Page 67 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
And of course, two months ago there’d been no Charles…
Now, Australia was imminent. In a few weeks her morning commute would look very different. There’d be a lot more sheep for one thing. On the train to work that morning, Sophy realised that she neededto start making plans, making lists. She’d thought that she’d only spend a week or so on the sheep station for all the anniversary goings-on, then head to Sydney, possibly by way of Melbourne. Now it looked like she’d be spending a couple of months there at the least, while Jean recovered from her operation. Sophy had already pored over the sheep station’s website for hours and hours but this morning she looked up the nearest town, which Bob and Jean said was only a fifteen-minute drive away.
Queensville was small. Very small. It had a population of only 1,648 people, which made it more of a village as far as Sophy was concerned, but it had its own Australian Rules football team and a mascot called Larry, a gigantic shrimp sculpture at the entrance to the town. It was exactly one hundred and eighty-nine miles from Adelaide, which seemed like a very long way away to Sophy: the equivalent of driving from London to Wales; but she supposed Australia was like America and everything was a long way away, unlike Britain, where you could drive most places in a day if you really put your mind to it.
As well as farming, the area was known for its winemaking – Sophylovedwhite wine – and it also had a healthy tourism industry as it was on the coast. Not that Sophy was going to be working on her tan; she’d be quite busy looking after some of those tourists who’d be staying at the guest cottages on the station.
Of course, Australia was all upside down. So, even though she was going out in early July, it would be winter. According to Wikipedia, the area had a ‘warm summer Mediterranean climate;’ which according to a quick search on Google meant that Sophy would be staying in a place where it rained half the month and temperatures didn’t get much higher than fourteen degrees.
But the glass was half full, Sophy decided as she made her way to street level in the Chalk Farm station lift. As a pale-skinned redhead, she didn’t do too well in the heat. Even the average temperature for summer in that so-called warm Mediterranean climate was a very manageable twenty-five degrees.
‘It’s not the part of Australia that gets super-hot and has those terrible bush fires,’ she told Cress as they walked to the shop. ‘And the town is famous for its shrimp. I don’t think I’ve ever had shrimp. Do you like shrimp?’
‘Shrimp, sheep, what is this place?’ Cress scowled. ‘Has your citizenship come through then?’
‘Johnno suddenly found the missing passport, so they have all the paperwork now.’ Sophy turned her attention back to her phone screen. ‘There are two, like, massive national parks nearby so when you come to visit me we can go on hikes.’
Cress put a hand on Sophy’s arm to still her. ‘You know that I love you,’ she said, her face troubled. ‘You really are my family…’
‘I feel like there’s a but coming.’ Sophy cringed in dread at another lecture about running off to Australia, kissing Charles or, who knew? Once, Cress had spent ten minutes lecturing Sophy about the optimum conditions for washing vintage dresses in a washing machine.
‘But Australia is a long way away and plane tickets are very expensive and I hate flying and the jet lag will be mortal and to make it worth anyone’s while, it would have to be at least a six-week trip. At least!’
‘You sound like you’ve thought about it a lot,’ Sophy said, still waiting for Cress to get to the big but that she was obviously leading up to.
‘I’ve thought about little else ever since you announced that you were emigrating or staying there indefinitely or taking a sabbatical.’ Cress shook her head as they started to walk again. ‘Thelong and short of it is that nobody knows how long you’ll be there, including you, but I can’t just take six weeks off work and fork out thousands of pounds on a long holiday. Colin and I are saving up for a deposit.’
Now was not the time to point out that Cress and Colin had been saving up for a deposit for so long that they could probably afford one of the grand three-storey houses they were walking past.
‘Not thousands. Not if you shopped around for a cheap flight—’
‘I hate hiking and I hate seafood!’ Cress shouted in a very unCress-like way. ‘I’m sorry. This has affected me more than I actually realised. It’s just I’m going to miss you.’
‘Oh, sister-friend, I’m going to miss you too. So much,’ Sophy croaked because now the tears weren’t far off.
‘Not as much as I’m going to miss you.’ The tears were much nearer for Cress. They were already streaming down her face. ‘Without you here, I’ll be half a person.’
‘I might not be gone that long. It depends if and when my citizenship comes through. There are alotof moving parts involved,’ Sophy insisted. ‘I might go out earlier and come back sooner. Who knows?’
By now they’d reached The Vintage Dress Shop, coming a halt because it was quite hard to walk and cry at the same time.
It was much easier to hug and cry. Even if she did go out in mid-July, Australia was still weeks away. Months really. By that time Sophy was sure that her tear ducts would have broken from overuse.
Their touching embrace was rudely interrupted by the door of the shop opening and Phoebe standing on the doorstep looking very unimpressed at such unseemly displays of emotion. ‘It’s far too early for… whatever it is you two are bawling about,’ she said witheringly, including even her darling Cress in her condemnation.‘Anyway, get a move on. Shop meeting! It is Monday morning, after all.’
It was Sophy’s eighth, maybe ninth Monday morning at the shop and in all that time they’d never had a Monday-morning meeting. Then she thought that maybe the meeting included Charles and she all but fell over her feet in her efforts to get inside.
There was no Charles. Just a full house of Chloe, Beatrice and Anita arranged on the pink sofas, all three of them looking quite put-upon as Phoebe stood on the bottom step of the spiral staircase so she could address the masses like Eva Perón on the balcony of the Casa Rosada. A couple of steps above her sat her faithful consigliere, Coco Chanel, who was wearing a new rose pink velvet collar.
Sophy leaned against the desk as Phoebe brought them all up to speed on wedding dress bookings, a consignment of dresses from a dealer in Palm Springs that had been held up at Customs and some beef she was having with the interior design shop a couple of doors down, who’d been trying to put their recycling bags outside The Vintage Dress Shop. ‘I said to that horrible Jodie who works there that we pay a fortune to the council for our recycling collections and if she tries it on again, then I’m going to report her.’
Chloe and Beatrice nudged each other. ‘That sounds more like Freddy’s remit,’ Chloe piped up with a smirk, though Sophy didn’t know what there was to smirk about. Jodie from two doors down was a very unpleasant woman who’d once come out of her shop to scream at Sophy for the audacity of standing in front of her window while she was on her phone.
Phoebe drew herself up. ‘I don’t need Freddy to fight my battles for me,’ she said grandly. ‘Ha! Freddy!’
Sophy still didn’t know what the deal was with Phoebe and Freddy but they clearly hated each other. She added a pair of sensible hiking boots to her mental shopping list for Australia. She would have to check that they weresturdy enough to protect her from a snakebite. Then, not for the first or last time, Sophy wondered how she was going to cope in a place where snakebites were an actual deadly occurrence and not a pint of half lager and half cider.
Meanwhile Phoebe droned on and on. Something about an Ossie Clark dress that hadn’t even been bought from The Vintage Dress Shop but the owner was a loyal customer and was bringing it in for alterations. Not that Phoebe was happy about it.
