Celebrity Shopper Read Online Free
place to really grow the audience. Myleene Klass is apparently “interested”. I doubt they can afford her and I’m going to do everything I can …’
But Annie could barely make out the words of reassurance that followed. The thought of How Not To Shop just carrying on without her … it hadn’t even occurred to her! The thought of being ‘replaced’ just as she’d thought she was arriving … It was terrible. Devastating. And what the bloody hell would she do instead?
‘For the two last episodes of this series,’ Tamsin was telling her now, ‘we’ve got to think of something amazing, barnstorming! We have to end the season with all our viewers clamouring to have you back. That’s our mission, girl.’
‘Right,’ Annie said, barely managing to whisper the word. She felt as if she was going to be sick.
Chapter Three
Svetlana in her office:
Very tight cobalt blue dress (Issa)
Very high green and blue stilettos (Prada)
2.4-carat diamond ring (last ex-husband)
22-carat gold rope necklace (same)
3.5-carat diamond earrings (first husband, deceased)
Silk underwear (La Perla)
Total est. cost: £78,400
‘He say “no”!’
‘Ya. Is great idea. No? I put big heap of money in, Harry put money in but we still need more, so I think of you. You big, clever, rich man …’ Svetlana Wisneski was on the phone, using her most charmingly persuasive voice.
She was always on the phone these days because her daughter, Elena, was working her very hard.
Svetlana Wisneski had in fact become Svetlana Roscoff over a year ago. But she still liked to use the name of her most recent ex-husband because she was mildly famous through him and she liked it that way. Igor Wisneski wasone of the richest Russians in the world: a gas baron. Svetlana was still the mother of his two and, as yet, only sons and heirs and although she’d suffered a very public divorce, the silver lining to the cloud was the multi-million-pound divorce settlement she and her barrister-turned-fourth husband, Harry Roscoff, had wrung out of Igor.
Well, that was then and this was now. Post credit crunch, post stock market crash, it turned out Igor’s fortune had been downsized from billions into millions, so Svetlana’s settlement and monthly maintenance had shrunk accordingly. For nearly a year, Svetlana had raged and tried by every means possible to squeeze more money out of her ex.
It wasn’t as if she was penniless. Very far from it. She still had her beautiful four-storey house in Mayfair: no. 7 Divorce Settlement Row, and Harry was undoubtedly wealthy. But Svetlana had been super-rich . She’d been the wife of a billionaire. She had been used to limitless oceans of cash, all the luxuries life could offer and never once having to consider the cost of anything.
When she’d realized she could not wrestle any more money from her ex-husband, she and her devastatingly clever daughter Elena had begun to develop another idea.
The phone still at her ear, Svetlana turned her feline grey eyes to Elena. Her daughter was at the computer tapping furiously with her elegant hands. Just as Svetlana loved to phone, Elena loved to email. She emailed and emailed and surfed the internet all day long, looking for clues, tracking down information, building up her data. Inside that beautiful blond head, uncannily similar to her mother’s, was a big brain, hungry for knowledge and success.
Elena had spent the past year at business school. Yes, up until now she had studied engineering, but she felt that a business qualification would stand her in good stead.
Svetlana and Elena’s relationship had not begun in a very promising way. Svetlana had given birth to this unplanned and inconvenient daughter twenty-three years ago in Ukraine and she had paid distant relatives to bring Elena up. Then, at the age of twenty-two, Elena had arrived unannounced on her mother’s doorstep and demanded to be taken in.
At first Svetlana had been horrified, but now the
But Annie could barely make out the words of reassurance that followed. The thought of How Not To Shop just carrying on without her … it hadn’t even occurred to her! The thought of being ‘replaced’ just as she’d thought she was arriving … It was terrible. Devastating. And what the bloody hell would she do instead?
‘For the two last episodes of this series,’ Tamsin was telling her now, ‘we’ve got to think of something amazing, barnstorming! We have to end the season with all our viewers clamouring to have you back. That’s our mission, girl.’
‘Right,’ Annie said, barely managing to whisper the word. She felt as if she was going to be sick.
Chapter Three
Svetlana in her office:
Very tight cobalt blue dress (Issa)
Very high green and blue stilettos (Prada)
2.4-carat diamond ring (last ex-husband)
22-carat gold rope necklace (same)
3.5-carat diamond earrings (first husband, deceased)
Silk underwear (La Perla)
Total est. cost: £78,400
‘He say “no”!’
‘Ya. Is great idea. No? I put big heap of money in, Harry put money in but we still need more, so I think of you. You big, clever, rich man …’ Svetlana Wisneski was on the phone, using her most charmingly persuasive voice.
She was always on the phone these days because her daughter, Elena, was working her very hard.
Svetlana Wisneski had in fact become Svetlana Roscoff over a year ago. But she still liked to use the name of her most recent ex-husband because she was mildly famous through him and she liked it that way. Igor Wisneski wasone of the richest Russians in the world: a gas baron. Svetlana was still the mother of his two and, as yet, only sons and heirs and although she’d suffered a very public divorce, the silver lining to the cloud was the multi-million-pound divorce settlement she and her barrister-turned-fourth husband, Harry Roscoff, had wrung out of Igor.
Well, that was then and this was now. Post credit crunch, post stock market crash, it turned out Igor’s fortune had been downsized from billions into millions, so Svetlana’s settlement and monthly maintenance had shrunk accordingly. For nearly a year, Svetlana had raged and tried by every means possible to squeeze more money out of her ex.
It wasn’t as if she was penniless. Very far from it. She still had her beautiful four-storey house in Mayfair: no. 7 Divorce Settlement Row, and Harry was undoubtedly wealthy. But Svetlana had been super-rich . She’d been the wife of a billionaire. She had been used to limitless oceans of cash, all the luxuries life could offer and never once having to consider the cost of anything.
When she’d realized she could not wrestle any more money from her ex-husband, she and her devastatingly clever daughter Elena had begun to develop another idea.
The phone still at her ear, Svetlana turned her feline grey eyes to Elena. Her daughter was at the computer tapping furiously with her elegant hands. Just as Svetlana loved to phone, Elena loved to email. She emailed and emailed and surfed the internet all day long, looking for clues, tracking down information, building up her data. Inside that beautiful blond head, uncannily similar to her mother’s, was a big brain, hungry for knowledge and success.
Elena had spent the past year at business school. Yes, up until now she had studied engineering, but she felt that a business qualification would stand her in good stead.
Svetlana and Elena’s relationship had not begun in a very promising way. Svetlana had given birth to this unplanned and inconvenient daughter twenty-three years ago in Ukraine and she had paid distant relatives to bring Elena up. Then, at the age of twenty-two, Elena had arrived unannounced on her mother’s doorstep and demanded to be taken in.
At first Svetlana had been horrified, but now the
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