How Not to Shop (20 page)

When she saw the horrified look on Annie's face, Svetlana added quickly, 'I not cancel. No. No. Not cancelled. Just pause, tell Harry I'm thinking if this best for me. I mean, a man like Uri . . .'

'. . . will never ever be as nice as a man like Harry,' Annie finished the sentence for her. 'Don't do this,' she urged her friend, 'please! You are making a big, big mistake.'

'But Uri,' Svetlana protested, 'he make so much money. He maybe make in day vat Harry make in a year.'

'You have your own money now,' Annie reminded her. 'You don't need another man to keep you.'

'I just interested. Verrry interested,' Svetlana told her.

'Here you go, girls.' Bob interrupted the conversation to hand them each a tea.

'Bob?' Annie kept her voice low because she didn't want Finn to hear.

'Has anyone told Tina what's happened?' Annie asked him with concern. 'I mean she thinks she's going to be on TV. She's told her family, her friends, her little girl . . . She was absolutely bubbling over with it all when we left her. How's she going to be told that it's all being dropped?' Annie had to know. 'She's not just going to get a letter or a cold call from Nikki, is she?'

Bob shrugged. 'I think you care just a little too much,' he said, 'you'll just have to let go of that one. Someone will take charge of that. Let it be.'

'Ya,' Svetlana agreed, 'you in enough trouble.'

'But she's going to be devastated,' Annie protested, 'completely devastated. And after all that effort, after we brought her along so brilliantly.'

'You,' Bob corrected her, 'you did that, I was just filming. I'm trying to pay you a compliment, Annie, stop looking so worried,' he added.

'Couldn't you put together some of the footage you took?' Annie asked. 'Especially when she was at the hairdresser's, all made up and looking gorgeous, couldn't you put that onto a little DVD for her? Then at least she would have something,' Annie pleaded, 'I can't bear the thought of her sitting at home with her little girl feeling that she's been dumped because she came out to us. That's what she's going to think, and let's be honest,' Annie hissed, 'that's the truth!'

'I'll see what I can do over the weekend,' Bob conceded, 'I'll take a look at what I've got and I'll run off a DVD for her. So you can give it to her. OK. Agony auntie Annie,' he added.

'Thanks. Thank you!' Annie squeezed his arm. 'I've got her mobile number, I'll let her know.'

'Be careful,' Bob warned. 'Make sure you've given Nikki time to tell her, otherwise you'll be breaking the news and you could land yourself in even more hot water.'

Looking past Bob's face, Annie was surprised to see Miss Marlise standing much closer to them that she'd expected. Much too close for comfort. She couldn't have heard, though . . . could she?

Ed at home:

Blue cotton sweater (Gap sale)
White rugby shirt (school uniform sale)
Tattered jeans (Levi's, vintage)
Bare feet
Total est. cost: £55

'D'you want to take off your instruments of foot torture?'

It was late when Bob pulled up outside Annie's house to drop her off after the two days of filming in Birmingham. But there was still a light on in the sitting room because Ed had promised he would wait up for her.

Owen would already be asleep and Lana had gone to Greta's house overnight, but Ed would be there to welcome her home.

At the sound of the car engine in the street, Ed opened the front door and headed out to meet her. He said hello to Bob and unloaded Annie's bag from the back of the car.

'Nice to have you back,' he told her once they were back inside the house. 'Go and snuggle on the sofa and I'll make you tea and toast if you like.'

'Yes, I'd like that very much,' Annie told him.

'Yeah, but it's just the one slice, obviously, and I'll be spreading the butter very, very thinly because I know about the ongoing weight battle you celebrity types are always waging,' he couldn't resist teasing.

'Oh, don't worry, I'm not sure I'll ever be allowed on camera again. I've been demoted and at the moment I'm just the wardrobe lady.'

'Oh dear,' Ed sympathized as she lay down across the sofa, 'is it that bad?'

'At the moment, yes!'

'But it will blow over . . . won't it?'

'Maybe . . . I hope so . . . I hope things won't seem so bad once we've all had the weekend at home and chilled out a bit.'

'D'you want to take off your instruments of foot torture?' Ed pointed at her high-heeled shoes, 'and I could give you a little massage.'

'Yes, that would be very nice,' she had to admit, 'but could you just bring in the tea and the toast first? Pleeeese,' she wheedled, 'you're a very, very nice man.'

'I know,' he told her, 'and you've not even asked me how I've been.'

'No,' she had to admit. 'How have you been, sweetheart?'

'Someone has just failed their Grade Six violin and I have an uncomfortable meeting with two very disappointed St Vincent's parents waiting for me on Monday.'

'Ouch,' Annie sympathized, 'I thought pupils at St Vincent's never failed anything.'

'Well, that's the idea,' Ed replied. 'She's really good, too. I think she got too nervous.'

'That's a shame. Bring in my snack, babes, then I want to tell you all about Tina.'

When the story was over and Annie's feet were thoroughly massaged, Ed felt he could only offer her the advice to 'Wait and see how it plays out on Monday.' But he did agree that if Tina could be given a DVD of the event it would be a very kind, very Annie thing to do.

'You don't think Finn will mind if you and Bob organize that?' he wondered.

'No,' Annie assured him. 'How's he going to find out anyway?'

'Well . . . that's not quite the same,' he pointed out.

'I think that's the least of my worries.'

'Right, well . . . now that you're comfy and a bit more relaxed, there's something I want to talk to you about . . .' Ed began carefully.

'Oh no.' Annie sprang up so she was sitting bolt upright: 'not the baby talk again, I really can't handle the baby talk, Ed.'

'No, it wasn't that. I wasn't going to talk about that,' Ed protested, 'but now that you've brought it up – why shouldn't we keep talking about it?'

'I'm tired.' Annie ran her hands over her face.

'So am I, but the weekends are really busy for us and maybe I need to talk about this.' He looked so serious.

'Ed,' Annie mustered up as much kindness and understanding as she could, 'Ed, I really feel as if I've had my kids.'

'Yeah, with someone else,' he broke in. 'Am I not good enough to have children with? This is so unfair! I'm competing with someone who's dead, and I can never, ever win.'

Annie flinched at this mention of Roddy. She never, ever wanted Ed to compare himself to Roddy. As he said, it wasn't fair. Roddy was dead. Annie, her family and her friends all thought the very best of him. That's how it was when you died. Everyone remembered the really, really good things. The amazing bits, the ultra-romantic and the superdad moments. All the ordinary, everyday moans and gripes were totally forgotten. Did Annie ever think back to how untidy Roddy had been? Or how charmingly irresponsible? Or the fact that he was almost always the last man standing at the bar? No, she never wasted a moment thinking about all that.

'Ed, please don't,' Annie warned him, 'it's not just about you and it's definitely not about Roddy, it's about me. I don't want to have another baby. OK? I don't want another child enough to go through it all again. I don't want to be pregnant, I don't want to give birth, I don't want to be woken every three minutes every night and spend all my time puréeing and feeling dowdy and exhausted. I don't even want to be back on the benches at the play park talking about it with the other dowdy and exhausted people. I'm not going there,' she added vehemently, just in case he hadn't got the drift.

Ed sat at the end of the sofa with Annie's feet still in his hands. But he had forgotten all about them.

There was a very sad, hurt expression on his face as he told her: 'But I've never done any of that. I've never carried a baby around at night, I've never pushed my baby in a swing or round the park in a buggy . . .'

'Well, I'm sure Hannah would love you to spend a bit more time with her children,' Annie suggested. Ed's sister had two small children now.

'Annie!' Ed replied angrily, 'that's not the point. The point is that I want to have my own child. Is that so hard to understand?'

For a moment he didn't say anything else, then to Annie's astonishment, he added, 'I don't want this to break us up.'

'It can't!' she exclaimed. 'It can't break us up. I never said I would have another baby for you!'

'You never said you wouldn't,' Ed replied.

'But you never asked before!' Annie threw back at him, feeling uncomfortably angry. 'This is a new thing.'

'Did we ever even talk about it? Did we ever really talk about anything?' Ed asked. 'We just moved in, in a great big flurry. A lot of things went undiscussed and undecided.'

'Well, we're talking about it now.' Annie tried to level her voice and keep the anger at bay, 'and I'm telling you I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it.'

'And I'm telling you this is the one thing I really, really want to do,' Ed replied. 'I can hardly think about anything else. I'm thirty-five . . .'

Annie snorted. 'Big deal! You've got at least another forty fertile years ahead of you!'

She was too tired. Why was he starting up with this again? It felt as if she'd only just come in the door and already they were in this deep, uncomfortable, irresolvable discussion.

'I can't do this right now,' she told him quietly, then picked herself up from the sofa and walked out of the room. Taking hold of her overnight bag on the way, she headed upstairs to the bedroom.

She would get undressed and she would run a bath. She would soak in it for a bit and calm down. There would be peace and quiet and Ed would calm down too. This would blow over. He was broody. It wasn't such a big deal. The feeling would pass. She knew this because she'd had broody feelings of her own in the past, and they passed.

Maybe he had too much time on his hands at the moment. Maybe he needed a new hobby or something. She'd been planning to get him helicopter flying lessons for his birthday. His dad had been a helicopter pilot and it was something Ed had said he'd always wanted to try. Maybe he'd get hooked and go out a few times a month. That would take his mind off all this baby stuff. Quite an expensive hobby though, surely? Helicopter flying . . .

Annie opened her overnight bag and began to unpack. Almost everything was grubby and would have to go into the laundry basket or the rack in her office for the clothes
en route
to the dry cleaner.

She picked up her beautiful blue silk blouse, shook it out gently, then headed to the office with it. As soon as she'd hung it up on the dry cleaning rack, she could tell that something wasn't right in here.

Where were her bags?

There was a slim wardrobe in the room where she kept her clothes overflow. In here were all the things not currently in use and it had got a little too full lately. So she had stored more overflow tops, skirts and even some shoes in big chequered zip-up laundry bags. There had been three of them, stuffed full, stacked against the side of the cupboards.