Page 17 of Love from Pretty Beach
'We've tried tugging, pulling, and Darbs has tried to shimmy her way out of it, but the zip's completely jammed and the coat seems determined to keep her. We’ll have to cut her out of it. It seems a shame after the coat has survived all these years.' Anna brushed her skirt down. ‘I’ll get some scissors.’
Archie nodded. ‘Darbs, right.’
Darby remained quiet and stared at the ceiling.
'You just need to approach this systematically.' Archie stated.
'Systematically? It's a coat, not an engineering project. I just need to be cut out of it.'
'Everything's an engineering project.' Archie bobbed down and crouched beside Darby. 'I restore old buildings for a living and half the time it involves figuring out how to take apart things that were put together by people who never intended them to come apart again.'
Ooh, nice.
'You restore old buildings,' Darby repeated weakly. 'Right.'
Anna beamed at Archie as if he'd just offered to solve world hunger. 'I knew you'd know what to do. You sorted out that Victorian wardrobe that got stuck in Xian’s hallway, didn't you?'
Archie addressed Darby. ‘Can you feel if the zip is catching anything?'
Darby was acutely aware that Archie’s face was now approximately six inches from hers as he examined the zip mechanism. She may have been on fire. 'No, I don’t think it’s stuck on the lining. It’s just stuck somewhere around my collarbone. It feels like the zip teeth are jammed when it’s pulled.'
Archie took charge. 'Do you have any soap or candle wax? Sometimes you can lubricate a stubborn zip if you know what you're doing.'
‘Can we just cut it off? I’ll pay for it. I’m not enjoying this.’
'There's a lavender candle by the till.'
Remaining pinned to the floor, Darby tried not to think about how she must look from Archie's vantage point. Attempting not to look at his leg muscles through his jeans or any other adjacent muscle, she closed her eyes. ‘Well, this is mortifying.’
Anna returned with a chunky lavender candle. 'Right then, let's see if we can get this sorted. Archie, you're the expert here. Are you okay, Darbs?'
Darby felt as if she might combust. ‘I’m fine. If this doesn’t work, you’ll need to cut it off. I’ll pay for it if it’s a problem.’
Archie took the candle and began carefully rubbing the wax along the visible portion of the zip. To be quite frank, Darby didn’t know where to look. He, however, seemed perfectly at ease. 'The thing about old zips is that they were built to last, but they weren't necessarily built to be user-friendly. Case in point. This zip has been working perfectly well for sixty years, so the issue isn't the mechanism itself, it’s just that it’s old.'
Darby shook her head and the enormous hat wobbled. She didn’t care about the mechanism. ‘This is a nightmare.’
Anna nodded. ‘Do you want me to just cut it?’
Darby shook her head. ‘I’ll live. I just need to be extracted from this thing ASAP.’
'Stay still whilst I work the zip down. The trick is to not force it, I reckon.'
Darby shook her head as Archie dealt with the zip. In actual fact, she might have been enjoying it more than she was letting on. 'The coat seems to have its own ideas about cooperation.'
Archie positioned himself so that he could get a good grip on the zip. Darby swallowed. She could smell his aftershave,clean but smoky, fabulous. The lavender candle, old clothes and charity shop smell seemed to disappear.
Anna nodded. 'It’s starting to come free.'
As Darby felt the zip give, she exhaled as the coat's death grip around her ribcage loosened. 'I was beginning to think I'd have to move in here permanently.'
'We'd have made you very comfortable,' Anna said cheerfully. 'Put a little bed in the back room, maybe charge admission for people to come and see the woman who got permanently stuck in an old fur coat.'
Archie eased the zip down millimetre by millimetre whilst Anna provided a running commentary. Giving the zip one final gentle tug that brought it all the way down to her waist. 'There. You're officially un-trapped.'
Darby sat up slowly. Blinking, she swallowed, not really sure what to think. She felt as if she’d just recovered from a minor medical procedure and as the coat fell open around her, she inhaled, filled her cheeks with air and then blew out a long blow of breath. 'Thank you.' Struggling to extract her arms from the sleeves, she chuckled. 'I genuinely thought I was going to have to live in that thing forever.'
'Any time,' Archie stood up and offered her a hand. 'Next time you're planning to wrestle with vintage clothing, you might want to bring backup. Or at least warn people in advance so they can bring equipment.'
