Page 70 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
‘I think you’ll be seeing a lot more slut-drops this weekend,’ Sophy blurted out and she deserved the glare that Phoebe gave her at the same time that Ingrid slipped an envelope into her hand.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Phoebe said as she was given her own envelope. ‘But really unnecessary. You can’t even guess what it means to me to match a bride with her perfect dress. It’s my favourite part of the job.’
Cress just smiled because, although she loved her job, Sophy knew full well that she didn’t love having to hand-sew a hem that measured several metres.
It wasn’t until Hege and Ingrid had left and the last customer was seen out of the door with a cheery and slightly manic, ‘Thank you for visiting us.Hope to see you soon!’ that Sophy had a chance to look in her envelope and there tucked into a thank-you card was a John Lewis gift card for one hundred pounds.
She waited until Chloe and Beatrice had left before checking with Phoebe and Cress to see if they’d received the same level of riches.
‘It happens all the time,’ Phoebe said, though she looked pleased that it did. ‘Once, a grateful bride gifted me a mini-break at Soho Farmhouse for telling her the hard truth that if she got married in plunging red lamé she’d regret it.’ Phoebe looked misty-eyed at the memory. ‘Then I sold her a darling white lace column dress for the ceremony and she wore the red lamé for the evening do. One of my finest moments, even if I do say so myself.’
Cress had also got a hundred-quid gift card and she was all ready to spend it.
‘Let’s go to John Lewis tonight,’ she suggested to Sophy. ‘I need to get some haberdashery.’
Cressalwaysneeded haberdashery and Sophy had been on her feet all day. ‘Can we take a raincheck?’
‘When you’re far away in Australia never knowing when you’ll see me again then you’ll wish that you’d taken two hours out of your life to go to John Lewis with me,’ Cress said because behind her mild exterior lay a woman who wasn’t above a little emotional blackmail. ‘Don’t you need to buy some snake repellent, anyway?’
Wikipedia that morning had informed Sophy that snakes were indigenous to all areas of Australia and quite a few of them were venomous.
‘Well, I suppose…’ she said without much enthusiasm.
‘If you are going to John Lewis, I’mbeggingyou to detour via bras,’ Phoebe called out from the back office. ‘You’re a 34B, Soph. No need to thank me.’
There was no way, no bloody way, that Sophy was detouring via bras to try on a 34B when she’d been a 34C all her adult life, but somehow she found herself in a changing room after some gentle chiding from Cress. (‘What harm can it do? If Phoebe’s wrong, then you have the satisfaction of knowing that she was wrong, and if she is right then at least you’ll be in the correct-size bra.’)
The bra fitter was obviously in cahoots with Phoebe; she didn’t even whip out her tape measure but looked at Sophy in her trusty 34C bra and said firmly, ‘Well, youclearlyneed to go down a cup size.’
Half an hour later, Sophy was trailing Cress through the haberdashery department with three new size 34B bras in her bag. On the inside she was fuming. On the outside she was fuming too. But also a tiny bit pleased at how her breasts looked in the right-size bra.
Still, as Cress said, Phoebe never had to find out. It was a secret they’d take to the grave with them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hallelujah! You’re wearing the right-size bra,’ Phoebe crowed the next day when Sophy emerged from the changing room in her black velvet draped dress, all ready for the vintage summer ball. ‘Iknewyou were a 34B. Though if I were you, I’d have gone for a rigid rather than soft cup; looks so much better under vintage.’
Sophy cast a jaundiced eye over Phoebe’s admittedly very perky bosom in the black lace Biba dress Johnno had brought in a few weeks ago and which Phoebe had immediately claimed for herself. Then she looked down at her own chest, which was a lot more perky now that she was in the right, no, adifferentcup size.
‘My breasts aren’t for discussion,’ she said, folding her arms and scowling.
‘Then I won’t say how good they look in that dress, which admittedly does seem much better in real life than in a photo.’ Phoebe allowed herself a small smile. ‘See, I can admit when I’m wrong. Now, what on earth are we going to do about your hair?’
As promised, Phoebe’s friends, Vivienne and Roy, a very glamorous couple both of them in head-to-foot leopard print, had set up a beauty and hair salon in the back office, and they only had Sophy left to do. Chloe, Anita and Beatrice had emerged with the famous ‘victory rolls’, their long hair pinned and curled into voluminous rolls. Their brows were arched, their lips a vivid carmine red; the three of them looked like 1940s pin-up girls.Sophy wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see their pictures on the side of a Spitfire.
Cress’s long, wavy hair had been braided and pinned and wound round her head like a coronet and her make-up was a lot softer but was a perfect complement to her navy blue lace dress in a New Look silhouette. Although she loved vintage clothes and collected vintage dress patterns the same way that small children collected Pokémon cards, it was very rare to see Cress in a dress.
Only Phoebe had refused Vivienne and Roy’s services. Roy, a six foot five rockabilly with a towering quiff, had said gallantly, ‘Well, it’s not like we can improve on perfection.’ Sophy hated to admit that he was right but Phoebe’s sleek black, precision-cut bob and her equally precise liquid eyeliner wings and red lipstick couldn’t be improved upon.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Sophy. Her hair, newly washed that morning, was so straight and shiny that it didn’t want to be victory rolled. Even spending most of the afternoon in heated rollers hadn’t helped. The curls fell out as soon as Roy put a comb through her hair. They settled with braiding it like Cress’s and coiling it into a bun, which Roy threaded through with black ribbon in the vain hope that it might actually stay in place.
Though Sophy never bothered with much make-up, just some light bronzer so she didn’t look too pale and mascara because her eyelashes tended to disappear, she gave Vivienne free rein and couldn’t quite believe the results.
After half an hour, her eyes were lined in kohl and looked positively Bambi-like; and she now had cheekbones and also the poutiest, reddest lips. ‘I never thought I could get away with red lipstick, not with my hair,’ Sophy said when she was turned round to see herself in the mirror.
She hadn’t been sure how she felt about this summer ball, other than being excited to see Charles after a week apart. But something lovely happened toPhoebe after six thirty, when the day’s takings had been stashed in the safe and the last dress put back on its hanger. Phoebe actually became fun. Who knew she had it in her?
She emerged from the back office with two bottles of Prosecco and some paper cups wedged under her arm and said, without any discernible irony, ‘Come on, ladies, let’s get this party started.’
