Shopping With the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

giant pair of glossy lips embellished across the front.
    ‘Wow!’ Annie had breathed, slightly shocked. ‘You’re stunning!’
    Now, she toured round the rails in search of something she hadn’t brought in to Lana yet. Marc by Marc Jacobs? Maybe there was something for the new Lana here? She began to look, but the colours … the cuts … she couldn’t blame Mr Jacobs, it was everywhere she had searched today.
    Things weren’t right this season. There was a sludginess, a bagginess … dirty pink baggy tops tucked into teeny grey shorts, saggy trousers with narrow cuffs, manly leather ties, weird jangly bangles, checked pork pie hats. It all felt off.
    ‘So what did she think of the silver satin?’ Paula, a former colleague of Annie’s, appeared on the other side of the Stella McCartney concession.
    ‘It wasn’t her thing. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what her thing is. She wants a summer jacket, but nothing I’ve brought her has been right.’
    ‘What about … Come over here and tell me what you think of this? I mean I LOVE. I’ve got one in cerise.’
    Paula beckoned Annie to a rail where silky blazers were hanging in a variety of bold colours: dark pink, cobalt blue, black and white.
    ‘Ooooh,’ Annie agreed, ‘very New York.’
    ‘Yeah – wear during the day then bling up for evening. You don’t even need to go home and change.’
    ‘The blue,’ Annie said, without hesitation. Her daughter’s eyes were a startling, forget-me-not blue and in cobalt silk her eyes and her pale skin, would look amazing.
    ‘I’ve found this,’ Annie told the velvet curtain back in the changing suite. ‘It’s fabulous and I think you’re going to love it.’
    ‘Good, because this is hopeless.’
    Lana stepped out of the changing room in the strange, pale green, wispy dress she’d insisted on trying on even though Annie had told her it wasn’t her colour.
    ‘No,’ Annie agreed, ‘I mean, it’s nice, but you could be so much lovelier.’
    Lana scowled, as if she wasn’t convinced.
    ‘Maybe I should be wearing the Perfect Dress collection at all times,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing you’ve seen the latest sales figures?’
    ‘Yes, I’ve seen the figures,’ Annie told her daughter cautiously, ‘but Svetlana says we shouldn’t get too het up, because it’s a difficult time. Sales of everything are down. Even toilet paper. I wish I didn’t know that fact but it’s lodged in my brain and I can’t get rid of it.’
    ‘Yes, but we’ve had a nearly 20 per cent fall,’ Lana countered, ‘Spring/Summer is down nearly 20 per cent on last year’s Autumn/Winter. That is huge. If we take another drop like that, end of story. The next collection will have to pull something incredible out of the bag – which is what Elena and I are going to talk to you about when we have the meeting.’
    ‘You know Svetlana’s feelings: stay classic and stay true to the original idea, a really wearable elegant dress that works for day and night,’ Annie said. ‘Classic and elegant. Those are her watchwords, darlin’.’
    Lana scowled again.
    ‘Classic and elegant didn’t work last season. There’s no guarantee it will work next time.’
    ‘Women always want classic and elegant,’ Annie protested. ‘That’s why the label began: to fill a gap in the market. It’s all about the timeless, wear-anywhere, any-time dress: a classic.’
    ‘Well, even classics need updating, I bet the Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo gets tweaked every season.’
    ‘Tweaked maybe, completely changed and revised, never. But Lana … you know you have to come home in the summer, no matter what happens with Perfect Dress.’
    Annie hadn’t exactly wanted to have this conversation right now, but here it was, raising its awkward head.
    ‘Am I?’ Lana asked, eyes flashing. ‘You can’t make me.’
    ‘You’re too young to give up studying. There’s this course I wanted to tell you about, I think it’ll give you a perfect grounding in