Page 145 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘I think I have, too, but it’s going very well,’ I said, as Thom went off to find the others. Then I told Honey the whole saga of Amy turning up, alive and kicking. Of course, being Honey, she found this highly amusing.
‘And I could get a plot out of it … only perhaps the Bloody Bride should sneak back after she’s happily married to her farmer, and kill her ex?’
‘Why would she want to, if she’s happily married to someone else?’ I objected.
‘The ex will have done something to deserve it,’ she said confidently. ‘She can kill him with some kind of ancient farming tool …’ she added vaguely.
I said doubtfully, ‘Isn’t there something called a mattock?’
‘I’ll look it up,’ she said, but true to form had already pushed up the black velvet sleeve of her YSL jacket and was writing up her arm, with the gold pen she still held from her book signing.
I tried to read it upside down and she seemed to be trying out various titles:Culling the Bloodline,Furrowed DeathandSlaughtered Dreams.
Then she pulled down her sleeve and, glancing up, spotted my ring.
‘O-ho! Is there something my little cousin isn’t telling me?’
‘Thom and I just got engaged,’ I confessed. ‘I mean,literallyjust! I didn’t even know my feelings had changed towards him till just before Marco turned up, but now we know we’re in love with each other, so it seems pointless to waste any more time, doesn’t it?’
‘Definitely, and everyone else could see you were in love from the moment you got here, what with all those antagonistic undercurrents – veryPride and Prejudice!’
I laughed. ‘I think I could see Thom in the Darcy role, but I’m no smart-mouthed Elizabeth Bennet.’
‘I’d better go and talk to my guests, I suppose,’ she said resignedly.
‘And I’ll go and answer even more visitors’ questions … although my feet are hurting! I haven’t worn heels for ages.’
‘We all have to suffer for our art, and today has really gone with a swing, hasn’t it?’ Honey said, and then drifted off, tall, slim and elegant, her black bobbed hair shining under the bright foyer lights.
Pearl and Simon came to congratulate me before they left, Pearl with a potential customer for the bookshop in tow. Thom also went soon after to walk Jester, and the crowd began to thin a little.
I’d just retreated into the corner next to the charity shop dress to surreptitiously ease one painful foot out of its shoe, while listening to the hum of visitors, like happy bees, and the merry jingle of the till, when a slightly husky gin-and-cigarettes kind of voice accosted me.
‘Blimey! That looks just like my wedding dress!’
A latecomer, a buxom, rosy-faced young woman with bright, bubble-gum-pink hair, had stopped dead and was staring at the wedding dress in the window.
Then she glanced at me, clocked my badge and said uncertainly: ‘You know, for a minute I thought that reallywasmy wedding dress! It’s almost identical.’
‘If you happened to have given it to a charity shop in Ormskirk, it probablyisyour dress!’ I told her.
‘Actually, Idid, but my dress was plainer.’
‘It was quite plain, but I added new roses because the old ones were a bit limp, the jewelled belt and a bit of bling on the skirt.’
‘Then it is mine – but it looks a lot prettier. I wishI’dthought of getting them to bling it up a bit!’
‘Why did you give it to the charity shop?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Course you can! In fact, I only came to look round the museum because of what happened to me! I’m Rachel, by the way.’
‘Garland,’ I said. ‘Please do tell me your story, because I’d love to hear it.’
‘Well, my wedding day started off to plan. My parents spenta fortune on it and booked a lovely country house hotel for the reception. It was a perfect, fairy-tale wedding – right up to the point where I found my husband and my bridesmaid – who was also my best friend – in a very compromising position in a walled garden.’
‘What an awful shock! You must have been devastated?’
‘Nah – I was absolutelylivid! I shoved them both in this big lily pond they were standing next to, then ripped off my dress and veil and tossed those in after them.’
