Page 81 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
‘You can save yourself. I’d have to pick Coco first,’ Phoebe said apologetically. ‘But then you and then, and I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, way, way down the list, would be the frocks.’
‘Only second?’ Freddy smiled as Phoebe stretched out her hand so he could see the underside of her wrist where her ill-advised tattoo, an F and a C entwined within the outline of a heart, was now clearly visible. ‘I can live with being second. In fact, being second sounds pretty good to me.’
Epilogue
A couple of months later . . .
Something old, something new.
Something borrowed, something blue.
Everyone said it would be romantic to get married on Valentine’s Day; however, there was only one place that Phoebe wanted to get married.
Her happy place. Which was the atelier.
And there wasnoway that Phoebe was going to close the shop on Valentine’s Day, which fell on a Saturday that year. A working day but also it would mean that ‘we’d be letting our customers down. Have you any idea of how many women suddenly wake up on February fourteenth and decide that they need the perfect dress for their dates later that night? Or how many men come to the shop to buy a red dress for their special person, even though it turns out that they have absolutely no idea what size their special person actually wears?’
‘I just thought it would be romantic,’ Freddy said mildly. ‘If you feel that strongly about it, then let’s do it on the Sunday instead. You can have the wedding any way that you want it but the honeymoon is non-negotiable.’
It was their new improved couple strategy. They were each allowed one, only one, red line on any given topic. A red line that couldn’t be crossed.
So if Phoebe had the wedding of her dreams on a Sunday afternoon (they’d done the legal thing at Camden Town Hall a couple of days before) in the atelier with Charles officiating then Freddy was in charge of the honeymoon. A week in Paris, a whole week away from the shop and away from Coco Chanel, who was going to stay with Birdy, Faisal and Peggy Gug, even though Phoebe was sure they’d return to find that Coco had become a fully fledged doggy influencer.
‘You’re not financially savvy, Coco,’ she said to her chief bridesmaid, who looked beautiful in her own little white veil and pearl collar. ‘You’d sign your life away for a pig’s ear.’
Phoebe fingered the pearls that were around her own neck. Mildred’s pearls, her something borrowed, which were one of the few things to survive the fire. It was lovely to have something of Mildred’s on this special day.
Her 1930s bias-cut dress was her something old. Once it had been repaired and the fake tan had been painstakingly removed after Rosie Roberts’s harsh treatment of it.
Phoebe’s something new was the going-away outfit that Cress had designed exclusively for her. The Phoebe was a French navy wool crêpe dress with satin accents, but it didn’t count as her something blue. That was the diamond and aquamarine (her birth stone) engagement ring sourced by Charles and placed on her finger by Freddy at the end of that strange week afterThe Sheilahad caught fire.
Even though it was the busiest shopping week of the year, Phoebe had been confined to bed in Freddy’s flat. She had to rest her broken ribs, she had stitches where she’d cut her arm and hand, and her feet were still sore and throbbing from being torn to ribbons. Also, she’d kept bursting into tears every time she looked at either Coco or Freddy.
Freddy hadn’t been much better. He hardly let Phoebe or Coco out of his sight. There had been a lot of sleeping off the worst of their symptoms. A lot ofcuddling. A lot of gazing at each other because Phoebe couldn’t get enough of the expression on Freddy’s face when he looked at her; it was tender and soft in a way that she couldn’t quite describe.
‘It’s so good to have my two best girls back with me,’ Freddy had said at one point. ‘We’re our own little family.’
‘I love our own perfectly imperfect little family,’ Phoebe whispered because it was still easier to say that than to remind Freddy that she really did love him. Loved him more than all the vintage dresses in all the vintage shops in the world.
But he didn’t need reminding because later that week when he was still a lighter shade of grey but well enough to go into town for a meeting, he came home with a cheeky Nando’s for them and the ring.
He even went down on one knee.
Phoebe didn’t even have to think about it. ‘Very much yes. Definitely yes,’ she rasped. ‘But are you sure about this? I’m still prickly.’
‘I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ Freddy said, with a grin. ‘I can cope with the odd scratch.’
It was quite hard to remember to be prickly when Phoebe was now something of a heroine. She’d gone viral yet again (she’d stopped counting how many times that had happened) after someone uploaded footage to TikTok of her leaping onto the blazingSheilato rescue Coco. She was officially uncancelled now and there was even talk of a Pride of Britain award.
It would also have been churlish to not thank her friends who’d all visited, bringing flowers and vintage dresses from their own wardrobes, to replace all those dresses that were now lost for evermore.
The Vintage Dress Shop hadsomehowmanaged without Phoebe while she was indisposed. Although someone would pop over every lunchtime to give Phoebe the low-down on that day’s business. Still, after all that she’d been through, it was quite hard to get even a little bit stressed about their ever-dwindling stock of black party dresses or that Cress’s overlocker was making an awful clunking sound and might be out of operation until the end of the year.
‘I miss the old Phoebe,’ Anita said mournfully, when it was her turn to come round. ‘Can’t you think of something to tell me off about?’
‘I’m sure that in another couple of days, I’ll be back to my true self,’ Phoebe said but her heart wasn’t really in it. She wasn’t sure who her true self was anymore.
Probably not the chilly woman she’d forged out of the ashes of that lost girl she’d used to be. There had been so many different Phoebes and over the last few weeks, she realised that she was transforming into yet another version of herself.
