Page 52 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
It also took a lot of wine. Charles had been true to his word and the law, and only had one glass of Sancerre, but Sophy had finished off the rest of thebottle without breaking a sweat. When it was time to leave, after a bit of argy-bargy over who was paying the bill before they unwillingly agreed to split it, she realised that she wasn’t altogether sober as she wobbled her way through the restaurant and nearly sent a heavily laden server flying because she wasn’t looking where she was going.
She hoped that the cold night air might sober her up, but when she was back in the Mercedes the world was still in soft focus and her limbs felt heavy. ‘I’ve had such a lovely time, Charles,’ she said, her words slurring ever so slightly. ‘Not just this evening, but this whole weekend. I don’t suppose you fancy coming to Australia with me?’
Charles didn’t say anything at first because he was negotiating those twisty, unlit country lanes, but then he came to a straight stretch of road. ‘It’s a tempting offer, but my whole life, my business, it’s here,’ he said softly.
‘You could come and visit,’ Sophy said and then cringed at herself because she’d only known Charles a few weeks and yet she was acting as if she expected him to travel halfway across the world to see her. ‘Or, you know, we could FaceTime.’
‘Well, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,’ he said non-committally and then neither of them talked until they were pulling up outside their little house for the weekend.
It was still early. Not even eight o’clock. Ordinarily, Sophy would be looking forward to spending an evening with Charles, but everything felt scratchy and weird and, once they were inside with their spoils from the day’s sales, she didn’t know what to suggest to make things unscratchy and unweird again.
‘Did you maybe want to watch television?’ Charles asked doubtfully as if he didn’t know what to do with himself, with them, either.
‘We could,’ Sophy said without muchenthusiasm. She dumped her packages on the stairs. ‘But I think I really need to drink some water.’
She hurried downstairs to the kitchen/lounge, so she could drink her bodyweight in water and stave off a hangover before she went to bed but mostly because she didn’t even know how to be around Charles right now.
Sophy was halfway down her second glass of water when she heard Charles’s tread on the stair. She looked up to see that he was carrying her bag of dresses from the car boot sale.
‘Do you want to try these on?’ he asked, dangling the carrier from his long fingers. ‘I think you might have lucked out with the black velvet. It’s not quite designer but it’s not far off.’
Of course, as if Sophy needed reminding, Charles was only interested in what she looked like when she was wearing a vintage dress or adorned with his semi-precious stones, and that was in a purely professional manner as he schooled her in the way of vintage fashion so Phoebe didn’t end up garrotting her with a 1960s Pucci scarf.
‘Sure,’ she agreed, taking the bag from him and heading for the little shower room that had been carved out of the side return.
Sophy’s face was flushed, her hair full of static, as she swapped one vintage dress for another. She had a good sniff of the black velvet before she put it on and it didn’t smell of dead people or mothballs.
It wasn’t the kind of dress that nipped in then swooshed out. It was tight, the velvet draped, not like anything that Madame Grès could create, but still clinging to every millimetre of Sophy. She tugged it past her hips and then, no cunning side zip, contorted herself round to try to do up the back. It was a futile exercise. She wasn’t bendy enough, her arms not long enough.
Sophy twisted round again to see her back view in the mirror. Her skin looked even whiter than normal against the stark black of the dress and the strap of her functional black bra.
There was a gentle knock on the door. ‘Everything all right in there?’
‘I can’t do it up.’ Sophy flailed her arms again.
‘Can I help?’
Charles was a man of the world. He was comfortable in the presence of women. It wasn’t like the sight of Sophy bulging out of a black velvet dress was going to bring him to his knees. Not when his type of woman was elegant, sophisticated and definitely didn’t get their underwear from good old M&S.
She opened the door, back to him. ‘If you could get the zip up, but I think it’s going to be too tight.’
She felt Charles’s breath ghost over the nape of her neck, enough to make her shiver, then one hand gathered the material at the base of her spine and the other pulled up the zip with no muss, no fuss.
‘There you go,’ he said in a voice that was a little unsteady. ‘It looks… you look good.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Sophy grumbled, taking a couple of steps forward so she could assess the damage in the long mirror that was fixed to the far wall. ‘Ugh… Oh! Maybe not ugh…’
The pleated bodice, the sweetheart neckline, the figure-hugging skirt, the exquisite cut of the dress, were giving Sophy the kind of figure she’d always dreamed about. She stared transfixed at her reflection in the mirror. Then Charles came into the bathroom, his eyes locked with Mirror Sophy’s eyes.
What was it that Egan used to say whenever he saw a Dua Lipa video or, worse, an attractive girl in a bar, while Sophy was in earshot? ‘She’s an absolute weapon!’
Sophy felt like an absolute weapon in that moment. A bombshell. A siren. She’d never looked like this before and no one had ever looked at her the way Charles was looking at her before.
‘It’s the artistry in vintage clothes,’ he said in a low, purry sort of voice. ‘You could argue that each one is a piece of art, but really they’re the frame that showcases the art to its best advantage.’
‘Like the Madame Grès dress,’ Sophy whispered though she didn’t know why she was suddenly whispering.
‘You can tell that she understands the female form, respects it, uses it as her inspiration, not like some of the designers today who design clothes that require women to whittle their bodies down to nothing.’ Their eyes were still caught in the mirror so Sophy saw Charles’s hands gently come to rest on either side of her waist a nanosecond before she felt the warmth of his long fingers through the silk velvet. ‘Madame Grès and whichever genius made this dress knew how to make women look their best, which also meant that they knew how to make women feel their best.’
