The Shoestring Club

by Sarah Webb

  And then I remember Karen’s challenge – ‘But Jules is hardly going to turn up. She couldn’t bear to see Lainey get something she wants so badly’ – and I’m filled with so much anger and remorse I can taste it. Karen was right. I can’t stomach the fact that Ed is marrying Lainey and not me.

  On and on my mind races. If only Jamie’s Dad hadn’t been such an idiot, and Mum hadn’t got sick, then I would never have got so close to Jamie in the first place; then Jamie wouldn’t have punched Ed on the nose, Ed and I would never have broken up that first, crucial time, then I wouldn’t have failed my exams and dropped out of college and gone travelling because I was so heartbroken, we wouldn’t have had our damn stupid on-off relationship, Lainey wouldn’t have had the chance to jump his bones, and I’d be the one planning my wedding right now. It’s all Jamie’s fault. I hate him!

  In my heart, I know it’s not logical, that I’m just lashing out because I’m hurt and lonely, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than blaming myself. I stare at the ceiling and will my mind and heart to stop racing. And eventually, hours later, light dappling through my shutters and birds warming up outside, my eyelids become unbearably heavy and I finally fall asleep again.

  Chapter 4

  The following morning my alarm clock shrills, waking me up with a start and I groan, slap the snooze button, roll over and go straight back to sleep. Next thing I know, I hear my mobile ringing and vibrating around my bedside table. It’s playing the theme song from The Addams Family, meaning it’s Pandora. I ignore it and, after a few more rings, there’s blissful silence. Until it starts up again.

  I roll onto my side, press answer and hold it to my ear. ‘This had better be good, Pandora,’ I mutter.

  ‘I just drove past Baroque and the door’s closed. Is everything all right? You sound funny. You’re not in casualty again, are you, Jules?’

  ‘I’m in bed! And what’s with the again? I’ve only been in hospital once recently. And it was hardly my fault someone dropped a pint glass on my foot, Miss Snarky Pants.’

  ‘You sound groggy. Are you hungover?’

  I do feel a little groggy and my brain is hammering against my skull, but I’m not admitting it to Pandora.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why the hell aren’t you in work?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten to eleven. What happened to the alarm clock I gave you?’

  I look at said clock. She’s right, it’s 10.52. I must have hit off instead of snooze.

  Pandora says, ‘Hang on, Rowie’s just pulled her jeep up outside . . . She doesn’t look happy . . . She’s getting out . . . She’s peering in the window . . . She’s taking out her mobile.’

  ‘And she’s trying to ring me,’ I add as Rowie’s call comes through. ‘Thanks for the running commentary. I’d better get going.’

  Pandora sighs. ‘Do you want me to say something to Rowie?’

  ‘Like what? Tell her I’m ill you mean?’

  She makes a noise, halfway between a snort and a growl. ‘You’re not ill, you’re just lazy; I’m not lying for you again. And I think you’ve run out of relations to kill off at this stage. I’ll tell her you’re on your way. Invent your own excuse, keep me out of it. But it had better be good. I don’t know why she still puts up with you.’

  ‘She likes me, Pandora, that’s why. And Rowie’s cool, she won’t mind me being a bit late.’

  Pandora makes another huffy noise. God, she’s annoying sometimes.

  ‘She’s not stressy about timekeeping like you,’ I say, ‘she’s far more laid back. She’s a great boss and her shop’s doing really well. Last week we took in over six grand and she’s talking about expanding, opening shops in Cork and Galway.’

  Pandora says something very rude and then mutters, ‘Bully for her.’ And with that she’s gone.

  I stare at the phone. It’s not like Pandora to be quite so tetchy. And she rarely swears. I must have really hit a nerve. To be honest I have no idea how much money Baroque made last week, I made that bit up to annoy her. And I don’t think Rowie has any intention of expanding. Maybe I went a bit overboard, but she drove me to it.

  I don’t have time to decide what to wear, so I throw on yesterday’s clothes. I can’t find my brush so I give my hair a quick run through with my hands, then tie back my curls with one of Iris’s hair bobbins: green, with red plastic cherries hanging off it.

  My own raincoat seems to have disappeared and the sky is looking decidedly grey, so I grab Pandora’s secondhand Burberry, knot it around my waist, and grab my bike from the hall, ignoring the handwritten notice Sellotaped to the wall above it:

  DO NOT LEAVE YOUR BIKE IN THE HALL, JULES. HOW MANY TIMES? YOUR FATHER

  Ten minutes later, I’m puffing and panting outside Baroque. The lights are on now and the door’s wide open. I can hear Rowie’s hippy-dippy Indian music drifting out, along with wafts of incense – not a good sign. She only breaks out the incense when she’s seriously stressed.

  I lock my bike against the usual lamp post, take a few deep breaths – almost knocking myself out with the smell of patchouli – and walk rather nervously inside, humming Wagner’s funeral march to myself.

  Rowie is standing behind the till, frowning at the computer screen. She’s channelling French peasant meets Riverdance today, in a billowing white shirt, black waistcoat with green piping and grey dirndl skirt, teamed with odd-looking, baby-pink Cuban heeled sandals. Her dark-pink hair is in two plaits, each finished with a piece of black ribbon. Rowie is scarily directional. And she dresses down for work, doesn’t like to scare the customers.

  ‘Hi, Rowie,’ I say, trying not to sound too nervous.

  She lifts her head. She doesn’t look pleased.

  ‘Did Pandora give you my message?’ I add quickly. ‘I’m so sorry, what a nightmare. I hate punctures. I got oil all over my clothes so I had to dash home and change.’ I hold up my black, greasy fingers – swiped across the chain outside – to make my excuse sound more authentic.

  ‘Jules, Jules, Jules.’ Rowie sighs so deeply I almost expect to be blown out of the door. ‘Don’t get me wrong, as a person I adore you,’ she continues. ‘You’re funny and you make me laugh. And Lord knows I could do with a good laugh most days. But it’s not enough any more, I’m gonna have to let you go.’

  I’m genuinely shocked. I thought this job was a safe bet. Rowie is the most laid-back boss I’ve ever worked for. I thought we got each other – we certainly have fun when we’re out together. OK, it’s only when Olaf is away, but still.

  ‘What? Why? Rowie we’re friends.’

  ‘I know and it’s killing me but the shop’s not doing so well, sweets. The figures are way down. People just aren’t buying as many clothes as they used to. And to be honest, this whole Sissy business is the last straw.’

  ‘What Sissy business?’

  Rowie stares at me. ‘Jules! She called in at ten to collect her dress for the telly awards tonight – the electric-blue one we sent off to be altered for her, remember – but you weren’t bloody well here. So she rang me and yelled down the phone. Threatened to sue if I didn’t get the dress to her place by eleven. Said she wasn’t interested in featuring our evening dresses on Red Carpet any more.’ She rubs her hands over her face and moans into them. ‘After weeks of meetings with her production team, streams of phone calls and emails, it all comes to nothing. That show could have made a difference.’

  I hit my forehead. Shoot! I knew there was some reason I had to be punctual this morning. ‘I’ll courier it over on my bike, right now,’ I say. ‘And I’ll try talking her around about the show.’

  She taps her watch face. ‘It’s too late. It’s ten past eleven, Jules.’

  ‘I’ll ring her, explain,’ I add a little frantically. ‘She’ll listen to me, we’re great mates.’

  Rowie looks at me doubtfully.

  ‘Honest,’ I say. ‘She offloads all
her old gear in Shoestring, she’s in and out like a yo-yo. Please, Rowie, let me ring her. I can hardly make things any worse now, can I?’

  She sighs. ‘I guess not.’

  She walks behind the cash desk, finds Sissy’s number in the customer address book, keys it into the shop phone and hands me the receiver.

  Sissy answers immediately.

  ‘Yes?’ she snaps.

  ‘Sissy, it’s Jules.’

  ‘Jules who?’

  ‘From Baroque.’

  ‘You! What have you done with my dress?’

  ‘I’m going to deliver it personally. I’m leaving right this minute.’

  ‘I said eleven sharp. You’re out of time. I’ve decided to wear something else.’

  ‘But it looked so amazing on you, Sissy,’ I say quickly. ‘And it’s been taken up especially.’ The off-one-shoulder dress is now micro short. ‘And if you don’t wear it, how can you justify those Jimmy Choos to Ian? You had them dyed especially to match it, remember? You can’t wear something you’ve worn before, not to an awards ceremony. Everyone will think you can’t afford a new dress.’

  There’s an icy silence for a second.

  ‘Fine,’ she snaps eventually. ‘But you’d better be quick.’ And then she gives me her address in Killiney.

  ‘We’re on,’ I tell Rowie, handing her back the phone. ‘I’ll throw the dress in a zip up, you can tape it across my back and I’ll have it over to her in a jiffy. Problem solved. And maybe the Red Carpet thing will still go ahead after all.’ I give her a hopeful smile.

  Rowie nods and smiles back, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. ‘We’ll talk later, Jules.’

  I pedal furiously to Sissy’s place and am utterly dismayed to find a rather ordinary looking semi-d. I swear under my breath. Now I owe Pandora a tenner. Unless I don’t tell her immediately of course. I’ll come clean when I can afford it.

  Ian pulls open the door and gives a warm smile. ‘Hiya, Jules. How goes it?’

  ‘Grand thanks,’ I puff. If Ian’s in, why couldn’t Sissy have asked him to fetch the dress, I think crossly.

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ he says, helping me pull the duct tape off my T-shirt.

  When I’m free of tape he takes the black dress carrier off my back. There’s a sheen of condensation on it from my body heat but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I wanted to collect it but Sissy wouldn’t let me,’ he says. ‘Says she needs me by her side all day. She’s a bit stressed right now but I know she really appreciates all the extra effort you’ve made.’

  Sissy’s voice hammers down the stairs. ‘Is that the Baroque girl? Tell her she’s lucky I’m not going to sue.’

  Ian winces. ‘You’ll have to excuse her. Big day. She’s up for the best dressed gong and I know she’s terrified she’ll lose out to one of the other Red Carpet girls or, even worse, one of the TV3 presenters. I have a whole day of taxi driving ahead of me. From the hairdressers, to the beauticians for her make-up, then on to another beauticians for her nails. At least she had her spray tan done last night.’

  ‘Is your tux all spruced up, Ian?’ I ask him.

  He looks a bit embarrassed. ‘I’m not actually going. She’s bringing Albert Dock, the sports presenter. Says he’ll look more showbizzy on her arm. Dentist doesn’t quite cut it in telly land.’

  He leans in towards me and lowers his voice. ‘Air kissing isn’t really my thing to be honest. And I find the whole TV world a bit intimidating. Everyone’s so tanned and glamorous looking. And that’s just the men.’

  I laugh.

  ‘The dress, Ian?’ Sissy shrieks again. ‘I’m waiting.’

  He smiles at me apologetically and hooks a thumb up the stairs. ‘Madame calls.’

  Now’s my only chance. ‘Ian, Sissy was supposed to be doing a Red Carpet slot using dresses from Baroque. Retail is difficult at the moment and it would really help. But I think she’s changed her mind.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with her,’ he says kindly. ‘See what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, I’d appreciate that.’

  ‘Ian!’ Sissy bellows.

  He rolls his eyes dramatically, making me smile. ‘I’d better go.’

  After saying goodbye I jump back on my bike and pedal up Killiney Hill, my heart nearly thumping out of my chest. It didn’t seem this steep on the way down. The climb nearly kills me, but twenty minutes later I’m outside Baroque. I lock my bike, then walk in, peeling my damp T-shirt off my back and flapping it up and down to air my sweaty skin.

  Rowie looks up from the desk. ‘Jules, must you?’

  ‘What? It’s like a ghost town in here.’ The shop is still deathly quiet, the only sound the plink-plonk of water dripping, another of Rowie’s ‘calming’ CDs. At least it’s not the whale song.

  ‘Jules, listen.’ She starts fiddling with the end of one of her pigtails.

  Uh-oh. From the grave tone and the deep sigh, I know Rowie’s about to give me one of her ‘you must be at one with the universe to be truly happy’ speeches. Olaf’s a Buddhist and some of it rubs off on her.

  ‘I can’t go on like this,’ she continues.

  ‘Is it Olaf? Has he crashed his rally car again?’ My eyes widen. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Olaf is fine. This is about you. I feel your relationship with Baroque has become completely dysfunctional. You’re permanently late, you borrow dresses without asking me, you come in all sweaty from your racer––’

  ‘Road bike.’

  ‘Whatever. Just look at you. Hardly a great advertisement for the shop.’

  I check out my reflection in the shop mirror: nice raincoat (even if it is Pandora’s and still wrapped around my waist); navy, cropped wide-legged trousers, teamed with a Breton striped long-sleeved T-shirt. OK, so my top is a little wrinkled, and yes, sweaty, but it will dry off. I’ve nipped it in at the waist with a red tasselled belt I found in Shoestring.

  Rowie shakes her head. ‘You just don’t get it, Jules. You’ve got all the smarts up here.’ She taps her head. ‘When you’re in good form, the customers love you, but when you’re in one of your moods’ – she gives a low whistle – ‘even I have to steer well clear. Apparently you told Sissy she looked like a pregnant hippo in the Debussy Universe dress.’

  ‘It was the truth, the boxy shape did nothing for her curves. I recommended a Hope and Glory dress instead. Suited her much better. She bought it too and it was much more expensive than the Debussy.’ I rub my fingers together and say, ‘Chaching.’

  Rowie opens up a paper clip. She pokes dust from the cracks in the desk with it and blows the scud away.

  ‘Look, sweets,’ she says finally, ‘there are ways of telling customers these things. Calling someone a pregnant hippo is not one of them. She also said you stank of vodka. Is that true?’

  ‘No! She was lying. Vodka doesn’t smell. And I’d never come to work drunk.’

  Rowie stops scraping the cracks and raises her eyebrows at me.

  ‘Once, Rowie! And it wasn’t my fault. I was at a gig the previous night and I hadn’t quite made it to bed. What did you want me to do, skip work?’

  She shakes her head. ‘You shouldn’t get smashed when you have work the next day.’

  My back stiffens. ‘Come on, I get enough of this from Pandora. You like going out on the razz. Who was I out with on Saturday night? Let me think?’ I tap my finger against my lip. ‘And you had far more to drink than I did.’

  ‘I absolutely did not!’ she says. ‘I had to drag you into a taxi at two. You wanted to go back to that English guy’s hotel room and carry on drinking.’

  ‘He was cute.’

  Rowie gives me a knowing smile. ‘Jules, he was bald as a coot. If he hadn’t kept buying us cocktails, we would have been so out of there.’

  I set my chin stubbornly. ‘He was funny. All those stories about air hostesses.’

  She sniffs. ‘I bet he wasn’t a pilot at all, I bet he cleans the toilets at Heathrow.’

  ‘R
owie!’

  ‘I’m just saying. Pilots don’t generally have neck tattoos. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. Yes, I was out with you on Saturday night, but unlike your good self, I didn’t have work the next day. You must have been in tatters in Shoestring yesterday.’

  ‘I managed.’

  ‘But that’s just it. You never take anything seriously. If Baroque fails I’ll be in serious debt for the rest of my life. I took a huge risk opening this place, and the rent is crippling me. I can’t play Russian Roulette with my future, I’ve worked too hard.’ She stops, plays with the end of her pigtail again. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but I can’t afford a full-time member of staff any more. I’ll have to run the place on my own.’

  I gasp. ‘You’re really firing me? This isn’t just one of those pull your socks up talks?’

  From the look on Rowie’s face I know the answer. She looks genuinely upset and embarrassed, blood ebbing in and out of her cheeks.

  ‘I’m so sorry, really I am,’ she says, faltering. ‘I hate doing this . . .’ She tails off, then shrugs. ‘But I have to let you go.’

  I stand there, in shock. ‘Please let me stay. I’ll make a really big effort to look all neat and tidy, I’ll borrow some of Pandora’s clothes if I have to. And I’ll cycle in slowly so I don’t get all sweaty. And I’ll be extra nice to the customers, lie to them so they buy the most expensive pieces in the shop; and I’ll never, ever, come in hungover again, I swear, and—’

  ‘Jules, stop. I’ve made up my mind. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. If I keep you on, Baroque may go under. I can’t risk it.’

  ‘Please, Rowie. Please don’t do this to me.’ My eyes well up and before I know what’s happening I’m pulling at both arms of her shirt. ‘I’m begging you. I love working here, I’m sorry for being so crap.’