Page 89 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘We’ve been to the chippy and thought we’d get enough for three, in case you fancied some,’ Thom said.
‘How can I resist, when the very smell makes my knees go weak?’ I said, stepping back to let them in.
‘Does it? Maybe I should try that on Pearl?’ Simon said. ‘Or on second thoughts, perhaps not, because she isn’t a fan of them.’
They followed me into the kitchen where Golightly, who obviously was a fan of fried fish, appeared like a smoke-grey wraith in the utility-room doorway.
Ignoring Simon, he headed for Thom and wound himself sinuously around his ankles.
‘He definitely likes you. He’s only done that to me once,’ I said, feeling slightly jealous.
‘Or he knows I’m the softest touch?’ he suggested.
‘That’s probably it, because I saw you feeding him prawns out of your sandwich at lunchtime,’ Simon revealed.
‘Snitch,’ Thom said amiably, pulling up a chair.
‘He was over at your place today, then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he turned up just as Simon and I were having a late lunch in my workshop. Maybe Jester told him, telepathically.’
‘He seems to be coming and going quite happily, and not straying away.’
‘I think he’ll hang around home territory, like Jester,’ Thom agreed. ‘I could see you through the workroom window once or twice, and I thought you’d be lost in costumier’s heaven.’
‘I was,’ I said. I’d poured out orange juice while they were unwrapping the parcels. We didn’t stop for refinements like cutlery, just ate the food straight from the cartons with our fingers, except for the mushy peas at the bottom of the tub when we’d finished dunking our chips: we needed spoons for that.
‘This is great,’ Simon said, sneaking the last few of my chips when I began to flag. ‘And I much prefer the smell to linger in your cottage, rather than mine, because I’m always afraid it will waft down to the workroom and impregnate the hats.’
‘Impregnate,’ repeated Thom, then grinned. ‘Sounds as if they might have very strange offspring!’
‘Well, you know what I mean,’ Simon protested. ‘Maybe I should have saidpermeate.’
‘Howisthe hat trade?’ I asked, putting a big tub of peanut butter ice cream on the table by way of dessert.
‘These days people mostly only want hats for race meetings, weddings and special events, especially royal ones. Of course,there’s an endless demand for fascinators, but they’re hardly any kind of creative challenge,’ he said gloomily. ‘I can make a little bonnet for the Maria Marten puppet, though, if you want me to. I’m just so grateful you’ve taken over making the marionette costumes!’
‘That would be really helpful. I’ve researched the dress for that period and I’ll show you a picture of the sort of thing I’d like after we’ve finished.’
‘Myorder book is fairly full, especially considering I’m currently working single-handed,’ Thom said. ‘There are always repairs and restringing requests, too. Pearl’s going to expand our website with a selling page when she’s less busy setting up the museum site for Honey. I finally persuaded Bruno to let me sell marionettes online, though I’ll need to build up a bit more stock before I go live with that.’
‘We are really busy and I’ll need to make some more miniature costume mannequins for the V&A shop as soon as I have time. Honey thought I should make some wearing replicas of the dresses in our collection too, but I’m not convinced any of our visitors would buy them!’
‘Oh, I think they might prove surprisingly popular,’ Thom said. ‘She suggestedImake marionettes for you to dress in replica wedding gowns, too, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, but I think both the mini mannequins and the marionettes will be a bit expensive for impulse buys from the museum shop, though they might sell better online later on,’ I suggested. ‘At the moment, I’m mostly planning ahead to when the museum is open and I go part-time, because I’ll need to earn more from my own work. So it’s good to have plans.’
I showed Simon the kind of simple bonnet I thought Maria Marten would have worn and forwarded him the link, beforehe and Thom went off to the pub together. I declined their invitation to go with them, because I wanted to skim through Honey’s basic information on the remaining dresses again, so I’d be ready to measure them up for mannequins next day … and then, perhaps, if I wasn’t too sleepy, read another instalment of Rosa-May’s journal, which I did, until Golightly decided to lie on the laptop keyboard.
When I slept that night, Rosa-May’s story and the strange, sad, mysterious, poignant or unexpectedly funny tales of bridal misfortunes were all jumbled up in my dreams.
*
I was up and in my workroom very early on Tuesday morning, feeling a bit like a child on Christmas Day: all those Pandora’s boxes to open, even if only briefly, before somehow making myself close them again!
First, however, I sent over to Pearl the content for a couple more show cards. No sooner had I pressed Send, than up popped an email from Derek.
He must be an early bird, like me, and already in the Pelican House office, because he said he’d put in the order for those first mannequins. I thanked him and replied that there would soon be a whole lot more, but I thought I’d get the most urgent ones first.
