How Not to Shop (10 page)

'So it's not a career path, it's a lottery?'

'Exactly.'

'Why did I give up my nice, glamorous, staff-discounted day job?' Annie had to ask. 'Please remind me.'

'Because like the rest of us glory-hunters, you wanted your shot at the big one.'

Annie considered the day she'd had today and the day she faced tomorrow: six hours in a shopping mall trying to transform Cath with £250. And Cath wasn't even sure if she wanted to be transformed!

Even when filming was over, there was still so much work to be done: the debriefings with Finn, then all the additional little camera shots that Bob would insist on. Annie smiling, Annie nodding, Annie shaking her head and looking troubled. 'We might need these shots in the edit,' he'd explained. 'It's always good to have plenty of spare bits and pieces.'

'Connor, if this is what it's like making cheap TV, what the hell is it like to make films?' she wondered.

'Oh the agony,' Connor agreed, 'and yet the ecstasy!'

'Have you heard about that big thing you were up for?' Annie asked.

'Which one?' Connor said, but more anxiously than boastfully. 'I'm up for about eight, but I'll probably be lucky if even one of them is made. I think that's the strike rate for films in development right now. Only one in ten ever sees the light of day.'

'Are you worried?' she asked with some concern.

'Not yet,' he told her. 'I can always fall back on the other great LA industry.'

'Drugs?!'

'No, porn. No-one ever tells you this, but LA is only 15 per cent movies and then 85 per cent porn. That's why everyone's so buff. To make sure they can play the part of Miguel the devastatingly attractive pizza delivery boy, if the rent's overdue.'

'You worry me,' Annie told him. 'You can come back to London, you know. There's a new series of
The Manor
, isn't there? And what about the West End?'

'Yes . . . but coming back with my tail between my legs isn't really what I'd planned to do.'

Me neither.
Annie couldn't help thinking; once again she was determined that she wouldn't be going back to The Store.

'However you come back, Connor, you'll be welcomed with open arms, by all of us,' she reassured him.

'You are a very lovely woman.'

'I know. How are your food intolerances?' She tried to sound as if she meant this, but it didn't come out right.

'Take that smirk off your face,' Connor commanded. 'Ever since I stopped eating grains, I am
struggling
to keep the weight on.'

'Maybe I should try it . . .'

'I don't know, are you an O type? Maybe you should call my dietician. I'm sure he could give you some guidelines over the phone.'

'
Maybe you should call my dietician?
' she repeated in-credulously.
'
These are words I never thought I would hear you say. But isn't booze a grain?'

'I'm allowed champagne and vodka,' Connor told her, 'because they're pure. Vodka with soda water is the only drink you can buy round here anyway,' he added; 'vodka with soda water means you can get drunk but with hardly any calories or toxins, plus you are rehydrating while you're dehydrating.'

'What do they call a vodka-soda then? The Hollywood Hellraiser?' Annie teased, 'Oh you crazy people! So you can have a big night out and still be up for spin class at six the next morning.'

'Spin class? Soooo over,' Connor said. 'It's all yoga kick boxing now.'

'But I thought yogis were pacifists. Do they just box away their negative vibes?' Annie teased.

'Yeah, you're laughing, but you're a TV presenter now. You are just inches away from behaving like this,' he warned.

'Am not.'

'Are so.'

'Not!'

'Totally.'

'How's your lover?' Annie asked to bring the play-fight to a close.

'He's great,' came the reply. 'He doesn't have a work visa, so he's busy being my companion. He plans my wardrobe, organizes my diary, books all my sessions, makes sure I don't miss a meeting, or a manicure.'

Manicure?
Over the phone Annie couldn't tell whether Connor was serious or pulling her leg. Surely even Californian Connor wouldn't go for a manicure. Would he?

'He's finding out about our baby options over here,' Connor dropped in without the slightest warning: 'there's adoption or there's surrogacy.'

'Hello?!' Annie pounced, 'Your
baby
options?! You two want to have a baby? And you've not even breathed one word to me about this?'

There was a pause. Then Connor felt he had to apologize. 'I'm sorry. We've not even been talking about it that long. It's a very new idea,' he added, 'but it's a fantastic one!'

Annie said the only thing she felt that she could say: 'Well, that's incredibly exciting, babes.'

But really, she thought it was too strange, that the two men she was closest to, Ed and Connor, both wanted babies. All of a sudden. Out of the blue.

'Ed wants to have a baby too,' she risked.

'No! That will be so amazing, Annie! Congratulations,' he added; a little prematurely, to say the least.

'No, Connor. There's a bit of a difference. Ed wants to have a baby, but I don't.'

Annie's on-screen outfit:

Bright blue blouse (Chloé)
Purple and blue skirt (Whistles sale)
Purple platform pumps (Miu Miu, Store discount days)
Thick blue tights (John Lewis)
Total est. cost: £470

'Oh practical schmactical!'

Annie walked briskly, three-inch heels clacking, arm in arm with Cath through the shopping mall. Permission to film in the mall and in most of the shops inside it had only just been granted twenty minutes ago after frantic phone calls to and from the director's assistant.

Annie had a tight grip on Cath because she felt that the poor woman was going to need real physical, as well as mental, support to get through this shopping ordeal. Hard enough to go shopping for yourself for the first time in years . . . but to have a camera crew watching your every move when you finally get out there? That was almost too much for any woman to bear.

Five years! Cath couldn't remember hitting the shops for herself once since her son's 16th birthday. It wasn't that she didn't have any money; Cath just felt she should be saving it rather than spending it on herself. Plus, she seemed to have a wardrobe full of things passed on from her friends, or worse, her son.

'I know you love him dearly,' Annie had told Cath, 'but do you not think wearing his old sweatshirts might be taking things a bit too far?

'But they're so practical,' Cath objected.

'Oh practical shmactical! If I hear the p word again I'm going to have to smack you. There are so many lovely, comfortable and cosy ways of getting dressed without baggy sweatshirts and anoraks!'

Cath had an assortment of anoraks in, yes, beige and pastel colours, that wouldn't have looked out of place on a mountain. In fact, if she had been a mountaineer they would have been fine, but for everyday London life they were . . . wrong!

'Look around you, try and enjoy the experience. This is called shopping,' Annie was playfully encouraging her. 'If you see a window display you like the look of, let me know, we'll stop and we'll explore. There is no panic, we've got the whole day,' she soothed. 'And a whole day to buy one outfit is a luxury, believe me.

'The only rule,' Annie went on, 'the one thing I'm insisting on, Cath, is that you buy only things that you love.
I quite like it, this will do, this is so practical . . .
no, no, we're not having any of that. If you don't love it . . . if it doesn't make your heart beat faster, then we're not going to bother. OK?'

'How's your son?' she asked, hoping a little bit of cheerful chat would put Cath more at ease.

'Fine. He keeps asking me when I'm going to get my party dress, as if I'm Cinderella or something . . .' There was note of despondency to this which Annie wanted to nip in the bud.

'You are!' Annie insisted, 'and I'm your fairy godmother, so you better start believing in me or I'm going to disappear.'

Spotting one of the funky shoe shops she knew Lana shopped in regularly, Annie steered Cath towards the front door: 'Now,' she began, 'every Cinderella has to have a wonderful shoe.' Annie knew that shoes didn't let you down the way clothes did. You never changed shoe size; shoes never made you look fat. They were a great place for insecure novice shoppers to start.

Cath was sent to look around the shop as both the camera and Annie studied her closely for her reactions.

'Just don't get so in her face!' Annie hissed at Bob. 'How is she ever going to relax and get into this if you're shadowing her every move?'

'I don't want to miss anything,' Bob defended himself.

'You won't. And if you do, I will personally bribe her to re-stage it,' came Annie's reply.

'Ah, can't do that!' Bob wagged a finger at her. 'It's never as convincing as the first time.'

'Oh rubbish,' she argued, 'I bet you do it all the time.'

Annie turned her attention back to Cath. She was wandering through the shop, looking at the shoes in confusion. There were all sorts of new colours, shapes, heels and designs here. Everything was obviously so different from the last time Cath had gone shoe shopping with nothing but price and practicality on her mind.

'Keep looking,' Annie urged, 'there will be something you like here. Really, just let me know if
anything
catches your eye, because then we can get a clue as to what kind of things you're into. Your love muscle,' she added with a cheeky wink, 'it's all about building up your love muscle. It's obviously not had nearly enough exercise lately.'

Even Cath had to giggle at this.

Three-quarters of the way through Cath's third tour of the shop and Annie saw it – Cath reached up and from a display high above the shop floor she brought down a pair of cherry red, patent leather loafers.

She watched Cath turn the loafers over in her hands, with a pleased fascination on her face.

Quickly Annie turned to the shop assistant hovering by her side, eager to appear on television. 'OK, I need the red loafers in a size six and everything else you've got in red patent in that size.'

After only a little arm-twisting, Annie had Cath striding up and down the shop in the loafers, a look of obvious satisfaction on her face.

'OK, we're taking them,' Annie told her.

'No!' Cath protested, 'I've got nothing to wear with them.'

'We'll go and find you a snazzy little red jacket and maybe a red bag. Maybe a shiny red, waterproof, non-anorak coat. Don't you
love
them?' Annie had to ask.

'Yes,' Cath confessed shyly.

'Well then. You're having them. That's final.' Annie had long ago forgotten all about the camera pointing in their faces. 'Anyway, they're a whole lot nicer than those – ' she pointed down at the sorry, bashed-up black slip-ons Cath had worn for the shopping session. Imitating Svetlana's rich accent, she intoned: 'Bin bag!'