Page 84 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
We could still hear Rory chewing his bone even from there.
The talk turned to the new museum again.
‘Tomorrow will be my first official working day and I’ll have to begin by quickly measuring up all the dresses so we can order the display mannequins,’ I said. ‘Then I can take my time working on them after that.’
‘Well …’ said Honey. ‘Actually, I’ve been wondering about the opening date, and now Priceless Interiors have promised to deliver the bulk of the display cases this week and next, I’m thinking of opening on Monday, October the fifteenth.’
I stared at her. ‘But I haven’t evenlookedat the costumes we’re putting on display, and that doesn’t give me much time to get them ready!’
‘I don’t think it really matters if they aren’t all on display by then. The museum can be a work in progress,’ she said. ‘The Rosa-May material comes back at the end of the month and will be ready to go straight out on display, so that can be the first thing to set up.’
‘Well … yes,’ I said slowly, ‘but—’
‘Of course, you’ll need to add your own wedding dress to the display in that room,’ she continued, blithely ignoring my panic.
She explained to Pearl and Simon: ‘Garland created a perfect replica of a lovely Regency evening dress that Rosa-May had had made in the style of her Titania stage costume, which she meant to use as her wedding dress, so if they were displayed next to each other, the visitors would be able to compare them.Of course,’ she added, ‘you don’t have to reveal the whole story of why you never wore it, if you don’t want to, Garland.’
‘I’m certainly not revealingallthe details to the public,’ I said, ‘because I’m still ashamed of my part in what happened next.’
I looked at Simon and Pearl’s surprised faces and suddenly realized their friendship already meant a lot to me and it would be a relief to tell them everything.
‘I think I’d like you both to know everything – Honey and Thom already do.’
So I described what I’d overheard at the Cockleshell Theatre when I was delivering the Titania costume.
‘Your fiancé actually let another woman borrow the wedding dress you’d spent so much time making, without telling you?’ Pearl gasped.
‘He did, but there was more betrayal to come, because it became evident from what Mirrie was saying that she and Marco had been having an affair.’
‘Just to complicate things, Mirrie Malkin is the actress who starred alongside me and my stepbrother Leo, in the Silvermann films,’ explained Thom. ‘She and Leo married after the filming finished, but I caught her with Marco not long after that, so now they seemed to be taking up where they left off a few years ago.’
I heard Viv give a small, surprised squeak. I’d forgotten she was there!
‘Mirrie was playing Titania in Marco’s new play and he was also directing it,’ I expanded. ‘The actor I overheard her talking to was Wilfric Wolfram, whose email I got when we were in the Pink Elephant.’
‘It’s a small world,’ Honey said.
‘It is,’ agreed Thom grimly. ‘And full of betrayals.’
Our eyes met for a long moment, his unreadable. I don’t know what he saw in mine. On the surface, our old friendshipseemed to have resumed, but underneath my emotions seemed permanently to be not just mixed, but in turmoil.
I looked away and carried on with the story. ‘Hearing her practically boasting about it all was such a shock that I dashed back into her dressing room, the room where I’d just hung the Titania costume …’
The next bit, admitting the enormity of what I’d done, was hard, but I screwed up my resolution and carried on. ‘I have no recollection of the next few minutes, except that I suddenly felt furious … and the next thing I knew, the Titania costume was in shreds.’
‘Gosh!’ said Simon inadequately, his faded-denim-blue eyes widening.
I felt my face burn. ‘It was so unprofessional of me that I can’t believe even now I did it! All those hours of work I put into making it …’
‘But I’m sure you couldn’t help it,’ said Pearl quickly. ‘It must have been the shock!’
‘I don’t know, but I think Honey was very brave, offering me the job here. You’ve been so kind, Honey!’ I told her, and she grinned at me.
‘Not at all. I found what you’d done perfectly understandable in the circumstances and you aren’t likely to do anything like that again, so I got a costume expert for a pittance!’
‘Garland always did have a fierce temper, even when we were children, although it always blew over quickly,’ Thom said with a half-smile. ‘We grew up together until we were nearly eleven and then didn’t meet again for over ten years, but she hadn’t changed.’
He looked ruefully at me. ‘Then when we first saw each other again, I thought for a minute you were going to fly at me!’
