Celebrity Shopper (25 page)

Elena removed the memory card from Sye’s camera and slipped it into her laptop, then she downloaded all the photographs he had taken of her in her George V bed.

Her eye was attracted to the many frames he’d shot of her with her dress slipping from her shoulders as she sat on the rumpled bedclothes. Although the pose was sexy, it was also extremely elegant, because the dress was a sophisticated gumetal grey silk. There was one photo in particular that she really liked. An image like that would be great for a Perfect Dress marketing campaign.

Once the pictures were safely stored on her computer, Elena erased each and every one of them from Sye’s card. Despite her very good first impressions, she kept telling herself that she didn’t know him, so therefore she couldn’t possibly trust him.

Elena was just slotting the cleaned-up memory card back into the camera when she heard a voice behind her.

‘Tut, tut, and I thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship,’ Sye teased.

Ed in bed:

White T-shirt (Boden)
Boxers (present from Owen)
Thick towelling dressing gown
(White Company via Annie)
Pocket contents (tissues, breadsticks, dummies)
Total est. cost: £90

‘Croak …’

When Annie opened the front door of her family home, the first thought that struck her was how quiet it was. Then she considered the cold.

Usually, pulling open the front door meant being hit by a blast of noise, warmth and often the smell of something delicious already cooking.

It was one of Annie’s favourite moments of the day. Arriving home, she could feel her shoulders relax and her face soften into a smile as she prepared to see all her favourite people.

But today the house was silent and as cold as an empty church hall.

‘Guys?’ Annie shouted out. ‘Where are you?’

They had to be in, it was 10.30 p.m. Where else would they be?

Now Annie could hear Dave burst into a volley of barks. It was coming from upstairs.

‘Guys!’ Annie called out again. ‘Are you upstairs?’

She dumped her bags in the hallway, stepped out of her shoes and began to head up the stairs.

Going up without shoes on turned out to be a mistake. How could she have forgotten about all the little lumps and chunks of plaster all over the place? Now that she was on the first floor, Annie decided before going in to see her family, she would just take the few extra stairs up to the attic floor to see what had really happened to the roof.

When she got there she was astonished at the damage.

The hole in the ceiling and, above it, the roof, was at least three feet square; there was a great rotten rafter dangling down dangerously and the large blue tarpaulin which had been hastily rigged up seemed to be bulging ominously with rainwater.

A big chunk of plaster had been gouged out of the wall where Al’s falling hammer had struck against it with force.

Annie might have sworn, but somehow, what with having tiny children and being on TV, she’d got out of the habit, so the only words that issued from under her breath were: ‘Oh. My. Good. Grief.’

‘Annie?’

She heard Ed call her from their bedroom so she left the scene of the roof disaster and headed back down to the first floor.

Opening the door, she was taken aback at the scene in here as well.

Ed was in the centre of the big bed in his pyjamas looking utterly exhausted, and, as an added attraction, his hair was practically standing on end with the amount of dirt and dust it had accumulated in the thirty-six hours since she’d last seen him.

Lying on his chest was Minnie, who looked up at Annie, displaying a snot-caked nose. To Ed’s left was Micky, already asleep, but making the wheezing, rattling snores of a baby whose lungs are full of phlegm.

On Ed’s right was Dave – up on the bed! – snuggled next to Owen, who was also in pyjamas, with a remote control in each hand. These were pointed at the small TV which Annie recognized as the one from Lana’s room.

It was stiflingly hot, the
two
electric heaters plugged in beside the bed had obviously been running all evening.

The bed was piled high with duvets, sleeping bags and several large cardboard pizza boxes. There was also a white polystyrene box. Coleslaw? she wondered. Well, at least they’d been eating their greens.

On the bedside table stood a cluster of empty milk bottles and …
unbelievable
… jars of baby food with the spoons still stuck inside the remaining orange goo at the bottom.

Jars?
Jars!
Ed had obviously lost it. Ed would never, ever dream of feeding his precious, pampered babies jar food unless he was at his wits’ end.

The schedule … the baby Mozart … clearly things had not exactly been running to plan today.

‘Hi,’ Annie said gently, ‘how are you all doing?’

‘Great!’ was Owen’s enthusiastic response. ‘Totally great. We’ve all moved in here, apart from Lana who’s moved to Greta’s. We’ve got telly, we’ve got pizza, it’s finally warmed up. Minnie and Dad aren’t too perky, but otherwise, we are great. Aren’t we, Mickster? Oh …’
Owen could now see that his buddy had zonked out.

Annie came and sat down on the edge of the bed. She kissed Owen on the forehead; she ran a hand over Micky’s head, Minnie’s hot little cheeks and finally Ed’s face.

‘Blimey,’ was her verdict, ‘so is this what happens when I go away for two days? You revert to bachelorhood – go feral? And all catch a virus?’

Ed tried to say hello or make some kind of response to Annie’s arrival but all that came out was a volley of coughs so sudden it made Minnie cry.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ Annie removed her damp raincoat, flung it at a nearby chair, took Minnie from Ed’s arms and realized that she’d better get busy. ‘Have we got medicine for the twins?’ she asked Ed. ‘Have we got honey, lemon and aspirin for you? Is Mum OK? Her lights are out, otherwise I’d have gone down.’

Ed croaked back a ‘Yes’ to her in reply to all of these questions.

‘Can we move one heater so that Owen can at least get some peace and quiet in his room?’

‘Oh!’ came Owen’s groan. ‘I don’t want to go to bed.’

Another ‘Yes’ was croaked at her.

Annie spurred herself into a frenzy of activity. The twins’ sheets were stripped and replaced. The babies were put into fresh nappies, fresh pyjamas, dosed with medicine, sponged and finally put down to sleep.

Then Annie stripped her and Ed’s bed and sent Ed for a hot bath and hairwash, despite his croaks and protests.

When he finally came back into the bedroom, he was tucked in with medicine and a hot drink.

‘Maybe you’re just exhausted,’ she told him. ‘Maybe if you could just have a really, really long sleep, you’d finally wake up feeling better.’ She handed him the present she’d bought for him at the airport: a pair of hi-tech travellers’
earplugs. ‘Wear these,’ she instructed. ‘When the twins wake up, I’ll deal with them as quietly as I can and you sleep. OK?’

Ed was too tired to protest. In clean, ironed pyjamas, he climbed into clean, ironed bed-linen. This was like a dream. The crying had stopped, the pizza boxes were gone, the rumpled, sweaty, hairy bedclothes and sleeping bags had disappeared.

Annie had brought order, calm and quiet back with her from Paris.

She also smelled delicious.

‘Did you buy new perfume?’ he asked. ‘Duty free?’

Annie thought of the beautiful rose-pink packaging carefully tied and taped around the things she had bought in Paris. On the journey back, before she’d realized how bad things were at home, she’d imagined herself showering and then, when the children were asleep, treating Ed to a little fashion show of her own.

She’d not thought at all about the roof hole, the viruses and the general chaos that awaited her.

‘No,’ she told him, running a hand over his still damp hair, ‘I bought something much, much more exciting than perfume. I think you’re going to like it.’

‘Mmmm …’ Ed said, not able to raise his head or even flicker his eyelids at her. Within moments, he was fast asleep.

Annie went out of the room and into her little office because there were three calls she wanted to make before she unpacked and showered off the long day.

‘C’mon, boy,’ she urged Dave, who was now trotting at her heels. He was a people dog and didn’t really like to be left alone for too long.

Annie’s first call was to Lana.

‘Hey, you,’ she said as soon as her daughter answered.

‘Hi, Mum, are you back?’ came the reply.

‘You didn’t fall out with everyone at home, did you?’ was Annie’s first question.

‘No, I just couldn’t stand it there any longer. It’s absolutely freezing, the babies cry all the time and Dad and Owen just want to eat pizza.’

‘I’m sorry. But it’s OK, I’m back and it’s all going to get sorted.’

‘There’s a hole in the kitchen covered with tarpaulin and now there’s a hole in the roof covered with tarpaulin. The builder’s in hospital and … good luck!’

‘Janucek, he’ll come to the rescue,’ Annie said hopefully.

‘Please don’t run off with Janucek,’ Lana warned in a teasing voice.

‘Same to you!’ Annie replied. ‘How’s school?’

‘School is fine, I am working like a slave.’

‘Good! Er … and when are you going to come home?’ Annie asked. ‘Should I speak to Greta’s mum? Explain to her that you’re not actually moving in on a full-time basis?’

‘Fix the roof and the kitchen wall, then I’ll come home,’ Lana promised.

Next, Annie tried to phone Connor but when she just got his voicemail, she wondered if he was screening.

‘Hey, Connor, can we talk?’ she began her message. ‘Have you forgiven me yet? I hope so. Love you. I told Vickie from
Pssst!
magazine that you are wonderful and so much more buff than in that horrible photo on the cover.’

Now, although it was late, Annie also wanted to call her sister.

She listened to the ringing at the other end of the phone. When the voice at the other end answered, sounding so sleepy, Annie immediately apologized. ‘Sorry, sorry, babes, I know it’s late, but I really wanted to speak to you.’

‘Annie! And you’ve woken me up,’ came the grouchy response.

‘I’m sorry,’ Annie soothed, ‘I’m really sorry I’ve not phoned you properly for days. That bloody
Pssst!
magazine say they’ve got an interview with our dad running next week and I don’t know what we should do about that.’

‘What?’ Dinah sounded shocked. ‘They’ve tracked him down?’

‘I think so. I don’t know, all I’ve read is that some sort of exclusive about our dad is coming out in the magazine.’

‘Oh God, this is all my fault,’ Dinah said.

‘No, don’t blame yourself. It’s their fault. They must have realized there was a mystery and they’ve gone off and done a bit of research.’

‘Why have we never done that research?’ Dinah wondered.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we’ve never been that interested. I don’t care about him. I wish he was dead, to be honest. That would be much more convenient.’

‘Annie!’ Dinah scolded, but then she was a much more tender-hearted person. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow. How was Paris?’ she asked with a yawn.

‘It was completely, unbelievably hectic. But I was in a hotel for a night, so I got to sleep for one whole, unbroken, seven-hour stretch. It was incredible.’

‘But how was Paris? The shows? Exciting? Glamorous?’

‘Oh yeah, all of those,’ Annie answered with sarcasm. ‘Didn’t you know that the fashion world is just one long fun-fest?’

‘Models? Catwalks? Amazing outfits? Photographers? C’mon, I want details.’ Dinah was interested now.

So Annie told her sister a little bit about the Svetlana and
Elena fiasco and how they were still waiting for their first order.

‘How did Ed cope?’ Dinah asked, once she’d heard enough about Paris.

‘Ah …’ Annie wasn’t quite sure where to begin. ‘Well, he’s had a lot on. The builder made a great hole in the roof—’

‘As well as the kitchen?’ Dinah interrupted.

‘Yeah. Then he fell off his ladder and broke his wrist.’

‘No!’

‘The twins have a virus or something and Ed looks like he hasn’t slept for forty-eight hours and has been living off pizza all that time.’

‘He’s exhausted,’ Dinah pointed out. ‘If he was a new mum, this would be the point where friends would intervene with a nanny, a spa weekend and a hairdressing voucher.’

‘Yeah, and someone would step in and sleep-train the babies. It’s totally impossible. They wake up every two hours!’ Annie added.

‘You need to look after him a bit.’

‘I know,’ Annie agreed, ‘or he’s never going to find out about all the nice underwear I bought in Paris. It’ll just be stuck in its little pink carrier bag for ever.’

‘Have you got a busy day tomorrow?’ Dinah wondered.