was brought abruptly back into the cab; she forced a smile on to her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Tired, maybe.’

She should take Ed and the babies on a trip, she thought to herself. For a little moment, she imagined leaning against Ed’s chest on a boat on the Seine in the sun, with, somehow, by some miracle, both babies asleep in her arms.

She tried to never compare the two very important men in her life. She accepted that it was possible to love people
equally and not have to choose whom you loved the most. After all, didn’t she love all four of her children absolutely fiercely the same?

Even if it was Owen who could make her laugh the most.

She should take them all on holiday. Devote some pure, unadulterated, uninterrupted time to them all …

Her phone rang.

‘Hi, how’s it going? Is Rich with you? Is he behaving? I’m sorry it’s not Bob, but just boss Rich around and he should do a good job. Yeah?’ Tamsin was obviously in a hurry, firing out questions before Annie had a hope of answering them. ‘So shoot two or three hours of rehearsal footage today, lots of backstage tears and tantrums. Tomorrow, shoot the whole show and we want interviews with Svetlana and Elena before, during and after, if poss. That OK? This is going to be great. The TV bosses love it. They think it’s glitzy and different and empowering. Girl-power, Annie. That’s what we’re all about though, aren’t we?’

‘Absolutely,’ was the only word Annie got in.

With that, Tamsin said she had to go.

The taxi was approaching the heart of the city now, driving down a long boulevard lined with trees and venerable old grey buildings.

It wasn’t snowing in Paris; the leaves on the trees were further out than in London and the sun was shining with a warmth which had brought the pedestrians out in a catwalk of spring outfits.

There were many pale beige trenchcoats to be seen, collars up and belts tied. The woman crossing at the traffic lights ahead was striding past in a blue swing jacket with blue and white striped sailor trousers underneath. Everyone was wearing sunglasses with their groomed hair.

Was there still a uniquely Parisian look? Annie wondered
as she stared out of the taxi window in fascination. Women in the most expensive areas of London looked just as groomed and glossy. And London girls had, did and would always do funky fashion so much better than Parisian girls. But still, there was a Parisian thing. No one in London would dream of wearing a Breton top like that one, just over there, under a
tweed
jacket? Would they?

As she watched another older woman walking past along the pavement, Annie suddenly thought she got it. French fashion was mature, respectable. It was
bourgeois
. This woman in her primrose-yellow belted coat, mid-heeled boots and tiny poodle on a leash was at the age it was best to be in Paris.

She was
un certain âge
. In her prime. This was when French women went chic and English women went all to seed.
Les Anglaises
started dressing for comfort, they got doggy and boggy. It was all animals and gardening and letting their hair go grey, not in a slick and shiny way, but in a mad witchy straggle.

Yes, the backbone of Parisian chic was middle-aged matriarchs looking very well put-together and important. They looked as if they had things to do, places to be and people to see, even once they had passed retirement age … maybe especially once they had passed retirement age, Annie thought, seeing two elderly ladies strolling out together in gold necklaces, fine coats and heeled lace-up shoes.

The taxi turned off the main boulevard and into a noless-impressive curving side street. Annie’s head began to crane. Wasn’t that … ? Had they just passed the Hermès shop? And look, oooh, Chanel, it must have been, with an awning as shiny and slick as black patent leather and a single pair of nude-coloured Mary Janes in the window.

Tragically, there was going to be no time to even window-shop
on this whistle-stop tour. It was lunch then the rehearsal and tomorrow she would spend all morning at the show and all afternoon at an after-show party. Yes, there were shops at the airport but that wasn’t nearly the same.

Her face was pressed to the glass as Louis Vuitton whizzed past … Yves Saint Laurent! She imagined herself inside, stroking supple dresses and considering a fitting for one of the legendary, satin-lapelled
les smokings
.

She wasn’t really a
le smoking
kind of girl though. If it came down to a choice between
le smoking
or a wonderful dress, she knew she’d go with the dress every time.

The taxi was slowing down and pulling up outside one of the grandest hotel entrances Annie had ever seen. She knew Svetlana’s taste always ran to the ultra-lavish but this …

‘You have got to be kidding me,’ she said out loud, feeling nervous at the thought of braving the terrifying lobby this hotel was bound to have, while still all dishevelled from the plane.

She ran her hands through her short blond hair, fished out a lipstick and applied it, glancing herself over in her compact.

There was no point fretting herself to death; she would have to do.

‘What happens next?’ Rich asked.

Rich! He was definitely not coming in here with her.

‘I get off here,’ she instructed. ‘I give you the taxi money and you take our bags to the hotel, then go somewhere for a coffee or maybe another Big Mac. We meet at Le Carrousel du Louvre at three p.m.
sharp
!’ Annie emphasized. ‘Maybe be there fifteen minutes early, just to be sure.’

‘OK.’ Rich nodded. ‘I’ll be there.’

Annie handed over a bundle of euros, smoothed down
her blouse and stepped out, clutching her large and impressive handbag against her like a shield.

The foyer of the George V was …
spectacular
. No other word would do. Annie couldn’t think when she had ever been somewhere more lavish. Blond marble floors and
marble walls
shone back at her; crystal and gold chandeliers glittered above her head; and look, the huge vases stuffed with flowers … and the vast tapestries! It was spectacular.

She felt lost, bewildered … bedazzled, in fact.

For a moment or two she couldn’t quite work out where the reception desk was amidst all the opulence of Louis Quatorze chairs, spindly side tables and wrought-gold mantel clocks. Then she caught sight of the elegantly uniformed staff manning the desk.

‘
Madame?
’ a sleek-haired guy turned in her direction.

At what exact moment did you become ‘
madame
’ in France? Annie wondered. There must be a crossover period, when women in their twenties, or maybe early thirties, were
mademoiselle
sometimes and
madame
at others.

She didn’t hesitate to talk in English, certain that this charming, cosmopolitan
monsieur
would be far more fluent in English than she could ever hope to be in French.

‘I’m meeting someone here for lunch,’ she told him.

‘Certainly, let me show you through to the restaurant,’ he immediately offered and stepped out from behind the desk.

The restaurant was,
naturellement
, even more awe-inspiring than the lobby. There was so much dizzying bling before her now, it was almost hard to take in.

Tables were set with rows of shimmering crystal glasses, heavyweight art loomed down from the walls, more chandeliers winked and glittered above, even more marble
shone, and huge windows, swagged, draped and pelmeted in taffeta, let in a panorama of the beautiful streets and buildings outside.

There in the centre of the room, like the queen bee enthroned in state, was Svetlana, just as spectacular as her setting, with Elena by her side like a princess in waiting. On the table in front of them, champagne was cooling in a silver bucket and a huge mound of seafood was stacked high on a platter of chipped ice.

‘Annah!’ Svetlana exclaimed and stood up to welcome her.

Within moments, Annie was enveloped in the familiar Svetlana embrace. Perfume, soft skin, warm cleavage, fragrant hair, enormous dangling diamonds: whenever you greeted Svetlana up close, your senses were bombarded with all of these things.

‘I’m sorry we start without you, but we are so hungry,’ Svetlana apologized.

Once Annie had kissed Elena on the cheeks, she sat down in the chair the ever-attentive waiter had pulled out for her.

‘Seafood and champagne? Is OK for you?’ Svetlana asked. ‘Is all I like to have when I eat out. So good for you and so low calorie.’

Looking at the two fat lobsters resting at the bottom of the seafood tower, plus the dishes of creamy mayonnaise set out on the table, Annie wasn’t quite so sure how true that was, but …

‘Delicious!’ she told her friend.

The waiter poured her a glass of champagne and now she was all set to toast Svetlana and Elena’s success.

‘You’re wearing the dresses, aren’t you?’ she asked, looking at the mother and daughter in turn. ‘They look amazing!’

It helped of course that both Elena and her mother had
wonderful figures, beautiful faces and icy-blond hair, but still Annie could see that the dresses were good.