Can We Still Be Friends by Alexandra Shulman Read Free Book Online

and can you cover for me till I get back? Lee.’
    She knew her mother would be trying to discover what time she was arriving for the weekend. Pleased as she was to have moved to London, weekends could be claustrophobic in the small flat. Only three hours now till she could leave work.
    By five o’clock, Annie had dispatched ten of the Swatches to various publications, carefully matching the title to an appropriate colour and size and asking the fashion editors and assistants to get back to her with info on how they could feature them. For a Friday afternoon in August, the office was surprisingly active – intercom lines buzzing throughout, deliveries coming and going. As she began to stuff her Swatch press releases back into the box file where they were housed Lee walked back into the room and thumped a huge wicker basket of peaches covered in cellophane and tied with a bright-pink ribbon on to her desk.
    ‘
Ta da.
Somebody’s lucky day then.’ He stood over her as she opened the small envelope addressed to ANNIE which dangled from the ribbon. ‘Can I buy you dinner? Jackson.’
    ‘
Very
impressive.’ Lee drew out the words in camp exaggeration. Annie was silent, just looking at the gift, before seeing Tania’s bulky presence in the doorway, arms folded across her indigo smock.
    ‘Here we go,’ she boomed, looking at Annie’s delighted face. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned.’ Annie rewound her memory of Jackson in the studio orchestrating the proceedings, his undeniable good looks, his cool aura. An injection of excitement and happiness surged through her, changing the ordinariness of a hot working day into something filled with thrilling potential.

3
    Sal stood in the small changing room of Joseph on South Molton Street. The floor was piled with black and white clothes – fine-knit sweaters, fitted short skirts, jackets with broad shoulders and large buttons. The summer sale had lured her in. It wasn’t the kind of place she normally shopped, or would even browse in. Way too expensive. She wasn’t keen on shopping but occasionally she’d dip into Miss Selfridge if she needed a dress for a party, or buy a cheap pair of earrings or belt if she just wanted something new. Come to think of it, where was that metallic cummerbund she’d bought a few weeks ago? At Joseph, the precise monochrome world and thin, black-clad assistants were daunting. One wearing a pair of tight black trousers and a knitted white vest approached her, thick silver hoop earrings glinting through glossy black hair.
    ‘Looking for anything special?’ she asked, with an expression that indicated she thought this extremely unlikely.
    ‘Not really, thanks,’ Sal muttered, trying not to look too obviously at the price tags when she riffled through the rails of sale items. She put her heavy handbag down, and pulled a cotton Katharine Hamnett suit from the rail and started weighing up its possibilities. On the positive side, it wasn’t too structured or formal, but did it have the authoritative quality she might need? It was worth a try anyway.
    Eventually, she had scurried into an empty changing room with a huge pile of clothes in her arms, regretting that she didn’t have Annie there to guide her. Annie was brilliant at putting things together. She could make anything special, everything looking better for the way she mixed things. It was the kind of thing Sal was hopeless at. She was best when she stuck to plain fabrics and tightshapes. Her shopping past was littered with mistakes, clothes bought in a flash of enthusiasm which overrode common sense.
    It was ridiculous to feel in awe of a shop, she told herself. She was meant to be a reporter. What kind of a reporter broke out in hives on South Molton Street because a sales assistant came near her? She told herself to grow up. Not everyone got a contract to work on the features desk of the
Sunday Herald
, and she had just banked her first pay cheque. She deserved to buy something