'For that kind of money,' the customer joked, 'I'd expect the creator to invite me to their house for dinner.'
'But look at the workmanship,' Sandra went on, 'the lining is quilted suede, all the zipped compartments inside are satin lined with a solid brass zip. This bag will last a lifetime. Probably two. You'll be able to hand it down.'
Annie wasn't getting anywhere with the Mulberry: she ditched it and picked up Chloé's new season tote. Now this was a lovely bag, jade blue and creamily soft. It jangled and slouched up against you. Snuggled, even.
She walked just a little more obviously past Sandra and the customer.
'Lovely bag,' she called across to Sandra, 'I might come down to get this in my next break. Can you hold it for me?'
'Yes Annie, I can hold it for you.' Sandra's voice was a touch weary. She knew exactly what Annie was up to.
Ooooh, but the customer had turned. The customer was looking.
Annie glanced at her watch. She had to go! She was going to have to leave it in the lap of the gods. Taking one last, long look at her bag, she set the Chloé back on the shelf and sped back upstairs.
Irena was from Romania, but she'd moved to London for a decent job. She was in her late twenties, much younger than Annie's usual client, but she had made this appointment asking specifically for Annie Valentine.
She wasn't going to be hard for Annie to dress because she was so pretty, with a figure that Annie understood perfectly because it was curvaceous with a nipped in waist, just like hers.
Slipping in and out of Irena's changing room with dresses, skirts, jackets and belts, Annie was impressed with the extravagance of Irena's deep burgundy underwear.
Finally, Irena, who had come for 'just two great outfits,' seemed to be settling on a dress, a skirt and a blouse, then a fantastic swing jacket with wide sleeves which went with all three.
'Thank you,' she gushed at Annie, 'you are very good at your job. I hear so much about you. I have been wanting to meet you for a long time.'
Annie couldn't help feeling there was something a little strange about the way Irena shook her hand and looked so deeply into her face.
'Have you been in London long?' she asked.
'Just a few months now,' Irena told her, 'but I visit one time before, about four years ago.
'You are not married? No?' Irena asked her, out of the blue.
Annie, whose heavy platinum wedding ring was still one of her most treasured possessions, stored safely in her jewellery box at home, shook her head.
'I used to be,' she said simply.
'Ah,' Irena said with her head to the side and a look filled with too much sympathy for Annie to feel comfortable.
'But . . .' Annie went on quickly, 'luckily for me, I've met someone new.'
'Not easy,' Irena intoned, 'not easy to meet nice new man. I'm still trying.
'And you have children?' she wanted to know.
'Yes,' Annie told her, unwrapping a pair of spike-heeled, wide-topped ankle boots which would be perfect with Irena's new pencil skirt, undo all the Miss Moneypenny connotations, 'two children, Lana who is sixteen and Owen who's ten.'
And now the feeling of unease was there again. There was something at the back of Annie's mind, something she was supposed to be doing. Maybe it was to do with her eBay site? Maybe there was something she had meant to buy? Or meant to sell?
By 8.45 p.m. Irena was still in the suite, still trying things on, still looking at her reflection this way and that, still asking lots of irritatingly personal questions: 'Where are you living?', 'What is Lana interested in?', 'Does she look like you?'
Annie was beginning to twitch. This was the seventh person she'd dressed today and it was a little hard to stay enthusiastic.
Meanwhile, Irena was scrutinizing her back view and making the tutting, sighing sounds that Annie knew were the self-critical musings of almost every woman on the planet.
She wanted to shout:
'Oh for God's sake, you're beautiful
with a gorgeous ass. Get over yourself. Are you buying or are
you not buying?'
'The tills are going to close down in about five minutes, babes,' was what she did say, as nicely as she possibly could, 'so it's time to make some decisions. Or if you like, I can hold some of these things until tomorrow,' she added, although every one of her natural sales instincts went against this policy. People who put things on hold could never be trusted to come back and buy them.
'Five minutes!? OK, I choose.' Irena stripped off the outfit she was wearing, stood for a moment in the impressive underwear and ankle boots and then quickly tried on one of the dresses for a third time.
When Annie had finally bundled Irena and her purchases out of the suite, she rushed around tidying up, powering down the computer, packing up her bags and her booty for the day.
When all her chores were done, Annie at last clickety-clicked down the escalators in her heels.
'Sandra!' she called out from the bottom step. 'What's the news then? Is it still there?'
On the plinth there was now a maroon bag she'd never seen before, so with a heavy heart she turned towards the saleswoman for an explanation.
'She
bought
it?'
Sandra bent down under her counter top and emerged holding The Bag in her hands.
'No . . . she put it on hold,' Sandra said with a slightly wicked smile.
'Oh no, then I can't . . .'
'Oh yes you can, I'm not in tomorrow. So even if she comes back, and I'm not convinced that she will, we'll just make sure Pippa is hugely apologetic but never got the message!'
'I like it,' Annie cackled, then she slapped her credit card down on the counter top and picked up the bag.
'Hello baby, how are you doing? Come on, come to Mama.'
'You're a little bit cracked,' Sandra told her, tapping her head.
'I'm tired,' Annie confided, rolling her shoulders back to try and ease some of the tension out of them, 'I'm really tired,' but with a smile, she added, 'This will perk me up, though.'
'Staff discount? You do have some left for this month, do you?' Sandra checked.
'Oh yeah,' Annie assured her, 'I've been saving it.'
'Do you want me to wrap it for you?'
'Well . . . you know what?'
As Annie typed in her credit card PIN, she remembered a little too vividly her recent promise to Ed that 'big' purchases were to be checked with him. This was so that he could try and talk her out of it. There was no other reason. He'd told her he was worried about her spending and was going to try and help her 'manage' it.
There was no doubt that he would never, ever allow her to buy this bag. He wouldn't even begin to understand why she would want to spend so much money on a new handbag, especially when she already had 'so many'. Ha! Ed had carried the same leather briefcase around for
seventeen years
!! What would he know of the need to buy a new handbag every season? Absolutely nothing!
'I'm going to start using it, right now,' Annie told Sandra. If she just put all her things into it and carried it about blatantly, he was far less likely to notice. Wasn't he? One bag pretty much looked the same to him as the next. She could just say it came from the bag stockpile at the back of her wardrobe. How would he ever know?
Opening the satisfying brass clasp and then zip, she sniffed at the delicious new suede and carefully unloaded her purse, keys and mobile phone into The Bag.
Slipping her old bag into her big canvas tote, she slung the tote and her laptop bag onto her shoulders, but carried the new handbag carefully in the crook of her arm. It was close to nine thirty when she finally hurried out of the building.
Only on the tube platform, waiting for the delayed Northern Line train, did she see a poster with a violin on it and realize, with tears springing to the back of her eyes that she was supposed to have left work early so she could get to school and watch Owen playing in the junior string quartet.
Lana at home:
Blue vest top PJs (Topshop)
Blue sheepskin boots (Ugg)
Frazzled blue and red dressing gown
(Her dad's)
Total est. cost: £95
'Is that new?!'
Rushing in through the door of her house, Annie dumped everything but the new bag in the hallway (it wasn't ready to be thrown on the ground in a heap just yet) and ran up two flights of stairs.
'Owen!' she called out, 'I am so sorry!' She hurried into his bedroom, already dark with the lights turned out, and crouched down at his bedside.
Owen's eyes were shut, but he opened them drowsily at the sound of her voice.
'Hi!' she whispered and ran a hand through his messy hair, 'I am so, so sorry I couldn't come. I needed someone to cover for me and they couldn't, so I didn't get out of work until after 9 p.m.'
'Don't worry,' Owen told her, sleepily but cheerfully, 'it went really well and Ed says there's going to be lots more performances.'
Annie leaned over and kissed his cheek. 'Will you play it for me on Sunday, when I'm home and we can catch up?'
'Yeah.'
'Night-night.' She ran a hand through his hair again: she could never resist it, soft and tumbly, on the longish side, boy hair.
Then she crossed the landing and knocked on the door of Lana's room.
Lana was sprawled across her bed with her laptop open. Annie doubted that she was writing an essay or doing homework research on the web. She was probably busy emailing Andrei and all the other people she would see again in only a few hours' time.
Annie settled herself down on a chair, ready to have a little bit of a chat with her daughter, but Lana seemed grouchy and uncommunicative.
'Was your day OK?' Annie ventured.
'Fine,' Lana insisted, although the crossed arms and screwed-up mouth suggested something different.
'Is everything going OK?' Annie asked.
'Fine,' Lana told her again.
'How's Andrei?'
'Fine! Mum? Can I come down and see you in a minute? I'm just finishing something off up here.'
Annie, feeling offended, stood up, picked up her handbag and headed out of the room.
But then Lana, spotting the bag, had to ask, 'Is that new?!'
'Shhhhh!' Annie put her finger up to her lips and smiled conspiratorially.
Lana got up to take a closer look, her eyes widening in surprise.
That's my girl,
Annie couldn't help thinking proudly.
'Is that really a YSL?' Lana asked, although she'd already clocked the label.
'Shhhh!' Annie repeated.
'You are in so much trouble! It's gorgeous, can I just hold it?'
'No! No!' Annie warded her off. ' Don't even think about it! You are never, ever borrowing this bag. Get off! Now I have to go down and say hello to Ed.'
'You better leave that here then, he'll kill you.'