'Sorry to call you at work, love,' Fern apologized.
'No, no no,' Annie insisted, 'you're fine. You couldn't make my day any worse, believe me.'
'Oh yes Annie,' came Fern's reply, 'I think I probably can.'
'What is it?' said Annie suddenly worried. 'You're OK, aren't you?'
'I'm fine, absolutely fine . . . but it's Aunty Hilda.'
'She hasn't died, has she?'
'No, dear. And you're not allowed to say "what a shame",' came the snippy response.
Aunty Hilda was an eighty-something widow aunt of Fern's and therefore Annie's great-aunt. Hilda was opinionated, pompous, generally difficult and increasingly deaf, but as they were her only family, they had to care about her. Also, the poor old dear had just had a hip operation and seemed to be taking a long time to recuperate, so she had been living with Fern for several weeks now.
Fern was worried because Aunty Hilda didn't seem to be recovering as quickly as she'd expected.
'I'm going on a little holiday,' Annie's mother told her. 'It's been booked for months and now I don't know if Hilda's going to be well enough to move back into her own home in time.'
'Black run skiing in the Alps again?' Annie joked. 'Or no, let me guess, Saga bus booze cruise over the Channel to France?'
'Saga booze cruise!' Fern exclaimed. 'It's a fascinating tour of the Bordeaux wine region.'
'Mmm . . . good choice, bound to be many, many single septuagenarians on that holiday. GSOH and OCB.'
'Good sense of humour and – OCB?' Fern was baffled.
'Own colostomy bag.'
'Annie!' Fern ticked her off. But as Annie's mother had been single for such a very long time now, dating jokes were not just permissible, they were an expected part of their conversation.
'So you want me to put Aunty H up for a week? Is that what I'm picking up?'
'Oh would you?!' Fern gushed, as if the idea had just occurred to her. 'It's not a whole week dear, it's about five days. She's getting quite mobile and she can manage the best part of the day on her own, so between you and Ed . . . and now that you have that nice big house. Dinah just hasn't got any space at all and I'll bring Hilda down myself, obviously.'
'Which week are we talking about anyway?' Annie asked, waving a cheery goodbye to Kelly-Anne as Marco ushered her off to the salon.
And here was Paula, showing in Annie's next client for the afternoon. This woman had very short hair, Annie noted, at least nothing could go horribly wrong on that front.
'September the 18th,' Fern told her, 'from Thursday until Tuesday. I'm back on Tuesday.'
'You know, I think Ed and the children are off . . . there's some special Centenary Founder's Day long weekend,' Annie told her. 'One hundred years since the old boy who set up the place popped his clogs or something. I've only just got them back into school and then they're coming out again,' she added with exasperation. 'Well, we've no plans. We'll all be delighted to look after Hilda for you, Mum.'
'I know, she's not the easiest,' Fern admitted.
'It's no problem, Mum,' Annie assured her, 'you'll need the break. I have to go, darlin'. Love you.'
Clicking off the phone, she hurried out to meet her new client, passing the rack of clothes Kelly-Anne hadn't bought and would never, ever buy. Annie doubted whether the poor woman would ever set a stiletto inside The Store again. She might even try and sue them. Maybe Annie should be filing an accident report for The Store's insurance policy right now . . .
She tried to overlook the lost commission and put all thoughts of owning The Bag Downstairs to the back of her mind.
'Hi, I'm Elsa,' her next client began. 'I know it's a bit boring, but I'm looking for some new suits.'
The most surprising thing happened halfway through Elsa's session. The bank executive was in one of the criminally chic grey dresses Annie had brought down for her, examining herself very closely in the mirror, when in breezed Kelly-Anne.
Well, not that it was immediately obvious.
The great towering, lacquered beehive construction was gone. Completely away! Instead, a short, silky-soft dark bob framed a sweetheart face, highlighting the most delicate of features.
Kelly-Anne didn't even make a big deal out of her first haircut in twenty years, she just waved over at Annie and said, 'Please, don't let me disturb you, I've just come down to get the clothes.'
Before Annie could even ask
which clothes?
Kelly-Anne went over to the rack that Paula had put to the side but not yet had time to set back out on the shop floor, and scooped up the lot. Then she left, thanking Annie profusely and promising she would be back soon.
Marco must have slipped her a Valium. This was the only conclusion Annie could come to. No doubt about it.
Owen's comfort clothes:
Green camouflage combats (Army Surplus Shop)
Orange and white T-shirt (Quicksilver)
Khaki sandals (Geox)
Total est. cost: £70
'No, not raspberry, I think we have to go with . . . Aunty
Dinah's homemade plum.'
'I'm thinking thick white bread toast with butter and honey,' Ed was telling Owen as they walked along the pavement together.
'Yup, toast,' Owen agreed, 'but not honey. How about peanut butter with jam?'
'Mmmm,' Ed had to concede, 'I like your style. Peanut butter with raspberry jam?'
'No . . . not raspberry, I think we have to go with . . .' Owen considered carefully for a minute then threw down the decider, 'Aunty Dinah's homemade plum.'
'Plum! Yes!' Ed nodded, full of enthusiasm. 'We have a winner. Do we have white bread and peanut butter in the house? Or do we have to stop at the shop?'
Monday to Friday, Ed, who was head of the music department at Lana and Owen's school, walked home with Owen. Lana, being older, would rather have had hot needles stuck into her eyeballs than be seen walking home with a
teacher
, obviously. But Owen wasn't quite so fussy.
Anyway, Ed and Owen would usually talk a little bit about how their day had gone, but as both had hearty appetites, which the twenty-minute walk home always seemed to sharpen, the main focus of the journey was on planning their afternoon snack.
'We're not going to have time to eat supper before the recital this evening, so we're going to need a lot of jam and peanut butter,' Ed warned.
'Is Mum coming to see me play?' Owen wondered.
'I hope so, she said she would,' came Ed's reply. He knew that the school's junior string quartet wasn't Annie's idea of a thrilling night out, but Owen was playing violin and had been practising so hard that Ed had made her promise she would come and watch him as his reward.
As they turned into Hawthorne Street, Ed ran his eye approvingly over the front gardens still bursting with green and bloom. Well, OK, the garden of number eight was in need of a little attention, particularly in the way of hedge trimming, but there would hopefully be time for that at the weekend.
However, the house looked amazing. A narrow, four-storey Georgian townhouse, it was quaint, ever so slightly wonky and just utterly charming. The window frames, recently repainted, gleamed bright white. The door was a shiny light blue. Two large blue pots at the front door brimmed with the pink and blue flowers Ed had planted in the summer.
Annie, although a genius at house renovating and redecorating, turned out to have something of a kiss-of-death effect on everything she touched in the garden.
'Leave everything inside to me,' she'd insisted, 'but you'll have to go out there and get dirty, babes.'
As Ed pushed the key into the brass-rimmed keyhole of the solid wooden front door, he thought of his mum. Coming in though the front door still made Ed think of his mother because she'd lived in this house for twenty-seven years, until she'd died just two years ago.
For several years, Ed had lived in a flat in the basement, and on his mother's death he and his sister should have had to sell up the family home and move on. But then Annie had bustled into his life, Annie with her big plans and snap decisions.
She'd moved in, she'd redecorated, then she'd sold her place and bought enough of a share in the house for him to be able to afford to own the rest.
He must be just about the only teacher in London living in a townhouse in north London's lovely Highgate. That was for sure. He would always be grateful that Annie had enabled him to stay here.
The mortice lock had already been opened, so Ed knew that Lana must be home. He pushed in the Yale key and opened the door.
There were two schoolbags in the lobby. The brightly patterned number he recognized as Lana's, the dark rucksack he suspected might be Andrei's.
'Hi, Lana!' Ed called into the stairwell, 'just to let you know we're back!'
'So you can put your clothes back on,' Owen muttered in a low aside.
Ed tutted him.
There was silence. Lana's room was on the attic floor two flights of stairs up from the lobby, but she should still have been able to hear them.
'Everything OK?' he called up.
When there was still no response, Ed told Owen to go and put the toast on in the kitchen and he'd be down in a minute.
Once he was on the first floor, he told himself that he was just being silly and anxious and maybe even too nosy. He was not going to go up to the attic room and knock on Lana's door. Whatever she was doing up there, she was fine and it was her business . . . and certainly not his.
So he swung a left into the sunny bedroom he shared with Annie. If Ed were to be ruthlessly honest, he'd admit that Annie had made this room just a bit girlie.
There was white and pink paper with a bold pattern on the wall, a white and crystal chandelier and an ornate white mirror above the fireplace.
A whole wall was taken up with the bank of white wardrobes she'd insisted they would need. And it turned out she was right. She had enough things to fill them almost single-handedly.
Planning to hang up his jacket, change his shirt for a T-shirt, then go down to join Owen, Ed had just pulled the shirt over his head and was heading over to drop it into the laundry basket, when he saw them.
Lana and Andrei were lying almost completely naked underneath the leather-upholstered bed: Annie's Christmas present to him, bought for some small fortune on who knows what credit card. Something he didn't like to think about.
'OK,' he said firmly. 'Game over.'
This was met with little gasps of horror from under the bed.
'I don't want to know,' Ed added, 'I really don't. But you have a room of your own upstairs, Lana. I'm going to go down to the kitchen now and maybe you two should . . . tidy up, then come and join us there.'
Ed and Owen ate peanut butter and plum jam toast steadily, working methodically through the loaf. Owen, now happily changed into his favourite combat trousers and fluorescent orange and white T-shirt (in case he wanted to disguise himself as a traffic cone lost in a wood) ate with much more enthusiasm than Ed, because Ed knew he was about to have to have a really awkward conversation with Lana.
Finally the romantic duo appeared at the foot of the stairs, where Andrei pulled his rucksack onto his back in the lobby and scarpered out of the front door. Clearly he didn't want to hang about to see what Ed, who was also his teacher, thought of the situation.