Celebrity Shopper (6 page)

‘Pinkie?’ Lana had to ask.

‘Er … yes. That’s my
private
name for Mr MacPherson. You don’t need to know that and neither does anyone else at St Vincent’s.’

But Lana was already giggling. ‘That’s good,’ she told Ed, ‘he is very pink. In fact, he’s always pink. He’s either sunburned or incredibly worked up about something.’

‘
Jesus Christ Superstar
! For St Vincent’s parents?’ Ed was still trying to come to terms with this news. ‘Has he run it past Ketteringham-Smith?’ he asked, invoking the name of the headmaster.

‘How would I know?’ Lana replied.

‘It’s only two weeks away … I should warn Pinkie. It could be hideously embarrassing; he could get the sack.’

‘For
Jesus Christ Superstar
?’

‘Ketteringham-Smith will be horrified. He’ll want holy music all the way. That’s the St Vincent’s tradition. You can jazz things up a bit at the summer concert or even Christmas, but messing with the Easter ceremonies … he will not like it one tiny little bit. Why didn’t Owen tell me about this? I’ve not heard Owen practising anything from
Superstar
.’

As he said these words, it occurred to Ed that for some weeks now, he hadn’t heard Owen practising his violin
at all. In fact, the only sounds coming from Owen’s room had been loud music blasting from his iPod speakers or that bloody electric guitar Annie had given him for Christmas.

He’d been meaning for ages to ask Owen how his violin was going, but the babies sucked up so much time and so much energy that he’d either been too busy or too exhausted to remember.

‘Owen is in the concert, isn’t he?’ Ed asked Lana.

Lana turned back to her potatoes and gave a shrug, determined not to land her little brother in anything. ‘You’ll have to ask him,’ she said.

Ed went immediately out into the hall and was about to shout for Owen to come down, but he remembered that the babies had just gone to bed, then there was a small
brrring
at the doorbell followed by the scamper and flurry of fur that was Dave, the small, wiry and extremely noisy family dog, rushing to sentry duty.

‘Shush!’ Ed grabbed hold of the dog and held his muzzle shut to demonstrate. ‘No barking,’ he said, but as Dave was almost deaf, this wasn’t very effective.

Dave issued two or three sharp little barks as Ed let Annie’s mother Fern in the front door.

‘Suppertime?’ Fern asked brightly.

‘Yes,’ Ed confirmed, ‘come in, take a seat. We’re nearly there.’

Fern had been living in the basement flat of Ed and Annie’s house for almost two months now. She’d been diagnosed with the earliest signs of dementia over a year ago now and the illness was progressing erratically. Sometimes she would be totally lucid, capable and normal for days, even weeks, but then if she got stressed or emotional, a cloud of confusion could come over her which was bewildering, not just for Fern but for everyone around her.

She was currently starting a new course of medication to keep the illness at bay and Annie had persuaded her mother to move into the basement flat until they could all be sure the treatment was working for her.

Ed and Annie didn’t mind Fern living with them one little bit; the person who really minded was Fern. Every day, she wanted to have the conversation with Annie about going home and, every day, Annie did her best to avoid it.

Ed walked with Fern towards the kitchen. Although it had only been a few hours since he’d last called in on her, he still asked: ‘How are you doing?’

‘Oh, fine,’ she told him, ‘I’ve spent all afternoon looking for … Lana!’ she interrupted herself. ‘Black and white stripes?’ She was referring to Lana’s top. ‘You just need a mask and a swag bag, then we’ll know you’re a robber.’

‘Thanks, Gran,’ Lana said with a smile. ‘You just need a walking stick and plastic pants, then we’ll know you’re an old lady.’

Ed froze in horror at the cheek of this remark, but Fern exploded into laughter.

Several minutes later, Annie and Owen came downstairs and soon the family’s evening meal was in full swing.

‘Have you heard from Nic?’ Annie asked her mother, referring to her other sister.

‘Nic, yes …’ Her mother paused, forkful of chicken in mid-air. ‘She’s going to come and see us as soon as she can and bring little Tara with her. Today has been a very good day, by the way,’ she added, ‘no white mists … well, not that I’ve noticed anyway; obviously if you go out into the garden and find my underwear hanging all over the bushes, then we’ll know otherwise. I’ve been looking for …’ She tailed off.

For a moment there was a little pause. Everyone was aware that Fern couldn’t remember what she’d been looking
for, but they tried not to panic. It didn’t necessarily mean anything scary.

‘Oh, never mind,’ Fern said finally, ‘it’ll come. Tell us all about the TV world today.’

Annie did, not mentioning a word about the threat she was under because everyone around this table so depended on her. Lana and Owen’s school fees; Ed’s unpaid sabbatical; Fern living downstairs in their basement flat – if Annie lost her job, it would affect everyone very badly. Better to just work on and keep it all to herself. Focus on making those two final episodes amazing.

Mouth full of salad, Owen butted in with the information that a jewellery designer had emailed Annie and wanted to be featured on her show.

Before Annie could reply, Fern looked up and blurted out: ‘That’s it! Jewellery! I’ve spent the whole afternoon looking for … for …’ but then she was groping about; whatever word or idea had glimmered in front of her had disappeared again. ‘Oh!’ she cried out in frustration. ‘I can’t bloody well remember.’

As she turned her face back down towards her plate, it didn’t escape Ed’s notice that both Annie and her mother had tears in their eyes.

‘Owen?’ Ed remembered, desperate to change the subject. ‘How’s the violin? What’s your part in the Easter concert?’

‘Uh oh,’ came Owen’s reply. Desperate to change the subject himself now, he threw in: ‘And when are you and Mum getting married?’

‘Uh oh …’ came Annie’s response.

Annie ready for bed:

Saggy PJ bottoms (La Senza)
Saggy white vest (M&S)
Pink maribou-trimmed mules (Agent Provocateur)
Frownies (Boots)
Crème de la Mer night cream (eBay)
Hand cream and white cotton gloves (Barielle)
Total est. cost: £270

‘Oh no … you can’t really be thinking … ?’

As Annie tiptoed into the dimly lit bedroom, Ed glanced over at her from his side of the bed. He frowned, and then, spotting the white gloves she was wearing to ‘turbo-charge her hand cream’ (apparently), he began to grin.

‘Oh no,’ he whispered, so as not to wake the twins asleep at the end of the bed, ‘not a mime show …’

‘For my hard-working hands,’ she informed him, also in whispers. The babies were like small unexploded bombs in the room; they could go off at any moment.

As Annie walked round the bed, so she could get in on
her side, Ed looked at her face, greased with a layer of cream and sporting those silly plastic strips that she taped to her forehead every night, supposedly to iron out her frown-lines. At least she’d stopped having her face injected with botulism … well, as far as he knew. He didn’t put it past her to sneak off every once in a while and have little tweaks made here and there.

She lay carefully back on the pillow, face, layer of cream and Frownies facing upwards, then she placed her gloved hands on top of the duvet.

‘That looks so relaxing,’ Ed told her. ‘You’re just going to nod off straightaway, aren’t you? Why don’t you put in your teeth-bleaching tray as well, just to help you doze off?’

‘Ed, I am so tired, I could be on a lilo at the top of a waterfall and I would sleep like a …’ She paused. There was no point saying she would sleep like a baby because those two at the end of the bed woke up every two hours and bawled.

‘Log,’ he finished her sentence.

Annie closed her eyes but Ed, propped up on his elbow, continued to look at her affectionately.

‘Go to sleep,’ she told him.

‘I don’t want to,’ he whispered and reached over to put the strap which had slipped from her shoulder back into place.

‘Oh no … you can’t really be thinking … ?’ she began.

‘I’m always thinking … there’s no harm in just thinking,’ he said and ran his fingers gently round her shoulder; the merest touch, but it seemed to bring the hairs on the surface of her skin to life.

He touched the side of her neck with the same very gentle, tickling caress.

‘I’m not doing anything,’ she told him, but she did nothing to move his hand away.

‘Neither am I,’ he replied, but his hand was still on her
skin, ruffling the downy hairs, touching the very tips of her nerve-endings and making them tingle.

When he slid the V-neck of her vest down, revealing her breast, she didn’t move, just lay with her eyes closed, perfectly still.

‘I’m just kissing your nipple,’ he whispered, ‘don’t read anything into it. Don’t expect it to lead anywhere …’

But then she felt the roughness of his stubble and his warm, wet tongue against her. Her nipple puckered up to attention and she immediately felt blood rushing from her stomach down to tingle between her legs.

Ed’s fingers moved over the skin on her stomach, then walked lower.

‘Just kissing your stomach,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t read anything into it … don’t expect …’

But his fingers were touching expertly, parting the skin and finding absolutely, exactly … the right place.

She didn’t want to move and not just because of the face cream, the Frownies and the cotton gloves. She wanted to do nothing, to lie back and let him and his tingling touch slide up and down against her. Wash over her.

But then came the moment of urgency and Annie was wiping off both Frownies and Crème de la Mer with her cotton hands, peeling the gloves off and throwing them to the floor. Her vest and pyjama bottoms followed and now they were naked with intent.

Ed sat on the edge of the bed, Annie straddled over him, his hands clasping at her buttocks, her breasts bouncing up and down against his chest, gloriously getting it together in delighted defiance of all the obstacles: the unexploded baby bombs, the beauty creams, the shooting schedule, the third series angst and the sheer, grinding exhaustion.

A baby stirred.

A baby definitely stirred.

‘Don’t stop,’ Annie whispered against his ear.

‘No,’ Ed assured her.

They concentrated … this could be the only sex for weeks … it had to be good. It had to glow in their memories as a very happy moment; something definitely worth trying to get round to again.

‘Is this a good time to bring up the marriage question?’ Ed whispered against her ear.

‘No!’ she told him. ‘Definitely not. Just because you’ve got Owen to agree to violin practice doesn’t mean it’s your lucky night.’

‘Pleeeeease?’ he tried.

‘Babes, not now,’ she whispered. ‘Shhhh …’ she added, hoping this might soothe the stirring baby.

They moved back across the bed and lay as quietly as they could, Annie feeling Ed’s heartbeat thud on top of hers and his blood pulse inside her.

She wiggled her hips, wanting to feel him move against her again. Needing to feel him move against her again.

He kissed her neck, slow, warm kisses from the shoulder up to the ear, which made her shudder with pleasure.

‘If anyone’s going to scream tonight,’ he whispered against her ear, ‘I want it to be you …’

Amelia’s work look:

Batwing neon brights tunic (Topshop)
White cropped jeans (Whistles)
White wooden wedge sandals (New Look)
Orange nail polish (Mac)
Pink eye shadow (Miss Selfridge)
Total est cost: £170

‘Girl, you so need more sleep.’

‘Knock, knock,’ Ed said outside Annie’s office door. He couldn’t actually knock because he had the tray of drinks orders in his hands.

‘Come in,’ Annie told him in a subdued voice.

He opened the door with his shoulder and brought in the tray, setting it down on the desk where Annie and Amelia were once again going through her schedule.

Annie was rubbing at her forehead, trying to make some impact on the exhaustion headache that was building up behind there. Her eyes alighted on the steaming cafetière, the two mugs, the jug of milk and the bowl of sugar Ed had
just brought up from the kitchen, and she visibly perked up. ‘Oh yes! Everything’s going to be much better now. Ed do you have … the other stuff?’ she asked with a wink.

‘I really don’t know if you should be doing this, not with coffee. You’re going to be really jittery.’ Nevertheless, he slid one slim, chilled can of Red Bull from his trouser pocket.

‘Girl, you so need more sleep,’ Amelia informed Annie.

‘Yeah, try telling Micky and Minnie about that.’ She looked up at Ed and saw the dark blue rings underneath his eyes too.