The Personal Shopper (45 page)

‘I don’t care . . . I don’t care . . . I just don’t care . . .’ She realized she was repeating a new phrase over and over in between gulps and choking, snot-laden sobs.

Then there was an arm round her shoulders. Not Lana’s soft comforting one, or Owen’s light arm which just made it from one of her shoulders to the other and
 
no more. No, this was a heavy arm, holding her tight.

With her eyes shut, she briefly leaned her head on the shoulder the arm was attached to and felt supported enough to cry more. Cry hard, really hard, cry with some intention of crying herself out.

Because she was going to have to cry about something else now too: how much she missed her job.

All day long, she caught herself thinking about little things happening at The Store. About unpeeling the
 
cellophane from the new season’s arrivals, about the excitement of the first day of the bright pink 50 per cent off tickets. Walking past racks of new shoes, inhaling the smell of unbroken leather.

The flow of women in through her suite every day, the transformations in front of the mirror . . . even tidying up at the end of the day, seeing the place in the dimness of the night half-lights. She missed it all so much.

She liked the fact that this solid arm and shoulder didn’t come with words. It didn’t say: ‘There, there’, or, ‘It’s going to be OK’, or ‘Don’t cry’, or ‘Shhhhh now.’ It was just there. Holding her shoulders tightly. Giving her heavy head a place to rest.

Long enough to catch her breath again, to grope for the sides in this pool of grief and begin to pull herself up, out of the water for a little bit.

Eyes closed, head still leaning, she waited for the heavy breaths and gulps, the rasping feeling in her lungs to die down.

After a long time, she felt able to open her swollen eyes again. Slowly, she released herself from the grip of the arm and she stood up.

When she could manage the words, she said, ‘I’m really sorry,’ to Ed, the owner of the arm.

‘No need to be, I understand,’ he said gently.

‘Where are the children?’ she asked, surprised to see they were no longer around.

‘They’ve gone on to the top of the hill. Do you feel ready to walk up after them?’

When she nodded in reply to this, but looked anxiously at the steep slope they’d have to scramble up to get back onto the path, Ed held out his hand and told her
: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll help you
.’

She took hold of the hand offered and let him pull
 
her
 
up the steep slope. On the summit of the hill,
 
she could see Lana and Owen standing close together, pointing out the things they could see in the distance.

When Annie finally got up beside them, she looked out o
ver the wide open view
, ruffled Owen’s overgrown hair, and asked him, ‘What do you think of this?’

Eyes fixed on the distance, he slipped his hand into hers, and told her, ‘Thanks, Mum. I always wanted to finish Daddy’s walk for him.’

When Lana heard this, she told her brother in a voice
 
close to a whisper, ‘That’s really nice, Owen. I never thought of it like that . . . I’m glad you brought us here.’

Chapter Thirty

Spare clothes Annie:

Wide, short, worn-out jeans (Ed)

Belt (hers)

Tennis socks (Ed)

White boxers (Ed)

Navy blue sweatshirt (Ed)

Est. cost: £0

‘I’m bloody soaked!’

‘Are you OK?’ Ed had asked Annie with concern as she’d scrambled to her feet after a backwards-on-her-bottom skid down a substantial chunk of hill in the torrential rain which had accompanied them all the way down.

The smooth waterproof trousers had tobogganed her furiously over several fierce dips, bumps and tufts until, pained and winded, she’d skidded to a standstill. The force of the slide had split the trousers in two and caused her anorak to ride up, wetting all her clothes underneath.

‘I’m fine,’ she’d told the little crowd of three ar
ound her, ‘but I’m drenched
!’

‘D
on’t worry,’ Ed had assured her. ‘I’ve got some spare things in my tent.’

She’d worried about that all the way down the rest of the hill.

Back at the camp-site, Ed’s tent had collapsed under the weight of the downpour. A handful of boys and their dads were taking down one of the big tents before it did the same.

‘I think we might call it a day,’ one of the dads called out to Ed as they walked past. ‘Forecast is for heavy rain.’

Nevertheless, Ed managed to fish out his holdall from the jumble of tent fabric, sleeping bags and assorted belongings and told Annie to take whatever she needed.

In the dank toilet and shower block, she undid the zip on the ancient sports bag and looked inside.

Chaos.

She felt in gingerly, but at least it seemed to be a clean sort of chaos. The dirty pants and socks she’d feared must have been tucked away somewhere else. She pulled out a pair of faded jeans, which were going to be too wide and too short, but there was nothing else in the trouser department. A white T-shirt, wafting washing powder, although it was saggy and almost threadbare, and a worn-out, frayed-at-the-edges sweatshirt were the items she decided would have to do for her top half. She’d need those socks and boxers, too. Should she risk wearing his boxers? They looked clean.

She scrambled out of her wet clothes and into the dry ones as quickly as she could, trying not to look at the cold room around her, walls damp to the touch with a persistent dripping sound. She used her belt to hitch up the trousers, making the denim bunch and gape.

Then her phone, tucked into the wet trousers she’d just peeled off, began to ring.

Her mother opened with the question:
‘Where are you, Annie?’

‘I’m with Owen and Lana and their music teacher . . .’ she began. ‘Owen was at this camp-site and it’s right beside the hill where Roddy fell.’ She talked Fern through the journey they’d just made.

‘Oh my God!’ was Fern’s reaction. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ Annie assured her, ‘we’re fine. It was . . .’ she paused, ‘I think it was a good thing to do. The children got a lot out of it.’

‘Oh Annie, I’m sorry,’ Fern sympathized.

‘How are you? What are you phoning me for at three p.m. on a Saturday anyway?’ Annie wondered.

‘I’ve just seen Gray,’ Fern told her, ‘but now maybe isn’t the time to tell you about this . . .’ She paused.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you know where he is?’ Fern asked her.

‘Not really. He said he was h
aving a quiet day at home
 
– and
he might go out
later
. Why? Where have you seen him?’

‘Well, maybe you should phone him up, sweetheart. See if he tells you that he’s in a cosy little booth at Le Pont d’Or having a three-course meal and two bottles of wine with his . . .’ Annie could hear the irritation in Fern’s voice now, ‘. . .
wife
, Marilyn,’ she added.

‘Really??!’ Annie could hardly believe it. ‘You’ve just seen them
there
?’

‘Yes. Went in to meet Netty for a lunchtime special – that’s all I can afford in Le Pont d’Or – and only when I was leaving did I see them. I’d love to be mistaken . . . and maybe there’s a completely innocent reas
on for it
 
.
 
.
 
. but she was giggling and they looked a little too happy
.’

As soon as her mother’s call was over, Annie dial
ed Gray’s number.
It was fine to meet your ex-wife and be civil, but a three-course lunch with wine, giggling and looking too happy… that was something else altogether.

‘Hi!’

‘Hi!’

‘How’s it going?’ he wanted to know. ‘Where did you rush off to? Is everything OK with Owen?’

He sounded so concerned that for a moment she thought her mother must have been wrong. Gray was surely at home, waiting for her to call him. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t phoned him earlier, he must have been worrying about them.

‘Everything’s fine. Really. Are you still at home?’ she asked.

‘No. I couldn’t face the tidying up so I headed into town.’

‘Southend?’ she asked.

‘Yeah . . . I gave John a call and we met up for lunch.’

‘John?’

‘You know, yachtie John. We had a bit of a blowout at the Pont d’Or. Very nice it was too. I’m just heading out of the Gents to settle the bill.’

‘Great . . . Sorry, babes, I’ve got to go . . .’ was all Annie could manage in response to this. ‘Speak to you later.’

‘When do you think you’ll be back?’ he asked.

‘Sorry, no idea yet. OK.’ She hung up abruptly.

And now he had made things even worse by lying to her.

She opened the mak
e-up section of her handbag,
took out her hairbrush and a new lipstick.

After brushing carefully through her wet hair, she tied
 
it up tightly and took several minutes to apply the
 
lipstick perfectly.
She needed the morale boost.

Unfortunately, she had to pull her soggy walking boots back on and the wet cagoule because the stair-rod rain had not eased.

Out on the camp-site field she located Ed’s tent, which had been pulled back to rights, and guessed that her children were inside with him.

Opening the tent flap, she saw the three of them sitting on rolled sleeping bags, backs hunched against the nylon sides, listening to the pelt of rain. She crawled in, trying to avoid putting her hand into the wet mud on the crackling plastic floor of the tent.

‘Pull up a sleeping bag.’ Ed moved from his seat and sat on the floor, so Annie inched in a crouching position over to the bag and perched her bum on it, grateful for the slight warmth it radiated.

Casting a glance round at the quiet, thoughtful faces surrounding her, she raised her voice to be heard above the drumming raindrops to say: ‘Well, here we are. Everyone OK?’

When they all nodded, she couldn’t help adding, ‘This is fun, isn’t it? I hadn’t realized how much fun camping could be.’

Although Lana and Owen giggled, Ed was the first to speak. ‘Owen, do you want to do another night under canvas?’ he asked. ‘Or should we think about packing up and doing this another time when it’s not so wet? Totally up to you,’ he added.

‘Let’s go,’ Owen decided.

Then Ed made an unexpected offer:
‘Can I make you all s
upper tonight? At my place. Yes? Why not?
’ He waved away Annie’s protests, although she was wondering whether she could face going back to Gray tonight . . . having to have the row about his Lana accusations and his expensive lunch, on top of the day she’d already had.

‘It’s the least I can do, honestly. No trouble at all,’ Ed was insisting. ‘Well, I’ll have to do something with all the beans I bought for this trip.’