Page 73 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was no time to discuss outfit options to a ball that Phoebe probably wasn’t going to.
The rest of the week was sheer, barely controlled chaos. Every year, Phoebe half forgot how manic the run-up to Christmas was in the shop and every year, she was surprised all over again.
Her new-found notoriety was definitely more of a help than a hindrance. Every day Bea presented her with a curated selection of Reels and TikToks from people who’d stitched the original video of her big speech, and the reaction to the shop’s twirling Reels had boosted their social media follows yet again.
It also boosted the number of customers coming into the shop. Not just to demand selfies but also to demand that Phoebe match them with their perfect vintage dress, which she was always happy to do.
On Friday night, after the longest week, with the shop shutting at eight, instead of six, it wasn’t just Phoebe who was crying off from their usual outing to The Hat and Fan.
‘We’re going large tomorrow night at the ball so I’m not even going to go very small this evening,’ Anita said. ‘I also haven’t quite narrowed down my accessories either.’
‘Post a pic of your choices in the group chat,’ Sophy said. This was the group chat that Phoebe had only just been added to, though she suspected it had been in existence long before that. ‘And yeah, definitely a quiet one tonight. Agreed?’
None of them even had the energy for a rousing chorus of assent. Instead they all trudged off to get their Tubes and buses and Phoebe and Coco headed home in the opposite direction.
Phoebe stopped off at the corner shop for the gourmet dog food that Katya got in for Coco on special order, a packet of gluten-free spinach and ricotta ravioli (though she actually quite fancied a lot of gluten) and Gunther, her neighbour, messaged and asked if she could pick up a copy ofThe Guardian, if they still had one, and a grab bag of Maltesers.
To think that he had the cheek to make piggy noises at Coco, Phoebe thought to herself. Which was just what Gunther did when Phoebe handed over his items. Coco was obviously in a good mood though because she arched against his legs like a cat and consented to having her back end rubbed.
‘If I decided to go out tomorrow night, just for a couple of hours, could you look in on Coco?’ Phoebe asked half-heartedly because she still wasn’t sure what her plans were.
‘What time? I think we’re going to be out for most of the day,’ Gunther said, squatting down to pet Coco’s belly. It must be all the yoga that made him so nimble.
The decision had been made for her. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m not even sure that I want . . .’
‘Sadie!’ Gunther bellowed. ‘What time will we be back from seeing your sister?’
Sadie stuck her head round the stern of their boat,The Lakshmi. ‘Pipe down, Gunther. You’ll wake the dead!’
‘Really, it’s all right,’ Phoebe said, shifting uncomfortably because it was cold and late and her feet had reached their high-heel pain threshold a couple of hours ago.
Gunther repeated the question at a more reasonable volume and Sadie said that they’d be happy to look in on Coco or even bring her around to theirs when they got back at around seven.
‘We’ve still got Johnno’s spare key,’ Sadie chortled, which was news to Phoebe, but now she had the option of going out if she wanted to.
As she ate her sad ravioli, Phoebe couldn’t help but think back to the summer ball. She’d worn a black lace gown and, even though it was quite a warm night, black satin opera gloves. Freddy had worn a slim-cut Italian 1960s black evening suit, and though he’d complained that it was too hot to wear a mohair and wool suit, he’d looked so stylish. Like the leading man straight out of a Federico Fellini film. And of course, Coco had been adorable in pearls.
The three of them had danced all night and afterwards they’d walked slowly home together all the way from Bloomsbury, and it had taken ages because they’d kept stopping for long kisses.
It felt like ages, even if it had only been a few days, since she’d last seen Freddy. He hadn’t even been around to see that she’d unbent enough to be on better terms with her team. Even Anita.Even Sophy.
Could she unbend enough to be on better terms with Freddy too?
‘The thing about relationships, Phoebe, is that men get more out of them than women do,’ Mildred had said when Phoebe was sad and sullen after she’d finally kissed Jason Mullins at her Leavers’ Disco, only to discover the next week that he was now going out with a horrible girl called Stacey who’d called Phoebe a ‘pikey chav’ on her first day at school. ‘Men can’t manage without women, but women can manage very well by themselves. Indeed, they thrive. Look at me!’
It was true that Mildred was perfectly content with her life. She’d had a career that she was proud of, a little home that she loved, full of carefully chosen possessions, from the collection of dresses that she’d stitched with her own hand and kept pristine over the decades to the fine bone chinashe used every day. More than anyone Phoebe had ever met, except perhaps Johnno, Mildred knew exactly who she was and made no apologies for it.
‘I may not be the kindest person, I’m not a soft touch, but I know right from wrong,’ Mildred had said when she told Phoebe that she could stay after her eighteenth birthday, which was when society and the local council deemed her to be an adult and old enough to look after herself.
It had been something that Phoebe had been worrying about for weeks. Turning eighteen wasn’t a cause for celebration. There’d be no big family party and extravagant presents. The horrible Stacey Baxter had gone to New York for her eighteenth.
Phoebe was working at Johnno’s Junk full-time after scraping together a handful of GCSEs at not great grades. She wasn’t earning that much and the prospect of having to pay rent and live who knows where, with who knows who, felt a lot like her life before Mildred. As if she were going backwards rather than striding forward into a glorious future.
Mildred, with her inflexible rules but that little twinkle in her eye, had been the making of Phoebe. She’d changed the way that Phoebe talked – she didn’t dare drop an aitch in Mildred’s presence. She’d changed the way that Phoebe dressed. The tracksuits had gone and instead of wanting to blend in, Phoebe didn’t mind standing out in the big foofy 1950s dresses that she had first dibs on when they came into Johnno’s Junk.
Most importantly of all, Mildred had changed the way that Phoebe saw herself. She wasn’t a burden. She was a person. Her own person. It didn’t matter who had let her down in the past ‘as long as you don’t let yourself down, Phoebe’.
