Free The Personal Shopper by Carmen Reid Page A

Maybe they   were ‘Iced gems’, but she was so busy trying not to   commit height gaffes that the word ‘midget’ had perversely sprung to mind.
    ‘Anyone else remember midget gems?’ She looked round at the other diners, hoping someone would prove she hadn’t lost her mind.
    No. No-one could recall midget gems and put her out of her misery. Dominic glared at her and might have been about to say something but fortunately a little bell rang, which turned out to mean that the first course was finished and all the women had to stand up and move three places to their right. To Annie’s relief, this put her in Lucinda’s seat, right next to Lloyd. Unfortunately Dominic could still glare at her, but she’d try to ignore that.
    Lloyd was a honey. He asked her about where she lived, he listened to her job description and property empire expansion plans with interest, he topped up her wine glass. He looked into her eyes and said in a low voice that he’d been coming to these dinners for over three months now and he’d met no-one as beautiful as her.
    She asked where he’d got his tan and he muttered modestly about business in Argentina and how a trip to   the Caribbean made February so much more bearable.
    Annie felt a warm wave of happiness wash over her. A warm, sun-kissed Caribbean wave of happiness. Her luck was so, so in. He was lovely. Perfect. Her hands were itching to pick up her handbag, whisk out her mobile and commit his numbers to speed-dial.
    ‘So you have children, do you?’ he asked, picking up his wine glass to take a sip.
    ‘A gorgeous fourteen -year-old, Lana, and then Owen, who’s nine.’
    ‘Four teen?!’ Lloyd was trying to restrain himself from a splutter.
    ‘Well, she’s my lovechild,’ Annie explained, always pleased with the ‘you look so much younger’ effect that mentioning her 15-year-old daughter had on people. ‘I had her when I was twenty.’
    ‘You’re thirty-five?!!’ Lloyd asked. ‘But you look so much younger!’ Unfortunately, this sounded almost angry, unlike the usual compliment that revealing her age brought her. (Annie suspected it was her bright blond hair, use of first-class moisturizer – past-expiry-date Sisley – and the fact she found sunbathing boring which   combined to give her a face that still looked late twenties, so long as she wasn’t laughing. In photographs taken mid-cackle, she looked about a hundred.)
    ‘Well, thank you,’ she smiled at Lloyd, but he didn’t look happy. ‘What’s the matter?’ She decided it would be best to know.
    ‘My cut-off point is thirty-three,’ he said coldly.
    ‘Thirty-three what?’ she asked, not sure what he meant.
    ‘Thirty-three years old,’ he retorted. ‘My ex-wife is thirty-four, so I’m going younger. Much younger.’
    ‘Oh!’ For a moment Annie was too taken aback to say anything. Then plenty of pithy responses came to mind like: ‘You sad old goat’, ‘When are you booking yourself in for a full facelift?’ or ‘Is dating a teenager so much fun?’
    But she reined them in and settled on a dignified ‘Well, Lloyd, that’s your loss. Women get so much more   interesting in their thirties. Not to mention expert .’ Unfortunately, she followed this with a snarled ‘But why are you h ere when there are so many Thai agencies that could help you?’
    There was nothing for it now. Having offended the man on her left and the man opposite, she had to concentrate on Will, the soup-slurping Mr Quiet.
    ‘I think Maisie really likes you,’ she told him, after a quick preliminary chat. ‘You should get her number . . . get in touch with her. I think you’d both get along like a house on fire.’
    Unfortunately this just made Will blush deeply and clam up completely. So now Annie had no-one to talk to. Time to execute plan A and claim she had to leave early to get to her ‘other’ fictional party.
    With a quick glance round at everyone within earshot, she announced that she would have to