Page 75 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
Well, she didn’t like him now. She tore off her work clothes and pulled on the one tracksuit that had survived every wardrobe cull she’d ever had and started pulling out clothes and boxes.
Part of Phoebe knew that you should never reorganise while angry. Then you made irrational decisions and got rid of clothes and accessories that a few weeks later, you realised you couldn’t live without. But another much larger part of her was too angry to care.
She stood on tiptoe to pull down a box that was right at the back of her wardrobe. It was caught on something until she tugged hard and the lid flew off and a shower of paper rained down on her.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ she swore though Phoebe never swore because of all the times Mildred had threatened to wash out her mouth with Fairy Liquid.
Thinking of Mildred, and Phoebe had been thinking a lot about Mildred these past few weeks, the first piece of paper that she picked up from the floor was a list written in Mildred’s careful and precise handwriting.
Three nighties.
My good quilted dressing gown.
My blue slippers.
My washbag (it’s in the cupboard under the bathroom sink). Pack it with soap, toothbrush (in its proper case) toothpaste, deodorant, my nail kit and hand cream. Shampoo, conditioner and hairspray. Brush and comb.
And so it went on.
A list from when Mildred had broken her hip and after a very uncomfortable night in A&E on a trolley, had been admitted for surgery.
She’d been in hospital for not even two weeks and she’d never come home to the little flat. She’d had her broken hip replaced but the surgical site had become infected and although Mildred was the strongest person Phoebe had ever known, so utterly sure of herself, in reality she was a frail, old lady. The infection hadn’t responded to treatment and had ravaged Mildred so that every day when Phoebe went to see her, Mildred was a little less. Then a lot less. Then as her organs shut down, one by one, she was a husk of a human being, until at just after eleven o’clock one drab Tuesday morning, Mildred died.
Her indefatigable spirit evaporated into nothing. Which was unthinkable and yet it was suddenly a reality.
It had been a terrible time. The council had given Phoebe two weeks to vacate the little flat and she’d had to clear out all of Mildred’s possessions. All those precious little things that she’d cared so much about and taken so much care over.
The funeral had been utterly heartbreaking. Already organised and paid for by Mildred and attended only by Phoebe and Johnno, because just as she was the only person to be there for Mildred at her passing, Johnno was the only person there for Phoebe as she drifted through those dark days. She’d needed him in a way that Sophy with her mother and stepfather and family and friends had never needed him.
Phoebe was on this trip down memory lane for the long haul now. And so again she reached up on tiptoes to retrieve the big, flat box she’d found on the top of Mildred’s own wardrobe. It was much like the boxes they used at the shop to carefully pack wedding dresses between layers and layers of acid-free tissue paper.
Inside this box was also a wedding dress. A beautiful ivory crêpe de chine dress with delicate beading. There was also a handwritten receipt, including her staff discount, plus a list in Mildred’s careful script of the alterations she still needed to make.
But she’d never made them because, as Phoebe had realised when she packed up Mildred’s life, the dress was never worn and the wedding never was. The man, who’d made Mildred so reliant on herself and so determined never to rely on others, had called things off. Maybe to marry Mildred’s sister, maybe some other woman, or maybe he’d decided he was better off unwed. Phoebe would never know.
She put the lid back on the box but instead of saying a fierce but silent thank you to the woman who’d rescued her,for the first time, Phoebe wondered if it was a good thing: to have been raised in Mildred’s own image.
A whole life lived. Over eighty years and Mildred had nothing to show for it but a wardrobe of old-fashioned dresses that she never wore. A collection of fine bone china that was really too delicate to be used for every day; its pattern almost indistinct after being handled and washed too many times. And one lost girl who’d been there for the last five years of Mildred’s life because there had been no friends, no family, no one else to care, as Mildred lay dying, then dead.
Phoebe wasn’t ungrateful. Mildred had saved her life in so many ways. What would have become of that snarling, terrified girl if Mildred hadn’t taken her in and given her a crash course in being able to stand on her own two feet?
Now, as she sat on the floor, surrounded by Mildred’s sad legacy, Phoebe realised that she didn’t want to follow all of Mildred’s life lessons to their inevitable conclusion. Phoebe didn’t want to end up on her own with no family, very few friends, just her own pride and a self-reliance that had been forged from all the bad things that had happened to her. You needed to build a wall to protect yourself but the wall needed a door that you could open to let the light in. To let other people in.
Phoebe needed, desperately, to open the door.
Just like that, once again, this Cinderella was going to the ball.
It took half an hour, a personal best, to get Phoebe ball-ready. To shed her tracksuit like a snake shedding its skin. Then to style her hair until it was gleaming, paint her face with lip powders, paints and pencils.
Then she carefully removed her favourite dress from its garment bag and padded hanger. That white, beaded sheath dress, which had once been worn by a debutante and photographed forHarper’s Bazaar. White in winter was so chic andwhite felt like a new beginning. A fresh page to write the next chapter on.
Phoebe packed essentials into a tiny silver clutch bag. Slipped on a pair of matching, three-bar heels and added a white faux-fur cape to complete her ensemble. She was going to be freezing but sometimes you had to suffer to look this good.
Although she was done with suffering, which was why she was going to find Freddy and fling open that door, which had been shut for far too long. She turned on the wood-burner stove and tried to settle a very put-out Coco Chanel who couldn’t believe that she wasn’t coming too.
‘You’ll be toasty warm here and it’s only for about ten minutes until Sadie and Gunther arrive to take you back to their boat.’ Phoebe stroked behind Coco’s ears as the little dog turned her face away like she didn’t even want to look at her human caregiver. ‘If Gunther makes piggy noises at you, then you have my permission to bite him.’
Phoebe felt a pang of hurt pierce the fizzy mix of nerves and excitement in her belly. ‘I’m going to be two hours tops. I just need to talk to Freddy and maybe, he might just, he might just . . .’
