Chapter 16 #3
As a small glossy bag was thrust into her hands, Annie knew it was time to invite Svetlana in.
‘You’re going to come in and drink coffee and tell me all about everything, aren’t you?
Unless you would like your driver to take us somewhere…
?’ Annie looked hopefully beyond the hedge at the sleek Bentley still purring gently in the street.
‘No… no need to go anywhere…’ Svetlana said with just the merest up and down at Annie’s Mum-on-the-run getup. ‘I want to come in and sit in your kitchen and talk, like friends, Annah. Like real friends,’ and with those words, Svetlana reached out and gently squeezed Annie’s arm.
Like real friends… ‘Well, real friends hopefully don’t mind what a state their friends’ kitchens are in,’ she warned, ushering Svetlana in through the front door. ‘Do you need to tell your driver you’re staying?’
Svetlana just waved airily and said, ‘He will park. He will wait.’
‘Follow me,’ Annie said as she led Svetlana towards the family kitchen – a lovely, bright and spacious place which had once been lovingly and very expensively revamped in the absolutely up-to-the-moment style, but now, several years and a lot of family life later, it had a much more well-worn, even slightly scuffed air.
There were old, dog-eared paintings by the children on the once glamorous stainless-steel fridge.
A pile of abandoned dishes was huddled on top of the dishwasher, Max’s biro scribbles on the worktop seemed to jump out at her, but never mind because Svetlana was declaring it: ‘So charming, Annah, so comfortable. The perfect family kitchen.’ Then following her compliment up with, ‘But I need to bring you some house plants… every kitchen needs some beautiful green plants.’
‘No, no,’ Annie warned her, ‘I’m too busy, I have too much to look after. Right now, I would struggle to keep a cactus alive.’
Svetlana gave a little shrug and added, ‘Maybe you need a housekeeper. Even one day a week. Why do you and your husband try to do everything yourself? This is not the way to a calm and organised life.’
‘No…’ Annie had to agree. But a housekeeper?
Occasionally, cleaning ladies had drifted in and out of her life, but they often brought drama, did damage and put things where she could never find them.
So, for the last few years, Ed and Annie had just tried to manage.
But it was far from ideal. Especially since Dinah had stopped looking after the twins because Dinah always snuck some house tidying and organising of the household into her day.
‘Coffee?’ she suggested, directing Svetlana to a chair.
‘And then tell me all about the new venue.’
‘Yes, I sit, you put the coffee machine on and then you open my gift.’
‘Oh… of course!’ Once the machine was fired up and Annie had pulled up the chair opposite Svetlana’s, she looked inside the bag. Inside the shiny gift bag was another bag made of white netting. This was tied with a ribbon and appeared to contain four substantial cookies.
‘My baking,’ Svetlana said proudly, ‘not Maria’s. I needed to do something special for you to apologise.’
Annie looked over at her. ‘Now, that I was not expecting. You baked me cookies?’
‘Yes, and one has an “A” on the front and is very special. You will eat it while we drink our coffee and I show you my videos of Gallery of Textiles.’
Coffees were made, plates set out, though of course Svetlana was not going to eat one bite of the home-made cookie herself.
Then Annie took the phone and watched videos, scrolled through pictures and tried to re-imagine how this new venue was going to work for the show which was already so deep in the planning stages.
‘This is the reception hall, very grand, nice columns, I can see it all filled with flowers. Then this is the grand hall. I love the art and the wood panelling and look at these chandeliers,’ Svetlana enthused.
It was undoubtedly a gorgeous venue. Grand, elegant, no, more than that, it was stunning but in such a tasteful, old-fashioned kind of way.
This was going to bring a grandeur to the whole event which…
well, was a little terrifying. While it had been a charity show in a marquee, Annie had been able to play it down, tell herself that it was no problem, that she could pull it off…
pull it together, she and Paula and Svetlana would create something amazing.
But filling a space like this… it looked serious.
It looked awe-inspiring. This was now turning into the kind of event that maybe she wasn’t going to be able to handle on her own.
Maybe they would have to bring in other professionals besides Paula, who was on mates’ rates, but then professionals charged real money and wasn’t this supposed to be for charity?
‘Eat your cookie,’ Svetlana urged.
Annie picked the biscuit up and before biting in, enthused, ‘I love this place but… so many buts… how will people get there? Is it near a Tube?’
Svetlana gave a curt, ‘Yes.’
‘Then, how will we get enough flowers, enough models, enough audience, enough of everything to fill this place?’
The reply to this was the familiar airy hand wave Annie had come to interpret as: ‘No big deal, we’ll take care of it.’
‘Are they giving us use of the place for free?’
‘A reduced fee that I am paying personally,’ came the reply.
‘We might need some more people to help us put this show on,’ was Annie’s next voiced thought, already thinking about who could be available and useful.
‘I have faith in us,’ Svetlana said. ‘Now, please, eat your cookie and tell me that I should open a little bakery in Mayfair.’
This made Annie laugh. She looked at the cookie and bit in, her teeth chiming against something metal as she did so.
Had Svetlana accidentally dropped something into the baking mixture and she shouldn’t mention it?
Or was putting lucky pennies into biscuits a Ukrainian tradition and she definitely should mention it? For a moment, she wasn’t sure.
‘Find something?’ Svetlana asked and there was definitely an encouraging smile with this question.
‘Maybe…?’ Annie said and took a cautious nibble around the edge of the biscuit.
This revealed a gold band and when she caught hold of it and pulled it out of the cookie, she was astonished to see a delicate gemstone ring with a central sparkling orange-yellow stone, propped up on each side with a small, twinkling diamond.
‘Oh my goodness! What’s this?!’ she asked, holding it up for Svetlana.
‘This is my gift for you,’ came the reply. ‘Not just a cookie,’ Svetlana shook her head. ‘I also give you a citrine stone because citrine brings energy and success. I would not joke with you,’ she added gravely. ‘This is my magic charm. It vvvorks.’
Annie’s thank you after the initial, ‘you really shouldn’t have’ protests, was giving Svetlana a heartfelt hug before she tried the ring on.
She found that it fitted her right index finger perfectly.
And it looked good there. ‘My bossing finger,’ she said, pointing at Svetlana.
‘I will bring energy and success wherever I point!’
‘Come on, drink more coffee, let me open up the laptop and we need to start making plans for the show of the season at Gallery of Textiles.’
‘There is going to be so much to do,’ Annie warned. ‘We’ll have to move everything, re-issue all the invitations—’
‘There is time,’ Svetlana assured her. ‘This is worth doing, no?’
For a moment, they held one another’s look. ‘We could pull the plug…’ Svetlana mooted just as Annie couldn’t help thinking how completely strange but also totally fine it was to have the Mayfair millionairess she knew best sitting sipping coffee in her kitchen.
‘No!’ Annie heard herself protesting. ‘You know neither of us wants to do that.’
‘Then we will have to work like farmers, Annah, from today until the day of the show.’
‘Call in all the help, all the favours, all the available friends—’ Annie began. But their train of thought was interrupted with the loud tooting of a car horn out in the street.
‘Maybe my car is in the way?’ Svetlana wondered.
She shrugged and would probably have left it there if the tooting hadn’t kicked off again, even louder and more insistent.
‘I go and look.’ Svetlana got up and to Annie’s dismay headed not towards the front door, but straight into the family sitting room, so that she could look out of the window onto the street.
‘But…’ Annie uttered in a futile attempt to stop her.
Didn’t she know by now that if Svetlana had made up her mind to do something, only flames, floods, or possibly a request from her youngest son could stop her.
So now Svetlana was at the window of the disastrously dishevelled room, Svetlana had had to pick her way over the juice box atrocity, while Annie hung back near the doorway, trying not to burn up with shame.
Svetlana lifted a graceful hand to shade her eyes against the glare of the midday sun. The tooting had stopped, but Svetlana’s interest in the street scene didn’t show any signs of waning. What was going on out there? Annie wondered.
Then Svetlana uttered the astonishing words: ‘Is that Lauren? Yes, I think it is Lauren. Are you expecting her?’
Lauren?! Here? In London?! No! Annie was certainly not expecting her.
She rushed over to the window, hurdling the juice box on her way, and lo and behold, there on the other side of the garden gate, a young woman was getting out of a car.
A young woman with dark hair and a severe fringe, all the better to show off her heart-shaped face and high cheekbones.
Even at this distance and without the prescription that her optician had recommended, Annie could see in a heartbeat that it was Lauren.
In response, there was only one word Annie could utter, a loud, shocked, ‘What?!!’