Page 41 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
I’d achieved a lot of unpacking already, but there was still so much more left to sort out, not to mention setting up my new workroom, which, to me, would count as fun.
The night air had briefly woken me up and I made a comforting mug of hot chocolate … and then almost fell asleep over it, thinking of the evening and of how, whenever I’d glanced in his direction, Thom’s dark and sombre amber eyes seemed to be fixed on me with an unreadable expression in their depths.
He wasn’t any longer the old Thom I’d come to take for granted in my life. I seemed to be seeing him now in a totally different light.
From what he’d said to Honey earlier, he evidently didn’t know I’d been dumped by Marco and fired by Beng & Briggs, but if he was still in contact with Sir Mallory Mortlake and his wife, he’d find out eventually. It was a mortifying thought.
I remembered I’d turned my phone to silent before I went out and I fished it out of the depths of my bag, which I’d dumped on the kitchen table. I’d been so preoccupied with the move and then the emotional turmoil of coming face to face with Thom that it was only when I found an email from Wilfric – or Will, as I must now call him – that I remembered Marco’s play had opened tonight.
Will sounded exuberant.
Darling! Play opened and four curtain calls – I just know it will get great reviews and run and run! Did my best toupstage you-know-who and she’s so dumb, I don’t think even now she’s realized that mine is the absolutely pivotal role! I’m the deus ex machina of the play – the Iago, as it were – and though I have fewer lines, they are much more important than hers.
Will xx
I didn’t take the ‘darling’ seriously, of course, and I noted that, just like all Marco’s communications, Will’s was entirely about himself – written, I suspected, on a rush of post-performance adrenalin and euphoria.
Still, I was glad for his sake that it had gone so well, although, somehow, it felt like a world I had left behind a long, long time ago.
By now, unlike Will, I wasn’t running on adrenalin or anything else, but instead had reached the stage of sheer exhaustion where my bones felt as if they had been filled with lead. There was a sound in my ears like the sea crashing against a cliff and the floor undulated when I got up.
It was all I could do to wish Golightly, who was curled back up on his favourite chair, goodnight, close the living-room door on him and climb the steep dog-leg wooden stairs to my familiar little white bed, in the unfamiliar cream-painted room, where I fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
*
I woke once in the night, with a horrible jolting, panicked feeling that I had no idea where I was, and lay there tensely, heart thumping, till everything came back to me.
All was silent, as it had never been in London, until an owl hooted somewhere not far away.
It was strangely comforting and, relaxing, I fell back into a dreamless sleep.
*
When I woke again it was very early morning and not yet light, but this time at least I remembered where I was.
I heard the sound of the central heating coming on – someone must have pre-set it, because I hadn’t got round to it yet – and the room was still a little chilly as I dressed in practical jeans and sweatshirt and headed downstairs.
Golightly must have heard me moving about, for he was now slowly working up his vocal range from low cries to a full-throated scream.
I hoped he wasn’t going to do that whenever I went out, too – or whenever he got bored – because here he wouldn’t have access to any outside space at all, not even a fire escape to view the world from.
Apart from that, he’d never been an outside cat, nor even tried to escape by way of the front door. Would hewantto venture into the courtyard, if I let him out? And if so, would he stay safely within the mews? The middle of a town wasn’t really the ideal place for an old cat to learn how to be street-wise. And anyway, Honey might not be keen on my installing a cat flap in the pristine paintwork of the front door.
Golightly had changed to a different tune the moment I’d appeared, one with an imperative note that suggested I serve him breakfast immediately, which I did for the sake of peace.
While I was eating my toast and Marmite, I rifled through the junk mail to see if I’d missed anything yesterday and founda second sheet of notepaper in Honey’s handwriting, on which she seemed to have randomly jotted down any bit of possibly useful information that came into her head. I learned in quick succession that Thursday was market day, the Sun in Splendour, on the other side of the square, did bar lunches and evening meals, there were three takeaways in town and an excellent fish-and-chip shop a few minutes’ walk away.
Like Honey, I wasn’t a great cook, so that was all interesting.
The nearest cashpoint was at the supermarket on the outskirts, because the bank, like the library, had closed up shop. There was still a post office, however, located in Rani’s Minimart around the corner, in which, said Honey’s angular black writing, you could get pretty much anything you wanted, unless you had exotic tastes and deep pockets, in which case the deli next to the Sun in Splendour would be delighted to welcome a new customer.
Rani’s Minimart sounded more my cup of tea.
It was still a bit early for the shops to open, so I did some more unpacking. Also, I started a list of things I needed to buy, like picture hooks, though I felt nervous about hammering hooks into those freshly plastered walls.
I was in the utility room, flattening cartons that had held cleaning materials, when Golightly followed me in and jumped into the box he’d favoured the day before, where he sat glaring at me, as if daring me to flatten that one, too.
I couldn’t personally see the attraction, or what that box had going for it that the others didn’t, but anything that amused him had to be a good idea, and it must have done because when I showed no sign of trying to evict him, he curled up in it, emitting his wheezy purr.
