Page 44 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
‘It’s from Freddy,’ she bit out.
‘Oh my God, how does he know about the champagne?’ Cress yelped, looking around fearfully. ‘Is there CCTV in here?’
‘He informs me that he’s swapped your day off with Chloe’s day off, so you’re not coming in on Monday,’ Phoebe told Sophy icily as if she’d had her vocal cords imported from some frozen tundra. ‘Apparently, it’s Johnno’s express orders so you can go gallivanting around with Charles.’
‘Not gallivanting,’ Sophy said, then she realised it was completely up to her what she did on her days off. ‘I would have cleared it with you but Charles said there was no need.’
Phoebe stood up and brushed down her dress. She never seemed to mind that there might be dog hair on her clothes or on her precious sofas and carpet. ‘I knew this would happen,’ she said crossly. ‘Special treatment that undermines my authority.’
‘It’s a day off,’ Cress pointed out courageously. ‘What difference does it make whether it’s Monday or Wednesday?’
‘It’s the principle of the thing.’ In Sophy’s experience, people always started banging on about the principle of the thing when they didn’t have a leg to stand on in an argument.
But she wasn’t going to tell Phoebe that. She wasn’t stupid. Also, she only had to put up with Phoebe for however long it took her to get her airfare together.
Even braving snakes and lizards in between shearing sheep on a remote, dusty farm had to be better than putting up with Phoebe.
Chapter Sixteen
Phoebe was still tight of lip and flared of nostril when they closed the shop on Saturday afternoon.
Charles had messaged Sophy to say that he’d pick her up after work, they’d be away for two nights and she’d need one fancy daytime outfit. Annoyingly, he was still unforthcoming on any other details.
Sophy had spent the last two days on a very detailed fantasy, which involved them rocking up to a posh hotel to find there’d been a problem with the booking. There was only one remaining room. With one bed in it! She’d read enough romance novels to know that that kind of thing happened all the time.
But before she could move on to imagining them in bed together, trying desperately to keep apart, Sophy would then remember that should she have to share a bed with Charles, her honour would remain intact, goddamn it, because Charles didn’t have designs on her. And never bloody would. He saw her as many things. The daughter of a good friend of his. The newest member of staff at a shop where he offloaded some of his cheaper costume jewellery finds. But mostly he saw Sophy as a project. A protégée. Someone he’d taken pity on. She was the Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins.
Then Sophy would remember that Henry Higgins had realised that he couldn’t live without Eliza Doolittle and her foolish little heart would think about skipping a beat. Then she’d go back to agonising over what she had to wear that could possibly be described asfancy. Even, dare she think it,sexy.None of her sack dresses had one solitary sequin between them.
‘I packed a jumpsuit. The navy blue one that feels like silk jersey but isn’t,’ she’d said to Cress on Saturday afternoon as they took advantage of a rare sunny day in a very soggy April to eat their sandwiches outside on the patio.
‘I don’t know Charles very well but if he wants you to bring something fancy to wear then I don’t think a navy blue viscose jumpsuit is going to cut it,’ Cress said gently.
‘What am I going to do then? Where am I going to find Charles’s idea of formal wear when I have twenty minutes left of my lunch hour and there is no way I can afford to buy clothes in very expensive Primrose Hill boutiques?’
Cress put her finger to her chin as she considered Sophy’s plight. ‘I don’t know. How are you going to find something to wear at such short notice when you only have twenty minutes left of your lunch break in the vintage shop where you work that gives you access to hundreds of dresses and a thirty-five per cent staff discount? It’s got me stumped!’
‘You’re not even a little bit funny,’ Sophy said and she wasn’t laughing either when Cress frogmarched her back into the shop, stood over her while she washed her hands (Phoebe was definitely a bad influence on Cress), then made her try on dresses.
Eventually they settled on a 1960s forest green metallic brocade dress with a leaf pattern in a lighter shade. It had cap sleeves and was tailored to give Sophy ‘a classic hourglass silhouette’, according to Cress. Though when you were used solely to sack dresses and jumpsuits, anything even a little bit fitted felt like it was a bandage.
‘You can wear the silver wedge heels that you were going to wear with that jumpsuit,’ Cress said with satisfaction. ‘You’ll have to go bare-legged.’
‘But it’s too cold for bare legs in April and I haven’t shaved in weeks.’ It was one of the advantages of being single. Sophy had to nip out to the chemist while Phoebe was tucked away in the atelier to buy some razors, then shave her legs over the sink in the tiny loo between the changing rooms and the office.
No wonder Sophy had a feeling of impending doom as she hefted up her overnight bag and followed Cress through the empty shop on the dot of five thirty.
‘Mum and Aaron are out out, so Colin’s coming round and we’re going to order dim sum and watch a film calledIn the Mood for Love;it’s set in Hong Kong in 1962 and hasthemost exquisite dresses in it,’ Cress was saying.
‘Shouldn’t you be out out too?’ Sophy asked because it was Saturday night and, just like most other Saturday nights, Cress was planning to spend it in in. ‘Unless you’re going to take advantage of having the place to yourselves to get up to no good?’
‘Says the woman going away for a dirty weekend,’ Cress said, slapping Sophy on the bottom as she shooed her out of the door.
‘How can it be a dirty weekend when Charles doesn’t— Wow!’
There was a sleek, silver vintage car parked outside, its roof down, and Charles, in a staid black suit made a lot less staid by his pink floral Liberty print shirt, was holding the passenger door open.
‘Your chariot awaits,’ he said, as Sophy stepped out into the road.
