Page 61 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
‘Anyway I should probably go now.’ He handed Coco over gently to Phoebe as if she were a precious newborn. ‘Thank you for not shooting the messenger.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Phoebe said, standing up so she could put Coco down in her basket. ‘Although I will be having words, quite a lot of words, with Stefan the next time I see him.’
Freddy grinned. ‘Yeah, he mentioned that in the email too. Something about hoping that the stab vest will fit underneath his best bib and tucker.’
‘Stabbing’s too good for him,’ Phoebe muttered darkly, then caught Freddy’s sudden panicked look. ‘That was a joke! Kind of.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Freddy was already halfway up the stairs but then he paused. ‘The way you love Coco, it’s always been one of my favourite things about you.’
Phoebe shrugged. ‘I don’t do love, Freddy. You know that. But when I adopted Coco, I made a commitment to always be there for her. To be all in. And yes, I do know that maybe I indulge her and spoil her a little bit too much but it’s nothing less than she deserves. After everything she’s been through in her life, she deserves to be absolutely spoilt rotten.’
‘Impossible,’ Freddy muttered, but before Phoebe could ask him what he meant, he was gone, disappearing up thesteps so quickly that he stumbled over the top one and swore under his breath, which made Phoebe glad that she’d be giving the weekly trip to The Hat and Fan on Friday a miss.
It was painful not to see Freddy but it was more painful to see him and to obsess over every last thing he’d said, every micro-expression which had flitted across his face.
Maybe given time they could go back to being people who worked together in a friendly fashion but not right now. It was too hard.
Everyone, even Anita, begged Phoebe to come to the pub, but she was happy to head home, change out of her work clothes then cut through the back streets to Kentish Town where Marianne and Claude were having their annual late-night-opening party for friends and valued customers.
If they spent more than a hundred pounds then Claude, whose tattoo parlour was on the first floor, would give them a free tattoo. ‘Nothing fancy. Not a replica of the Sistine Chapel on their backs, but their loved ones’ initials in a heart or something,’ he’d said when Phoebe, a little aghast, asked for more details.
Not that Phoebe would qualify for a free tattoo. ‘I’m not buying anything,’ she said to Marianne. ‘Please don’t let me buy anything, but I’m happy to help out if you need it.’ She looked around at the cheerfully eclectic rails of clothes. Leather jackets mixed in with leopard-print coats. Paisley hippy shirts hanging next to mod-inspired dresses. ‘Honestly, Maz, have you never thought about arranging the stock by genre and era? It would make your life and your customers’ lives so much easier.’
‘And not colour?’ Marianne asked with an arch of one already exquisitely arched eyebrow.
‘The thought of having to arrange all this by colour makes me want to cry,’ Phoebe admitted, sweeping out her hand to encompass the cluttered, cramped little shop.
‘Which is why, although you’re a dear pal, if we worked together, we’d end up murdering each other,’ Marianne said, putting an arm around Phoebe’s shoulder to guide her over to the counter where a makeshift bar had been set up. ‘Gin and tonic? I’m afraid it’s just bog-standard tonic and there’s not even lemons, let alone limes.’
‘Is there bottled water for Coco?’ Phoebe asked. If there wasn’t, she’d nip to the newsagent a few doors down to get a bottle of Evian and hope it was chilled.
‘Of course! Nothing but the best for Mademoiselle Chanel.’ Marianne looked over Phoebe’s shoulder to where a noisy crowd of people had just come in. ‘Oh, there’s Nina. Grab a drink, then come over and say hello.’
It was good to be surrounded by friends. Of course everyone wanted to know how Phoebe had managed to go viral three times over the last month but when she explained that there had been crimes against dresses, they seemed to understand. Or maybe because they were friends, they understood Phoebe.
Marianne’s shop, Retro-a-go-go, was a much more rough-and-ready affair than The Vintage Dress Shop with that smell of vintage clothing, musty and a littleunfresh, which Phoebe had sworn would never be smelt on her premises. Her clientele were a more rock ’n’ roll crowd too; both men and women rocking quiffs and a lot of tattoos. Most of the stock focused on the fifties, sixties and seventies. She even sold some reproduction lines. It was something she and Phoebe had agreed to disagree on.
Inevitably, Phoebe did end up buying a few things. Marianne had recently made her annual pilgrimage to Palm Springs in California, the vintage capital of America, and had returned with some darling novelty items, including a set of brooches that celebrated the Las Vegas of yesteryear when the Rat Pack had ruled the Strip. A tiny cocktail glass with aswizzle stick. A miniature pair of dice. A roulette wheel. And, of course, the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. Perfect presents for the shop staff.
By then, although she didn’t usually drink that much, Phoebe was on her third gin on an empty stomach so when she found the perfect shirt for Freddy, a 1960s Italian knit polo shirt that was almost the same shade of blue as his eyes, she had to have it. Which took her over the hundred-pound mark and somehow, the details were a little hazy by then, Phoebe found herself in Claude’s chair about to get tattooed for the first time.
‘Are you sure, Phoebe?’ Claude asked, his tattoo gun poised. ‘This is very unlike you.’
‘Maybe I’m not like people think I am,’ Phoebe said. ‘Maybe I have hidden depths. Like the iceberg that hit theTitanic.’
‘You’re not an iceberg, Pheebs, you just want people to think that you are,’ Marianne said, because Phoebe deciding to get a tattoo warranted her leaving the shop to witness this strange event. ‘Also, how much have you had to drink?’
‘Enough but not enough to have lost my senses,’ Phoebe said, very carefully pressing a tip of one finger to the tip of her nose to prove that she still had perfect hand-to-eye coordination. ‘Come on! Tattoo me.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘And now it hurts like hell,’ she admitted to Bea some twelve hours later as she sat in the back office of The Vintage Dress Shop. ‘My head hurts too. All of me hurts. Just between you and me, I now have a greater understanding of why Anita prostrates herself on one of the pink sofas when she has a hangover. I feel utterly wretched.’
‘Never mind you feeling wretched,’ Bea said rather crushingly, ‘can we rewind to the part where you got a tattoo. You got a tattoo! A tattoo of what? Let me see!’
Phoebe lifted up her arm, even that took a superhuman effort, and carefully unbuttoned her cuff and rolled back the sleeve of her dress to reveal her bandaged wrist. ‘I can’t take this off until tonight. The thing is I wasn’t drunk when I got the tattoo, not really, but I may have had quite a lot to drinkafter.’
It was somewhat hazy but the gin and tonic had quickly run out and Phoebe had made the cardinal error of mixing grape and grain (or grape and sloe berries) and had switched to red wine. The devil’s drink.
