Celebrity Shopper (20 page)

Celeste gave a little clap and began to speak to her grandmother in French. Then she turned back to the others and asked: ‘What you think? She say she have friend who could play organ music here tomorrow.’

Elena and Svetlana appeared to be too surprised to be able to speak. They were looking at each other in the very dim light.

‘Will the candles be enough? For taking pictures?’ Annie asked Rich.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘it’s a very dark church, even in the daytime. It’ll be very moody, but you know, the photographers will use flash and as for me, I’ll just put the camera on the night-time setting and … hey, it’ll be something different.’

Suddenly Elena seemed to be galvanized once again. Springing up from her hard wooden seat, she exclaimed: ‘Come on, we light up all the candles we can find and we see how it look.’

The fashion buyer:
Multi-coloured knit dress (Missoni)
Simple grey wool coat (MaxMara)
Grey heeled boots (Chloé)
Aqua blue patent shoulder bag (Mulberry)
Prescription sunglasses (Boots)
Total est. cost: £2,800

‘What on earth …?’

‘Did you survive the night, babes?’ Annie asked gently down the phone when she woke up at 6.30 a.m. in her hotel room the next morning.

Unlike Svetlana and Elena, who would be waking up in the luxury of their George V suite, Annie and Rich were staying in rather more functional rooms at a business hotel on the edge of the financial district.

‘Yeah, we survived,’ Ed sleepily assured her, ‘but I’ll take Minnie for a check-up at the doctor’s this morning. How about you?’

‘It was a very, very late night,’ Annie said and gave a
yawn as if to make her point. ‘I’m just about to get dressed, put on my TV face, then Rich and I are heading over to the venue first thing to help get it all set up.’

‘Put on your TV face?’ Ed repeated. ‘What? No make-up artist?’

‘No! No Ginger, and even the multi-skilled Amelia didn’t come with us in the end. Too much to do in London for Tamsin, apparently. How will I cope? No, don’t worry, we’re filming by candlelight, no one will get to see me in all my truly hideous detail.’

‘You know you’re lovely,’ Ed insisted.

‘Aw—’ But before Annie could say something nice back, a sharp cry attracted Ed’s attention.

‘Got to go,’ he told her, ‘fighting has broken out in the playpen.’

By 9.45 a.m., fifteen minutes before curtain up, the church hall was overwhelmed with the smells of perfume, clouds of hairspray and the lashings and lashings of deodorant being used to hold nervous sweat at bay.

Annie, plus every one of her ‘models’, had been made up, dressed up, tweaked, teased and prepared in every way that they could think of, so now they were all peeking out of the church hall windows and anxiously watching the arrival of the buyers and the press.

In the cool light of day in the drab church hall, their elaborate plans, concocted last night in a fug of darkness, candlelight and several bottles of wine, seemed … well … a little childish, amateur and definitely unprofessional.

Look at these terrifying fashionistas walking towards the church!

Annie had been a personal shopper for long enough to know that these were very serious fashion people. They carried thousand-pound Chloé and Bottega Veneta bags.
They wore Chanel sunglasses, although it wasn’t even remotely sunny; Fendi fur-trimmed coats were slung over their shoulders.

Annie could feel her heart sink, then sink some more. She just hoped no one would actually laugh outright, out loud at their poor little show.

Then she stole a little glance at Yvette and took heart once again. At least Yvette looked like a proper model. She was the real deal. A catwalk panther, about to stalk down the runway, take out her talons at the bottom and claw. Bite even.

Yvette had strapped mighty stilettoed boots on to the ends of her long legs and they made the cobalt-blue dress look slinky and dangerous. She also kept bursting into little snatches of song to gee everyone up.

Anoush looked pixieish and cute as a button, Celeste, curvaceous and gorgeous, Grand-mère of course looked
pleine de dignité
in her dress and Annie … well, Annie just hoped she looked on the better side of normal, even though she was wearing a red tulle veil that would have been more at home on a flamenco dancer, or maybe a lamp.

‘Nervous?’ Annie asked Anoush as she walked over towards her.

‘A little bit,’ Anoush confided. ‘I hope we remember where to walk and where to stand.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Annie said, hoping the same thing herself. ‘We just need to go slowly and then we won’t trip and fall, or bump into each other. That’s the main thing.’

Annie took another look out of the window and saw Svetlana laughing with a small group of guests.

Svetlana was a practised veteran of tens of thousands of cocktail parties and high-society events. She was a natural out there making small talk and no doubt telling everyone
how exciting this was and how thrilled she was, building up their anticipation for the event.

Every time Annie flicked a glimpse at her wristwatch, it seemed to have jumped much further forward than she expected.

The door of the hall opened and there was Rich, camera on his shoulder: ‘One more shot of backstage,’ he said with a grin, ‘then I need to man the action stations in there. Are we all ready for curtain up, girls?’

Annie felt a sickening lurch of nerves, but knew she had to hide them as well as she possibly could. Nervousness was horribly contagious and she wanted everyone to exude calm and sexy confidence.

‘Smile for the camera,’ she urged everyone.

Once Rich was out of the hall, she called all the girls together.

‘Group hug,’ she commanded, ‘but gently, we don’t want to mess our hair.’ When no one seemed to know what she meant, she spread out her arms and tucked Celeste under one and stretched up to include Yvette under the other, and then she encouraged everyone, including Grand-mère, to do the same.

When they were all in the cramped huddle, she began with: ‘Anoush, you translate please. We all look wonderful. We are all beautiful in our different ways. We are going to go out there and show off our beautiful dresses on our wonderful selves.’

She paused while Anoush caught up with the French version.

‘
Pleines de dignité
,’ Grand-mère added at the end of Annie’s little pep talk.

It wasn’t a bad idea, if they were all dignified, no one could laugh at them, could they?

‘
Dignité
,’ Annie repeated.

Elena came into the hall, looking pale with worry. The strain of being the lynchpin for this event was starting to show.

‘Are you ready?’ Elena asked after she’d looked everyone over with a critical eye. ‘You look really good,’ she added, voice full of anxiety, unable to stop herself from going over to Celeste to make a little adjustment to the short netting veil pulled over her eyes.

‘We’re ready,’ Annie answered for the models. ‘We’re going to knock your socks off,’ she added, sounding much more confident than she felt.

‘OK, come and wait in the vestibule. I will tell you when to come out.’

Crammed into the dimly lit vestibule, Annie listened to the organ music and inhaled the thick incense that was now burning in the church to make it as authentic and atmospheric as possible.

Glancing over the other models as they waited nervously under their head-dresses and veils, she thought again of brides. How many brides had waited in this cramped space? Smelling incense and listening to the organ play as they prepared to walk down the aisle in their one and only catwalk moment, a new, strange and thrilling life ahead of them?

For a flickering moment, Annie considered the question Ed asked every so often. Would she be a bride once again? As soon as she even thought of the question, she felt the inexplicable fear …

The organ stopped and now the church was in silence. All the models knew that when the music began to play again, that was their cue to start the show.

In the silence, Annie thought she could hear not just her own heart beating, but the thumping of all the nervous
hearts around her. Only Grand-mère looked serene. She was too old for nerves, she’d told them earlier in the day, nerves were bad for the heart.

It was simple enough, the plan for the show. Everyone was going to file in slowly, one by one, walk down the aisle, turn at the top and take their place there until the last model, Yvette, had done her walk. Then they would file out, rush to the church hall, change dresses and go through it all once again. While they were changing, Elena was going to talk about the dresses, the fabrics and the prices. Easy. So why was Annie, who was watched by nearly two million viewers on TV every week, feeling as if she might actually puke with panic?

Then the organ struck up, the vestibule door opened and before Anoush could even think about it, she walked out and the show began.

Within moments, Celeste followed, then Grand-mère, then Annie.

Walking down the aisle to the dramatic strains filling the space, Annie kept her eyes ahead of her. She felt grateful for the red veil shielding her face and her features from the crowd.

Although she didn’t look at it, she could feel the audience. The church was full of the warmth and subdued hush of a densely filled space. It was packed, the aisle felt narrow because black-clad arms, black jackets, bags and blond heads were all edging in to it.

She walked carefully, one hand on her hip as she attempted to look carefree and nonchalant. All she was really concentrating on was the distance between her and Grand-mère. She had to maintain it. That was her only real job here.

Already, she could sense that Yvette had stepped out of the vestibule. Heads were turning to look at her
and there was a sort of rustle of interest from the crowd.

Yvette in her shiny high-heeled boots, blue dress and orange hair, trimmed with orange net, strode down the aisle. She was a total natural who managed to convey just the right amount of disdain to the audience.

Annie turned left at the top of the aisle, took her place beside Grand-mère and turned towards the audience. From what she could read on the faces, the audience was watching carefully and paying attention, but no one was smiling or giving away the slightest sign of approval. So much for creating a wedding-like atmosphere; this was like being at a very fashionable funeral: everyone was dressed in black and looking incredibly grave.

Annie hadn’t expected high fashion to be quite so serious.

But, of course, maybe it had to be taken so seriously, because everyone who didn’t take it super-seriously laughed at it.

Yvette finished her walk down the aisle, twirled elegantly and came to stand beside Annie, though not too closely because the wrought-iron holder with the forty or so little candles was blazing with a surprising heat between them.

As Annie had twirled herself into position she had noticed with a flicker of worry how dangerously close to the candles her nylon netting had swished. Health and Safety wouldn’t have been very impressed with this artistic little fire hazard, that was for sure.

Once Yvette had posed for a moment or two, Anoush began to lead the models towards the back of the church. As soon as the vestibule door was closed they rushed over the courtyard to the church hall to change in a frenzy of relieved giggles.

‘Was it OK?’ Anoush asked Annie. ‘Do you think we did OK?’

‘We did fine,’ Annie assured her.

‘I miss the DJ,’ Yvette said, snatching her white dress from the rail. ‘Is hard to rock to church music.’

As the rest of them dropped their dresses on the floor and wriggled into the new outfits, bras, stocking, G-strings and all on display, Yvette and Grand-mère turned away, trying to maintain some privacy despite the need for speed.

‘Yvette, you are so skinny, you hardly need a body-stocking,’ Annie had to say, although she was so tightly pulled into one herself that bending over was an effort.

‘Oh, you would not like to see me naked,’ Yvette replied.

There was no time to ask why not because head-dresses and veils had to be arranged, lipstick touched up and everyone checked over because it was already time to crowd back into the vestibule.

Pushing the door open just a tiny crack, Annie could listen in to the final part of Elena’s pitch. She realized at once that every word was falling into a sea of silence.

There just wasn’t any feedback. The crowd was not wowed. There was no rustle, no stirring, no whisper of interest. It felt flat and dead out there, smoky and stuffy.

Annie looked over the models huddled into the vestibule. They were amateurs putting on a pantomime and it was flopping. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she could brace herself for round two.

Elena finished her speech and it was met with silence, not even a ripple of polite applause. As she walked up through the church to the vestibule door, to come and tell the models to begin the next part of the show, Annie could see that she looked flushed and embarrassed.

‘You OK?’ Annie whispered as Elena approached the door.