Page 41 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
‘Right, Louise, you need to suck in everything you’ve got.’ Sophy took hold of the tag with a tissue between her thumb and finger so she had a good grip, and sent up a swift but heartfelt prayer to the gods of retail.
It must have worked, because slowly Sophy was able to inch the zip down. It did get stuck just before she reached the bottom, but Chloe was there to apply more gel and finally Louise was released from her silver lamé bondage.
‘Oh my days!’ she gasped, doing a victory dance in her beige double Spanx. ‘I can’t wait to go home and put my comfies on.’
‘That dress definitely needs a new zipper,’ Chloe said, as she folded it up. ‘I’ll have a word with Cress and see—’
‘No, but I’m taking the dress,’ Louise interrupted, like the last very stressful half-hour hadn’t happened. ‘Apart from the whole getting stuck in it thing, it looked amazing on me.’
‘It did look amazing,’ Sophy agreed, but she couldn’t in good conscience allow Louise to walk out of the shop with a dress that she probably would have to be cut out of at a later date.
‘This is just the incentive I need to lay off the lamb bhuna and the peshwari naan,’ Louise continued as Sophy and Chloe shared a look of helplessness.
In the end, Louise was made to see reason and conceded that she would let them put in a new zipper at no extra charge and return in a week. ‘Honestly, I’m a curry-free zone now,’ she said as she paid the deposit on the dress.
‘This makes me feel so guilty about selling dresses that are sized much smaller than civilian dresses,’ Chloe mused. Then, with another look to the stairs and the muffled sound of raised voices, she added,‘Phoebe flat-out refuses to let a customer try on a dress if she thinks that it might be too small.’
‘It’s a wonder that Phoebe actually allows any dress to leave the shop,’ Sophy said and she and Chloe both grinned, until Sophy’s phone beeped and she pulled it out of her dress pocket to find a message from Phoebe, who really did seem to have a spider sense for when someone was bad-mouthing her – or, worse, one of her frock children.
COME UPSTAIRS NOW!!!!!!
Chapter Fifteen
With stomach-churning dread, Sophy mounted the stairs, already rehearsing the passionate speech she’d give in her own defence. Maybe Phoebe had installed cameras in the changing rooms so she could see what they got up to when she was otherwise engaged. Though wasn’t that against the law?
Then Sophy turned the corner, climbed the last few steps – and put a hand to her mouth at the absolute scenes in front of her.
‘What the…?’
Hege was in her grey coat and dress and looked beautifully elegant, not at all matronly. Ingrid was half in and half out of her dress as she stood on the dais; Cress crouched at her feet. Not to do anything useful like pin the hem but to avoid the chaos that reigned all around her. Now, for the first time, Sophy was grateful that she’d missed out on shopping for wedding and bridesmaid dresses with Radha and the other bridesmaids if this is what they’d got up to.
British Beyoncé and Valkyrie were stripped down to their undies and trying on dresses, which they were yanking from their satin padded hangers with absolutely no respect for the fact that they were unique heirloom pieces that cost more than Sophy earned in a month. Heaped on one of the sofas was a crumpled pile of dresses that had obviously been discarded.
‘Everyone tries on the wedding dresses,’ Beyoncé was insisting gaily as she tugged down the skirt of a delicate, paper-thin ivory silk charmeuse. ‘It’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?’
Meanwhile Valkyrie was dropping it like it was hot in a 1930s crêpe and lace dress, which had survived the Second World War but seemed far too fragile to survive being twerked in.
Only Jaunty Ponytail wasn’t partaking. Instead she was sitting on one of the gilt and brocade cream sofasmunching her way through a packet of crispsand saying earnestly, ‘I’ll pass. I bet someone has died in one of those dresses.’
Now Sophy knew what it meant to be hoist by her own petard. No wonder Coco Chanel wasn’t lolling on her blue satin cushion but was cowering under one of the sofas, and Phoebe… Phoebe…
Was Phoebe actually crying?If she was, they were tears of utter rage.
‘Youhaveto make them stop,’ she was growling at Hege, who might have looked elegant but was also looking like she was wishing for a swift and pain-free death. ‘Those dresses are antiques. If they get damaged, they’ll have to be paid for.’
Sophy wondered if she could just quietly disappear back down the stairs, but it was too late; Phoebe had seen her.
‘Sophy!’ she barked. ‘Can I have a word? In the workroom!’
‘Uh, yeah, sure thing.’ Sophy’s legs, which were working entirely independently from Sophy’s brain, carried her further into the ninth circle.
‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ Phoebe said, as she shut the door behind Sophy. ‘Seriously, my heart is doing this weird fluttery thing.’
‘Please don’t have a heart attack. What is going on up here?’ Sophy collapsed onto Cress’s swivel chair. ‘I can’tbelieve that you let them put their hands and God knows what else on the dresses.’
‘They’re monsters. They wouldn’t listen to a single word I said. They laughed at me. You don’t even want to know how much champagne they’ve necked.’ Phoebe clutched at her heart. ‘Hanging’s too good for them.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Sophy asked because, again, this was beyond her pay grade.
