Page 13 of Falling for You
Just start writing?
‘I usually review events and things …’ I say, following him out of the kitchen, ‘is there anything you want me to cover?’
‘Nope!’ He smiles. ‘We don’t have much on at the moment. So just write whatever you like, see where inspiration takes you.’
He catches the look of panic on my face and shakes my shoulder. ‘You’re a writer, you must be full of ideas!’
I laugh weakly as Brian walks off, leaving me at an empty desk.
Well, if I wanted to know if Brian was a writer himself, I know now for sure.
Every writer knows that, actually, we never have any ideas.
Ever.
CHAPTER FIVE
Annie
I grip the pin between my teeth as I reposition the material against my sewing machine. It’s a thick fabric, almost too thick for my machine, but the brief was a ghost costume that could survive an outdoor Halloween party set in the grounds of a castle.
In my eyes, anyone who is cool enough to go to that level of commitment for Halloween deserves a good costume, so I’m going all out. All the bells and whistles, pockets and thermal linings. I’m nothing if not practical.
I reposition the fabric so it’s perfectly aligned, adding another pin so it stays firmly in place. Once I have received the brief from the client along with their measurements, I design the costume. This usually involves hours of sketching and scribbling, stitching my favourite parts from each design together until I come up with the perfect outfit. Then, using the measurements the client sent through, I adjust the pattern to make sure it’ll fit correctly and set about sourcing the fabrics. I go to a fantastic shop in Camden. There are a million fabric shops in London, half of which are far closer to me. But they don’t have Jade, the shop owner.
Jade is around thirty, with electric-pink hair and big, glittery earrings. Her shop is like an Aladdin’s cave: streams upon streams of glistening, beautiful fabrics, every colour under the rainbow. I could spend hours in there, admiring each roll and imagining what I could make with them.
‘Are you all right, love?’
I narrow my eyes before sticking the final pin into the fabric to tack up the hem. I nod at Mum, who is balanced against my copy ofPride and Prejudice, on FaceTime. She’s in her kitchen, half bent over a bubbling stove as she peers into the camera. My mum is a wiry woman with thin, wild hair and an extensive collection of pashminas. You can find them coiled round her neck like fabulous snakes all year round. She gets away with it, as whenever someone notices how enormous her collection is, she proudly tells them that she made them all herself. Then, instead of being slightly deranged for being so obsessed with cashmere scarves, she’s suddenly very impressive.
It makes me want to learn how to make wine.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That hem was just a bit tricky. The fabric is so thick.’
‘Let’s see it?’
I hold an offcut up to the camera and Mum nods knowingly. ‘Gone are the days that you’d wear a simple bedsheet.’
‘Gone are the days where you’re expected to freeze to death in order to look good,’ I say, grinning at Mum as she laughs.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be the young one living it up in London?’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t be worried about being cold.’
I glance around my bedroom, my blanket firmly draped over my legs.
The first year we moved in, the three of us were still a bit naïve after spending three years living in ‘bills included’ accommodation at university. We went wild with the thermostat. I remember walking around the flat in December in aT-shirt. We were all, ‘we deserve a warm home’ and ‘we work hard for our money, we’ve earnt this’, and blah blah idiotic blah.
Well, we had the shock of our lives when our bill came through in the spring. We made a solemn oath to each other that we’d keep ourselves accountable and not turn the heating on until the twentieth of November at the very earliest, unless it snows.
We have thin, rattly windows and an attic that puffs all our heat away like a cheerful steam train. We haven’t had snow, but I’m pretty sure there are icicles forming in my nostrils.
‘I’m always worried about being cold.’
Mum still lives in our family home, an old farmhouse in the Cotswolds. It has wooden beams and sage cabinets, and an enormous reclaimed-wood dining table that stretches across the conservatory and sits our entire extended family every Christmas. All fifteen of us.
Growing up it was just us three, but our house was always full of friends from school, relatives and pals of my parents popping round for a cup of tea or a steaming Sunday roast.
On the odd occasion that I take Tanya and Penny backhome to ‘escape to the country’ (as Penny likes to call it), they cannot understand why I ever wanted to leave. Once, I caught Tanya ‘joking’ with my mum about lodging in my old bedroom (she swore it was a joke when I questioned her, but I saw her face when she bit into Mum’s apple crumble. The intention was real). Don’t get me wrong, I loved living there. But I love living in London too. Even if it does mean that the only person making me an apple crumble on a Sunday for under £11.50 is Mr Kipling.
