Celebrity Shopper (29 page)

‘What a colourful life you lead,’ Tamsin said.

‘So, hillwalking in heels. What’s your plan?’ Annie wondered.

‘I’m not expecting you to scale Ben Nevis,’ Tamsin assured her. ‘Amelia’s been speaking to a very enthusiastic guide. Plus, what do you think of the idea of using a little digital video recorder yourself? To give it a very homemade, video diary kind of feel? I mean, if we send you up with Rich or Bob in tow, then everyone knows you have a film crew with you, so there’s no risk, no element of danger.’

‘What kind of danger am I supposed to be in?’ Annie exclaimed. ‘The only risk I’m prepared to run is twisting my ankle. That’s it. I don’t want to fall off a bloomin’ mountain!’

As soon as the car had pulled up outside her house after work, Annie knew she wanted to go and see her mum before she got embroiled with all the other members of her family.

She walked down the garden path towards the basement entrance and rang the bell. Fern opened the door just moments later.

‘Hello, there you are!’ were Fern’s words of greeting.
‘Come on in and have some wine with me. I’m having a great day.’

‘Oh good,’ Annie said, landing a kiss on her mum’s cheek. ‘What’ve you been up to today then? Burning all your library books in the middle of the bedroom? Gardening in your pyjamas?’ she joked, only because that was how their relationship had always been; Annie had always been allowed to tease her mum.

‘W-what?’ Fern turned towards her, looking all hazy and lost. ‘Library books? Do I have library books?’

When Annie looked back at her in distress, not knowing what to say, a grin split Fern’s face and she said: ‘Gotcha!’

‘Mum!’ Annie told her off. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t ever do that!’

‘Sit,’ Fern instructed Annie as they came into the little sitting room. ‘I’ll get the glasses and whatnot. I have a plan, Annie, I’m very excited! And I’m feeling good, darlin’, I think the pills are working.’

‘Well, they did say it would take time,’ Annie called after her as she disappeared out of the room.

When Fern came back, she poured them each a small glass of white wine then settled herself down on the chair opposite Annie’s.

She looked unusually cheerful, which made Annie nervous. What was coming next?

‘I’ve spent the afternoon getting Ed to look things up for me on the internet.’

That was sweet, ‘look things up’, as if the internet were some sort of library or glorified phone book.

‘And?’ Annie asked.

‘I’m going to go home,’ Fern announced, ‘and I’m moving a toy-boy in with me.’

‘What?’ Annie spluttered, sending wine rushing off in all sorts of dangerous directions.

Fern just laughed. ‘I’m serious,’ she said, ‘I’ve found a student who’s going to come and live with me. Help with the gardening and the cleaning and make sure I don’t get up to anything bizarre. He’s studying nursing at the college in town.’

‘He? But who is this person?’ Annie demanded. ‘This is scary! He could be an axe-murderer!’

‘Stefano, from Chile. We’re going to meet him, me and Ed, but his references are excellent. This is all my idea, Annie, by the way. You can’t blame Ed for any of it. So, Stefano gets free accommodation and I get free help. It’s going to work out perfectly.’

Reaching over to touch her daughter on the hand, Fern added: ‘I have to go home, darlin’. I keep telling you that. I have to find a way to get home and I think this is the way. You can put me wherever you like when I’ve lost it,’ she added, shooting her daughter the cheerful smile which was meant to cover up the great sorrow behind these words, ‘but for now, I want to be in my own home. I’ve stabilized, Annie, I know it. I feel fine. The doctor hoped this would happen.’

Before Annie could make any reply, or could think of anything sensible to say, there was another ring at the door.

‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Annie asked.

‘No. Must be Ed, wondering where you’ve got to.’

‘I’ll go,’ Annie said, jumping up.

‘No, no,’ Fern insisted, ‘sit, drink … enjoy another three seconds of spare time.’

‘No, I’ll go!’ Annie protested.

Although she made it to the door first, she could hear her mother following on right behind her.

She turned the Yale lock, opened up and saw a leathery skinned man of about sixty standing in front of her. He had
a head of thick grey hair, cut short, and a weather-beaten face with a map of deep-set wrinkles running from his eyes. Dressed in a slouchy navy jacket and a pair of jeans, he was short but very upright, almost standing to attention. Somehow, to Annie, he looked as if he should be wearing a cap. He almost seemed to be missing some kind of headgear.

‘Hello. I’m looking for Fern Mitchell,’ were his first words.

‘She’s right here,’ Annie replied, gesturing for her mother to come forward.

‘Are you Annie?’ the man asked just as Fern got to the door.

‘Yes,’ Annie replied with surprise. ‘Have we met before?’

At this, the man shook his head slowly, cast his eyes down to the hands clasped tightly in front of him and said: ‘Oh dear, oh dear …’

Fern was standing beside Annie now and as she laid eyes on the man at the door, her hand flew up to her chest: ‘Oh my good gracious!’ she said with real shock.

Annie looked at her mother, then back at the man.

She didn’t know why, but she could feel the hairs rise up on the back of her neck.

‘
Good gracious
!’ Fern repeated.

Annie looked at the man very closely, scrutinizing the eyes beyond the crinkles and the mouth slightly upturned in a smile, which looked deeply apologetic.

‘Mick,’ Fern’s mother said much more calmly now, ‘I think you’d better come in.’

The man gave a nod and Annie felt both her eyes and her mouth widen in horror.

Mick?

Mick!

As far as Annie knew there had only ever been one Mick in Fern’s life.

Could this really be him? No. Surely not.

Mick was long gone, had not been heard from in years and years. Mick was not expected to ever return again …

Totally sexy Sye:

White cotton button-down shirt (Brooks Brothers)
Beige multi-pocketed cargos (Patagonia)
Leather bracelet (Mom)
Multi-coloured fabric bracelets (a special ex)
Hiking boots (Hi-Tec)
Total est. cost: £210

‘All yours, baby …’

In a cosy booth in an old-fashioned pub in Kensington, a very good-looking couple had forgotten all about the drinks on the table in front of them.

The blond girl had both her arms wrapped around the slim waist of the slightly scruffily dressed guy beside her. The guy, kissing her probingly on the mouth, wished only that there was somewhere more private where they could wrap their legs around each other too.

‘Sye?’ Elena asked when she finally broke the kiss off and came up for air. ‘You can use the photo you took. I’ll sign the form.’

Sye’s green-brown eyes were fixed on hers. He didn’t think he’d ever, ever felt more attracted to anyone in his whole life.

‘Aha,’ he murmured, just wanting the kissing to carry on again.

He was thinking about the logistics: he was staying on a fold-down sofa with a friend who had small children. There was no taking Elena back there. From what he could understand about her situation, she was living with her mother and stepfather, plus more children. So male visitors weren’t exactly going to be welcomed there either, were they?

He was wondering if they could get a hotel room. But in Kensington? His eyes watered at the thought of how much that might cost.

‘But then can I keep the photo after
Women’s Wear Daily
has published it? Can it be mine?’ Elena was asking him.

‘Yeah,’ he told her, ‘you sign a release form for me, then I’ll sign the rights over to you … so that when you’ve dumped me and made the photo into a billboard, twenty-four feet by twelve, I won’t be able to claim a penny. Is that your plan?’ he asked, kissing her neck.

‘Yeah!’ she teased. ‘How did you guess?’

It wasn’t a billboard she had in mind – well, not yet anyway, she just wanted to own that photo in case she needed an advertising shot.

‘Happens all the time. Gorgeous but ruthless young businesswomen seduce photographers and steal all their copyrights,’ Sye said.

‘Poor, poor you,’ Elena replied with a throaty giggle. ‘How long are you in London?’ she added, her lips pressed right up against his ear, which seemed to call every hair from the top of his neck to the base of his spine to attention.

‘Two days,’ he told her. ‘And I have lots of work to do … unfortunately.’

‘Are you working tonight?’

‘Not until eight thirty,’ he told her, hoping she was going to suggest where they could go to be alone together.

‘Then we go to hotel,’ she said, scrunching up the fabric of his shirt in her hand, because the thought of ripping it off was uppermost in her mind.

‘I’m not sure if I can afford a hotel round here.’ He wanted to warn her straightaway.

‘No, I know somewhere … friend of friend …’ she added, with something of a dark look.

Sye felt another surge of desire. There was so much to know about her, so much to find out. He didn’t doubt for a moment that it was all intriguing.

‘Let’s go now,’ he said, wrapping her hand in his, wanting to pull her away from the table and go immediately to wherever it was they were going.

‘But first we need to sign,’ Elena said, all business sense not quite forgotten. ‘Later, we forget … or maybe fall out.’

Sye shook his head at the idea of arguing with her. ‘I don’t think so.’

Elena, head tilted flirtatiously, handed him a pen, and then from her mock-croc handbag she also brought out a form.

‘You sign this to say photo is mine,’ she insisted.

Sye reached down to the largest flap pocket on his trousers and brought out a rolled-up sheet of paper.

‘Model release form,’ he explained.

They exchanged papers, Elena found another pen and signed hers. Sye read over his typed sheets carefully, pushing his hair thoughtfully from his face.

For a moment his hand hovered over the page and she felt a little flutter of worry. Maybe he wasn’t going to sign.

But then the pen hit the page and he signed with a flourish: ‘All yours, baby. You’re worth it. Perfect Dress is going to be big, better believe me.’ He smiled at her and winked, delighted that he knew something about this that she didn’t know yet. But she would. She was going to find out very soon.

‘Now …’ He rolled up his form, tucked it into his pocket and handed Elena hers, together with her pen. ‘Formalities over, I think we should go to your friend’s hotel and be very, very informal.’

Elena took the silver pen between her fingers. Sye leaned back, untucked his shirt and lifted it just far enough to reveal a glimpse of taut, tanned stomach. ‘Could you sign just here as well?’ he asked, pointing down to the gap between waistband and shirt.

‘Oh yeah.’ Elena smiled foxily at him and, reaching down with her pen, she too used the words: ‘All yours, baby.’

Harry, home from work, had padded all over the four floors of Svetlana’s Mayfair mansion in a bid to find his wife.

He’d seen Maria and the boys, who were very busy with their whole bedtime routine upstairs in the attic rooms.

Maria had been rubbing Michael dry with an enormous white towel as Petrov, in blue and white striped pyjamas, brushed his teeth.

‘Mrs Roscoff downstairs, in the study, still working,’ Maria had informed him with a shrug of her shoulders, as if she couldn’t understand what all this working silliness was about. She still fully expected it to come to an end just like the other fads Svetlana had adopted and then abandoned: the all-raw diet, golf lessons, learning Arabic and so on.

‘Mrs Roscoff?’ Harry repeated with a smile. ‘You know you are the only person who calls her that.’

‘Is her name!’ Maria said with some indignation. ‘And you much nicer husband than last one.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry told her. ‘Boys, I’ll be up in ten minutes to read to you.’

This news produced two cheeky little grins, which Harry found exceptionally rewarding.

Entering the chic little study room all the way back down the stairs in the basement, Harry saw that Svetlana was sitting at the desk in front of the computer. Her back was to him and she was deep in conversation.

He couldn’t resist the temptation of tiptoeing up from behind and wrapping his arms lovingly around her.

Unfortunately, this made her scream with fright. Mid phone call. ‘Aaaargh!’ she shrieked and dropped her handset.

She turned to see what was attacking her and when she saw her husband, she pulled a furious face at him.

Not exactly the welcome he’d been expecting.

‘I’m busy,’ she hissed. ‘Very, very important call.’

‘Sorry!’ he whispered back and took several steps away from her, hoping she would finish soon.