Free Celebrity Shopper by Carmen Reid Page B

you come home in the evening. That’s why I went out for a walk. To get away from stuff.’
    ‘Oh!’ Annie could hardly keep the excitement from her voice. ‘So the builders have started, have they?’
    ‘Oh yeah!’ came Lana’s dark warning. ‘They’ve definitely started.’
    ‘With the bathroom?’ Annie asked impatiently. ‘Or with the windows in the kitchen?’
    ‘Let’s just say they’ve decided to do both at the same time,’ Lana replied.
    ‘Great! It will all be over so much quicker like this.’
    ‘Hmmm …’
    They were at the front door of the house by now and as Annie pushed it open, two things struck her at once: the strange smell and the overwhelming mess.
    The entire hallway floor was thick with footprints, which looked as if they’d been created from a mixture of white plaster dust and brown mud. The trail of multiple footprints led from the back of the house to the front and then up and down the carpeted stairs to the bathroom.
    Fine plaster dust was hanging in the air – well, all the dust that hadn’t already settled, coating everything in sight. The stairs, the banisters, the skirting boards, the floor, even the walls seemed a shade greyer because of the dust.
    But Annie’s eyes returned to the footprints. They spread all over the carefully sanded and polished wooden hallway floor and crusted up her beautiful striped stair runner.
    ‘Didn’t they use tarpaulins?’ she heard herself exclaim. ‘Didn’t they think to cover the floors before they removed a bathroom and—’
    ‘Demolished a kitchen wall.’ Lana finished the sentence for her.
    ‘They’ve made a hole in the kitchen wall already?’ Annie looked at her daughter in surprise. ‘But we weren’t ready for that. We hadn’t even packed the kitchen up. Surely …’
    Annie began to hurry towards her kitchen.
    As soon as she opened the kitchen door, her eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You are joking! You have got to be joking me!’ she exclaimed.
    A huge hole, surely far too big for the new windows, had been punched into one of the kitchen’s walls. It was a gaping, jagged hole with rough edges and bits of plaster hanging from it. The rest of the room looked almost normal, except the pots and pans, the shelves, the plates,the cutlery and even the dishes drying on the draining board were all covered with a thick layer of plaster dust.
    Ed had obviously not had time to tidy away one single thing before the builders had come in and bulldozed out a chunk of wall. Not even the cereal boxes had been put away, Annie saw with disbelief. They were standing in a row on the kitchen table looking as if they’d been spray-painted grey.
    A chill wind whistled about the room, stirring the dust, because only a blue tarpaulin tied loosely over the outside of the hole was protecting it from the elements.
    ‘ED!’ Annie called at the top of her voice. ‘Where is he?’ she directed at Lana.
    Lana gave a shrug. ‘Maybe upstairs,’ she offered.
    ‘ED!’ Annie repeated, heading out into the filthy hall.
    She took the crusty stairs two at a time, pausing to gasp in surprise at the bathroom. It was a shell, stripped right back to the brickwork with bits of spindly copper pipework dangling from the walls. One pipe was dripping water on to the floor and a grubby cloth had been put underneath it to try and catch the drops.
    Annie could hear one of the babies crying in the main bedroom, so she headed towards the noise.
    As soon as she opened the door, she could tell that things were not calm.
    The bedroom was in chaos. Mud from the stairs had made its way on to the pale carpet in there. The bed was unmade and littered with baby clothes, bits of cotton wool, two bowls of water, Babygros and vests.
    Micky was standing up in the cot, his face red with the effort of crying. Minnie was lying on the bed having her nappy changed, also in tears.
    ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Annie soothed.
    Ed looked round at her and she saw at a glance how flustered he