Page 90 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
Duty done, I was free to make a start on dresses two to eleven, and I thought I might as well tackle them in numerical order. The more modern ones would be quick and easy to measure, but there were also some antique costumes – not by any means the traditional white wedding dress we expect now – that would take much longer.
As I worked, laying out each one in turn on my cuttingtable, I tried not to dwell on the intricacies of their construction, or their histories. There would be time enough for that later, although the condition of some of them made it hard to keep my mind focused on the task in hand. They appeared the products not so much of bridal misfortunes, but catastrophes!
The last one was especially poignant … but finally, by late afternoon, they were all safely returned to their boxes or garment bags.
Pearl rang just as I was packing up for the day to say she’d already printed out the information cards I’d sent over to her and would laminate them next day, but she also wanted to remind me it was book group night.
‘I thought you might be so busy you’d forget.’
‘I had, but I’ll come. Golightly seems to be so much happier and more relaxed now he can go out during the day, so I don’t feel so bad about leaving him.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. The meeting is at Thom’s cottage this time and we’re going to discuss favourite children’s books.’
‘That sounds like fun!’
‘What’s that weird noise in the background?’ she asked.
‘Golightly. He wants his dinner, so I’d better go,’ I told her and rang off.
When I’d fed him, I decided on impulse that I’d have a light meal at the Pink Elephant – I deserved it!
To my surprise, I found the Rev. Jo-Jo in the teashop, seated in one of the booths at the back of the room.
She beckoned me over. ‘Do join me! I’m afraid having afternoon tea here is my guilty pleasure, but I’ll feel so much better if you’re indulging in one, too!’
‘I was thinking more of something savoury,’ I said. ‘But now you’ve mentioned it, I don’t think I can resist!’
‘The full works, with finger sandwiches, scones and cakes?’ she said happily. ‘That’s what I’ve ordered.’
‘Then I’ll have the same.’
I gave my order, then Jo-Jo explained that she usually had tea there on a Tuesday, before visiting a former parishioner who now lived in Great Mumming. ‘There isn’t time after that to have anything to eat before the book group.’
‘I came here on impulse – I just felt I deserved it after a hard day’s work. Also, it’s a reward because I managed to resist dwelling on the stories that lie behind all the dresses in the collection while I was measuring them for display mannequins.’
‘I look forward to finding out all about them when the museum opens, which Pearl tells me will probably be mid-October.’
‘Yes, the fifteenth! That’s what Honey has decided, and I suspect she usually gets what she wants,’ I agreed. ‘It doesn’t give me long to get everything ready to go on display.’
‘I’ve just been to see Pearl, because she had some books for me, and she told me about the family connection between you and Honey, and how you discovered it through an exhibition about a mutual ancestor – a Regency actress! It was all quite enthralling!’
‘That’s right. It was only because Honey found some items in the attic related to Rosa-May Garland and loaned them to the V&A Museum that we found out. Of course, I knew I was a descendant, because I was named Garland after her, but Honey had no idea of my existence till then.’
‘And now you’ve left your job as a theatrical costumier in London for a new life here in Great Mumming? That must be quite a change? Of course, you are not entirely among strangers because as well as Honey, Pearl mentioned that you were previously acquainted with dear Thom, who we are all busilypretending we don’t know was once a famous actor!’ She beamed, her round face rosy. ‘The plot, as they say, thickens!’
‘Thom and I knew each other as children, then met again later in London, but until the day I moved here I hadn’t seen or heard anything of him for six years and had no idea where he was. It was … quite a shock.’
‘But a good one, I hope?’
I looked across the table at her and there was something at once so clever and kind in her grey eyes that I felt an unstoppable urge rise up in me to tell her the whole story of my lifeandThom’s, since they were inextricably intertwined.
Really, I don’t know what had got into me lately! Ever since I’d met Honey, I seemed to have gone from preserving a clam-like silence about my past to babbling on about it at the drop of a hat.
Anyway, my mouth seemed to have taken on a life of its own, because before I knew it, I was explaining all the events in the past that had finally led me to this point in time – and I meaneverything. Out it all poured: our happy childhood, then the trauma of my parents’ deaths and our separation. Our new lives apart, in very different, but equally alien environments. How we’d eventually come together again in London and instantly been best friends, closer than any brother and sister.
Then there was the relationship between Thom, his stepbrother Leo, and Mirrie Malkin, which had been finally broken first by Mirrie’s infidelity to Leo and then Leo’s death, and, before that, how Thom had blamed Marco and Leo’s other London friends for leading him into drug and alcohol dependency … which in turn, when I told Thom I’d fallen in love with Marco, led to our estrangement.
‘And we still hadn’t made up the argument before Leo diedfrom an overdose, after which Thom just vanished from my life.’
