Page 1 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
Chapter One
There were many good things about living in a houseboat with a permanent mooring on Regent’s Canal just by Primrose Hill.
Although it was only a couple of miles away from Oxford Circus, it was easy to think one was deep in the countryside when one woke up to the sound of birdsong. Through the porthole windows, everything was green and verdant as far as the eye could see. Not just from the leaves on the trees that lined the canal path but also from the reflection of the leaves on the water.
Unfortunately Phoebe Parker didn’t particularly love waking up and thinking that she was in the middle of the countryside. Phoebe didn’t do countryside. There was far too much mud, awful smells and people wearing sensible shoes.
Phoebe’s bed was on a raised platform so she could admire the view from her horizontal position, but it was also imperative to have a lot of ventilation when you lived on a boat. Mattresses would be the first thing to get damp and grow mould spores.
Mould spores were another thing that Phoebe didn’t love. But she knew that she was very lucky to live in such a desirable postcode, rent-free – even if it was on a boat.The Sheila, the name painted on her stern in a swirly red font, had been loaned to her by her friend, mentor and boss ever since he went to Australia eighteen months ago to visit his parents and so far hadn’t returned. It was so like Johnno. He’d left Phoebean envelope with the keys toSheilaand some sparse instructions, mostly about the compost toilet.
‘I’m sure you can figure out the rest yourself, Pheebs. You’ve always been the brains of the operation,’ he’d written before signing off. The note was also so like Johnno.
The Sheilamay have had her quirks but she still felt like home to Phoebe and Coco Chanel, a beautiful black French bulldog and the best roommate that Phoebe had ever had. Coco was still curled up on her very own Tempur pillow with a Hungarian goose-down quilt tucked around her.
Phoebe left Coco slumbering and clambered down from the bed, checked that the water tank was full – it was – and pulled a plastic shower cap over her head, and more importantly over the sponge rollers in her hair. Girls who lived on houseboats with temperamental water tanks could not have everything showers. Phoebe had her morning shower down to two minutes, long enough to get her squeaky clean, not long enough to deplete her precious water supply so she had enough left to brush her teeth and boil the kettle.
Then Phoebe embarked on her light five-step morning skincare routine, finishing with an SPF 50 sunscreen. Even though it was October, once the sun got going, it was very bright and Phoebe lived in fear of getting both a tan and fine lines.
Next, she sat down with her first coffee of the day in the sunniest corner of the open-plan lounge, to do her make-up.
Phoebe had no time for bronzers and contouring and beating her face.
She liked a blank canvas: smoothing foundation on, concealer for under her eyes so her pale skin was even. Then she was ready for the liquid eyeliner that she drew on her upper lids with a rock-steady hand, flicking it out at the corners and a smudgy pencil on her lower lid before mascara. Lots of mascara. So her blue eyes looked impossibly big.
There were people who said that you could do a bold eye or you could do a bold lip but you shouldn’t do both. They were the sort of people that Phoebe had no time for. She outlined and coloured in her lips with a red lip pencil, then it was time for her MVP: Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick, a moody blue-toned red, which made Phoebe’s skin even paler.
Then she took her rollers out and brushed her thick black hair, ensuring that the edges and fringe of her impeccably precise bob were straight.
Phoebe turned her face this way and that to make sure that everything was perfect. That she was perfect. Of course she was!
Now it was time to get dressed in one of the many form-fitting 1930s black vintage dresses that hung in her wardrobe. Each hanger exactly five centimetres distance from the next, to allow for ventilation. There was no way, no bloody way, that any mould spores were permitted to sprout on her dresses. The Bastard Moth Infestation of 2019 had been horrific enough. Phoebe still wasn’t recovered from those dark few months.
The sound of her sliding wardrobe door closing was Coco Chanel’s signal to let out a series of moans to alert Phoebe to the fact that she was awake and needed assistance in getting down from the elevated bed.
Now that Phoebe was ready to face the day, it was time to give Coco Chanel her morning glow-up. First Phoebe dealt with Coco Chanel’s eye bogeys. Then with a cotton wool bud and a special oil that cost more per ounce than gold, she administered to the little folds in Coco’s face, which tended to get enflamed. Next she spritzed the little dog with an avocado mist and stroked it in so her black fur gleamed like silk.
It was their special time. Lots of stroking and cuddling until it was time to face the world.
‘What are you in the mood for today, Coco?’ Phoebe asked as she did every morning on her way to the little closet that housed Coco’s outfits and accessories. ‘There’s a real nip in the air. I think you need a jacket.’
Phoebe selected a pink velvet collar and lead and a tweed jacket inspired by the famous Chanel suit. Coco plonked her bottom down and obligingly held up her front paws so that she could be dressed. Then Phoebe pulled on a faux-fur leopard-print swing coat. She was definitely an autumn/winter person and that was largely down to the fact that she got to wear adorable faux-fur coats and sweet little cashmere cardigans. Also, her high-maintenance look – she was now sliding her feet into her four-inch, suede stiletto ‘day’ heels – didn’t work so well when the temperature was over twenty degrees.
It was nine twenty-five exactly. With Coco bundled under her arm, even wearing a tight skirt and heels, Phoebe still managed to negotiate the jump from boat to canal path with ease born of long practice.
‘Morning, Pheebs! Morning, Coco. Well, aren’t you both a sight for sore eyes.’
‘Hi, Sadie; hi, Gunther!’ Phoebe trilled back, putting Coco down on her own four paws, and waving at her neighbours.
The neighbours were another drawback of living on a houseboat. The inhabitants of the other boats that sharedThe Sheila’s permanent mooring thought of themselves as a community.
Ugh! Phoebe didn’t want to be part of any community, especially when it involved people wearing tie-dye and doing yoga on the roof of their boat every morning as Sadie and Gunther loved to do.
As well as dire warnings about the compost toilet, Johnno had written (in capital letters and underlined) that Phoebe should be ‘neighbourly even though that’s not really your bag.You never know when you might have a power cut and need to borrow some candles or even a tow to the nearest boatyard. Company manners, Pheebs!’
So Phoebe was alwaysneighbourlywith Sadie and Gunther. She even messaged them if she was going to the big supermarket on Chalk Farm Road to ask them if they needed anything. OnThe Sheila’s other side were Emma and Sean who weren’t so bad. They didn’t wear tie-dye and Phoebe had let them extend their vegetable garden to her roof and they’d also clubbed together to get a bulk discount on solar panels. Sometimes Phoebe couldn’t believe that she knew so much about solar panels or the ideal growing conditions for carrots and tomatoes.
Mostly she knew about vintage clothes. As Phoebe left the canal path for a proper pavement, crunching over russet brown autumn leaves, then turned one corner, then another and saw The Vintage Dress Shop in the distance, her heart quickened a little as it did every morning.
