‘I’m going to send someone up to you, then. Check yourself over in the mirror, girlfriend.’
Click.
He hung up. No further information – although she suspected this might have something to do with her coffee break chit-chat about how she was on the lookout for a
very
wealthy husband and couldn’t you boys down there in the menswear department do something to help me out, when you’re not too busy chatting up the clients yourself, obviously.
Annie didn’t trust Dale’s judgement on a tie, let alone potential husband material, but nevertheless she redid her ponytail, applied a fresh dab of lip gloss, spritz of perfume and waited. Paula was busy on the shop floor, so for the moment she had the Personal Shopping suite to herself.
No sooner did she clap eyes on Mr Spencer Moore, as he was grandly introduced by Dale – weighed down by a selection of suits, shirts, jackets and ties – than her suspicions about the menswear assistant’s judgement were confirmed.
Spencer was gay. Definitely. Why hadn’t Dale been able to tell? Weren’t the round red-rimmed glasses perched in the middle of his face clue enough?
‘Mr Moore, hello, I’m Annie,’ she gushed in the direction of the new arrival. ‘Come in, come on in. I’m
here to help, so . . . Take the lovely big changing room on the right here. We’ll hang everything up for you.
‘He’s gay!’ she hissed at Dale as soon as she got the chance.
‘Na-ah.’ Dale shook his close-cropped head and raised
his eyebrows at her teasingly: ‘He’s a divorced, straight man who dresses gay. I know. It’s weird, he’s an urban sub-species . . . a mutation possibly caused by his
“designer” career. I thought he needed a woman’s touch, plus, you might get a date out of it. He’s loaded,’ he added in a whisper, then: ‘We split the commission, by the way.’
‘Babes, if I get a date out of this, you can have all the commission,’ she told him.
Dale, an only child, who’d wasted all Mummy’s money on drama lessons, sashayed to the main door and blew her a goodbye kiss.
It turned out Spencer, late forties, fit and freshly divorced, obviously took the fashion section of the Sunday supplements far too seriously for a man of his age and status. Hence the confusing signals.
‘Are you dating again, or is it too soon?’ Annie asked, quickly defusing the rather bald question with: ‘I’m just wondering if you’ll need some more casual outfits.’
‘Oh, definitely ready to date again,’ Spencer confided as she paired a pale grey pinstriped suit with a pastel-coloured shirt and tie and urged him to try them on. Strangely, there was nothing more hetero than the right shade of pink.
‘So we have to make a babe magnet of you,’ she smiled.
‘Er, well . . .’
She had to tone it down, she told herself. Clearly, he was a reserved kind of guy.
‘Where do you live?’ she asked him from the other side of the drawn curtain as he tried on the outfit she’d suggested.
‘Kensington,’ he told her. And didn’t return the question, she noticed. Some customers always assumed that shop staff were so beneath them. It was up to her to put herself in a very different light.
‘Oh lovely,’ she told him, ‘I was at school there. Francis Holland.’ There, that would put him straight. Everyone had heard of Francis Holland, one of the smartest all-girl schools in London.
‘Really?!’ It was a little too surprised.
‘Yes. I loved it. I discovered art there.’ She didn’t like the way that came out, now she was sounding posher than the Queen. ‘Yeah, then did art school afterwards: theatre costume and design. I worked in films for a bit and now I’m a consultant here.’ Consultant sounded great. Like she didn’t work here all the time. Like she had another high-flying career elsewhere, away from The Store, which of course technically she did. There was Annie V’s . . . the property business, on the verge of taking off . . . the home makeovers.
It seemed to do the trick. Spencer asked which art school she’d gone to and told her where he’d studied.
Then he pulled open the curtain, stepped out and asked: ‘What do you think?’ making eye contact now, appreciating that he was dealing with a high-calibre ‘consultant’.
He looked good. The suit was a great cut but roomier and so a little more macho than the one he’d come in
wearing. The pale pink suited his complexion. She couldn’t get past those awful glasses though.
‘Nice.’ She stroked down the lapels, then made him turn around so she could run her hands over his shoulders and back, all in the name of smoothing out the
suit obviously. ‘Very nice. We’ll put that on the “definitely maybe” rail and then I want you to try this on.’
She held out a cashmere blend Nicole Farhi. Super-hetero wear.
‘This is real quality, Mr Moore.’ She stroked the jacket to emphasize her point. ‘I don’t waste my money on anything inferior.’
He took the suit from her, meeting her eyes and brushing past her hand in the process, which she took to be an excellent sign. She pulled the curtain shut and grinned.
‘“
Nowt as expensive as cheap
,” as my dad used to say.’ When Spencer made no response to this, she explained: ‘Because cheap things wear out so quickly and have to be replaced.’
But then Paula breezed in and, not noticing the occupied cubicle, asked in a loud voice: ‘Hey, Annie, what’s on special offer at Asda this week?’
Annie pulled a face and pointed at the curtain.
‘All right,’ Paula said, much more quietly, ‘but I’ve got loads of birthdays coming up, no money and I need to know where to get cheap presents.’
‘Later!’ Annie hissed.
Joy of joys, their boss Donna was now striding into the suite looking as if she’d bitten on a bee: ‘Paula! Annie’s office, now!’ she barked, acknowledging Annie only with a quick raise of the eyebrow.
‘Yes, that will be fine, Donna,’ Annie told her with mock politeness. ‘Please make yourself at home in my office.’
Clearly a major telling-off was about to rain down on Paula’s pretty, plaited head. The two personal shoppers exchanged sympathetic looks and Annie gave Paula a surreptitious wink.
Oblivious to the latest developments in in-store politics, Spencer pulled back the curtain to have his second outfit appraised.
‘Hmm . . .’ Annie smoothed down the jacket again, examined it from behind, but told him she wasn’t as happy with this one. Together, they sorted through Dale’s selections for the next possible ensemble.
Once Spencer was safely back behind the curtain, Annie decided that although she was trying to steer totally clear of Donna, she couldn’t leave Paula in there to face the witch alone.
She tapped on the door of her office and opened it without waiting for a reply. ‘Is everything OK in here?’ she asked.
One glance at Paula’s tear-stained face told her that it was not.
‘Can I help with anything at all, Donna?’ she went on. ‘Would you like me to explain anything? I do oversee Paula after all.’
Donna spat out: ‘We’ve had the suite’s sales figures in for the month and Paula’s are way down on January.’
‘But February is always lower than January,’ Annie reminded her, trying to keep the indignation out of her voice.
‘I’m aware of the general pattern of annual sales, thank you, Annie,’ Donna snapped, ‘but Paula’s figures are much lower than they should be. There’s a job on the shop floor open, so I’m pulling Paula out of here. People come to the Personal Shopping suite desperate to buy new clothes. If Paula can’t sell to them, then who the hell can she sell to?’
Despite her written warning, Annie couldn’t help mentioning ‘the difficult new collections’ in Paula’s defence. What she would have loved to say was that if Donna hadn’t gone to the trade shows right after she’d been dumped by her girlfriend, then maybe the collections wouldn’t be quite so
difficult
. The sales team were now flat out trying to shift ‘tulip’ skirts (i.e. universally unflattering sacks) in shades of ‘mushroom’ and ‘taupe’ (otherwise known as hessian), not to mention cashmere trapeze tops in screaming orange and lime.
‘Don’t ever, ever complain about my collections!’ Donna looked poised to gouge out an eye now. ‘The Store is proud to showcase some of the most cutting-edge fashion in London . . . in Europe . . . in the world!’
Annie was bursting to say: I rest my case. But she had her own interests to look after, as well as Paula’s.
She heard Spencer opening the changing room curtain, so knew she had to get back, but before she did Donna managed to issue another threat: ‘And don’t you dare abuse your staff discount, Annie Valentine, I’m keeping a very close eye on your transactions. If I find anyone has used it apart from you . . .’
Just because she couldn’t find anything witchy to say
about Annie’s sales she had to resort to this. Vicious cow.
Spencer was happily admiring himself in the mirror. ‘This is fantastic! You’re a genius!’ he enthused, which cheered her up immediately. ‘I’d never have thought of Romeo Gigli. I thought he was for girls.’
‘Italian,’ she told him. ‘You can’t go wrong with a good Italian. Mr Moore—’ she began.
‘Please, call me Spencer.’ He straightened the heavy silk tie and admired his reflection in the mirror.
‘OK, Spencer . . . we have to talk about your glasses.’
‘Do we?’
‘Yes we do.’ Annie leaned in to tell him gently, as if breaking seriously bad news, ‘I’m sorry, this may come as a terrible shock, but those are gay glasses.’
‘Oh? The glasses? The glasses are gay?’ He sounded completely taken aback.
‘Yup. Definitely,’ she assured him. ‘Your shoes too. Too pointed and with top-stitching. I’d even say the belt as well. Women pick up on these things and you are giving off a gay vibe. Which is obviously great . . . if you’re gay. But you’re not. Right?’
‘Well, no.’
‘You need something smaller, maybe with a silver frame . . .’ She reached up to take off his glasses and stared quite unapologetically at his face. Not bad, she was thinking,
in need of some general upgrading but some excellent period features.
‘You’d look very handsome with contacts,’ she told him. ‘We definitely need a moss green tie for you. With those distracting red frames, I hadn’t noticed your eyes were green. We need to find you ties in exactly the same shade. But don’t wear them with the pink shirt . . . obviously.’
Spencer had the decency to blush slightly. He was really quite nice; she was warming to him by the moment and wondering how she could arrange an out-of-store meeting . . . or at the very least a follow-up shopping session.
‘Try on the Paul Smith,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go in search of ties.’
As she stepped out of the suite, she ran right into Delia.
‘Annie, I’m back . . . laden down!’ An even happier Delia was carrying one of The Store’s pink rubber shopping baskets and waving a shiny, gold-lettered bag
from the cosmetics department: ‘Oh, I’ve been pampered,’ she confided, ‘let me tell you!’
She held open the bag to show Annie the array of mini pots, sachets and trial sizes the girls in Cosmetics had no doubt been charmed into handing over to her.
‘OK, here’s my basket.’
Annie ushered her to a till well away from the shopping suite. Donna would be out of there like an angry wasp any moment and Annie didn’t want to be caught doing anything Donna could sting her for. But there was no question of letting Delia down.
Annie tapped her code into the computer and rang up Delia’s treats: four pairs of Sloggi super-comfort thongs, size 22, Chanel’s No. 5 bath soap and a Mac nail varnish in brightest orange.
All good choices. Every woman, no matter how hard pressed, needed box-new, comfortable thongs in the knicker drawer, a perfectly indulgent bar of soap and a
flash of designer colour, even if it was just on the nails.
Delia picked up the soap and sniffed it deeply: ‘I love this. Absolutely love it. And I get to smell like Nicole Kidman,’ she cackled. ‘In a big bag please, Annie.’ Delia winked at her. ‘Today I’m a customer at The Store, not just the cleaner.’