'I have never, ever seen so many good-looking guys in such a short s.p.a.ce of time,' came Lana's astonished reply.

Annie gave her a nudge, but now that she looked, she could see it was true.

New York men all seemed to be tall and lean with immaculate hair, sungla.s.ses perched on their heads, tight jeans, clean pressed polo shirts. And they had muscles! Teeny waists! High buns!

'They can't all be gay ... can they?' Lana wondered.

Several blocks on, the irresistible window of the 21st Street Deli drew them in. Inside was a salad bar on truly epic New York scale.

'I don't know what to get,' Lana wailed in front of the triple rows of salad on offer. 'I'm not even going to have room in my box for a bit of everything!'

When they were sitting in front of a huge gla.s.s window eating salad and sipping iced tea in the air-conditioned splendour, Annie's mobile rang.

'h.e.l.lo.'

She recognized Ed's voice straight away.

'Hi there!' she replied.

'You've adopted the lingo then.'

'I've adopted the city. I'm a New Yorka now. You guys are going to have to pack up and move over to join us. Kidding!' she added quickly. 'Is everything OK?'

'Yes. We're just phoning to say good-night,' Ed said.

'Good night?!' She looked out of the window: the Avenue was still bathed in blazing sunshine.

'It's 9.30p.m. Babies in bed, Owen in shower, me thinking about turning in early,' he said and gave a yawn.

'Long day at school?'

'It's always a long day at school.'

'And you're all OK?' she asked again.

We're fine, Mick and Min have had a lovely day. Don't worry about us. We're all coping. Are you having a great time?'

'As a tourist, fabulous. As a dress-business consultant ... we'll have to wait and see. Elena is all over the place. But I'm hoping we'll be able to help. Lana's fantastic. She's in love with New York aren't you, darlin'? Ed, there haven't been any calls, have there? Tamsin? Anything like that? No,' Annie answered her own question, 'they would phone my mobile.'

'No. Nothing. Have you told her you're in New York for four weeks?'

'Well, not exactly. I said I might be out of town for a ... bit ...'

'Annie!'

'It'll be fine. Honest. OK, we shouldn't talk for too long, should we? Transatlantic phone bills.'

'No,' Ed agreed.

'Well, bye for now, babes, I love you.'

'Love you too.'

Then the line went dead and for a moment, Annie felt the pang. London was so far away. If anything happened ...

But Lana's excitement brought her right back to the lure of New York.

'Where are we going to go next?' Lana wanted to know. 'Shall we keep on walking? Shall we take a cab somewhere?' She pulled her well-thumbed guidebook from her bag and began to flick through the pages she'd marked up.

'What about Wall Street? Or Central Park? Or the Flatiron Building ... it's really close by. Or the Empire State? Or the Statue of Liberty?'

'Lana! It's OK,' Annie a.s.sured her, 'we're going to be here for four weeks. We don't need to see the whole of New York in a day.'

It was 1a.m. British time when Annie and Lana finally flagged enough to venture back to Elena's apartment.

It was 8p.m. in New York but the pace of the city hadn't slackened in the slightest. In fact it almost seemed busier. The shops were open till 10p.m. most nights! Annie felt torn between glee because the shopping would never end, and sympathy for the sales staff. Their shift rotas must be nightmarish.

'D'you think Elena will be in a better mood now?' Lana asked as they stood in front of the row of bells once again and prepared to buzz.

'Yeah ... I'm sure,' Annie replied, 'when I phoned her to say we were on our way back, she sounded much better.'

But when Elena answered the door to her apartment, she looked just as distraught as she had done earlier in the day.

'What's the matter now, my love?' Annie asked, fearing a fresh calamity on the Perfect Dress front.

'It's Sye,' Elena gasped, clearly on the verge of tears.

'Is he OK?'

Elena nodded.

'Has he broken up with you?'

Elena shook her head.

'Then what is it?'

Elena stepped back from the door, letting them and the several bags of shopping they seemed to have acquired into the little apartment.

'He's going away,' Elena wailed, collapsing onto the sofa.

She was freshly showered, Annie noticed, wet hair wafting a delicious scent, but her shoulders were slumped and she looked totally miserable.

'Where's he going?' Lana asked.

'On a shoot, in Venezuela, for six days.'

Annie couldn't help the smile that crossed her face. Elena must have it bad if a six-day absence was the cause of this much grief.

'But, Elena, that's what Sye does,' Annie reminded her. 'He's a fashion photographer! You should be proud of him. And he's obviously totally mad about you, anyone can see that just by the way he looks at you.'

'But this man. This beautiful man,' Elena exclaimed miserably, 'he will be surrounded by beautiful models all day long.'

Annie couldn't believe this lovely girl could be so insecure. 'He'll be fine, Elena. You're the one he wants to be with,' she said, 'try and remember that. Now, we need to talk about business.'

'Oh yah,' Elena gave a shrug, 'more bad news. Someone who give us 10,000 to start up Perfect Dress wants money back. So now we have close to zero.'

Chapter Nine.

Annie does New York: Purple sleeveless draped dress (Banana Republic)

Nude peep-toe platforms (Marc Jacobs)

Oversized sungla.s.ses (Nina Ricci)

Blue patent leather tote bag (DKNY)

Total est. cost: $920 (Ooops)

'Everyone has setbacks.'

Bright sunshine peeped through the small blind-free window of the tiny kitchen-meets-sitting room, waking Annie at the unG.o.dly hour of five the next morning. But as it was 11a.m. in Britain, she felt as if she'd had a luxurious lie-in.

Despite having to cope with a new sleeping partner in a cramped bed, Annie had slept soundly. She glanced over at Lana and saw that her daughter was still fast asleep, despite the noise of the bin-men now rattling and clanking metal dustbins down in the street below.

She broke into an excited grin. Even the noise of dustbins being emptied was thrilling because they were New York dustbins ... trash cans, she remembered.

Annie stole out of bed quietly and after a visit to the pocket-sized bathroom, stuffed with more toiletries and products than Annie had seen in many chemist shops, she clicked on the coffee machine, sat down at the tiny cafe table and decided that Elena couldn't mind too much if she took a look through the large pink files all neatly labelled: Perfect Dress.

Despite a talk with Elena about the business yesterday evening, Annie felt she needed to see all the doc.u.ments, the invoices, the facts and figures. Only then would she really have a clear idea of how to launch a rescue plan.

Besides, she'd been invited in as a partner. Surely, there couldn't be a problem with looking through the books?

She suspected Elena would be asleep for at least another two hours. After crying on first Annie and then Lana's shoulder, Elena had dressed up and headed out for her last evening with Sye before he left for Venezuela. Annie knew that Elena had come home because her bag and leather jacket were slung over the other cafe chair.

Sipping at her coffee, Annie looked through pages and pages of orders, invoices and printouts of email exchanges. Then she came to the photocopied papers with the latest dress designs. A talented Italian designer, based in London, was the person who translated Elena and Svetlana's 'creative vision' into the kind of paper patterns which factories could use.

Annie looked through the pages carefully with her seasoned shopper's eye. The drawings were beautiful. Truly lovely designs that managed to combine fashionable with cla.s.sic, stylish with wearable. So very clever. Annie remembered what had made her invest some of her own money in the Perfect Dress label.

Svetlana and Elena's inspired idea was to make comfortable dresses which could be dressed up or down for every occasion. These were swishy, fluid shirtdresses and wraps in bright colours and luxurious but machine-washable fabrics. Dresses that could do the school run in boots and a denim jacket, but then a dinner party in heels and a necklace.

They hovered between the 200 and 300 mark: just above the high street, but below designer label prices.

From her understanding of the files in front of her, Elena had tens of thousands of pounds' worth of orders to fulfil but debts with her factories and now absolutely no money left in the bank. What she needed was to raise some advance cash, money which would let her make the dresses to meet these orders. When the order money came in, she'd be able to pay off her factory debts, then her creditors, and she'd still have money in the bank to get next season's dresses lined up.

Despite the financial hiccups, Annie was convinced the dress label was still a great idea. Look how many shops had placed orders! Bloomingdale's had ordered close to ninety dresses for the period between September and February. Annie remembered now that Sye's mother had something to do with Bloomingdale's and this was how Perfect Dress had gained its first foothold in the US.

So, in a nutsh.e.l.l: they just had to raise some serious funds and find a dress factory that would run their order ... that was all.

Annie glanced again at the Bloomingdale's order to see when the first dresses were expected. In three weeks' time!! So what on earth was Elena doing lying in bed at 5.45 in the morning? She needed to be up, drinking coffee and starting a full day of phone hustling on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lana sat up on the couch. 'Hi, Mum. You keeping busy?'

'As a bee. I'm going to work all day today, love. What do you want to do with yourself?'

Lana flicked a glance at the large clock on the wall.

'I think I'll have a shower, then head straight up Sixth Avenue to be first in line at the Empire State Building. It opens at 8a.m.'

'No! You're not allowed to go up it without me!'

'Mum, I am,' Lana insisted. 'I'll go up this morning and then you can come up with me when you've got the time. I'm going up more than once. Greta says it's the best thing in New York.'

'It is,' Annie agreed. 'Ed and I went up at sunset and the city below was all golden ...'

'Very romantic,' Lana said, nipping embarra.s.singly dreamy memories in the bud. 'Did you sleep OK?'

'Yeah fine, you?'

'Not bad. I was so tired but as for you ... you snore! Did you know that?'