Inside, a plethora of photographs lined the walls of her workspace: images of her favourite people and her favourite places – some of which she’d actually visited, like Positano, and others she hoped to travel to in times to come, like Paris and Australia.
She kept those there for inspiration.
Her desk was a minimalist IKEA affair with a comfortable executive chair behind it. Annie settled in that chair now to get started on the latest stock inventory and purchase sheets.
It hadn’t been easy building a business on top of all her commitments, and she’d had to learn how to do much of the admin and accountancy stuff herself in between salon appointments and trying to drum up new customers.
She no longer counted stock but she checked the sheets, made the orders, and ensured her business had everything it needed.
The things she could no longer do herself, like VAT and tax, she’d employed professionals to see to, and now, five years on, things were finally working like a well-oiled machine.
She turned her attention to that morning’s post, raising an eyebrow when she saw a familiar logo on one of the envelopes and prying it open to find Kim Weston’s invite to Villa Dolce Vita’s grand reopening in Italy.
Annie smiled. So she’d actually done it then.
Though, as always where Kim was concerned, she felt an instinctive pang of envy, and quickly pushed it aside.
Ofcourseshe had done it – the same girl never let anything faze her.
Annie also raised an eyebrow at the launch party date, only a month way.
As if she could just swan off to Italy for a long weekend at such short notice. She had a business to run.
She then spotted the flight and hotel confirmations, and how everything had been booked and paid for.
Nice, but Annie was perfectly able to pay her own way. Then she took a deep breath.
There she was getting her back up again – exactly the kind of thing Kim used to always warn her against. She should just accept her friend’s generosity and leave it at that.
But Annie couldn’t help it. Despite their closeness that summer, there was always a fault-line where she and the other two were concerned – and probably always would be.
Right from that first day at the villa, she’d always felt somewhat on the outside and knew she’d never share the same rapport Colette and Kim had, and probably still did now.
But maybe that was understandable.
In truth, Annie was somewhat surprised to actually get the invite. Colette and Kim had kept in much closer contact since that summer in Italy – they had even attended each other’s weddings, whereas Annie couldn’t make either at the time.
She didn’t think they ever resented her for that or anything,but in all honesty, she hadn’t really expected their time together to spill over into their lives once they got back home.
It was just a holiday thing. Time and place.
Of course, it was easy to keep up with Kim’s life on social media (or at least the version she shared of it) and she knew that she now had a young daughter with her gorgeous husband Gabriel.
Annie had met the couple briefly when one time Kim was on a business trip to Dublin, and he was exactly the kind of guy the likes of Kim Weston would find herself ending up with – a drop-dead gorgeous hunk with oodles of natural charm and an even greater amount of adoration for his wife.
Again, Annie chided herself for her envy.
Kim deserved this, she’d worked hard for it – yet like everything, the success of The Sweet Life all seemed to come about so easily for her. After that summer, she’d practically fallen into her highly lucrative mindfulness guru and successful social-mediainfluencer role without even trying. And with support from the right people aiding her all the way, making introductions, bankrolling her investments, everything …
Whereas Annie had to work her arse off right from the get-go, and even if she continued to expand #GlamSquad, she’d never match the giddy heights of international success Kim had achieved.
But that was life, wasn’t it? Some people just glided effortlessly through the water like swans, while others treaded water like demons just to keep afloat.
Annie looked again at the invite. The Sweet Life indeed …
No doubt this new retreat or wellness centre – or whatever hippy-dippy buzzword the gullible masses lapped up these days – would also be a roaring success, especially given the location.
And she couldn’t help but wonder now what Kim had done with the crumbling old villa. She smiled fondly, recalling how dismissive she’d been of the house initially, calling it an ’oul wreck, when Kim and even Colette had each been able to see beyond the ramshackle disrepair and visualise its former glory days.
