Page 62 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
‘But what did you get tattooed on you?’
‘My favourite Chanel quote,’ Phoebe said, pressing the tips of her fingers to her aching, pounding temples.
‘Which is . . . ?’ Bea prompted.
‘Keep your heels, head and standards high,’ Phoebe recited although she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that those words were tattooed on her arm.
She could remember both Claude and Marianne, then Nina, questioning her decision but when Phoebe’s mind was made up about something, then it was very hard to convince her otherwise. Really, it was the story of her life.
By lunchtime, the shop was frantic and there was no way that Phoebe could leave Sophy, Bea and Anita to manage the scrum.
At least she was feeling a lot better after Anita had insisted that Phoebe try her patented hangover cure. Bacon and fried egg on a toasted everything bagel, a can of full-fat Coke and a family-sized bag of Haribo Starmix. ‘Every time you feel yourself flagging during the afternoon, just down another handful,’ Anita had advised.
‘You’re enjoying this far too much,’ Phoebe told her but she didn’t have the energy to get annoyed about it.
‘I’m absolutely loving it.’ Anita didn’t even try to hide her delight. ‘It’s like my best day ever.’
Now, dosed up on Starmix, Phoebe was on the till – even though her usually elegant fingers were like stabby sausages – where she’d have the least amount of contact with the majority of customers but a vantage point to supervise her team.
Not that she really had the emotional bandwidth to tell Bea that emerald green and Kelly green were not the same green. Or to signal to Anita that a customer had been in one of the changing cubicles beyond her allotted time. Or even to tell Sophy that she was going to get a written warning if she played her ‘Christmas Choons’ playlist one more time.
‘Anita was right, this is the best day ever,’ Sophy cheerfully remarked as Phoebe slumped against the till. ‘You should drink more often.’
‘I’m never drinking again. Not a drop will pass my lips,’ Phoebe vowed, lifting her head as a customer approached the counter.
She was a young woman, not much older than twenty, with her hair in milkmaid braids and wearing an appropriately milkmaid-ish dress which wasn’t vintage Laura Ashley but was a pretty good copy of a classic Laura Ashley design. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said to Phoebe. ‘But . . .’
‘If you’re into that seventies boho, country girl chic then we’ve got a pretty Bus Stop maxi dress on the black rail.’ Phoebe gestured in the vague direction of said rail.
‘Absolute queen!’ the girl said rather confusingly, then turned around so her back was to Phoebe and leaned in. ‘Can I get a selfie?’
Phoebe didn’t have time to refuse before the selfie was taken and the girl had been swallowed up by the crowd of shoppers.
Then three customers later as a woman paid for a 1940s Bakelite bangle and necklace set, which Phoebe wrapped up in their trademark Wedgwood blue tissue paper, she took the parcel with a grateful smile and said, ‘Keep up the good work!’
There were more requests for selfies, which Phoebe graciously granted with a gritted smile and there were also a lot of approving smiles and comments, variations on ‘Good for you,’ and ‘Don’t let the haters win.’
‘Am I still recovering from last night or are people acting weird?’ she asked Sophy but Sophy was too busy on the shop floor to really notice.
Phoebe was pleased to escape to the relative calm of the atelier to attend to the one bridal party who were booked in. Then she had a walk-in, a beautiful and beautifully turned- out young woman, dressed in genuine vintage Chanel and her much older gentleman companion. ‘Hard to tell if it’s her daddy or her sugar daddy,’ Phoebe hissed at Cress en route to the designer room to pull some dresses for her. ‘Not that I like to judge.’
‘You love to judge,’ Cress pointed out as she got up from her sewing machine to have a discreet gawp at the couple who were now canoodling in a way that suggested that they weren’t blood relatives.
It was another, very lucrative hour later before Phoebe took the spiral staircase, one hand gripping the banister very carefully, though usually she careered down it in her four-inch heels without a moment’s thought, back down to the main shop.
There was still a crowd but it had thinned out and it was only an hour until they shut. Phoebe would have given anything to have a long, soaky bath that evening but she’d have to make do with a quick shower.
Things between her and Freddy were civil enough but her days of treating his flat like her second home were long gone.
‘I can’t wait for today to be over,’ she muttered to Bea who was now on the till but mostly glued to her phone. ‘You know, Bea, I am feeling recovered enough to remind you of how I feel about staff being on their phones during work hours.’
‘Yup,’ Bea murmured, eyes still fixed to the screen. ‘It is work. Looking at our socials.’ She raised her head to stare at Phoebe as if she should be behind glass at a museum. ‘I can’t quite believe it but you’re going viral again. There’s even a hashtag.’
Phoebe racked her brains for any heated interactions she’d had recently with customers who had conducted themselves in an unacceptable manner. ‘I’ve been on my best behaviour for at least a week. Maybe two,’ she huffed. ‘Or is it some archival footage of me being justifiably annoyed when someone has come in to ask if we sell jeans?’
‘Neither.’ Bea put down her phone as a customer approached and, right on cue, came the Saturday final push. A sudden wave of shoppers in a panic because they had parties to go to and even if their own wardrobes were full tobursting, they still had nothing to wear. Or they longed for the transformative powers of a new dress. Even better if it was a new old dress with its very own particular brand of magic.
Phoebe didn’t have time to ponder the reasons for her latest internet cancellation. Instead she was caught up in the last-minute drama of a woman rushing in on a mission to buy the perfect dress because she’d had reliable intel that her boyfriend planned to propose to her that night.
