Page 80 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
It was true. Freddy was still grey, but a very pale grey. ‘I feel much better than I did. But my new suit’s a write-off,’ he said tugging at his trousers, which were still shiny from his dip in the canal.
‘You were so brave,’ Phoebe croaked. ‘You didn’t even take your jacket off. You just dived straight in to save Coco.’
Freddy raised Phoebe’s ice-cold hand to his mouth so he could press a kiss to her knuckles. ‘Got to look after my girls,’ he murmured against her skin.
‘Am I still one of your girls?’ Phoebe asked, her words a pained little whisper because she was meant to be resting her voice on a night when she had so many important things to say.
‘Of course you are,’ Freddy replied just as hoarsely. ‘Not just one of them. My best girl. My favourite girl. Except, I know you’re not a girl. You’re a woman.’
It was something, yet another thing, that she used to chide Freddy for whenever he called her a girl. ‘Not a girl, Freddy,’ she’d say. ‘A woman. A fully grown up, adult woman, thank you very much.’
But now Phoebe just squeezed his hand. ‘Your woman, I hope.’
‘I hope so too,’ Freddy said gravely. His eyes in his pale grey face were soft and tender. ‘But should you even be talking at all?’
Phoebe shrugged, then winced as her ribs protested. ‘Probably not, but I have a lot on my mind.’
‘I’m sorry about your dresses. Sorry about the dress you were wearing tonight.’
Phoebe was currently sporting a fetching hospital robe. ‘They had to cut it off me,’ she whispered.
Freddy pressed another kiss on the back of her hand. ‘Sorry, Pheebs. I know it was your favourite.’
Phoebe was still waiting for her heart to shatter over that dress, all of her dresses, herstuff. But her heart had already shattered once tonight when she’d seen Freddy and Coco lying motionless on the ground after being pulled out of the depths of the Regent’s Canal. And now that Freddy was safe and she’d been sent a picture of Coco wrapped up in Cress’s mum’s favourite pashmina and sleeping in Cress’s bed, her heart was healed and, all things considered, beating out quite a steady rhythm.
‘I know that you think I care too much about the dresses. I probably do but I always think that the dresses need me to stand up for them. It’s so easy to throw something away just because it’s a little old-fashioned or a button’s come loose and the hem has dropped but it still has worth, it still has value,’ Phoebe said, her voice scratchy, her hand movements not as extravagant as they usually would be. ‘Like you wouldn’t throw away a person because they were a bit broken, would you?’
‘I see what you mean,’ Freddy mused as Phoebe’s pulse began to thunder and she could actually see her blood pressure increase on the monitor she was hooked up to. It was easy to say these things to a load of faceless people on the internet. There was less at stake. It was much harder to say them to someone you’d grown to really care about but who might throw you away once they realised how damaged you were. ‘But I think the best people are a little bit broken, a little rough around the edges. Life might have been a bit hard on them but they’ve come through it and it’s made them stronger.’
‘I’m not strong, Freddy,’ Phoebe said so faintly, that he had to lean closer to catch every word that she managed toforce out. Not just because it hurt physically but because emotionally, each letter, each syllable was wrenched out of her soul. ‘I’ve always been broken and I’m terrified that people are going to find out.’
‘Why do you think you’re broken?’ Freddy asked.
Phoebe shut her eyes, took a deep breath, which made her poor swollen throat throb, and then she started to tell her story. To tell Freddy the story that she’d never told anyone, though there were people, Mildred, Johnno, who had filled in some of the blanks themselves.
She told Freddy about the three-day-old baby who’d been taken into foster care. She told Freddy about Annabel, the mother who didn’t want her, and all the other families that she’d lived with who hadn’t wanted her either. The group homes and the caseworkers and a care system that didn’t seem to care very much about her at all, until she’d landed on Mildred’s doorstep.
And she told Freddy about how Mildred had rescued her as much as she’d rescued Coco. That she’d raised Phoebe to rely only on herself. That she’d spent all these years following Mildred’s edict that she shouldn’t let people into her heart because they’d only take advantage and stamp all over it.
‘What kind of person am I when I can’t even admit that I love Coco?’ she asked. By now, her voice was barely there and Freddy was on the bed with her, pressed up close so he could hear her confession. A nurse had come in at one point, but had obviously decided that trying to separate them was far beyond her pay grade and had left them to it.
‘Phoebe, everyone knows that you love Coco. Everyone except you,’ Freddy said gently. Phoebe’s head was tucked neatly under his chin so she couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his smile.
‘But does everyone know that I love you?’ Phoebe lifted her head so she could watch the emotions, surprise, hope,then joy, play over Freddy’s face because he never hid what he felt.
‘You love me?’ he clarified.
It was too hard to say it again. To make it a statement of fact instead of a question so Phoebe just nodded.
‘Well, good, because I love you,’ Freddy said as if it was as simple as that.
‘Even though I’m a very prickly person?’
‘Even prickly Phoebe.’ The twinkle was back in Freddy’s eyes. ‘You can’t have a rose without a few thorns, can you?’
‘You can’t,’ Phoebe agreed and then she really couldn’t talk anymore.
Except, he had one last question. ‘So, is it Freddy before the frocks then? If, God forbid, my flat was on fire, would you save me first?’
