Annie in Paris, page 1
ANNIE IN PARIS
CARMEN REID
For every dedicated Annie fan, who kept on asking for a new book.
CONTENTS
Author’s Reminder
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
More from Carmen Reid
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Carmen Reid
Love Notes
About Boldwood Books
AUTHOR’S REMINDER
ANNIE VALENTINE IS BACK!
For everyone in need of a little refresh, here’s an introduction to the characters from the series.
Annie – our heroine, 40-something mother and fashion makeover queen. After many years as the top personal shopper at London fashion heaven, The Store, she’s currently star presenter on popular TV show How To Be Fabulous. She’s the eternal optimist, on a quest to make every day and every outfit just that little bit better.
Lauren – Annie’s oldest daughter, now a young adult out in the world, currently working at fashion label, Perfect Dress, in New York. Fiercely opinionated and independent, artistic and so into fashion, Lauren looks like her late father, Roddy, with his raven-black hair and steely blue eyes.
Owen – Annie’s oldest son, now a 17-year-old in his final year at St Vincent’s School. Tall and gangly with his mother’s lighter hair, Owen has a big sense of humour and is totally into all music. He plays violin, drums, glockenspiel, guitar – electric and acoustic. He’s trying to decide what to do after school.
Ed – Annie’s huge-hearted second husband is sporty, outdoorsy, scruffy, and tragically, couldn’t care less about clothes. He’s head of music at St Vincent’s School, plays violin, guitar, loves every kind of music and is a fantastic dad to all four children.
Minette and Max – Ed and Annie’s twins are adorable, when they’re not fighting, screaming, or having a complete meltdown, obviously. They’re walking, talking, four-year-old pre-schoolers in need of a lot of parental time and energy.
Svetlana Wisnetski-Roscoff – the fabulous multi-millionairess former wife of many important men, including oil baron, Igor Wisnetski. A former beauty queen from Ukraine, she has her own house in Mayfair, a daughter, Elena, two sons, Michael and Petrov, and a new English barrister husband, Harry. Annie was once her beloved personal shopper, but over the years, they’ve become close friends. Svetlana owns Perfect Dress and films regular financial advice slots on How To Be Fabulous.
Elena – Svetlana’s secret love child, who was estranged from her mother previously. She is now all grown-up into an extremely determined and ambitious young woman. She helps to run Perfect Dress in New York.
Dinah – Annie’s younger sister. Dreamy, creative, artsy Dinah, who is always lovely to everyone. She gave up her day job to become nanny to Minette and Max during Annie’s busy TV filming schedule. She’s married to architect, Bryan, and they have a daughter, Billie.
Connor – Annie’s oldest, ‘cashmere sweater’ of a best friend. Once her late husband’s bestie. He’s an actor who has enjoyed TV, film and now West End theatre fame. He’s single, yet again, and more than a touch diva-ish, but he’s family.
Fern – Annie’s mother. A retired podiatrist who brought up her daughters as a hard-working single mum and instilled the love of a quality piece of clothing. She lives outside London now and suffers some health issues, including early-stage dementia. She’s well looked after by her daughters and carers.
Fashion plays a huge part in all the Annie Valentine books, the shows, the stores, the labels, the excitement around designers, new collections, and new styles. This is for entertainment and inspiration! In reality, I’m a total jeans-and-a-shirt person, who wears the same things forever.
I’m very aware that we’re living in environmentally precarious times and we all need to do what we can to help. I shop as cost-consciously and sustainably as I can and I donate or recycle everything I’ve worn out. I love fashion classics and basics because you can re-wear and re-invent them and I love buying second-hand and borrowing from my Mum’s treasures.
I hope you’ll get all the retail therapy you need from reading Annie’s adventures and won’t feel that you don’t have enough or need to rush out and splurge once you’ve finished the final chapter. The best ‘investment wardrobe’ is the one you already own.
Thank you so much for reading, loads of love, Carmen xx
PROLOGUE
Les Tissus Naturels – Natural Fabrics
Elegant French women are obsessed with clothes made from natural materials. Pure wool sweaters and coats, cotton denim jeans, shirts made from creamy silk or crisp linen. The best accessories are boots, shoes, handbags and belts crafted from supple leathers and suedes.
Natural fabrics allow their wearer to move, to breathe, and to warm up or cool down more easily. Well cared for, these fabrics last a long time and at the end of their lifespan will return gently back to the earth.
FRENCH DRESSING, BY MADAME MADELEINE MOREAU
Right now, Annie Valentine was supposed to be somewhere else. At this exact moment, she was meant to be 1.5 kilometres away, sipping at a glass of Evian and calmly preparing for her interview with a major-league star. Instead, where was she? She was trapped in a beautiful 19th century courtyard in St Germain in the heart of Paris.
Yes, this courtyard was paved with worn limestone slabs and co-ordinating gravel, home to clematis-bedecked trellises, not to mention vigorous plants in old terracotta pots, and even the quintessential metal garden table and chairs. It was gorgeous, but she was still trapped!
The door she’d come through had locked behind her, the wooden courtyard gate was barred with a rusty bolt and chunky padlock. Surrounding the courtyard were walls three metres high and there was no obvious escape route.
Even worse, she was fully dressed up for her important interview in her pale suede boots, a fashion-forward ‘vegan’ leather dress, full make-up, hair done, toting an up-to-the-moment handbag. This was not the outfit for climbing onto bins and scrambling over stone walls. In fact, this was not the outfit for being trapped, stressed half to death, in a relentlessly sunny, stone-paved space. Encased in plastic leather, she was cooking like a chicken in a bag, sweat running in rivulets down every one of her crevices, her make-up sliding off and her hair wilting like a lettuce.
This was absolute torment! And why? Why was she here in this courtyard off the Boulevard Saint-Michel? To be honest, it was because she was trying to spy on the woman that she suspected was getting far too close to her husband.
She glanced hopelessly at her dead phone, hammered once again at the building’s locked back door and gave another loud, but dispirited, shout of: ‘Hello! Can anyone hear me?’ Then she went over to the tall apartment window and pressed her face to the glass to take a glimpse inside the bedroom. An old mahogany double bed with white pillows and duvet took up one side of the room. But she didn’t want to stare at that bed and wonder what had or hadn’t been going on in there between her husband and this other woman, so she cast her gaze over to the other side of the white-walled room.
Standing there was an antique wardrobe in the same dark mahogany wood as the bed. One of the solid old doors was hanging open and inside – Annie pressed her face right against the windowpane to get a better look – was a row of wooden shelves, neatly stacked with piles of clothes. The glimpse of a dress peeking out from beside the shelves suggested that the rest of the wardrobe was packed with items on a rail.
Despite her trickling sweat, melting make-up and general sense of panic, Annie could not stop the thought bubbling up that right here, inside this mahogany armoire, she may possibly have located the Holy Grail of French style. This antique piece of furniture contained the complete wardrobe of an effortlessly chic Parisienne. The whole shebang, the full monty, the real deal – tops, dresses, jeans, blouses, shoes, skirts, trousers, jackets, scarves and accessories – it was probably all in there. Just an hour or two of sifting through that closet would probably reveal all those elusive French Girl secrets.
But there was nothing she could do about that right now, especially as the secrets belonged to her. No, right now, she had to concentrate on how to get out of this baking courtyard, this absolutely broiling dress, and somehow salvage something from the wreckage of the careful plans made for today. Oh dear God, everyone was going to be absolutely furious with her. And if she thought back through all the steps that had brought her here to this locked courtyard nightmare… well, it was definitely Ed’s fault. And it had all kicked off back in August on the night of that supposedly Romantic Dinner Dat
1
La Lingerie – Underwear
Even in the smallest provincial French towns, you will find boutiques with top quality underwear because this is an essential ingredient for being well-dressed. Smooth cottons, pretty laces and sexy sheers all feel perfect next to the skin. They make you look and feel better. The best way to wash your exquisite Lejaby bra? Wear it in the shower!
M.M.
It would be fair to say that the ‘cosy’ Italian restaurant chosen for their dinner date was not nearly as nice as Annie had hoped. She had imagined dimmed lights, mellow music, plush chairs and generous glasses of fruity wine, so that she and Ed could steal a brief evening away from the mayhem that currently passed for family life.
While she had been hoicking herself into extra-strength Spanx and applying lipstick for the first time in weeks, she’d imagined enjoying a relaxed meal and uninterrupted conversation with her husband. As she’d fiddled about with earrings, applied one too many blasts of perfume, and fussed about to bangle or not to bangle, she’d even thought about coming home later to a romantic rekindling.
But instead, the only thing about to be rekindled was her almighty temper as Ed was twenty minutes late so far and there had been no word from him since a brief message nearly two hours ago:
Not forgotten dinner, still caught up in handovers.
Handovers… endless handovers… meanwhile, she was stuck in a below-par diner at a sticky table, even though she’d already asked the waiter to wipe it down for her, with a heavy smell of fried onions in the air and a huge TV screen on the wall behind her showing a blinking football match. And why was the TV draped in red and green tinsel? It was the tail end of August. Was this something to do with the football and showing Italian colours?
She picked up her phone with the intention of sending another message to Ed, this time to tell him that she would never be taking restaurant recommendations from him again. Maybe he’d been tipsy when he’d last eaten here, or maybe he’d been planning to keep up with the football during their ‘date’, but this was just not the setting for a romantic dinner and Annie couldn’t get up and go somewhere else because this place was tucked away down several side streets and she’d not seen any other restaurants nearby.
As soon as the phone was in her hand, she could see a new flurry of messages had landed and, for a moment, she hesitated. Yes, she should check to see if there was a message from Ed, or any kind of family emergency, but, on the other hand, this was supposed to be an evening off, and if she opened her messages, the chances of being drawn into some kind of urgent family drama were high.
The waiter appeared by her side.
‘Another glass of wine for madam, and how about some appetisers while you wait for your companion?’
She looked at her half-drained wine glass and decided more chilled white was probably needed. Then she added bread, butter and olives to her order, but she wasn’t sure if the waiter heard her because a goal had been scored, cheers erupted, and off he darted to watch the action replay.
Annie sighed and opened the messages.
Nothing from Ed, she saw as she scrolled.
She opened the one from her teenage son, Owen, first. He was away for another night at some sort of ‘music camp’ that he had begged and hassled her to go to, but he seemed to spend most of the day there on his phone begging and hassling her with all other kinds of requests.
Can you top up my phone plz?
Followed by:
Didn’t pack enough pants. Can you send?
Followed by:
Back at school at 6pm tmz. Can I get lift? Bag and instruments too heavy.
She sighed, took another gulp of wine and tapped out:
Will top up phone. No! Can’t send pants! Just re-wear. Will see what I can do about lift. Hope you’re having fun. Love you xx
Then there was a new message from her oldest daughter, Lauren, in New York:
I have found a room, but it’s v v small and they want a deposit of $2000. Is that OK?
Annie sighed again and took a bigger gulp of wine. Lauren in New York was currently just one v. v. big, expensive headache.
Out for dinner. Will call later and talk it through. Love you xx
A message from the babysitter looking after the twins tonight had also dropped:
Max says he has a sore stomach. What should I do?
Sigh. Swig.
Liesel, from Owen’s year at school, was not hugely experienced, but she had been available and Annie hadn’t anticipated any problems. Her four-year-old twins, Max and Minette, had seemed absolutely fine when she’d left the house earlier.
Give him some water. Maybe a teaspoon of Calpol (main bathroom cupboard) and let me know if it gets any worse. Thank you x
She put the phone down and couldn’t help the flashes of angst that now popped up… Could Max possibly have appendicitis? Was Lauren about to be scammed out of her hard-earned money? Shouldn’t Owen be old enough to count his pants?!
There was so much that she absolutely loved about being the captain of the Starship Family Enterprise, but sometimes, just occasionally, it would be wonderful to have a few hours completely off. But then her thoughts were interrupted.
‘Annie! There you are! I’m not too late, am I?’
And here was her husband, unruly, curly hair all over the place, clothes looking rumpled, and as he bent down to kiss her, she got a blast of heat, damp upper lip and sweat.
‘Did you cycle over here?’ she asked, as he settled down into the chair opposite hers. When he nodded, she had to add: ‘But that’s absolutely miles, babes, no wonder you’re late! And now you’ll have to cycle home…’
He nodded, helped himself to a piece of the bread and explained between chews: ‘Yeah, but that is me bang up to date with school. I didn’t want to have to go back for the bike and get dragged into anything else, so… it sort of made sense. I am completely starving. Have you ordered?’
‘No, I’ve been waiting for you, in this cosy, romantic bistro,’ she said, heavy on the sarcasm.
She thought about the time she’d spent doing her hair and make-up, choosing the dress, booking the babysitter and now she felt even more annoyed. Look at Ed, he wasn’t even wearing a clean shirt!
‘What’s the matter, Annie?’ he breezed. ‘Let’s order the food and then you can tell me all about it.’
So, they called the waiter over, selected a generous spread from the menu and, as the dishes began to arrive, Annie started to unload the list of current family woes – how would they know Lauren’s flat was OK and that she wasn’t being ripped off? When would Owen learn to look after his things, pack properly, and stop making fifteen different requests a day? And many other incidental things that had cropped up recently, not to mention – did Ed think Max could possibly have appendicitis?
One of the very good things about Ed being a teacher was that he was endlessly experienced and reassuring about children and young people: ‘Lauren will be fine – as long as she’s not expecting us to pay that deposit’; ‘I’m sure it’s just a phase with Owen’; ‘don’t fret about Max, it will be a bug’ – were the calming phrases he provided that she needed to hear.
