Chapter 22 #2
This just made Paula smile before she instructed the girls loudly. ‘Time to learn how to strut your stuff. To the catwalk!’
* * *
There wasn’t really a catwalk. Not tonight, not for rehearsal.
That would have required engineers, roadies, rigging, insurance waivers, clipboard wielding men in hi-vis jackets – and a much bigger budget.
What they did have was a runway of ‘approximate length and width’ marked out with whatever Paula and Annie had been able to find – several brochures, two high-heeled shoes, an empty Pret sandwich box, three coffee cups, half-full, and, for symmetry, a pair of tatty evening bags that had seen better nights.
Still, they had discovered a proper speaker, so Paula connected her phone and instructed Siri to: ‘Play fashion show, chapter one,’ and all at once, the venue was pulsing with music that made everyone feel as if they had just upgraded to Milan.
‘Right, Gwen and Phyllis, you are on!’ Annie instructed.
‘Show us all your best moves, so our beautiful dance girls can see what they need to be doing.’ Gwen and Phyllis did not disappoint.
Gwen in the slinky fuchsia and Phyllis in a classic black evening gown both strutted with lethal precision, hip bones jutting and swaying from side to side, in classic catwalk style.
The walk always looked slow and slinky but it was surprisingly pacy, designed to march the dresses out there and sell, sell, sell.
The dance girls were clapping them on and it was impossible not to be caught up in the buzz of the moment.
‘OK, my lovely dancers,’ Annie called, ‘jump in and just follow Gwen and Phyllis up and down. Copy the walk, the twirl at the end of the catwalk, and slouch, babes! Give it all the moody slouching that you can. Hand on hip, hand on hip, smoulder, smoulder and turn!’ Naturally, the dancers nailed it.
So used to moving in new and interesting ways, they had the slouch, the walk and the turn down within moments.
‘This is brilliant!’ Annie beamed. ‘You look so professional!’
* * *
When the rehearsal was over and the girls had departed, Annie and Paula were left to label up all the outfits with names and running order and carefully box them up for the real event. And that was when Paula asked what the update was on the Schiaparelli items and the other special treasures.
‘Are we going to be allowed to show them? Will that be a special final round at the end… after the bridal party?’
‘Oh…’ Annie began. She had no news yet, and had to find the time to visit Florence, see how she was getting on and offer to help.
‘Trying to find out more, urgently,’ Annie told Paula.
‘And if we are able to show them… we’ll probably need security guards.
I mean those dresses could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. ’
‘Ha… remember when the new jewellery came into The Store? And there would be guards with helmets and vests and those suitcases that were handcuffed to their wrists?’
‘Oh yes! I do remember that. It was so exciting! God, I miss The Store,’ Annie declared.
‘You do not,’ Paula declared. ‘It was drudgery, those hours, that crummy pay! Even with our staff discounts, we could barely afford a pair of tights from that place!’
‘But we were such a good team and it was lovely being there, surrounded by staff and all the clients, even the difficult ones. It felt like a community, a family even.’
‘I think you’re remembering the very nice things and forgetting a lot of issues.’
And maybe this was true. The pay had been poor and sometimes the work had been stressful or utterly boring.
But there had also been so many nice things about it.
‘The seasons…’ she went on, ‘remember how much love went into Christmas… the pre-Christmas windows, the décor, all the excited women coming in to buy presents and outfits, and all the hopeless husbands on December 24th needing us to choose everything for them.’
‘And the total and utter carnage of the sales…’ Paula reminded her, ‘let’s not forget about that. Annie, you work in TV now, you are living the dream!’
‘It’s not the same,’ Annie confessed. ‘Not the same team feeling at all. We only see each other for part of the year. There’s different crew every time. It feels insecure and as every season closes, I’m convinced they won’t hire me again. They’ll bring in a younger number.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Paula protested. ‘You have a fan base.’
‘I’m not being silly. It happens in TV all the time.’
The trials of freelance TV life were huge, Annie couldn’t help thinking to herself.
It always looked so much more glamorous from the outside.
And, to be honest, she had loved the freelance freedom and the long breaks between filming seasons when the children were small.
But lately, maybe because she was older and life was more serious, she was beginning to long for something more stable and solid, something that didn’t rely on being popular with strangers, where she was in danger of being upgraded to a cooler model; something that felt like a real career with promotions and career goals and sick pay and all the things that hadn’t mattered so much when she was younger.
But no need to dump all that on Paula right now, especially as she was in the early days of running her own company.
Annie pulled her phone out to check it and was a little surprised to see she’d missed four calls from Lauren… now what for goodness’ sake?