The Personal Shopper (40 page)

The next hour did not go happily. As Annie tried to make hollandaise again, Connor snuck up behind her and asked her heavy questions quietly.

‘How’s it working out?’

‘It’s fine. We’re settling in . . . I think it’s going to work out really well.’

‘Aha . . .
fine
. . .
well
. . .’ Then standing close behind her he whispered into her ear: ‘And how’s it going in the bedroom?’ and made several pelvic thrusts against her hip for emphasis.

Unfortunately he chose the moment she was carefully pouring a spoonful of vinegar into the sauce.

‘
Connor!’ She tried to spoon the vinegar overflow out of the bowl as quickly as she could. ‘It’s fine, thank you,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not talking about it right now. I’m busy!’

‘Oooooh tetchy . . . another “fine” from Annie.’ Then in a suddenly serious voice, he added: ‘He’s got to be right, Annie, he’s got to be the
Next
One . . . absolutely no-one says you have to settle.’

‘Go away, Connor,’ she growled, ‘I can’t have this conversation now. Open the dishwasher and check my fish.’

‘What?!’

Connor opened the machine and let a cloud of scalding steam into the kitchen as Annie pulled back the fridge door to bring out her meringue mess and beaten cream.

‘Smells lovely and lemony,’ Connor commented.

‘Lemony?! What??’ Just as it was dawning on Annie that maybe she should have double-checked the powder drawer hadn’t jammed shut on the last wash only to open and tip soap over her salmon, she also spotted the meringue bowl, totally empty, standing by the kitchen sink: ‘Where the bloody hell are my . . . CONNOR! Did you and Owen eat the meringues?’ she shouted.

‘The scrapings . . . the leftovers, I told Owen those had to be . . .’ Connor broke off. He could tell by Annie’s face that it hadn’t been a bowlful of scrapings they’d wolfed down.

‘They were very good,’ he said sheepishly.

‘I will kill you
!’ She ran at him, but at the last minute veered to the dishwasher, which stank of lemony-bleachy dishwasher powder.

‘No. No, no, no!

Only for Gray to walk in, still in his raincoat, and ask
 
what was the matter? And hello, Connor, and . . . could he smell fish? Didn’t she remember his father was allergic to fish?

Annie ran out of the kitchen and into her bedroom where, in a melodramatically Lana-like style, she threw herself across the bed, right on top of the chic red and white Marc by Marc Jacobs dress she’d laid out for tonight, and began to sob noisily.

It wasn’t just that she was exhausted, or a crappy cook, or that she’d washed the salmon instead of cooking it, or that she’d completely forgotten about the fish allergy. There was something else. She was frightened. For the past few days she had been trying to suppress the worry, but now it was bubbling up uncontrollably. She was frightened that she’d made a mistake.

She was beginning to suspect that she didn’t like Upper Ploxley, didn’t like suburban Essex life and all the endless trips on the M11 ferrying grumpy children to school.

And then there was Gray. It was only when she’d moved in that she’d got a sense of how set in his ways he was. How – dare she use the word? – old and old-fashioned he seemed to her and the children.

He wore shabby purple velvet slippers round the house (‘But they’re comfortable!’) and wouldn’t listen to her protestations about them. Although he looked dapper in a suit and tie, in his preferred golf V-neck and chinos he didn’t. He liked to read the paper, undisturbed, from cover to cover, taking a full two hours
 
over it. The children bugged him. They made too much noise for him, too much mess. They required too
 
much
 
of her time and attention. He was used to a pampering wife, who kept a neat house, had meals on the table, and who ironed, and fussed over him. Maybe he was sorry too. Maybe he was wondering what the hell he’d got into. Maybe Fern’s worst fears were true: maybe Annie
was
being used as a tactic in the divorce battle.

Annie found herself regularly replaying Roddy the Early Days in her mind to try and remember if she’d felt all the same worries then too. Had she experienced the same feelings of claustrophobia and uncertainty when she and Roddy had first moved in together?

Now, when she thought back to that time, she remembered only delirious happiness: painting their tiny bedroom sexy pink . . . Roddy nursing her through appalling morning sickness because she got pregnant so soon . . . buying babygros and baby shoes, spending entire evenings entwined on the sofa, listening to each
 
other’s music collections with mock disgust and debating baby names.

But maybe she had been just as unsure, she kept telling herself, there must have been some moments of doubt. But she’d been so young. Nothing mattered so much when you were young. The stakes were not so high. You could give someone a whirl, you could back out and walk away. Well, OK . . . baby Lana would have made that more tricky, but still . . .

Now there was no denying that she’d made a great big, important decision, which affected both her and her children’s lives, far too quickly.

But she couldn’t just walk away . . . she had to be a grown-up and give it a real, considered chance.

In the kitchen Annie could overhear the developing scene.
Gray
was making
the mistake of telling Lana, Owen and Connor that he’d better go upstairs to see ‘if I can calm down this tantrum’.

This caused Lana to jump up and shout: ‘
No
! No, you
 
will not go up to my mum. How dare you call it a
 
tantrum! Maybe if you hadn’t asked your parents round on a day when my mum’s working! Just expecting her to
 
cook for you all like some sort of housekeeper! She can’t cook! Haven’t you noticed that yet? Haven’t you worked out the slightest thing about her?’

‘Lana,’ Connor tried to intervene
, ‘I think you’re being a bit—’

‘But look at him,’ Lana raged. ‘He doesn’t do anything for himself, he’s the most unreconstructed chauvinist pig I’ve ever met. He just wants to turn Mum into his housewife!’

‘Lana, that is not true,’ Gray insisted, riled by the accusation. ‘I think you should stop, right now.’

‘I’m going up to her,’ Lana stormed. ‘You can just keep away!’

With that she rushed out of the room.

‘Why don’t you ha
ve a glass of wine?’ Connor asked
amiably. ‘Then probably best if you cancel your parents for tonight. Don’t worry about all this. I’m sure it’ll blow
 
over . . . Teenagers! Total nightmare,’ he tried to sympathize.

‘For God’s sake!’
Gray
exclaimed. ‘Th
at’s my Dominio de Pingus 1996!
Very rare, Spanish . . . three hundred pounds a bottle . . . with excellent investment potential.’

‘
Ah . . . sorry . . .’ Connor apologized,
‘I think you’d better have some.’

Chapter Twenty-five

Annie back in town:

Orangey red linen wrap dress (Joseph sale)

Beige mac (the trusty Valentino)

Large orange leather tote (Coccinelle on eBay)

Caramel heels (the Chanels, for morale)

Orangey red lipstick (Mac)

Est. cost: £390

‘You’re not dead yet, woman.’

Annie walked down the charming flagstoned pavement of one of her favourite Highgate streets. Smartly painted fences enclosed gardens brimming with blossoming lilac bushes, buddleia and honeysuckle.

Almost all of the three-storey Georgian houses had
 
been beautifully and expensively renovated: lime mortar pointing restored, old wooden windows and doors repaired, fresh coats of historically appropriate Farrow and Ball paint applied, bright hanging baskets and windowboxes attached.

To buy a whole house on this street . . . at least £1.5 million, she reckoned, which is why most were carved up into bijou flats. It was still her property dream to own
 
a house in Highgate – but maybe it would have to
 
be something a little smaller than one of these. Just two storeys and a garden would be fine. She wasn’t greedy.

She passed a plump thirty-something woman striding briskly along in navy blue shorts, a pale floral blouse and black pumps. A black shoulder bag with a narrow strap was strung diagonally across her chest, bisecting her cleavage to horrible effect.

Annie considered stopping her there and then to hand over a business card and urge her with the words:
‘C’mon . . . I promise you can do better, much, much better.
’

Number 39 was not a house that had been renovated yet. The paint was flaking, the stonework was grubby, parts of the fence had rotted away. Absent landlord, she guessed, or maybe landlord down on his luck.

She’d been told to follow the garden path round to the back of the house where the entrance to the basement flat could be found: 39B.

Through the overgrown garden she went, damp flower stalks and shrub branches whipping at her legs as she negotiated the mossy, slippery path.

The black door was flaking paint and all the windows needed not just repainting but cleaning too. She pressed hard on the buzzer and after a few moments Ed appeared at the door, looking – despite her efforts – as much in need of care and attention as his home.

‘Hello there, erm, Annie . . . why don’t you come on in?’ Ed gave her a smile and waved her into the cramped hallway.

A rack stuffed with coats, anoraks, walking boots, shoes and wellingtons had to be shuffled past before she could follow him into a tiny, low-ceilinged kitchen also crammed to bursting.

She took in the overflow of pots, pans, jars rammed with utensils, piles of newspaper, small table overwhelmed with a burden of books, pens and papers, as Ed made welcoming but slightly apologetic chat.

‘Sorry . . . always such a mess . . . hopeless . . . can I get
 
you a tea? Hope you don’t have to rush off . . . Owen’s getting on great . . .’ and so on. His words were punctuated with several sneezes, smaller than the ones he used to startle them with.

She was here to collect Owen from his music lesson. Now that Ed could no longer swing round to their address, the new arrangement was that Owen would go home with Ed after school on Thursdays and Annie would pick him up at 7 p.m. But she’d been held up twice and had had to send Dinah, so this was her first visit to Ed’s.

‘Tea would be great, thanks,’ Annie told him and knocked over a dish of cat food on the floor as she tried
 
to get out of his way. Once he’d mopped up the spill with a dishcloth that went back into the sink, she noticed unhappily, he filled up a battered aluminium kettle and put it down on the ring of an ancient electric cooker.

‘Come on, I’ll take you through,’ he offered and she followed gingerly, wondering what housekeeping horrors lay ahead.

The sitting room was reached by way of a tiny corridor lined with bookshelves so packed that books were stacked double thickness, and also piled up on the floor. The ceiling lamp hung so low that Annie bumped her head not just once but again when the lamp swung back at her.