The Personal Shopper (13 page)

Delia was just bustling out of sight when Donna stormed out, looking for her next assassination victim. Annie should really spike Donna’s mineral water with Valium, she thought. For everyone’s benefit.

Donna spotted her at the till and for one long, eerie moment stared straight at her. But then she carried on.

With a selection of ties in her hand, Annie headed back to the suite, taking a moment to pep-talk Paula, before she returned to Spencer.

‘C’mon, girl,’ she said and passed Paula a tissue. ‘Don’t let the Queen of Spleen get you down. Do a stint on the sales floor and then I’ll wangle you back in here again. Honest. You just need practice. More experience with the
 
customers. Donna forgets how long I’ve been doing this for. C’mon.’ Annie worried about the proximity of Paula’s nails to her tearful eyes. ‘We’re supposed to go out tonight, aren’t we?’ Annie reminded her. ‘So, get changed. Glad rags on. Touch up the face. I’ll be with you
 
in’ – she checked her watch – ‘twenty or so.’

Spencer was tiring of trying new things on. Men’s shopping tolerance was so tragically low, she’d noted before. It was time to close the deal with him . . . on all fronts.

Two suits, four shirts, two green ties (he must have liked the eye compliments), a pale suede blazer – dangerously expensive but he went for it when she told
 
him (
fairly
truthfully) how very like Pierce Brosnan he looked in it – two T-shirts and six pairs of new boxers,
 
because ‘You never know,’ she’d winked at him cheekily.

‘I’ve never, ever bought this much all at once before.’ He looked concerned at the packed rail they’d amassed.

‘You look great in everything,’ she assured him. ‘You’re going to love wearing these clothes, you’re going to get total value for money from them and wear them to bits. You’ve got to start going out straight away. This week! Tonight!’ Was that hint enough?

But nothing came, so she prompted: ‘What’s your idea of a good night out?’

He thought for a moment before telling her: ‘You know what I like? A really well-made gin and tonic in a great bar. Somewhere with atmosphere, not too noisy, not too quiet. Somewhere . . .’

‘Classy,’ she finished his sentence.

‘I can’t stand cocktails and girlie drinks, happy hour all that sort of thing,’ he added.

‘No, no. Me neither,’ she nodded and fibbed outrageously, ‘Cocktails? Oh no . . .’ but these words just served to summon up Paula, in a spray-on black dress and neon heels, and her high-volume question: ‘Annie, are you ready yet?! We’re going to miss happy hour at Freddy’s and we’re sharing a jug of margaritas after the day I’ve had.’

Classy.
Oh yes.

‘Theatre? I bet you like the theatre?’ Annie made one last attempt at somehow connecting with Spencer, as she rang up his purchases.

‘Oh, yes. I’m going to the Noël Coward thing that’s just opened, what’s it called again?’

Sunshine was breaking through the clouds.

‘
After the Ball
? When are you going?’ Annie could barely contain her grin.

‘Thursday night, I think.’

‘No! Really,’ she gushed. ‘My friend is in one of the lead roles and that’s the night he’s invited me along. He says Thursday night is the real theatre buff’s night.’ She was making this up as she went along. Every word. Well, OK, apart from Connor being the lead.

‘Really!’ Spencer didn’t sound quite as pleased as she’d hoped.

‘I might see you there then, in your fabulous new clothes.’

‘Well, yes . . . That would be nice . . .’

‘And contact lenses,’ she advised. ‘Either a small metal rim or contacts. Definitely.’

‘Right . . . er . . .’

It was hard to judge from so few words whether Spencer was pleased at this turn of events, or worried that he now had a stalker on his hands.

Chapter Seven

Megan’s outfit for her ex-husband’s wedding:

Missoni dress (The Store)

Manolo boots (The Store)

Gucci bag (Gucci)

Philip Treacy hat (The Store)

3.5-carat emerald engagement ring (Ex-husband)

Cartier diamond watch (Ex-husband)

Asprey gold and diamond bracelet (Ex-husband)

Est. cost £220,000

‘I want to look everything his cheap little girlfriend is not.’

‘Nooooooooooooo!’ shrieked Taylor. She yanked the four-figure silky, frothy Matthew Williamson creation up over her head and tossed it onto the floor.

‘No more empire lines! I’ve tried on six now and they all make me look fucking pregnant!’

‘Taylor!’ Megan warned in knee-jerk reaction to the swearing.

Annie was so exhausted, she was going to have to
lie down and mainline an energy drink
when this ordeal was finally over. She’d already been with Taylor and her terrifying mother, Megan, for one and a half hours: they’d booked a double session.

Dressing them was like the Personal Shopper Olympics. Annie was always surprised when they came back to her, because she was sure these
Vogue
,
Harpers
and Net-a-porter experts, these females wealthy enough to shop for everything they could
possibly need in The Store, even groceries, knew far more about up-to-the-nanosecond fashion than she ever could.

She suspected she was brought in, like the UN, to serve in a peacekeeping role when this precocious 16-year-old went frock hunting with her beautiful mama.

Taylor was, like every teenage girl, a special shopping challenge.

She was extraordinarily pretty with long flicky blond
 
hair and the lean, perfectly proportioned body and dewy complexion born of great genes and lashings of money.

Taylor was made of fresh air, skiing holidays, summers on the beach under factor 30, sensible boarding-school food, a mild eating disorder and daily workouts on the hockey pitch.

Here to choose outfits for Taylor’s father’s remarriage, it didn’t look as if they were ever going to agree because Megan wanted Taylor to wear something sweet and girly, whereas Taylor wanted the kind of dress a 30-year-old vamp would consider daring.

Taylor had dismissed all suits as ‘bo-oh-ring’, including a gorgeous pale pink Miu Miu which had inspired her to say: ‘Look at me, I’m Lady Penelope,’ and then do a really quite funny impersonation of the
Thunderbirds
puppet.

In pale blue velvet and lace, while Megan and Annie had sighed at how divine she was, Taylor had pulled a face and gone: ‘Yeuchh! What a drip!’

All the cute empire lines had been tossed off in horror and Annie was beginning to wonder what more The Store could offer.

‘I want the black wrap! Pleeeeease,’ Taylor whined, sounding more and more like the spoiled and pampered princess she was.

Megan drew herself up to full height, formidable in head to toe Dior, sighed and looked at Annie for back-up before explaining once again: ‘Taylor, you cannot wear black to your father’s wedding. Absolutely no! Look,’ she added bitchily, ‘I don’t think he should be marrying a twenty-two-year-old Romanian gymnast either, but we can’t go in mourning and that’s final.’

Annie had to turn her mind to very sad and lonely thoughts, to prevent herself from snorting with laughter at this.

The hour spent finding Megan’s perfect outfit for the social and emotional ordeal of attending her exhusband’s remarriage had passed satisfyingly well.

Megan had come in with a wonderfully clear idea: ‘I
 
want a severely smart dress. Nothing soft, nothing flouncy, nothing flared. I want perfect tailoring, I want to look everything his . . .’ dramatic pause to deliver these words as witheringly as possible, ‘
cheap, little girlfriend
is not: sophisticated, cultured, complicated, intelligent, elegant and grown-up.’

Annie, with a Parisian vision of chic in her mind, had installed Megan in a changing room then run from floor to floor bringing her everything that could possibly comply with this description.

It hadn’t taken long to find the dress: cream with an olive-coloured leaf print, narrow skirt, tight waist with a wide striped belt, close-cut bodice with a high ruffled neckline.

‘It’s not soft,’ she’d promised Megan, ‘it’s supremely elegant.’ It was also Missoni and comfortingly extortionate.

Wide, three-quarter-length balloon sleeves completed the dress, so Megan could display her most extravagant gold bracelet, diamond-studded watch and enormous emerald ring to full effect.

‘I want suede stiletto boots to go with this and, of course, a hat,’ she’d instructed.

These had taken longer to get exactly right, but finally, a vision of ex-wife perfection had been created.

‘Genius.’ Megan had allowed herself to smile in the mirror.

Annie had stepped back to admire her handiwork. The tiny hat with long, spiked pheasant feathers was breathtaking on top of Megan’s angular silhouette. How did Megan look? She looked just what she was: an extremely beautiful, bitter brunette who was far, far from over the biggest disappointment of her life. Her marriage to Mr Fabulously Wealthy Bigwig had ended and she was still devastated by her loss of status.

Although – Annie couldn’t help thinking – surely the jewels and the annual allowance, generous enough to make small African nations weep, must be of some comfort? She wondered if Megan had thought about finding a new husband yet . . . and did she dare to ask her where she was going to look?

‘The best thing about this outfit,’ Megan had noted with triumph, ‘is that, with jewellery, it will have cost
 
him
five times more than what the bride will be wearing. Poor little girl, she has no idea what she’s in for. Romanian gymnast!’ she’d snorted. ‘Let’s hope that Victor and his penis will be very happy.’

‘I think we need a little break,’ UN Annie suggested as Taylor flung another dress on the floor. ‘Why don’t we go down to the vintage boutique in the basement?’ she risked.

Taylor’s response to this looked reasonable, but Megan’s eyebrows were arched and twitching.

‘Don’t worry,’ Annie soothed, ‘it’s The Store’s version of vintage: exclusive one-offs and collector’s items worth more now than when they were bought.’

Down in the glamorous basement floor, a section had been made over as an antique clothes shop, complete with picturesque, worn wooden shelves crammed with dainty crocodile handbags, long leather gloves, feathered and furred hats. The rails were adorned with silks, lace, taffeta, chiffon. Dresses with history. Ghosts from parties that had been held all over the city since the 1920s and on into the fifties and sixties, even the eighties.

Annie had always liked secondhand. She liked to rummage through old, and usually much better made, clothes. These were not dresses that whispered ‘you shall go to the ball’, these gowns had been to the ball, danced till they dropped, sipped champagne, met the man of their dreams, sneaked a cigarette or two, kissed, maybe more, and come back to tell the tale.

OK, sometimes they didn’t come back too pretty – a rip here, a mud mark there, or worse, a serious sweat stain, irremovable from pastel silk satin.

But in this department, the dresses were all in mint
 
condition. They were hung just like the new clothes, with space around them, with respect and size tags.