How Not to Shop (46 page)

HERE'S THE FIRST CHAPTER
. . .

It was 6.29 a.m. The digital alarm clock beside the bed was about to go off. Just as it started up with its nasty little beeping, the bedside phone began to ring too.

Bella leaned over to click off the alarm and answer the phone.

'Hello?'

She heard a distant 'Hello!' far from the other end of a crackling line, followed by singing.

'Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . . .'

'
Don!
' she shouted and heard it echo back at her.

'Hello Bella, wake up, I love you, I want phone sex now.'

'I love you too,' she said laughing.

'What? It's a terrible line.'

'I love you too!' she shouted. 'When are you allowed to come home?'

'Ah ha . . . well I'm phoning you from Grozny airport. By the time you get back from work, I'll be there.'

'Yeah?! I can't believe it! That's bloody brilliant!'

'My job here is done,' he said in mock superhero voice. 'Seriously, it's been a nightmare and it's getting dangerous now, so they're pulling me out. Plus I told them it was your birthday and I had to get home, or else a fate worse than a rebel gunman awaited.'

'Are you OK?' she asked.

'I'm very tired, it's been three weeks from hell. Oh bugger, hon, I have to go now, I'll see you tonight and I am so looking forward to it.'

'Me too. Take care.'

'Missing you already,' he joked, then the line went dead.

She was smiling hard, was going to be smiling all day long, she thought, as she got out of bed and started on Operation Bella. The difference between Bella and other women whose looks were somewhere between moderate to good on the scale was that she tried harder. In fact, 'tries hard' was a description that had peppered her report cards since she was tiny.

At the very start of her career, she'd spent a long summer on assignment in New York and it was there that she had found her spiritual sisters, the immaculate New York women who jogged, gym-ed, power manicured and treated sex as just another way to business network. Her eyes had been opened and she always joked that she'd checked all her insecurities in at JFK airport and never bothered to check them out again. This wasn't exactly true, the insecurities were still there, she'd just learned to hide them well.

She pulled on her running clothes and trainers now, because Monday to Friday, she jogged for twenty-five minutes every morning with NO EXCEPTIONS. She loathed almost every second, but it was the only way to shake off any remaining booze from the night before, stay on the slim side of curvaceous and guarantee that she got some exercise crammed into her day.

After the run, she showered, shaved, dried off and moisturized. Then, with her hair wrapped up in a big white towel, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror.

She stared hard at her face. Twenty-eight years old today. Pulling a smile, she looked at the tiny crinkles radiating out from her eyes and the very first hint of bagginess on her eyelids. It was obviously all downhill from here.

She sponged a generous squeeze of foundation from collarbone to hairline and loaded up a powder brush to dredge over her face. She thanked God every morning for make-up. Then she shook her hair out of the towel and blasted it dry, before bundling it up into the loose chignon which she thought made her look older and more serious for work.

Back in the bedroom, she pulled open her underwear drawer and rifled through it. Don was coming home! He'd been away so long, he'd find her a turn-on in greying pants and a jogging bra, but hell he deserved a treat. She took out her newest pink and black underwired lace bra and matching G-string, then opened the wardrobe. She slipped into a crisp shirt and hold-up stockings then buttoned on a black suit with tightly fitted jacket and a narrow skirt which fell to the knee.

She checked herself over in the long bedroom mirror and approved. Of course, since New York, nothing about Bella's workwear was left to chance. She'd taken the hair and make-up lessons, been colour-consulted and image madeover. Her perfectly appropriate outfit, about to be perfectly accessorized, was supposed to scream 'woman headed for the top'.

She fished about in her jewellery drawer for small chic earrings and the tiny platinum pendant Don had given her, fiddled to put them on then grabbed high-heeled leather pumps from the shoe rack and hurried into the kitchen.

Two oranges were blitzed in the small electric squeezer. She put the glass of juice and a pot of yoghurt onto the tiny marble-topped table in the kitchen, then went to the front door of the flat to bring in the newspapers. She sat down and studied the
Financial Times
carefully as she had breakfast, then flicked through Don's tabloid until she found his latest report, and read every word.

At 7.45 it was time to go, so she collected raincoat, briefcase, laptop and keys and headed out to work. As her left hand pushed shut the heavy wooden and glass front door of the mansion block, her eyes fell on the thin platinum band, sparkling with tiny diamonds on her fourth finger, and she couldn't help smiling. God! Marriage was still such a novelty.

Just one birthday ago, she'd woken up in yet another unfamiliar 'loft-style' bedroom, with makeup caked deep into her pores and the roots of a truly monumental hangover taking hold in her skull. Her nostrils had burned suspiciously and she'd been repulsed to see a fleshy, snoring equities trader, whose name she couldn't recall, fast asleep beside her.

She had retrieved her underwear, pulled on a dress stiff with sweat from the night before, picked up her bag and shoes and crept out of the flat. Three heart-attack-inducing espressos later in an Italian café on the corner, she'd come to the realization that it was time to put as much effort into her personal life as she'd put into her career. And about a month after that, all psyched up to stay away from men and sex and one-night stands until she'd got her head together, she'd bumped smack bang straight into The One. After a thirteen-week romance, the longest she'd had for years, they got hitched. Fear of commitment, ha!

She had crossed that line, made the jump, taken the plunge. Well, actually, Don had seen straight through the tough City-girl-shagger defence to the person underneath, the one who hadn't dared to fall in love since Big Romance Number One had gone all horribly wrong. Don had taken her hand and convinced her this was the real thing. He'd urged her to make the leap with him and when he'd slid the slim ring onto her finger, she'd felt a surprising solemnity. She'd felt terrified of it too. But there was so much love just radiating out of him, she had committed, signed on the line, sealed the deal.

She turned away from the front door into the lukewarm May sunshine. In the distance she could hear the gentle roar of traffic: another day in the capital was already under way. She unlocked the door of her low, cream-coloured classic Mercedes 280/SL soft-top, threw her coat and bags onto the passenger seat and climbed in, smudging her right calf with oil on the door frame.

'
Damn
,' she said out loud, then leaned over to the tiny glove compartment and popped the button, causing half a dozen packets of black hold-ups to slide out onto the floor. She held her leg out of the car door, whipped off the smudged stocking, rolled on a new one then, tossing the spoiled one into the back, she fired up the engine and set off for the office.

At 8.25 a.m., juggling coat, briefcase and laptop with the packet of twenty Marlboro Lights and large bottle of Evian from the shop round the corner, Bella arrived at Prentice and Partners, one of the City's smallest, but sharpest, firms of management consultants.

'Morning, Kitty,' she said as she walked in.

'Hi, Bella.' Kitty looked up from her desk in the large reception area.

'Is Susan in?'

'Of course,'

'Girls first. Are the boys in to play today?'

'Yup, Hector's due in any time and – ' Kitty checked her screen – 'Chris will be in for the afternoon meeting but he might be earlier.'

'OK. I'll just go through my diary and put the coffee on then I'll be ready for you,' Bella said with a smile.

She went into her little office and settled in, hanging up her coat and filling the coffee machine before she took out her laptop, checked through her e-mails and clicked open her schedule.

MAY 8

Tuesday

* Happy Birthday – just in case you've forgotten. Old Bag.

* Put in follow-up call to Petersham's office to answer/reassure on queries/nerves/cold feet.

* Prepare for meet with Merris.

* BOLLOCK Hector.

* Chris and Susan meet 2 pm – Petersham's and Merris details.

* Get pregnant?

What???! She re-read that last bit. God, why had she put that in there? It was on her mind, but that didn't mean it had to be in her diary. She hit delete. It was off the screen, but not out of her head. She knew she wanted a baby: really, really wanted one. Something that had begun as a vague interest several months ago had now grown into a fully-fledged desire. It was weird.

Why did she want one so much? She'd tried to analyse her reasons endlessly: maybe because her own parents had made such a mess of things and she wanted to do better, maybe because she worried a lot about what the future held for her and Don without kids. He was thirteen years older than her and she couldn't help imagining herself growing ancient, all alone with deranged, incontinent cats for company instead of children and grandchildren.

Bella also worried that it might take a very long time to have a baby. Her own mother had given birth to her at 29, then spent eight years enduring miscarriage after miscarriage before finally giving up hope of a second child. She remembered the little cradle and the boxes of baby clothes, all care fully labelled, in the upstairs loft room and how sometimes as a small girl she would find her mother up there, weeping furiously.

But Bella's biggest problem right now was that when she married Don seven months ago, he didn't want children – said he was too old, too independent, too set in his ways – and she'd agreed 'no kids' with him. But now she knew she hadn't meant it, hadn't really thought it through.