Page 36 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
They’d ticked along for a few years and just when Johnno had decided that vintage clothes was done because it was getting harder to source decent stock and maybe he should go back to the junk business, Phoebe had come on board and persuaded him that they needed to go more upmarket than back downmarket.
‘So, how did you meet Phoebe?’ Sophy suspected that Phoebe had entered Johnno’s life in a puff of sulphurous smoke. She also wanted to know if Johnno had even started to look for his birth certificate and passport; but then two things happened that made her not really care about either of those things.
The first thing was that Coco Chanel, who shunned all human touch unless it was Phoebe’s (doing nothing to disprove Sophy’s theory that maybe Phoebe was a witch and Coco Chanel was her familiar), suddenly plonked herself down on Freddy’s lap, contorted herself onto her back with some difficulty because she really wasn’t very ergonomically shaped, then allowed him to rub her belly. That was definitely something out of the ordinary.
‘Not that out of the ordinary,’ Phoebe insisted. ‘Coco Chanel can be very personable and, anyway, it’s probably because Freddy’s been eating pork scratchings.’
‘I haven’t been eating pork scratchings. Maybe it’s because I’m a lovely bloke. They say that about dogs, don’t they? That they’re good judges of character.’
‘Do they?’ Phoebe was pure ice queen, but Freddy just smirked and raised his bottle of lager in salute, which made Phoebe look even more cross.
The second thing was that, just when she’d given up on him, Charles suddenly appeared. He stood in the doorway surveying the packed bar and,when his eyes lit on Sophy, he shot her a smile, which made her heart lift. So different to how she’d felt when she’d come home to find Egan sitting there.
It was another late one. Another evening when she and Charles were the last ones standing and, as he waited with her outside the pub for her Uber to appear, it felt like they were the last two people left in the world.
‘You’ll text me when you get home so I know you’re in one piece,’ Charles said, lifting up the ends of Sophy’s ponytail so her hair was shot through with the LED glare from the lamppost they were standing under.
It was a long time since a man had cared that Sophy got home in one piece. Egan never even waited up for her and, when she made it back from a long sesh, would often complain that she’d woken him up. Even though it seemed to Sophy she was always walking on eggshells around him.
‘And we’re still good for Wednesday?’ Sophy asked hopefully. ‘London Bridge station, you said. I am going to google museums in the area, unless you’re taking me to the London Dungeons.’
‘I’m not taking you to the London Dungeons and please don’t google, it will ruin the surprise.’ Charles gave her a stern look (even his stern look was thrilling), then the moment was shattered by the triumphant beep of the horn as Steve in a Honda Insight let Sophy know he’d arrived.
She was still floating on a little cloud of contentment as she unlocked the door of her mum’s house. It didn’t really feel like home, but it was the closest she had right now.
Mindful that she’d drunk quite a few gin and tonics, Sophy forced herself to drink two glasses of water in the vague hope that it might head off tomorrow’s hangover. Then she tiptoed up the stairs so she could brush her teeth and take off her make-upin the bathroom before heading back down the stairs to sleep on the sofa.
‘That you, love?’ her mother called out. She and Mike always slept with their bedroom door ajar to stop Lollipop from scratching at the paintwork and demanding entry.
‘Yes, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep,’ Sophy whispered back, opening the door to the spare bedroom/home spa so she could retrieve her pyjamas.
She stood there blinking. How much had she had to drink tonight – surely she was seeing things? Or rathernotseeing things.
The sunbed was no longer there. Neither was the hood dryer, the foot spa, the wheeled IKEA trolley full of lotions, potions and unguents. The gigantic cat tree that Lollipop wanted nothing to do with. Even the boxes containing Mike’s prized collection of Spurs programmes had been cleared out.
In their place was a bed. A double bed too, already made up with fresh linen and pillows plumped to perfection. There was a bedside table, chest of drawers – she opened the top drawer to find all her knickers had been neatly folded and put away – and a hanging rail for her dresses.
Sophy felt a lump lodge itself in her throat. Eyes smarted as if the tears were about to put in an appearance. It wasn’t just that she had a proper room to call her own now so that her mum’s house would feel like home; it was the thought of Caroline and Mike taking the time to make Sophy feel like she was home.
And the finishing touch? Even though Sophy had long given up on cuddly toys and had, quite unsentimentally, chucked out her childhood teddy bear, nestling on the pillow was a plush koala with its stumpy arms outstretched.
Chapter Thirteen
On Wednesday, for Sophy’s next lesson Charles took her to the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey, a bright orange building with neon pink flourishes, which was a world away from the Victorian splendour of the V&A.
It was a small space with no permanent collection, but its current exhibition,Night And Day, was a celebration of 1930s fashion.
Unlike the V&A, where all the clothes were behind glass and there’d been too many people blocking Sophy’s view, there were no such hindrances this time. The clothes, arranged in themes, were justthere, maybe behind a velvet rope or on a dais, but Sophy could get close enough to see the slightly uneven stitches on a brown crêpe dress.
‘The economy had crashed in 1929, so the women of the thirties had to be quite thrifty,’ Charles explained when Sophy expressed surprise that so many of the clothes on display were home-made. ‘That’s why lamé was so popular as a fabric. Much cheaper than the sequins on all those twenties flapper gowns.’
‘And so many different colours,’ Sophy noted as she scrutinised a peach lamé evening gown with chiffon sleeves and an extravagantly plunging back. ‘People really got dressed up back then.’
‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? When you feel like it’s the end of the world, then you want to go out with a bang,’ Charles mused and Sophy would have said that she was a practical, pragmatic sort of person but she foundit very easy to imagine the fizz of excitement for a 1930s woman as she got ready for a night on the town. Maybe a cocktail party at a swank London hotel. Or a supper dance at a louche Soho nightclub. The feel of cool satin against her heated skin as she slipped on a floor-length red and cream art deco-inspired dress.
Charles would look splendid in top hat and tails, Sophy thought as they passed a mannequin wearing just such an outfit. There was something a little bit Fred Astaire about him. Sophy wouldn’t be at all surprised if he suddenly broke into a soft-shoe shuffle and danced with her cheek to cheek around the exhibition.
‘Do you dance?’ she asked without thinking, and couldn’t blame Charles for looking surprised at her question.
