Page 62 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
Where There’s a Will
I thought I’d spend the rest of the morning finishing the unpacking in the cottage, starting with filling all the bookshelves with my beautifully bound old Victorian novels and the well-thumbed paperback children’s books that I still comfort-read from time to time.
Until I could buy some picture hooks, I couldn’t hang anything up, including the padded heart on which were pinned all my Bakelite brooches, but I could arrange the rest of my collection in the glass-topped curio table.
I didn’t have much bric-a-brac, and most of what there was had belonged to Mum and Dad: a photo of their wedding day in a silver frame, vases, a box covered in shells, and an amusing teapot shaped like a snail, with a tiny version of itself on the lid.
I arranged these treasures carefully on the shelves and added the big album of family photos – mainly of me, from babyhood up to the age of ten, some including Thom.
Golightly watched me unpack, occasionally getting down from his chair to try an empty box for size, but none of them seemed to measure up to the one in the utility room.
I had acquired a few things besides Bakelite over the years, and put a big, saffron-yellow jug on the kitchen windowsill and an Art Deco coffee pot with a spout like a hooked nose on the living-room mantelpiece.
Honey had been right about everything finding its place, so that all that was left to do then was scatter around the cushions, made of oddments of vintage fabric, that had filled out the heavier boxes and – hey presto – it was home.
Now I had the room, I could do with a sofa and maybe another easy chair as well as a couple more kitchen ones, but I didn’t think I’d find those in Honey’s attic on Sunday. It would, however, be fun helping her sort out the accumulated junk of centuries. In fact, it might be like the start of a Blyton or E. Nesbit adventure. I suspected Thom, Simon and even Pearl would feel much the same way!
I flattened all the cardboard boxes, tied them in a big bundle with string and jammed them behind the wheelie bin in the passage next to the cottage, in the hope they would be taken away for recycling.
I spared Golightly’s box, of course, and not only because he was now lying in it again and eyeing me beadily.
I don’t know why unpacking makes you so grubby, but I needed a wash before lunch, and when I checked my phone afterwards I found a message from Derek with the delivery details for the cutting table and workbenches. The table was actually arriving tomorrow! Then the workbenches – I’d gone for the trestle kind – were coming on Friday.
That suited me, because it was the day when I expected some of the odds and ends for the workroom that I’d ordered myself to arrive.
Hopefully, by Monday, everything would be set up and ready for me to start work.
I would begin reading all the details of the dresses before that, of course, and I was also determined to read another page or two of Rosa-May’s journal later on and pick up the story, which sounded intriguing.
I’d only just sent a reply to Derek when up popped a new email from Will. There seemed no escaping the past entirely, just as, I suppose, Thom never quite escaped his when he was receiving regular bulletins from Demelza and Mallory.
I have to admit that I do rather enjoy Will’s slightly malicious and acerbic take on things. Events seemed to have moved on since Marco sent his email, because Will’s was quite illuminating in several ways, including how Marco’s next play was faring.
Darling!
Chez nous, relations between our leading lady and director are increasingly rocky. It started to go downhill the moment she had calmed down after the scene in the dressing room and grasped that Marco’s attentions had not been serious … Of course, he then immediately backtracked and told her she’d got it all wrong and he meant to tell you your engagement was at an end in good time, but by rushing things Mirrie had brought about a catastrophe that could have been avoided.
That went down like a lead balloon, I can tell you!
But, as they say, the show must go on and we all know in our hearts that the play is a huge success and will run and run, so Mirrie is not about to cut off her nose to spite her face by flouncing out … especially since that would break her contract and she is so very money orientated.
At the theatre yesterday I overheard Marco telling Mirrie about the play he’s currently writing, which seems to be about a woman turning into a swan, of all things. It sounds too dreary and arty for words, like the highbrow dross he used to write. Mirrie, of course, only wanted to know if there was a big part for her in it. From what he was saying, he’d just run the plot and theme of it past the management and they’d thought much the same as me …
Mirrie assured him it sounded brilliant, but though she’s sharp as a knife when it comes to money, she isn’t exactly going to win the Intellectual of the Year title, is she? Then Marco made the mistake of saying that you’d told him he should write another supernatural thriller and I popped my head out of the dressing-room door and said I couldn’t help overhearing, but you were quite right. So then Mirrie had a tantrum and accused him of being sorry he’d broken off with you and I left them to it …
What larks!
Will xx
*
I’d found Thom’s mobile number on the contact list Pearl had given me and I sent him a text suggesting he come for lunch before fitting the cat flap. I was just putting out salad, cold meats and cheese, a jar of pickles and some crusty rolls I’d bought the previous day, when he arrived, carrying a large toolbox.
‘I wasn’t sure what tools you had,’ he explained, setting itdown in the hall. ‘And I thought even if you had an electric drill, it might not be charged up.’
‘No drill and only the most basic of tools,’ I said. ‘We’ll have lunch first, though. Come through, before Golightly beats us to it.’
As far as I could tell, Golightly was pleased to see Thom. At any rate, the faces he was pulling weren’t as hideous as the ones he used to direct at Marco, who he hated.
