Mini Shopaholic (12 page)

CENTRAL DEPARTMENTAL UNIT
FOR MONETARY POLICY
5th Floor
180 Whitehall Place
London SW1

Ms Rebecca Brandon
The Pines
43 Elton Road
Oxshott
Surrey

18 January 2006

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was passed to me.

On his behalf, may I thank you for the sentiment that you ‘know how he feels’ and your thoughts on how to ‘get out of this mess’. Your father’s principles of ‘C.B.’ and ‘M.M.M.’ seem sound, as does the advice to ‘look around and sell some things you don’t need’.

Thank you also for the kind gift of
Controlling Your Cash
by David E. Barton – a book I was unfamiliar with. I am unaware of whether the Chancellor owns a copy, but will certainly pass it on to the Treasury along with the advice to ‘write everything down that he spends’.

With thanks again for your interest

Yours sincerely

Edwin Tredwell
Director of Policy Research

SEVEN

Why have I got so many clothes? Why?
Why?

I’ve finally collected them up from around the house and counted them all. And it’s a total disaster. There’s no way I’m going to get through them all in two weeks. Two years, more like.

How
can I have so many pairs of jeans? And T-shirts? And old cardigans that I’d forgotten about?

On the plus side, I found a Whistles coat I’d totally forgotten about which will look fab with a belt. And some True Religion skinny jeans which were still in their plastic bag, stuffed under a pile of Lancôme gift sets.

But on the downside, there are about eighteen grey T-shirts, all scraggy and shapeless. I don’t remember buying
any
of them. And some really mortifying sales buys. And the worst thing is, Luke told Jess I was doing an audit of my clothes and she decided to come over and help me. So I couldn’t do what I was planning, which was to hide all the clothes I hate in a plastic bag and secrete them out of the house.

Jess was relentless. She made me write a list of every item and wouldn’t let me discount anything. Not the disastrous hot pants, not the revolting maroon leather waistcoat (what was I
thinking?)
, not even all those old promotional T-shirts and shoes I’ve got free off magazines. And that’s before we get to the weird Indian clothes I bought on our honeymoon.

If I have to wear that maroon leather waistcoat in public three times I’ll
die
.

Morosely I look down at myself. I’m in one of my zillion unworn white shirts, with a pair of black trousers and a waistcoat layered over a long cardigan. This is the only way I’m going to survive – by layering as many pieces as possible every day and getting through them that way. Even so, according to Jess’s calculations, I won’t need to go shopping until 23 October. And it’s still only January. I want to
cry
. Stupid, stupid banks.

I was secretly hoping this whole financial crisis thing would be one of those very quick affairs that come and go and everyone says, ‘Ha, ha, silly us, what a fuss we made about nothing!’ Like that time when there was a report of an escaped tiger on the loose in Oxshott and everyone got hysterical, and then it turned out to be someone’s cat.

But no one’s saying ‘Ha, ha, silly us.’ It’s all still in the papers and everyone’s still looking worried. This morning Mum very ostentatiously ate her toast without jam, shooting little resentful looks at Dad the whole time. I was sunk in gloom, trying not to look at the Christian Dior ad on the back of Dad’s newspaper, and even Minnie was subdued.

And when I get to work, things are even more depressing. I run the personal-shopping department at The Look, which is a department store on Oxford Street. It didn’t start off too well, but recently it’s been on a roll. We’ve had loads of events, and great coverage in the media, and profits have been up. In fact we all got bonuses!

But today the place is desolate. The women’s fashion floor is totally silent, and nearly all our appointments in the personal-shopping department have been called off. It’s a pretty depressing sight, a whole row of bookings with ‘Cancelled’ beside them.

‘Everyone said they’d got a cold,’ reports Jasmine, my colleague, as I’m leafing through the appointment book in dismay. ‘You’d think they could make up something more original.’

‘Like what?’

Jasmine taps her pale-green nails, which totally clash with her violet leopard-print eyes. (Coloured lenses are her new fashion habit. Her own eyes are one blue, one green, so she says she’s already used to people staring at them and wondering if they’re real.)

‘Like they have to go to rehab,’ she says at last. ‘Or their coke-addict husband beat them up and they’ve had to go to a secret women’s refuge. That’s what I’d say.’

God, Jasmine is warped. We couldn’t be more different, the two of us. Jasmine behaves as though she doesn’t care about anything, including her own clients. She tells people they look shit, they’ve got no style, their clothes should go in the bin … then she’ll toss some garment to them with a shrug and they’ll put it on and look so spectacular, they
can’t
not buy it. Sometimes they’ll get all gushy, or try to give her a hug and she’ll just roll her eyes and say ‘Jeez’.

‘Or they could be honest.’ Jasmine throws back her long, bleached-blonde hair. ‘They could say, “I haven’t got any money, the bastard bank lost it all.” You do realize this place’ll close down?’ she adds almost cheerily, gesturing around. ‘In fact, this whole country’s over. It’s a fucking mess. I’ll probably move to Morocco.’ She eyes my shirt suspiciously. ‘Isn’t that Chloé, two seasons ago?’

Trust Jasmine to notice. I’m debating whether to say, ‘No, it’s a tiny label you don’t know about,’ or ‘Yes, it’s vintage,’ when a voice says timidly, ‘Becky?’ As I hear my name I turn round and peer in surprise. It’s Davina, one of my regular clients, hovering at the entrance. I barely recognized her, what with her mac, headscarf and sunglasses.

‘Davina! You came! Great to see you!’

Davina is in her thirties and a doctor at Guy’s Hospital. She’s a world expert on eye disease and pretty much a world expert on Prada shoes, too – she’s been collecting them since she was eighteen. Today she had an appointment to find a new evening dress – but according to the appointment book, she’d called it off.

‘I shouldn’t be here.’ She looks around warily. ‘I told my husband I’d cancelled. He’s … worried about things.’

‘Everyone is,’ I say understandingly. ‘Do you want to take your coat off?’

Davina doesn’t move.

‘I don’t know,’ she says at last, sounding tortured. ‘I shouldn’t be here. We had a row about it. He said, what did I need a new dress for? And that it wasn’t the time to be splashing the cash. But I’ve won a Taylor Research Fellowship. My department’s throwing me a reception to celebrate.’ Her voice suddenly throbs with emotion. ‘This is huge, this fellowship. It’s an incredible honour. I worked for it, and I’ll never get one again, and I’ve
got
the money for a dress. I’ve saved it up and it’s all secure. We don’t even bank with Bank of London!’

She sounds so upset, I feel like giving her a hug. The thing about Davina is, she doesn’t do things lightly. She thinks about every piece she buys and goes for really classic well-made things. She’s probably been looking forward to getting this dress for ages and ages.

What a meanie her husband is. He should be
proud
of his wife, getting a prize.

‘Do you want to come in?’ I try again. ‘Have a cup of coffee?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says again, her voice tiny. ‘It’s so difficult. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘But you
are
here,’ I point out gently. ‘When’s the reception?’

‘Friday night.’ She takes off her sunglasses to massage her brow and suddenly focuses past me, on the rail in my fitting room. It’s holding all the dresses I looked out for her last week. I told Jasmine to have them ready this morning.

There are some gorgeous pieces on that rail. Davina would look amazing in any one of them. I can see the lust growing in her eyes.

‘Are those …’

‘Just a few options.’

‘I can’t.’ She shakes her head desperately. ‘I
can’t
turn up in something new.’

‘But would your husband
know
it was new?’ I can’t resist saying. I see this thought register in her head.

‘Maybe not,’ she says at last. Her brow is clearing a little … then it wrinkles anxiously again. ‘But I can’t possibly come back home with any shopping bags. Or have anything delivered.
Or
have anything delivered to work. All the junior staff will chatter and want to see, and it’ll get back to my husband. That’s the downside of both working in the same hospital.’

‘So how can you buy a dress?’ says Jasmine bluntly. ‘If you can’t take anything home or have it delivered?’

‘I don’t know.’ Davina looks a bit crestfallen. ‘Oh, this is hopeless. I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Of course you should!’ I say firmly. ‘We’re not in the business of giving up. Come in and have a cup of coffee and look at the dresses. And I’ll think of something.’

The minute Davina puts on the Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti, we both know. She
has
to have it. It’s a black and bitter-chocolate sheath with a trailing wisp of chiffon and it’s five hundred pounds and worth every single penny.

So now it’s up to me to work out how we do it. And by the time she’s dressed again and has eaten the sandwiches which I ordered for her, I have the answer. We are hereby introducing a new, specialist personal-shopping service at The Look called SIP (Shop in Private). By lunchtime I’ve made all the arrangements for Davina, plus I’ve come up with several extra innovations. I’ve even typed up a quick email about it, which begins: ‘Do you feel guilty about shopping in these troubled days? Do you need a new level of discretion?’

I don’t want to boast, but I’m quite proud of all my ideas. Customers can come to the personal-shopping department, select their new clothes, and then, in order to remain discreet, choose from a number of delivery options:

1. Have clothes on standby, ready to be biked over to client’s house at a suitable specified time (i.e. when no one else is in).

2. Have clothes delivered in a cardboard box labelled ‘Computer Paper’ or ‘Sanitary Products’.

3. Have a member of staff (i.e. me or Jasmine) pose as a friend, visit home and offer clothes as ‘unwanted cast-offs’.

4. Have a member of staff (i.e. me or Jasmine) pose as a cleaning lady, visit home and secrete clothes in hiding place to be previously arranged.

5. For a more substantial fee, members of staff from The Look (me and Jasmine) will set up a ‘charity stall’ at a location to be arranged,* where the client may ‘purchase’ clothes for a nominal price in front of spouse or partner.

*This option may work better for groups of shoppers.

Davina’s going for the ‘Computer Paper’ option. By the time she left, her eyes were sparkling with excitement and she gave me a massive hug, saying she’d send me pictures of the reception and I’d absolutely made her day. Well, she deserves it. She looks amazing in that dress and she’ll remember the occasion all her life. As I set off for lunch with Bonnie I feel pretty chuffed with myself.

The only teeny doubt which occasionally shoots through my head is that I haven’t run the ‘Shop in Private’ scheme past any of my bosses. Like the MD or head of marketing or director of operations. Strictly speaking, I should have got a new initiative like this approved before I launched it to the public. But the thing is, they’re
men
. They’d never understand. They’d probably just make lots of stupid objections and time would tick away and we’d lose all our customers.

So I’m doing the right thing. Yes. I’m sure I am.

I’m meeting Bonnie at a restaurant near the Brandon Communications offices and as I arrive she’s sitting at a table, looking as understated as ever in a beige tweed dress and flat patent pumps.

Every time I’ve met Bonnie, she’s always seemed remote and spotless; almost not-human. But I
know
there’s a hidden side to her – because I’ve seen it. At the last Brandon C Christmas party, I happened to notice her when the rest of us were on the dance-floor singing madly to ‘Dancing Queen’. Bonnie was sitting alone at a table, and as I watched, she surreptitiously helped herself to one of the left-over hazelnut chocolates left on the plates. Then another one. She went around the whole table, discreetly hoovering the hazelnut chocolates, and even folded the wrappers neatly and put them in her evening bag. I never told anyone about it, even Luke – because something told me she would have been mortified to have been seen. Let alone teased about it.

‘Becky,’ she greets me in her low, well-modulated voice. ‘How lovely to see you. I’ve ordered some sparkling water …’

‘Fab!’ I beam at her. ‘And thanks so much for helping out.’

‘Oh, it’s no trouble. Now, let me show you what I’ve done so far.’

She pulls out a plastic folder and starts fanning printed papers across the table. ‘Guests … contacts … dietary requirements …’

I goggle at the pages in amazement. Luke’s right, Bonnie’s awesome. She’s compiled a full list of guests from Luke’s business and personal address books, complete with addresses, phone numbers and a little paragraph on who each person is.

‘Everyone in the company has blocked off the evening of 7 April,’ she continues. ‘I’ve taken Gary into my confidence, and we’ve invented a full company training session. Here you are …’

Speechlessly, I look at the sheet of paper she proffers. It’s a schedule for a ‘Brandon Communications Training Session’, beginning at 5 p.m. and lasting into the evening with ‘drinks’ and ‘group activities’ and ‘discussion circles’. It looks so genuine! There’s even the name of some ‘facilitating company’ printed at the bottom.

‘This is brilliant,’ I say at last. ‘Absolutely fantastic. Bonnie, thank you so,
so
much—’

‘Well, it means you don’t have to tell anyone at the company the truth just yet.’ She gives a little smile. ‘These things are better kept under wraps for as long as possible.’

‘Absolutely,’ I agree fervently. ‘The fewer people who are in on the secret, the better. I’ve got a list of exactly who knows and it’s tightly controlled.’

‘You seem to have things very well in hand.’ She smiles encouragingly. ‘And how are the party arrangements themselves going?’

‘Really well,’ I say at once. ‘I mean … I haven’t
quite
finalized everything …’

‘Have you thought about employing a party planner?’ enquires Bonnie mildly. ‘Or one of the concierge services? There’s one in particular that several of my employers have used, called The Service. Very efficient, I can recommend them.’

She takes out a notepad and scribbles down a number. ‘I’m sure they’d help with organizing, sourcing, providing staff, whatever you need. But it’s just a suggestion.’

‘Thanks!’ I take the paper and put it in my purse. That might not be a bad idea, actually. I mean, not that I need any
help
. But just to tie up any loose ends.