Late Night Shopping: by Carmen Reid Page A

charge of this party. His wedding had been cheap and depressing and anyway, he was an architect now, a very minimal, hyper-pernickety architect. If he was in charge, they'd be eating off white plates in a white room, all trying to share a tiny slice of a minimal white cake. No, what Bryan needed was a gay man. A professional party planner. What Bryan needed was one of Annie's newest friends: Hector.
     
Yes, unfortunately Hector had been Connor's boyfriend for a brief spell, and it had ended badly and sadly because Connor, allegedly, spent too much time obsessing about his waistline and career trajectory. But Annie didn't see why she and Hector couldn't still be friends. Especially when Hector would be just brilliant at organizing Bryan and Dinah's tenth wedding anniversary party.
     
'Look, why don't you just let me call Hector and get him to hook up with you? No, no!' she assured Bryan, when he made extremely dubious-sounding noises, 'it won't cost much. Honestly, he'll charge mates' rates and he'll save you loads of money on all sorts of things because of his party contacts. Honestly, trust me.'
     
Her mobile was beeping with a call waiting, so Annie said goodbye to Bryan, promised Hector would be in touch and that Bryan was going to love him, then switched over to take the other call.
     
'Mssss Valentine?' came the voice at the other end of the line.
     
'Yes?'
     
'This is Nicole Wilson from Simpson mortgage brokers, you wanted to talk to us about releasing some equity on your property.'
     
'Borrowing more money?' Annie wanted to make sure they were talking about the same thing.
     
'Freeing some of the capital tied up in your share of Hawthorne Street,' was Nicole's take. Obviously 'borrowing' was a bad word these days.
     
'Yes, we're thinking about putting in a second bathroom,' Annie began. A second bathroom would be nice, no doubt about it . . . but Annie was fibbing because she thought Nicole would prefer to hear this than talk about tax bills and vague plans to import Chinese shoes from Mr Timi Woo.
     
'So what sort of figure are we looking to release?' Nicole asked briskly.
     
'What's my limit?' Annie wondered. She wasn't going to go there, obviously, but it wouldn't really hurt to know, would it?
     
'Well . . .' Tapping noises came down the line as Nicole asked the computer. 'We could lend you £125,000 against the current value of your property. Obviously that would bring up your monthly payments by . . .' the tappity-tap sound came again.
     
£125,000!! Annie had thought she might borrow £20,000 or so just to pay off the Revenue & Customs and get started with the shoes, but with so much available and at such a low cost really . . . well, what was the interest on £30,000 going to be per month?
     
Nicole tappity-tapped then told her.
     
Done. Annie agreed to it there and then. Well, she did pause for a moment to think of Ed and how she'd promised to discuss this with him – but then Nicole had reminded her that for this week only there was a special interest rate available: 'Only another two days left on this equity release offer . . . you don't want to let this one go if you're serious about borrowing more. You're not going to get another deal like this anywhere.'
     
Now, if Annie could just hold on for a few minutes while Nicole went through the terms and conditions and blah, blah, blah with her on the phone . . . yes, there would also be some forms to fill out, but Nicole would send those on to her straightaway.
     
When the call was over, Annie checked her watch and saw that there were still eight minutes to go before her next client arrived at 7.30 p.m. She was supposed to have rearranged this appointment, but she had no recollection why. Anyway, she'd been too busy to get round to it. And if she couldn't remember why she was supposed to have rearranged it, it surely couldn't have been so important, could it? She told herself this to make the vague feeling of unease go away.
     
Eight minutes