Secrets, Schemes & Sewing Machines

by Katy Cannon

  It needed to be her. It really needed to be her.

  She turned, slowly, to face me, and I could see in her eyes she was calculating her options, weighing up her choices. Wondering how to beat me.

  “I’m not telling anyone anything,” she said finally. “And there’s no point in you doing it. No one’s going to believe you.”

  I couldn’t let her know that I thought she was right. “Connor will believe me.”

  “Really?” She arched a brow at me. “Are you sure? I heard you two arguing, you know, last term. He thought you were after my role. This would be all the proof he needs, right?”

  “I’m not going to explain mine and Connor’s relationship to you. Things are different now.”

  Violet’s smile was cruel. “How much are you willing to bet on that?” She leaned in closer, as if to whisper a secret. “You might not have noticed, Grace, but you’re not the be all and end all at this school any more. In fact, you barely matter. You’re not going to tell anyone because they’ll think you’re just a bitter, twisted, mean girl trying to get back at me for being a better actress than you.”

  “A better actress?” I shouldn’t have laughed but it came out before I had a chance to think.

  Violet wasn’t smiling any more. Her expression cold and stony, she grabbed the neckline of her costume and pulled. The ripping sound echoed through the empty room, as she casually stepped out of the tattered dress. She tossed it across the room, where it landed on a window jamb, its delicate silk caught on the metal.

  My heart sank down towards my toes, but I wouldn’t let myself wince, wouldn’t let her know that she’d just potentially destroyed hours upon hours of Izzy’s work, and I had no idea how, or even if, I could fix it in time.

  Striding across the room in her underwear, Violet stepped behind the screen to get dressed again. I just kept staring at the torn fabric hanging from the window. At least, until the door opened and I darted forward to grab it before anyone else saw.

  “You two finished in here?” Connor asked, just as Violet emerged from behind the screen. “Mr Hughes is waiting to lock up.”

  “Oh, I think we’re done. Aren’t we, Grace?” Violet said, an innocent smile on her face. I knew this was it. This was the moment to tell Connor what I’d discovered, to prove that I trusted him to believe me, whatever Violet said.

  But I couldn’t. I just wasn’t sure enough. And I’d promised him I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the show – like wreck one of the most important costumes just days before opening night.

  So instead, I nodded. “For now, anyway.”

  Connor looked between us, a small frown on his face. “Well, OK, then. Let’s go. Big week next week, as Mr Hughes keeps reminding us.”

  Yes, it was. There was no way I was going to let Violet ruin it.

  I spent Sunday panicking about the dress.

  I called Izzy, but she was away on some textiles course until Monday night and so she was absolutely no help at all.

  “How bad is it?” she asked over the phone.

  “Bad.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll be back late tomorrow night. We can meet and look at it on Tuesday morning?” But even she didn’t sound too hopeful of us getting it fixed before the dress rehearsal that afternoon.

  Connor texted around lunchtime, and my heart jumped when I saw his name on my screen.

  Hey, want to do something today? I could come over?

  Did that mean everything was fine and normal? Or did he suspect something? Or, worse, had Violet told him – or Ash – about my accusations?

  Either way, he couldn’t come round. He’d see the dress, and then he’d know something had happened. Or I could hide it, but then it definitely wouldn’t be mended in time for the dress rehearsal.

  In the end, I lied.

  Sorry, got family stuff on today. See you at school, though x

  I felt bad about it all afternoon.

  At teatime, Mum knocked on my bedroom door to see if I was ever planning on coming out. And then, because she believes parents can just do these things, she walked in without waiting for me to say it was OK.

  “You can’t sit in here sulking all day,” she said, leaving the door wide open behind her.

  “Want to bet?” I replied. I didn’t even really mean it; I was just so fed up of everything.

  A look of frustration crossed Mum’s face. “Honestly, Grace. I don’t know what else you want us to do. I thought things were getting better, but this weekend… Look. Maybe we did make a mistake, when we were younger. Our circumstances were very different back then. When we made the decision to give Faith away … it seemed like the only option at the time, but maybe it wasn’t. Either way, none of it was Faith’s fault, and now we’re trying to make it up to her. I don’t understand why you can’t support us in that.”

  “You made another mistake.” The bile and the bitterness rose up in me all over again. Maybe Connor was wrong. Maybe some situations needed a little drama, or nothing ever got resolved. “You should have told me about Faith before she showed up on our doorstep.”

  Mum’s face froze at that and when it unfroze, she suddenly looked much older than I’d ever seen her before. Stepping further into the room, she leaned against my desk, as if she needed the support.

  “You’re right,” she said, and I almost fainted in surprise. I don’t think I’d ever heard either of my parents say that before. “We should have. But … there was a chance we’d never see her again, and that was hard for me to accept. I didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge that you had a sister out there who didn’t want to know you.”

  I sat up a little, so I was perched on the edge of the bed. I’d never thought about it like that before. About what it would be like to know that Faith existed but not have her in our lives. I wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse, quite honestly.

  “I’m sorry, Grace. Sorry that everything has been so … unexpected and difficult for you this year. But we’re trying, really we are. I know this is hard for you, but you have to understand that it’s hard for us, too. For all of us. We’re all adjusting, and we’re doing the best we can to find our own way through.”

  “There should be a handbook for this sort of thing,” I said, and Mum laughed.

  “There should.”

  I watched her, still looking tired and worn, but trying. Maybe my parents weren’t the only ones who had expectations. I’d been so busy trying to live up to theirs, I hadn’t even realized how much I expected from them. I expected them to get it right, every time, and to know all the answers. But nobody could live up to that, could they? Not even me.

  We’re doing the best we can, Mum had said. Wasn’t that just what I was doing? With the costumes, with Connor, with Yasmin. And maybe that best would be enough, and maybe it wouldn’t. One way or another, we’d all come out the other side of this.

  “Everything OK in here?” Dad asked, his head appearing around the edge of the door.

  Mum looked at me. “I think so. Grace?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded for good measure. “I think everything will be.” Not yet, perhaps. Faith was still a stranger, really, and the new dynamic between us all would take some getting used to. But eventually, we would get used to it. And until then, we’d keep on doing the best we could.

  “Good,” Dad said. “Then who wants some coffee and cake? I picked up a coffee and walnut sponge from the bakery. It has perfectly symmetrical coffee beans on the top.”

  One of Lottie’s. I hopped up off the bed. “Great!”

  But before I could follow him, Mum spotted something.

  “What’s that?” she asked, staring at the ruined silk lying in state across my bed.

  “One of the costumes from the play,” I said, my miserable cloud descending again. Not only had I totally failed to fix Yasmin’s relationship, or my own – in the process, I’d ruined the best costume in the whole damn play.

  “What happened to it?” Mum picked the dr
ess up carefully, like it was some sort of injured animal.

  “It met with an accident,” I said flatly. Violet, as far as I was concerned, was an accident waiting to happen.

  “How are you going to fix it?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I admitted.

  Mum stared at the dress. Then she turned to me. “Come on. I know what we need to do. Nick, put the kettle on.”

  Dad and I looked at each other, then at Mum’s retreating back as she darted out of the room.

  Maybe this weekend could be saved after all.

  “OK, see this tear here?” Mum peered over the glasses perched on the end of her nose and pointed at the one she meant. I leaned closer around the sewing machine to get a look.

  “Yeah?” It was a long one, all down the left side of the dress.

  “This one is easy. It’s just along the seam, and the fabric is still intact, so we can just re-sew it. This one, however…” She pointed to another rip on the opposite armhole. “This one has torn the fabric. We’re going to need to reinforce it before we can re-sew it.”

  “Can we do that?” I asked, worried. “It needs to still match the other three dresses that are the same.”

  “We can do it,” Mum said, and her confident tone gave me hope. “And since it’s under the arm, no one will see any repair job we do anyway.”

  “Great!” It was all going to be fine. I felt like I could breathe for the first time since the confrontation with Violet.

  “But this one…” Mum tapped next to a tear in the fabric I’d almost forgotten about in my excitement. This one was more of a hole, and I figured it must have happened when I grabbed the dress off the window jamb.

  “It’s right on the front of the dress,” Mum said, running her fingers over the silk around the hole. “Any mending we do is going to show, even from a distance under the stage lights. Especially when it’s next to the other dresses. And on fabric this fragile… I’ll have to think about this one.”

  “Do you think we can fix it, though?” Otherwise, what was the point in mending the other tears? “If I need to find a new dress…” I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do, to be honest.

  Mum shook her head. “We’ll fix it.” She flashed me a smile. “Just trust me.”

  “OK.” I took a deep breath as Dad placed the coffee cups on the table. “And, um … thanks. For helping me.”

  Mum’s smile became deeper at that, almost a little sad, and she sniffed, before pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I’m glad to have the chance. You’ve always been so good at doing everything on your own.”

  “Have I?” It didn’t feel like it.

  “Grace,” Dad said. “You’re a marvel. Always have been.”

  I grinned and reached for a piece of cake. “Then let’s get started.”

  The first tear took Mum moments to fix. I watched her carefully, and listened as she explained what she was doing and why. The silk was slippery under her hands and took careful handling with the sewing machine.

  Then, while she was looking for something to reinforce the second tear, muttering something about seam tape, there was a knock on the front door. Feeling fairly superfluous to the proceedings anyway, I ran to answer it – only to find Jasper on my doorstep, his arms full of brightly coloured fabric.

  “I figured out how to make things up to Izzy!” He beamed.

  “By smothering her in fabric?”

  Jasper shook his head. “Let me in and I’ll explain.”

  Since I had a feeling I was going to be expected to do something or other with the mass of material Jasper had brought, I led him straight through to the kitchen, where the sewing machine was set up on the table.

  Dumping his bundle of cloth on a chair, Jasper peered down at the dress Mum was working on.

  “Violet’s costume for the final scene,” I explained, in response to his curious look. “It met with an … accident, yesterday.”

  Jasper raised his eyebrows. “Was that accident called Violet?” he murmured, his words inaudible to Mum over the sound of the machine.

  I nodded. “But Mum knows how to fix it. Mostly.”

  The machine stopped clacking and whirring, and Mum pulled the dress out and held it up. Apart from the hole in the front, it looked as good as new.

  “It looks great, Mum. Thank you.”

  Mum beamed. “Well. We’re getting there, anyway.” She spotted the stack of fabric on the chair. “Do we have another project on our hands?”

  “Jasper is trying to impress a girl,” I explained, and he glared at me.

  “These are the offcuts from the dresses she makes. I thought maybe there might be something I could do with them? I need something … impressive.”

  “A grand gesture with fabric…” Mum stared off into the distance. Jasper and I exchanged looks, and I shrugged when he mouthed, “What’s going on?” at me.

  Then Mum clicked her fingers. “I’ve got just the thing! But you’d better phone your sister, Grace. We’re going to need all hands on deck for this one.”

  Phone Faith. I’d never done that before. And, nice as she’d turned out to be, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to set that kind of precedent just yet.

  “What about Violet’s costume?” I asked, stalling. “We’ve got to get that last hole fixed first.”

  Mum gave me a mysterious grin. “I think Jasper’s grand gesture might just be the answer to your dress issues, too. Call Faith and I guarantee that by the end of the night I’ll have solved both of your problems.”

  Well. That decided it. Leaving Jasper and Mum sorting through fabric, I darted out into the hall to call Faith and ask her to come over.

  School on Monday was unbearable. Everywhere I turned Violet seemed to be smirking at me. Yasmin looked sadder than ever and was refusing to come anywhere near the drama room, or the play.

  “I’ll help bake the refreshments like I promised,” she said, when I asked if she could help backstage for the dress and first performance. “But Lottie will come and set them all up. I don’t want to… I think it’ll be better if I just run things from the food tech classroom this time.”

  I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t blame her, either. “Don’t worry. I’ll ask Izzy if she’ll help. She’s back tonight.” The high from fixing Violet’s costume – and inadvertently sorting out Jasper’s love life – was fading. I still needed Violet to own up. That way, everything would be fixed and Connor would never have to know I was involved.

  Mr Hughes was running some last-minute scene rehearsals after school, but I wasn’t needed for them. Instead, I was with Izzy in the textiles classroom, ironing and spot cleaning the costumes to make sure they were in perfect condition for the dress rehearsal.

  At least it meant I didn’t have to see Connor for one more day. The temptation to just tell him what Violet had done would be too great. And, as much as I hated it, she was right. There was a real chance he wouldn’t believe me – that he’d think this was just another scheme to get Violet into trouble and take over the lead role.

  I couldn’t risk that. Especially when things were already so fraught. He’d asked me to stay out of Yasmin and Ash’s dramas, to focus on our relationship and the play instead, and I hadn’t. Instead, I’d gone after Violet and almost ruined everything.

  Tuesday came quickly enough, though, and there was no way to avoid him at the dress rehearsal, so I didn’t even try.

  “Everything ready for tonight?” I leaned against the edge of the wall beside the stage, my arms full of costumes.

  Connor looked up, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Think so. How about you? Costumes all sorted?”

  “All ready to go. Even Violet’s.” I cursed mentally the moment the words slipped out.

  He frowned. “What was wrong with Violet’s?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, as breezily as I could. Hoping I’d got away with it, I turned to head into the drama room, which had been turned into a dressing room, with the addition of plenty of sc
reens to keep the male and female cast members apart.

  “Grace…”

  I paused, turning to look back over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “When this is over … can we, I don’t know … catch up? I feel like it hasn’t been just us in weeks.” He sighed. “I just want to go back to how we were on New Year’s Eve.”

  I smiled softly. “Me, too. And yeah, once this play is over, maybe everything can go back to normal.” And once I’d forced Violet to tell Ash the truth.

  “I’d like that,” Connor said, probably imagining a drama-free future for the two of us.

  Even though the chances were, I was about to make things a million times worse. But I had to. For Yasmin and for Ash.

  Leaning over, my armful of costumes still between us, I pressed a light kiss to Connor’s lips. I’d have everything sorted soon, however much drama it took. I just hoped that things could go back to how they were supposed to be when I was done.

  What you need:

  Long piece of fabric (scrap pieces work well)

  Felt in a matching colour

  Button

  Badge-back pin

  What to do:

  1. Cut your fabric into a long rectangle, 8 x 50cm.

  2. Fold in half, with the wrong sides together, and tuck the ends under. Sew a long, gathering stitch 1cm in from where the edges meet.

  3. Gather your fabric into tight ruffles then coil it up into a spiral, sewing it in place by hand as you go. Keep wrapping the strip around your centre and sewing in place, until you reach the end.

  4. Sew your button in place at the centre of the flower.

  5. Cut a circle of felt to cover the back of your flower.

  6. Sew your badge-back pin to the centre of the felt, then glue the felt circle securely in place on the back of your flower.

  7. Wear your corsage as a brooch to brighten up your outfit!

  The first half of the dress rehearsal didn’t go too badly. A few stumbles and a couple of skipped lines, but by the time we broke for the interval the cast were starting to get into the swing of things.