Page 52 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Sophy sighed as she leaned back against the sink. ‘It goes both ways. I was so jealous of your relationship with Johnno. It seemed too easy, so effortless. Like he didn’t need to bother staying in touch with me because he had you.’
‘But Johnno adores you!’ Phoebe pointed out because even if there had been a distance between father and daughter, there was still no mistaking the way that Johnno’s face always lit up when he talked about Sophy. More so, when they were actually in the same room together.
‘I don’t know if he does. I hope he does. I am really fond of him. One of the best things about working here has been this new relationship with Johnno . . .’ Her lips twisted wryly.
‘But I’m the worst thing,’ Phoebe guessed.
Sophy shrugged. ‘You said it, not me.’ She sighed again. ‘Look, I don’t want your job. I don’t want to be the manager and have all that responsibility. I just want to sell pretty dresses to interesting people and have a little piece of something that’s my own, which is the rental dresses. I have no evil plans to take over your empire.’
Phoebe digested this information. ‘Freddy would prefer it if you were manager.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. If he wanted anyone else to be manager, it would be Bea because she knows how to make Excel spreadsheets, how the inventory thingy on the computer works and how to order new bags and a hundred other things that I have no interest in because, again, I don’t want to be manager,’ Sophy said. ‘But also, Phoebe, I like working here. I love working with Cress. But no job is worth this much stress and hassle, so if you really want me to go then . . .’
‘No! No! Of course I don’t want you to leave,’ Phoebe said quickly, even though it had been her heart’s true desire ever since Sophy turned up. But was Sophy really that bad? If she didn’t have designs on the shop and stayed in her lane then . . . ‘Do you promise never to get another hare-brained idea, like reorganising the dresses, then act on it without getting my approval?’
‘I’m happy to sign something to that effect,’ Sophy said with a grimace. ‘Honestly, I knew I’d screwed things up.When I heard you come down the stairs, I swear my whole life flashed before my eyes.’
‘I’m sure we can find a way to work together,’ Phoebe said, though she knew she was the one who needed to make the most effort. ‘Also, happy Sophy means happy Charles and I really couldn’t afford to lose him. All those dresses from estate sales that he’d pass on to another shop. That would be unbearable.’
‘Was that another joke?’ Sophy asked. ‘It really is hard to tell.’
‘It started off as a joke but then contemplating the loss of Charles quickly turned into my worst nightmare,’ Phoebe confessed. She drained the rest of her coffee then stood up. She felt depleted. This conversation had been challenging and difficult but now it felt like the closing of one chapter, where nothing good had happened, and the start of something new. Hopefully, something much better.
‘Well, this has been a good chat,’ Sophy said with some surprise.
‘It has,’ Phoebe agreed.
‘Should we shake hands or something?’ Sophy grinned mischievously. ‘Or hug it out?’
Phoebe’s shudder wasn’t entirely fake. ‘That won’t be necessary.’ She paused on her way to the door. ‘You know, if you want to decorate the shop for Christmas, then that’s fine with me. Just, please, don’t go mad. Tasteful. Even understated.’
‘Yes to Christmas tunes too?’ Sophy asked hopefully.
‘If I were you, I’d quit while I was ahead.’
Phoebe and Sophy’s new, friendlier relationship was clearly going to be a work in progress.
Chapter Twenty-One
Acouple of days later Sophy put up Christmas decorations and in the time it took, the atmosphere in the shop changed completely.
From frosty with the threat of storms to a gentle breeze and the promise of sun.
Of course, if Phoebe had decorated, she’d have chosen either silver or gold. Not both. Never both. But this was clearly what people meant when they said you should pick your battles.
‘Very nice,’ Phoebe managed to say when she came down from the atelier after attending to a private client who’d tried on ten dresses and hadn’t bought a single one. She knew her smile was quite brittle, but she nodded her head effusively. ‘Very nice indeed.’
She couldn’t resist adjusting a stream of tinsel – the bougie, very full tinsel, not the nasty straggly cheap kind, which was wound round the end of one of the dress rails. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Then the bell above the door tinkled and Phoebe hurried to the safety of the back office. The shop was busier than she could ever remember from Christmases past. Though it was quite hard to tell who was there to shop or who was there to simply gawp at Phoebe and try to stealthily video her so she wouldn’t notice.
Phoebe didn’t really know what this business meant for their profits. If they were up year on year and far greater thantheir outgoings? It wasn’t something she could ask Freddy. Not now. Not anymore. There was an accountant who handled their payroll, probably the best person to contact if she wanted to start docking Anita’s wages for poor timekeeping too, but buddying up to accountants really wasn’t playing to Phoebe’s strengths.
It would be a far better use of her time if she could think up ways to get more people in the shop to buy more dresses.
Drumming up the good kind of publicity would be a start, instead of the bad kind. At least their social media numbers were through the roof (although the trolls and the mean comments continued apace) and so were their website orders. Bea said they’d hit 25,000 followers on Instagram and that they needed to finesse their TikToks and Instagram Reels and memes.
In between customers, she’d spent quite a lot of time filming Sophy and Anita as they decorated the shop. Then even more time trying to make a TikTok and swearing when it kept refusing to upload. Phoebe hadn’t even known that Bea knew how to swear, unlike Anita who needed her mouth washing out with soap given how frequently she dropped the F-bomb.
