Late Night Shopping: (9 page)

Annie checked herself: glam Addams family, yes, but it was a
look
. Maybe the woman didn't want to change. Maybe her husband adored her like this. Maybe it was just other women, like Svetlana, who were thinking: 'Hello!! Morticia!'

Annie was never too keen on women being dragged here by their friends. She lived by the psychologist's mantra that you couldn't change anyone unless they wanted to change. But anyway, she was here to suggest some new clothes. The hair was nothing to do with her.

'So! Kelly-Anne, isn't it?' Annie ushered her in and made her sit down on the sofa next to Svetlana. 'Tell me what I can do for you today. What kind of things are you looking for?'

'Well . . .' Kelly-Anne looked a little unsure of herself, 'I've never done this before. I have such a good idea of the kind of things I want, usually.'

'Pschuuuuut,' Svetlana tutted unhelpfully beside her. 'You need Annnah.'

'That's great,' Annie smiled at Kelly-Anne, hoping to cancel out Svetlana's comment. 'Some new things for the autumn . . . a coat? A bag? I have amazing new day dresses, just in . . . or maybe you want to look at something more casual.'

'Maybe a haircut too,' Svetlana put in.

'No, no!' Kelly-Anne said, looking anxious, 'you don't do hair here?'

'Yes, we do now have a new hair salon in the basement,' Annie told her.

'Kelly-Anne, you need haircut,' Svetlana told her firmly, 'this hair looked good when you were fifteen. Now you need something more modern.'

Kelly-Anne looked faintly terrified now.

'Well, anyway,' Annie gave Svetlana a look which was intended to make her shut up about the hair, 'let's talk about clothes.'

* * *

The trying-on session wasn't a great success. Everything tight and black Kelly-Anne wanted. Everything colourful, elegant and stylish, Svetlana and Annie wanted, but Kelly-Anne resisted.

It was shaping up to be one of Annie's very rare personal shopping deadlocks, when suddenly Connor breezed into the suite unannounced.

'Whatcha think Annie?' he asked, holding out his arms and wanting her immediate appraisal of his new, all-important outfit, 'I've been shopping with Dale downstairs in the big boys' department. This is what we came up with for the Sam Knight lunch. You like it?' Suddenly he noticed the other women in the room.

'Svetlana!' he exclaimed, and rushed over to take her hand and kiss it showily.

Annie gave him the glare, which was supposed to mean:
I'm busy, make an appointment, like everyone else.

But Connor read it as disapproval. 'No? Not the blazer?' he asked her, 'I thought the blazer was a bit much as well. But it's Ralph Lauren, baby and I'm loving the cashmere T-shirt underneath.'

He posed in front of the full-length angled mirror, knowing full well he looked like sex on a stick and even Annie was going to have to admit it.

Kelly-Anne was looking at him with the wide-eyed look of surprised recognition. Annie hoped this was a good thing. Maybe if Kelly-Anne knew she dressed the famous Connor McCabe, she might be just a teensy bit more open to some honest advice.

'Hello there!' Connor schmoozed at Kelly-Anne. 'And I'm not Peter Andre, if that's what you're thinking.'

'I know!' she squeaked. 'You're Connor McCabe, from
The Manor
! I love that programme. I think you're great!'

Kelly-Anne, who was currently wearing slim grey flannel trousers with a cream off-the-shoulder jumper (an outfit she'd just told Annie and Svetlana she'd never be seen dead in) stared at him quite transfixed.

'You're looking very foxy in that,' Connor told her generously. 'You're even giving me the horn.'

Kelly-Anne was well enough up on Connor's love life to know why that was funny.

'But the hair!' Svetlana complained to him, 'the hair should be silky. Moving, no? Connor, tell this woman.'

'Come to Connor and sit,' he instructed, pulling up a chair and placing it in front of the mirror.

Kelly-Anne obeyed without a word. She sat in the chair and faced the mirror as Connor, enjoying every moment of the attention, sank his hands deep into the dark tresses and started to shake them about.

'Stiff as a board,' was Connor's verdict. 'That's not sexy, baby, we want to be stroked with silk, not have our eyes taken out with bits of twig. Go shorter,' he urged, 'look at your lovely neck – ' he ran a finger along its length. 'Show it off!'

'Eeeek!'

Clearly, the thought of short hair was making Kelly-Anne squeak with fear.

'Eeee . . . yeowch . . .' she added. Maybe something was actually hurting.

'Ooops I seem to have got a little tangled in here,' Connor explained, as his hands remained buried in Kelly-Anne's hair. 'Annie, her hair's caught on my blazer button!'

Annie bent down and tried to investigate. Caught on a blazer button? Connor had four buttons on each arm.

Big, shiny gold buttons, sticking pompously proud of the material. Kelly-Anne's hair was tugged and tangled, snarled and snaggled right across all eight buttons.

It would take Annie hours to sort this out. She began to try and unwind the muddle.

'Oh for goodness sake!' Connor was starting to fidget, 'it can't be that bad, there must be a way of just fishing it out from under the buttons.'

More long minutes went by as Annie fiddled away at the mess of snarled hair and hard, unyielding brass.

'Yeeeeouwch,' was the only sound Kelly-Anne made every now and again.

'No, it's not going to work, babes, we'll have to either cut off some hair or cut off the buttons,' came Annie's verdict.

'Well, we can sew the buttons on again, can't we?' Connor was trying to sound calm and pleasant, when he was in fact deeply regretting ever having stepped into this room and interfering with this crazy woman with the hair.

'Where do I get scissors?' Svetlana asked in her deep, dark voice.

Annie knew the suite only had tiny nail scissors for snipping stray threads and cuticles and a great big pair of dressmaking shears for cutting off whole trouser hems . . . and on occasion, rescuing women trapped in dresses. Once she'd had to free a leg bound so tightly by a pair of skinny jeans it had started to swell. Yes, if Annie ever hosted a TV series, it would be called: 'When Clothes Can Kill'.

She directed Svetlana to the drawer, sure that plenty of progress could be made snipping off the brass buttons with the nail scissors. A little hair might be sacrificed, and if it wasn't working out they could always go down to the salon. Although Annie wasn't sure she wanted to lead Kelly-Anne all the way through The Store with a TV star stuck to her head.

Kelly-Anne seemed to be suffering. She'd gone very quiet, her shoulders were shaking a little and her breathing was shallow.

'You're going to be fine,' Annie assured her, 'this is just a little hiccup, it will all be over really soon.'

'I haven't cut my hair since I was seventeen,' Kelly-Anne whimpered, 'I don't want to cut my hair. Donnie loves my hair. I love my hair. I don't even want any scissors around . . . I don't want to see any scissors . . .' The anxiety in her voice was obvious; clearly some sort of hairdressing phobia was kicking off.

'It's OK, don't worry,' Annie soothed, 'we're just going to snip Connor's buttons off and the problem will be solved. Honestly, you'll probably lose a strand or two at the most. Do you want me to do it? Or we could get one of the hairdressers up . . .'

Because Annie was kneeling down at Kelly-Anne's side, patting her hands and trying to reassure her, she saw Svetlana return, but did not see what she had in her hands.

'Arms up,' Svetlana instructed Connor.

'Are you sure?' Connor asked. Then, before Annie could say a word, two sounds came all at once.

A dramatic: 'Aaaargh!' from Kelly-Anne as her hair was yanked up high with Connor's arms and then a very firm, very final, metallic 'clunk'.

'There!' Svetlana said, brandishing the dressmaking shears.

'Phew!' Connor freed his arms as an astonishingly large clump of purple-black hair slid to the ground.

Kelly-Anne's bloodcurdling scream brought every member of staff currently on floor two rushing to the scene.

Annie bustled everyone out of the suite just as fast as they'd come in. 'We're fine thanks, just a little anxious moment. Don't worry, don't worry we'll be fine! Paula,' she instructed her assistant, 'a glass of champagne, love, just as quickly as you possibly can and get Marco from the salon up – right now! I don't care if he's blow-drying Madonna's fringe, he needs to come here now.'

She dispatched Connor and Svetlana as well with a brisk: 'I think I can manage this better without your help, thank you!'

'I phone you Annah!' Svetlana promised.

Yes, well, maybe Svetlana wasn't going to be the dream business partner Annie had hoped. What else was she capable of when armed with a pair of shears?

But back to the poor trembling, gibbering, weeping woman in the far corner of the room, who had not even been able to open her eyes since she'd first seen the scissors and the clump of hair hit the ground.

'Kelly-Anne,' Annie began, kneeling down again beside the woman's chair, 'you are going to be fine. Honestly, please, please, please trust me here. I've worked with hundreds of women who haven't wanted to change a thing about their appearance and when it had to happen, it was OK. They coped.' Annie put her arm round Kelly-Anne's shoulder and squeezed comfortingly.

'I've had clients who've gone bald with chemotherapy and one of my ladies has gone from double-D to double mastectomy. Now that is a big change, babes. Your beautiful hair will grow back, Kelly-Anne. No doubt about it.'

Paula came into the suite with an elegant glass of champagne balanced on a small silver tray.

As soon as Kelly-Anne saw it, she waved it away, but Annie took the glass, handed it to her and insisted kindly: 'Go on . . . I think you deserve it and absolutely no one is looking.'

By the time hairdresser Marco arrived, Kelly-Anne had drunk the whole glass down, wiped her eyes, blown her nose and although she wasn't exactly cheerful, she had at least stopped weeping and shuddering.

Marco, having heard some of the details of the disaster from Paula, came armed with a second glass of champagne. Then with all the charm of a 27-year-old straight guy who loves all women, he flattered, wheedled and cajoled Kelly-Anne to come down to the salon.

'I can't do anything up here,' he insisted, taking her hair tenderly in his hands and stroking it, 'I need to wash it, deep condition it, handle it, really get the feel for it before I
reshape
it for you.'

As Kelly-Anne reached for her second glass of complimentary champagne, Marco told her, 'I'm going to need some of that too. Apparently I'm the first person who's been allowed to reshape this in twenty years or something.' Then with disarming sincerity, he added: 'does that mean you last cut your hair when you were
seven
?!'

As Kelly-Anne finally smiled, Annie could hear the trill of her mobile sounding out from her office.

'I'll be right back,' she told them before heading over to answer it.

'Annie!'

Straight away she recognized the voice of her mother, Fern, sounding slightly stressed.