Page 74 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘Darling, we sodon’t,’ I said aloud.
In fact, I’d no intention of opening any channel of communication with him ever again.
I called Marco a very rude word and looked up to find Golightly standing in the doorway. He seemed to be mouthing an emphatic, if silent, agreement.
*
I went over to the museum a few minutes before the delivery slot for the workbenches, to open and pin back the doors to the foyer. There had been no sign of any workmen about today and all was quiet.
Luckily, since the tables were trestles, I managed to drag them into the workroom myself, then put them together.
My Amazon delivery arrived just as I was about to lock the museum doors. I now had the wedding dress reference books and a tall, leather-topped stool, a bit like the one in Thom’s workshop, which I’d rather liked.
Soon I had the arrangement of benches and sewing machines to my liking and sat on the tall stool, swivelling it round and round, as you do – small things amuse small minds – until Honey rang to summon me to go through to her office.
There was no sign of Viv when I passed the kitchen, though it was redolent with the smell of baking – something like cheese scones, I thought, sniffing appreciatively.
Honey wanted to show me the photos Priceless Interiors had just sent her of the first of the renovated display cabinets from the ecclesiastical museum.
‘The first lot are arriving on the fourteenth and then the rest on the seventeenth, though they’re still sourcing more to fill in any gaps,’ she said.
They were all in dark glossy wood: full-length display cases and shallower units with shelves.
‘They’ve got a big mahogany L-shaped desk for reception and some shelving and drawer units that will do for the shop.’ She scrolled to another picture. ‘This is a smaller desk and chair for the staff room.’
‘I think they all look really good, and we’ll have plenty of display space to expand into,’ I said.
‘I just want to make sure that huge deskwillfit in the foyer between the staircase and the wall, with a gap to get round it,’ Honey said, and came back with me to the museum.
I helped her measure up. The desk would fit quite nicely, soshe rang Priceless Interiors on the spot and insisted she wanted it delivered on the fourteenth, with the first display units.
I could hear protesting noises from the other end, but she got her way, which wasn’t surprising since she must be spending a fortune with them. She had sold them the glass cases that had housed the stuffed animals from the natural history collection, however, which might have offset some of her expenses.
‘That’s that,’ she said in satisfaction, pushing the phone back into her jeans pocket. ‘I tell you what, let’s go up to the attic in the house and see what you think of Uncle Hugo’s office furniture. If you like it, I’ll get it brought down to your workroom and then it will be out of the way before our first Great Attic Hunt on Sunday.’
‘OK,’ I agreed, and followed her back through the corridor from the museum and up and up the tall, crooked old Tudor house until we finally arrived at a set of steeper and uncarpeted stairs that opened directly into the first attic.
‘Here we are! The attics ramble up and down various levels, just like the rest of the rooms in the house, but the ones over the later kitchen wing used to be the servants’ quarters, so there isn’t much in those. Even less, now I’ve flogged most of the brass bedsteads and washstands to the junk shop man, Arthur. The door to the right leads into the older attics.’
‘There’s not a lot in this room,’ I observed.
‘No, because I had all my odds and ends and Hugo’s office furniture moved into one of the servants’ bedrooms. My cunning plan for our Sunday sessions is to shift anything I want to get rid of into there. But anyway, come and look at Hugo’s stuff.’
In what must have been a very spartan bedroom she twitched off a dustsheet to reveal a modern light-wood computer desk, side unit for a printer, a high-backed office chair and two small filing cabinets, stacked one on top of the other.
‘Ikea’s finest,’ she said. ‘It didn’t really go with the house, but of course, it was practical. Would it do for your workroom?’
‘Yes, it’s just the thing!’
‘Those boxes in the corner contain his hard drive, a monitor and printer, all in good working order, so you could have those too, if you want them?’
‘I’ve only got a small laptop, so it would be handy having a permanent workstation just for the museum work. As long as you’re sure you don’t need any of it.’
‘No, it’s all surplus to requirements. I took all Uncle Hugo’s genealogical files off it and wiped the hard drive before I put it up here. I knew his password to get in.’
She checked her watch. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun, but we need a couple of strong men to heft the office furniture over to your workroom. Do you happen to have Simon and Thom’s mobile numbers handy?’
‘I do. I’ve got all the book group in my phone now, but they might both be in the middle of doing something important!’
