The Personal Shopper by Carmen Reid Read Free Book Online Page A

been ‘Do Not Disturb’ until 9 a.m. at the very earliest.
    Sunday brunch had once meant happy, sleepy parents in pyjamas and Roddy making pancakes with banana and maple syrup, or blueberries, or bacon and syrup, or even, not so successfully, Smarties and liquorice .
    The kitchen on Sundays had once been full of burning butter smoke and sizzling fat, coffee fumes and the noise of Roddy’s carefully selected seasonal tunes played loud, to sing along to. In winter, this meant crooning with Dean Martin about his marshmallow world; for summer, they’d learned all the words to things like the Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini song. When it was hot the pancakes had come with chilled strawberries and even vanilla ice-cream.
    For some time after Roddy had gone, Annie had tried to keep the Sunday morning pancake tradition going on her own. But she couldn’t get it right. She burnt the butter and the pancakes came out black on the outside, raw in the middle. Or the batter went runny and they came out like crêpes. In desperation, she’d even tried pancake mixes, but the results were too sweet or too stodgy and provoked just as many tears as the bad home-cooked ones.
    But then, when Dinah came round and made them wonderful pancakes, taking Roddy’s big blackened cast   iron frying pan down from the shelf, washing and re- greasing it carefully, Annie and her children understood that even perfect pancakes wouldn’t work.
    What was missing was all too obviously Roddy and his huge, sunny presence in their lives.
    So Sundays were now a careful exercise in avoidance. There was a different routine going. Lana usually invited friends round, Owen and Annie often went out for a long, early morning walk, although more recently Annie had spent Sunday mornings viewing flats.
    Today, Annie had brought back the new Sunday morning delicacy: butter croissants from the deli. She put them into the oven to warm, filling the room with a toasty comforting smell. There was lovely cherry jam and Lana’s music on the stereo, pots of tea and the busy chatter of seven people in the kitchen. This way, Annie, Lana and Owen were able to not think about pancakes and ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’.
    Once the meal was over, Annie lured Dinah to the sitting room with the words: ‘Follow me, I’ve got something very interesting to show you.’
    The south-facing, windows-on-two-sides, third-floor sitting room was an Annie makeover triumph. She’d scraped, sanded and sealed the floorboards herself, she’d reclaimed the tiled fireplace inch by inch from the paint and plaster slapped over it. Now the room was a delicate shade of lemon-green with fresh yellow blinds (sale), luxurious green and lemon curtains (secondhand), a slouchy biscuit-coloured sofa (small ads) and all   the little touches – antique mirror, sheepskin rugs, beautifully framed photographs – which ensured her flats always sold for a bomb.
    Dinah snuggled, feet up, on the sofa and patted for Annie to sit down beside her.
    ‘I have a new plan,’ Annie told her, taking a seat.
    ‘You always have a plan, Annie. Does this one involve going round another dodgy flat at nine thirty on a Sunday morning?’
    ‘No, no, no,’ Annie assured her. ‘Although I’ll have to find something else to move to. No, this plan is about giving up the Lonely Hearts columns.’
    ‘Oh thank God!’ was Dinah’s reaction. ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep putting yourself through all those blind dates. I know you tried very hard, Annie, but I didn’t think it was ever going to work.’
    Last summer, Annie had decided that the best cure for the aching loneliness her absent husband had left in her life was maybe not to pretend that everything was fine and she had been coping just perfectly on her own, but to find someone new.
    She’d approached the project as she’d approach a shopping quest: she’d looked in all the places she could think of where available men were on