The Personal Shopper (9 page)

‘Oh yeah,’ she replied. ‘It makes you dinner, then washes up and gives you a massage. Who needs a man?’

‘Ha. Very good.’ He nodded and began to take off his coat.

Annie took it from him, noting that he wasn’t in his usual tweedy schoolwear, but in very well-worn jeans and an ancient dark blue Guernsey jumper, fraying at the cuffs. A desperately unironed shirt was peeking out at the collar and hem. This was obviously Ed doing casual. He looked like a refugee from a badly dressed war.

‘So you’re heading out?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yeah. A party . . . dinner . . . thing.’ She didn’t want to be specific about the dating scene she was venturing into.

But Lana’s acutely perceptive teen antenna flicked on and she didn’t hesitate to inform Ed: ‘Mum’s going on
 
another blind date.’

‘Well, it’s not quite like that . . . Lana!’ Annie warned her dau
ghter with a look.

‘What do you mean “not quite like that”?’ came Lana’s testy response. ‘Forty single strangers are getting together for dinner tonight and you’re going to be one of them.’

‘Well! What can I say?’ Annie forced a smile onto her face and gritted her teeth
.

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ she managed instead.

‘Right,’ said Ed. He looked astonished, which made Annie feel slightly ridiculous and irritated. ‘Best of luck,’ he added.

‘I’ll tell you how it goes,’ she tried not to snap, giving Lana a pointed glare. ‘Anyway, a friend of mine, Connor, will be round later on. He’s babysitting because I don’t like to leave them alone at night. Do I, babies?’

Owen made vomiting noises while Lana crossed her arms and scowled at her mother.

Annie climbed the hotel’s thickly carpeted staircase with unbridled optimism. This was a classy place. Nothing cheesy about it. Well, OK, maybe booking the Anne Boleyn Function Room hadn’t been the organizers’ best
 
decision: ‘My second wife? Yes, she was beheaded, unfortunately. So sad. But there we are . . . that makes me single again.’

No more dates via the Lonely Hearts columns! Annie was triumphant. No more hasty glasses of wine downed while she made her excuses to the poor bewildered souls she kept encountering. No more internet dating! Her inbox would be free of the entirely deviant fantasies of Mr Perverted of Tampa Bay, Florida and pals.

Red carpet dinner dating. This was the way to go. Yes,
 
it was expensive, at a moment in her financial life when she really couldn’t afford it. But she was looking on it as an investment. Finding not just Mr Right, but Mr
 
Wealthy-and-Right was going to be money so well spent. Anyway, this was a trial dinner. She’d only paid for the meal. The full subscription was due only if she signed up after tonight. Maybe she’d get lucky first time. She was feeling very lucky.

How Dinah had rolled her eyes as Annie had read to her from the brochure: ‘A gourmet dining experience with forty hand-selected singles . . .’

‘Look thorough the guest list,’ Annie had urged her, handing over the profile pages studded with grainy printouts of passport-sized photos.

‘There’s a property developer, a Czech businessman, a computer entrepreneur, someone interesting from the West Country . . .’ Annie had pointed out.

But Dinah had labelled each photo in her own way:
 
‘Man who does DIY, Eastern European gangster, husband not over his wife who dated lesbians on the internet . . . mono-browed Welsh werewolf . . .’

‘Stop it!’ Annie had ticked her off. ‘What about him
 
then?’ – she’d ringed one profile – ‘Dominic runs a
 
garden design consultancy. He loves French wine and
 
Cuban music . . . Ooh!’ Her eyebrows had perked up
 
with interest. ‘Half French. Now
he
is very, very promising.’

‘Let’s see the picture.’ Dinah had peered at the page and grudgingly agreed that Dominic wasn’t bad. In fact, really quite handsome: dark hair, nice jawline and smile . . .

‘Why do you think he needs a dating agency?’ she’d wondered.

‘Maybe he’s just so busy running his consultancy, he can never find the time to meet anyone,’ Annie mused. ‘He
is
good looking, isn’t he?’

Smoothing down her dress, pulling back her shoulders and setting what she hoped was a slightly mysterious smile on her face, Annie opened the Anne Boleyn room door and stepped inside.

At a reception table directly in front of her an overenthusiastic girl with a stack of name badges was gushing: ‘Hello and welcome to Discerning Diners.’

Name badges? Annie hadn’t expected something as functional and conferencey as name badges, but far, far worse than that was the fact that everyone Annie could see milling around in the drinks area was dressed in regulation office clothes: the men were all in grey and navy suits, the women likewise. This was a sea of jackets, long-sleeved blouses and smart trousers with not one pretty dress to be seen anywhere, let alone a
strappy
one.
 
She was going to look like a divorced and desperate housewife amidst all the high-flying, executive girls.

‘So, what’s your name?’ the super-smiley blonde behind the desk wanted to know.

‘It’s Annie Valentine and . . . I thought we were supposed to dress up!’ she added in dismay.

‘We do ask everyone to make an effort, but I’m afraid so many people come straight from work, they don’t have time. Can I take your jacket?’

‘No . . . ummm . . . well . . .’

It was warm in the Anne Boleyn room, too warm for yellow wool gabardine with a satin lining, especially now that she was feeling the added heat of embarrassment.

She could either hover round the drinks reception quietly sweating her jacket up and her make-up off, or she could be brave and breezy and take it off.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she relented, slipping off the Valentino and exposing slim shoulder straps, bare arms and a lot more cleavage than the event required.

‘I’m going on to another party afterwards.’ Suddenly the perfect excuse, not to mention fib, sprang to mind. She would tell everyone this. Oh and it meant she could leave early
if –
surely no chance of this – the evening was a horror.

‘OK, Annie. Hi! Welcome! I’ll take you over to Hillary, who’s going to introduce you to everyone.’

With Hillary at her side, Annie was whisked through a blur of faces, smiles and introductions. She recognized some names from her list: the Czech turned out to be a rather meek-looking salesman; Idris was indeed a mono-browed Welshman, though probably not a werewolf; most disappointing of all was ‘very, very, promising’ Dominic, the garden designer, who was handsome, but came in at about five foot three. So, Annie, in heels, was a clear eight inches or so taller than him.

When they were ushered through to dinner, she felt a little disheartened to see that the name tag on the place next to hers was Dominic’s.

A rather shy, bland man called Will was seated on her left opposite a pale, nondescript woman called Maisie. But some sort of salvation seemed to loom in the form
 
of Lloyd, the greying but nonetheless debonair-looking
 
fifty-something opposite her. When he smiled, introduced himself, shook hands over the table and complimented Annie on her ‘ravishing’ dress, she found that her will to live seemed to be returning.

But over the starter – spinach and nutmeg soup, which quiet man Will couldn’t eat without splashing and slurping noisily – Annie discovered that Lucinda, the woman seated on Lloyd’s left, was also very taken with him.

Within minutes, it also became clear that Lucinda was very, very chatty and was going to do most of the talking at the table, imagining that she was helping everyone to mingle by going round and asking all those excruciating personal questions Annie did not want to
 
answer: ‘
Are you divorced?
’ ‘
How long have you been dating?
’ ‘
What do you do for a living?
’

As her turn to be asked approached, Annie made the mature decision to bolt for the loo.

WÈ¡n she came back, she felt she should leave off Lloyd and devote some attention to Dominic, so as not to be rude.

‘The wine’s nice, isn’t it?’ she asked him, remembering his interest from the profile pages.

‘Not bad at all,’ he replied, turning the bottle to read the label.

‘I’ve taken the decision not to drink plonk any more,’ she explained. ‘Life’s just too short.’

He held up the bottle and said, ‘Indeed,’ as he refilled her glass.

Was it her imagination or had he given a little wince? What had she done? Maybe it was her use of the word ‘short’. He was obviously super-sensitive and she’d hurt his feelings. Subconsciously, she’d drawn attention to his height, or lack of it. Mental note not to use the word short again.

She asked him about his journey to the hotel and got an almost funny anecdote in reply.

Half French, Cuban-music-loving Dominic: it was obvious the French genes were strong, he was handsome in a dark and brooding kind of way, wore his shirt unbuttoned low and would have looked at home in a Parisian café puffing on a Gitane.

He should have been very promising date material. But eight inches . . . eight inches was quite a gap to overcome. Even sitting down, his head was tilted up to
 
meet her eye level, which whizzed Annie back in time to dancing with boys a whole head and neck shorter than her, making her feel like an overgrown freak.

‘Your nephew’s at St Vincent’s!’ she exclaimed, because they had just made this discovery. ‘Small world.’

He gave the little wince again. Ooops.

As the first course had arrived, they began to talk about favourite foods; vegetables, to be precise.

‘Aubergine in a tomato ragout,’ he was telling her.

‘Dwarf beans, steamed with butter, delicious,’ Annie said.

Dwarf?? Why did she have to say dwarf? Wasn’t ‘beans’ description enough?

Lloyd shot her a wink. Was he just being friendly or had he noticed her unfortunate choice of words? By the way, that was Lloyd, property developer, divorced, no children, large house in Wimbledon, hobbies: jazz and windsurfing – Lucinda had her uses.

‘Have you been dinner dating long?’ she asked Dominic, changing direction away from miniature food.

‘A year or so,’ he admitted.

‘Met any interesting people?’ She wondered if he’d had more luck than her.

‘Lots. Lots of interesting people – but nothing serious.’

After a few moments of attempting to make chit-chat with taciturn Will, Annie turned back to Dominic as it was hard to wrestle Lloyd from Lucinda’s focused attention for more than a moment or two.

‘I love her, she’s adorable . . .’ Dominic was telling Maisie about his long-standing admiration for the French actress Audrey Tatou.

‘Oh, I feel the same way about Billy Crystal,’ Annie chipped in. ‘Although he’s obviously tiny.’ It was out of her mouth before she could even think about it.

Dominic’s smile was definitely too tight at the edges.

‘So, tell me about your gardening work?’ she asked, deciding any sort of apology would just make things worse.

This turned out to be a good question. Dominic was very enthusiastic about his job and talked with animation about the Modern Garden.

Annie and several other diners listened closely, chipping in with questions about their own little plots, wondering if he could offer a few tips. This was one of
 
the many sad things about getting older, Roddy always used to joke; suddenly everyone’s as interested in gardens and where to score the best bedding plants as they used to be in drugs. Bird-watching no longer meant checking out the hot chicks, but setting out feeding tables and encouraging the starlings. ‘From big tits to blue tits: it’s downhill all the way,’ had been Roddy’s take on it.