Page 15 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
But what she saw with her own actual eyes, heard with her ears . . . Phoebe went hot. Then she went cold. Still standing on the top step, she teetered very precariously in her heels.
No.
No!
NO!
It was a sight too awful to contemplate.
Rosie had stripped down to her Kim Kardashian SKIMS undies and even though she’d professed to love vintage fashion she was struggling into an antique 1930s dress made of silk and lace so fragile that Phoebe winced every time anyone went near it.
‘Yuk! I’m not loving this. It’s so dull,’ Rosie exclaimed once she was fully in it and yanked hard at the skirt.
‘That is not a rental dress. You need to take it off now,’ Phoebe said in a voice so strained that something at the back of her throat pinged. She wanted to move, to run and delicately pry the dress away from Rosie, but she was paralysed with shock and horror.
Rosie snorted as if Phoebe was being completely unreasonable and then with much huffing and puffing and exaggerated eye rolling, she pulled off the dress.
Her entourage was chattering away but the ripping noise was still absolutely deafening and as Rosie flung the dress down on the nearest sofa, Phoebe could see the orange streaks of fake tan staining the delicate dress.
Instantly, instead of the orange streaks, all Phoebe could see was the red mist of utter rage.
Chapter Six
There was a rushing in her ears to match the rushing of her limbs as Phoebe flew at Rosie, snatching up the dress en route.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ She thrust the dress in Rosie’s face. ‘It’s almost a hundred years old and you’ve damaged it. You can’t treat the dresses like that. What kind of monster are you?’
Other words were pouring out of Phoebe’s mouth but she hardly knew what she was saying over the sound of Rosie shouting back at her, Coco Chanel barking in distress and Sophy trying to calm everyone down.
Then there was a firm but uncompromising grip on Phoebe’s arm and she was pulled away by Cress, who marched her to the workroom and shut the door behind the two of them. ‘Sit down,’ she said sharply and Phoebe, suddenly aware that she was shaking, actually shaking, collapsed onto the tall stool Cress used when she working on the overlocker, which was perched on a high counter.
She was still clutching the dress, which she held out for Cress’s inspection. ‘Look! Look!’
‘I know! But, Phoebe, you can’t get so aggy with someone.’ Cress lowered her voice. ‘If you’d got even a centimetre closer, technically I think it would have been assault.’
‘What she did to that dress was assault!’ Phoebe knew that she shouldn’t have manhandled thatcreature. But she also knew that this wouldn’t have happened without the rentalscheme bringing the wrong type of people to the shop. The type of people who didn’t care for the dresses, not properly. They just wanted a cheap thrill then to be done with them . . .
They both jumped as the door opened but it was only Sophy. Her face was so red that it looked as if it hurt. She was furious. Of course, they were all furious with Rosie Roberts and . . .
‘I am so angry, Phoebe, that I can hardly look at you,’ she snapped. Which was completely unjust. However, there was a look in Sophy’s blue eyes that was a little scary. Still, when it came to fight or flight, Phoebe chose fight every time. She stuck out her chin.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ Sophy continued. ‘She’s kicking off. Threatening to go to the police. You need to apologisenow.’
‘Me, apologise? Have you been sniffing glue? She’s the one who needs to apologise for damaging my dress . . .’
‘It’s not your dress,’ Sophy pointed out, which was neither here nor there. ‘All her horrible mates were filming the whole thing and I really don’t want this to go viral.’
‘She wouldn’t dare! I’d sue her!’ Freddy was a qualified solicitor. That meant he could sue people. He’d got Phoebe out of very hot water before and he’d do it again, if he had to. Thinking of Freddy, Phoebe could hear his voice in her ear.‘You’re at a twenty, Pheebs; I need you to be at a four.’
Then she thought of other things Freddy had said recently when it was just the two of them, his hand holding hers, smoothing the back of her knuckles in a way that almost always calmed Phoebe. Even the time when he very gently asked about the shop’s recent Google and TripAdvisor reviews.
Someone, well, quite a few someones, had slated them. Or rather, slated Phoebe for ‘the absolute bollocking she gave me for putting a dress back in the wrong place’. And: ‘We’dcome all the way from Wales to visit the shop but she refused to let us through the door because we had takeout cups of coffee and then she checked to see if our hands were clean.’ Then there was the one that said, ‘OMG, the woman who works here is a joy-sucking demon in heels. No dress is worth having to deal with her.’
Phoebe had insisted, quite strongly, that there were two sides to every story. Also how would they like it if she went to their workplaces and even though she knew nothing about their jobs, still marked them out of five stars? But she had agreed that she’d dial it down because she hated when Freddy was angry with her. Not angry, disappointed. She didn’t like disappointing Freddy. Even though he wasn’t the boss of her, though technically now that Johnno was in Australia, he kind of was.
This was what happened when you let yourself get close to someone. You forgot your principles. Made yourself a little bit less so they’d like you more.
But still, she’d never hear the end of this from Freddy or Sophy who did love to go on and on about things. Like Coco Chanel when she got hold of one of her beloved squeaky balls.
