New York Valentine (6 page)

For Annie, new clothes, new styles and the latest looks were a comfort, a fresh start … a source of hope and optimism.

‘I know just exactly what you should do, Annie girl, you should come back and work for us. Even temporarily. You know we’d welcome you back with open arms. We’re rushed off our feet,’ Paula said as soon as Annie explained what had happened to her TV series. In The Store’s Personal Shopping suite, a little crowd of staff had gathered round and now murmured in agreement.

‘That’s a lovely offer, but you have so totally filled my shoes,’ Annie said, giving Paula the once-over and a significant wink.

Paula didn’t just look amazing – it’s hard for a six-foot-something black girl with a lithe figure to look bad – she also, for the first time, looked glamorously grown up.

The jacket over the bod-con dress was sober and serious. There was simple gold jewellery around her wrist and neck, and her long nails had been given an unusually elegant manicure. Not a zebra stripe or diamanté stud to be seen.

‘Have you been promoted again?’ Annie asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ Paula winked back, ‘head buyer for this floor. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘Nooooo! Trips to Paris? And Milan?’

‘Not yet, but they are coming right up.’

‘Congratulations.’ Annie dared to hug Paula again, even though embracing this gazelle made her feel like a small squashy frog.

‘Come back to us,’ Dale, from Menswear, repeated and the other assistants nodded eagerly.

‘I can’t yet,’ Annie told them, ‘it’s too—’

She broke off because she definitely didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But coming back would be too much of a step backwards. She’d been the presenter on her own TV show – she just couldn’t return to personal shopping at The Store, no matter how welcoming, familiar and easy it would be.

‘I still think a new TV thing will happen,’ she told them instead. ‘I had over a million viewers. There’s an audience out there who like me and hopefully my producer can sell the show or a slightly different version to someone else. Fingers crossed.’

‘What about your friend Svetlana?’ Paula asked, ‘wasn’t she setting up a dress label with her daughter? Weren’t you involved with that? In fact, we’ve got some of their dresses on order.’

‘Fantastic! I love their dresses. I think the label is going to do brilliantly well … I even thought about going over to New York to help over there … but …’

‘Excuse me?’

A voice interrupted the animated conversation.

All heads swivelled towards a woman standing at the entrance to the suite.

‘I was just wondering about personal shopping … well, I’ve never been personally shopped … do I need an appointment? Do you charge?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Come on in,’ Paula said with an expansive sweep of her arm, ‘our dedicated personal shopper isn’t in this afternoon …’

Ah … how well Annie remembered her treasured weekdays off, designed to make up for the hectic blur of Saturdays at work and often Sundays too.

‘Oh …’ the woman at the door hesitated. She was holding a jumble of dark clothing and hangers in her hand.

‘No seriously, come on in,’ Paula urged, ‘you’re going to be in very safe hands today.’ She gave Annie a wink as she said this: ‘I’m the head buyer for the floor, but I’m having a quiet day. This is our former personal shopper who now does makeovers on TV and I have a feeling she’s not going to be able to help getting involved. What are you looking for?’

‘A dress …’ the woman uttered the word with a degree of dread; despondence, even.

‘That’s good, we have lots of dresses,’ Paula encouraged. ‘Special event?’

‘Ye-ees.’ Again this sounded hesitant.

‘Step into our boudoir,’ Annie urged the woman, ‘this is a nice problem to have and we’re going to enjoy solving it for you.’

Just half an hour later, the woman – a fifty-something psychiatrist called Joanne Kettner – had sipped her way through one glass of complimentary champagne and abandoned the two severe black dresses she’d brought into the suite with her.

‘Black is so strict,’ Annie said, ‘plus, I think it drains you. You don’t want to have to wear tons of make-up if you don’t usually. So, we’ll try out a dress in a better colour that does all the brightening and tightening for you.’

For the first ten minutes or so of Joanne’s session, Annie had tried hard to take a back seat. She’d tried to busy herself browsing the enormous rack of new season’s clothes which Paula had set out for her to look at in her TV capacity.

But although Paula was good with Joanne, Annie just hadn’t been able to stop herself from getting involved. Because she loved to shop for other people, maybe even more than she loved to shop for herself.

‘My husband’s going to be given an award at the kind of swanky ceremony I usually run a mile from. Most of the time I let him go to that kind of thing with work colleagues,’ Joanne confided. ‘But this one means a lot to him, he’s asked me to come and I want to dress up, make the effort, go the extra mile. But … I’m a psychiatrist, I don’t do fluffy or floral or flouncy or …’

‘Fussy?’ Paula suggested.

‘No,’ Joanne pulled a face at the very thought.

‘So we want to go glamorously feminine, just a touch, an elegant ruffle or two, something just a little softer,’ Annie chipped in, holding out two long silk cowl-necked dresses: one ivory with bold watercolour style pink and black flowers, the other violet with long, silky purple sleeves.

‘Oh they are too pretty,’ Joanne said, ‘almost too pretty to try on.’

‘Don’t be mad, dresses
need
someone to try them on,’ Annie insisted. ‘That’s when they come alive.’

Minutes later, Joanne stood before them in the ivory dress.

They all agreed it was beautiful, but Joanne didn’t like the bare arms: ‘I’m nearly fifty-three,’ she protested, ‘I think my arms need less attention.’

‘We have a lovely little pink bolero …’ Paula suggested.

‘I’ve seen the price tag on this number,’ Joanne said with a smile. ‘There’s no way I’m buying a bolero to go with it. We’ll give the other one a go.’

When she stepped out in the violet and purple dress, Annie and Paula definitely had the ‘that’s it’ look on their faces, but Joanne still looked troubled.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Paula assured her, ‘I love the way the neckline sits, and the drape at the front is so flattering.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Joanne agreed, but she was still peering at herself critically.

‘What are you thinking?’ Annie had to ask. ‘What are you telling yourself?’

Joanne turned from the mirror to look at her dressing guide properly: ‘Which show is it you’re on?’ she asked.

‘I had my own programme, called
How Not To Shop
– we did makeovers and shopping tips for real people and lots of fun slots. It was great,’ Annie said sadly, ‘I really loved it, but unfortunately, the plug has just been pulled. We were filming series two then boom … end of story.’

‘I’m very sorry. Do you think you’ll get another show?’

‘I’ll have to wait and see, but times are tough and there are so many other presenters who’ve done much more than me waiting in the wings.’

‘Did you get any unexpected results?’ Joanne wondered. ‘Did you buy people new jeans, restyle their hair and suddenly find they were dumping their husbands and riding off into the sunset?’

‘All the time,’ Annie said with a grin. ‘Almost everyone who applied to the show was on the verge of a big new change. I’m a psychiatrist too, you know, but with dresses, not drugs.’

Joanne laughed at this: ‘Did you have a good producer who can get you more work?’

‘Tamsin Hinkley, yes, she’s fantastic, if anyone can get my show re-commissioned, it’s her. But we’re way off track here. We’re supposed to be looking at you in this amazing dress. Are you worrying that the dress is wearing you?’ Annie wondered.

Joanne smiled at this.

‘That’s exactly right. The dress is wearing me. I’m so unused to a dress like this, I don’t know how to get back in charge.’

‘No shoulder pads, no white-collared shirt, you’re all to pieces,’ Annie teased.

‘First of all, we need the shoes and the bag,’ Paula said and headed off to the shop floor to find them.

‘Then we need a little restyling … wait right there,’ Annie instructed her. ‘Do not go anywhere. I’m posting someone on the suite door to make sure you don’t flee.’

Within minutes, both Paula and Annie were back. Joanne was buckled into four-inch strappy silver evening shoes and handed a patent clutch. Meanwhile Annie clipped on earrings, applied lipstick and hairsprayed Joanne’s short locks out of her face.

‘We want to counteract any hint of a move south. Earrings are moving up, hair is moving up, lipstick gives that central focal point – am I getting a bit technical?’ she joked.

When Joanne looked into the mirror this time, she was just as poised and elegant as they hoped she would be.

‘Very good, girls,’ Joanne smiled. ‘Very well done. The dress, yes, the bag, yes. I’m not even looking to see how much it is because I’ll be too horrified and change my mind. Earrings yes, so long as they’re costume jewellery, not real. I’m even going to buy the lipstick but the shoes …’ she lifted one foot out from under the hem of her dress: ‘no way the shoes. Even if they were the last shoes in Britain. No way!’

‘Oh come on,’ Annie urged her, ‘you’ve got the whole of your life to be a sensibly dressed psychiatrist, wife and mother. One night in a pair of fantasy shoes isn’t going to kill you.’

‘I’ll need lessons in how to walk.’

‘Just swing your hips, baby,’ Paula instructed and began in her four-inch heels to demonstrate the kind of shimmy that suddenly made her look giggly, Bambi-ish and 21 all over again.

‘So what will you do if you don’t get another job in TV?’ Joanne asked Annie. ‘Will you come back here and do this? You’re very good, but I’m sure you know that.’

‘What about New York, Annie? You were just about to tell me what you might go and do in New York,’ Paula reminded her.

‘When I rudely interrupted?’ Joanne asked.

‘Well … New York,’ Annie couldn’t help giving a little sigh, ‘I have these friends who’ve set up their own dress label. They wanted me to go over and help out in New York … just for a bit. Nothing permanent. I was desperate to go, because I really can’t stand sitting about waiting for something to happen …’

‘But? I have the feeling there’s a but coming,’ Joanne prompted.

‘But my husband thinks it’s a mad idea. I was going to take my oldest daughter with me, she’s just left school, but that would leave him in charge of the other three – and the babies are only a year old.’

‘But New York?!’ Paula insisted. ‘Working for a label.’

‘I know! I would have
loved
it. Even for a few weeks. But he won’t agree. And I think I might have to accept that. I mean, he has a point. There are lots of reasons why …’

‘Didn’t you just tell me I’ve got my whole life to be a wife and mother? And a psychiatrist in sensible shoes?’ Joanne asked gently.

She had clear, grey eyes and a soft smile. Her head was titled slightly and Annie felt as if the eyes were staring into her deepest thoughts, reading her mind and smiling knowingly at what she’d found there.

‘It’s our biggest challenge,’ Joanne added, ‘working out how to do the best we can for the people we love while remaining true to ourselves.’

True to ourselves
.

The words rang in Annie’s mind for a moment.

‘You’re good,’ she told Joanne, ‘but you probably don’t need me to tell you that.’

‘You have to be true to yourself or it eats you up inside, eventually. Trust me here. I’ve heard it so many times from so many different people.’

For several moments there was a thoughtful silence, then Annie snatched up her bag and rummaged about for her phone.

‘Booking the flights to New York?’ Paula wondered.

‘No. Calling Ed. There’s still five more minutes of lunch break, I might be able to catch him and then … I’ll have the chance to talk to him again.’

‘To tell him you’re going to New York?’ Paula persisted, excitement in her voice.

‘Well … I won’t put it quite as baldly as that … but … YES!’

Plane Lana:

Black vest top (Topshop)
Black skinny jeans (Primark)
Pink pointy pumps (New Look)
Pink and black fringed scarf (Vintage Miss Selfridge
via Oxfam )
Overwhelming scent sensation (duty-free)
Total est. cost: £50

‘Oh look! Look at that!’

‘So you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be absolutely, totally fine? Do you promise? You won’t let one single thing go wrong?’ Annie asked, aware that her heart was racing at panic-speed.

‘Yes,’ Ed said simply, solidly, utterly reassuringly. He placed his hands on her shoulders as if to weigh her down and bring calm to her frantic mind.

‘So you’re going to go and see Mum this weekend, to give Dinah a break. And you’ll take the babies, but Owen will obviously be at the stall. But you’ll be back in time to give him dinner and—’

‘Shhhh,’ Ed soothed.

‘Mum said something about Stefano going away for a fortnight,’ Annie remembered suddenly. ‘I don’t know if that’s soon, or if maybe she’s just got confused. You need to speak to him and find out. Because if he’s going away, Mum can’t be on her own, she’ll have to come and stay with us, so we’ll need to know when that is. And I hope I’ll be back by then otherwise you’ll have too much to—’

‘Annie! Stop it! I’ll speak to Stefano on Saturday. I’ll get the dates of his holiday and the recipe for his chorizo casserole. OK? You were the one who wanted to go on this trip,’ Ed reminded her, his hands sliding to the tops of her arms, which he squeezed affectionately.

‘Yes, yes …’ she said distractedly because now that the boarding card was actually in her hand, now that her entire family was assembled around her at passport control ready to say goodbye, now she just wasn’t quite sure if she really could manage to go.

Ed put his hand under her chin and turned her face towards his.

Oh no. Oh no, it really was going to be time to say goodbye.

‘Look, you’ve convinced me that this is a good idea. That it is really important for you,’ he reminded her, ‘so now you have to go. Stop worrying about us. We’re going to be fine. And you’re going to be great!’ he encouraged her.