If the Dress Fits

by Daisy James

  ‘I didn’t betray you, Cal. I loved you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I was just the first girl you kissed and who was crazy enough to stick around. So if you didn’t betray me, what were you doing with that girl? The Tonsil Tango?’

  She forced her duplicitous heart to recall the last image she had of Theo; the one that had lingered in her mind over the years like dripping acid in which he had his arms wrapped around the voluptuous curves of a flaxen-haired fan of The Razorclaws. She could still recall the girl’s cat-like eyes gleaming with triumph at her conquest of the lead singer.

  Of course, Theo’s explanation for that terrible scene had been relayed to her from numerous sources: Seb, Dominic, her best friend, Nessa. Even his bandmate Archie had sent her a text with a plea to speak to a devastated Theo, explaining that what she had blundered in on had meant nothing; that in fact it was a regular by-product of being a member of a moderately successful band; that inevitably there would be fans, groupies, young girls who went to extraordinary lengths to gain access to their heroes, and from whom there was often no polite escape. But Archie’s protestations and explanations had only served to make her discovery worse and her pain sharpen. The incident and its fallout had solidified her sneaking suspicion that, when she could not be at Theo’s side, there was a line of girls willing to walk into her shoes.

  ‘I just knew you wouldn’t be able to resist bringing that up. Nothing happened with Lydia. She threw herself at me. What was I supposed to do? Throw her back?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what you were supposed to do!’

  ‘But, it didn’t mean anything. It just goes with the territory. You promised to be there to watch us play. For God’s sake, Callie, it was the night we finally made it into the big time and my girlfriend wasn’t even there to share it with me. Oh, no, she had something much more important to do, like sewing sequins on some rich bitch’s dress!’

  ‘Well, I suppose now you are famous, that would put you in the same category as a rich bas… Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m leaving. You’ve done it. You should be able to recognise the signs.’

  Theo wrenched open the door so hard the bell jangled on its chain and came loose, dangling down into Callie’s face. She slammed the door behind him and reached up to drop the sneck, tossing the bell from her cheek like a recalcitrant fly, only for it to swing straight back and hit her in the nose. She flapped her hand at it again but it returned to give her a sharp and painful blow on the temple.

  Her eyes smarted with tears as Theo rolled his eyes at her through the glass and marched off to his battered old Saab.

  Chapter Eight

  Callie hesitated, staring at the screen of her iPhone before selecting Scarlet’s number. However, she knew her friend and colleague would understand.

  ‘Are you sure you can manage without me, Scarlet?’

  ‘I’m not totally useless, you know, Callie. After all, haven’t I had the most fantastic mentor a fledgling fashion designer could wish for these last three years? If you need to stay on in Yorkshire for a couple of weeks to sort out your aunt’s shop, then do it. The decision on Lilac’s wedding gown is out of our hands; there’s nothing more you can do. Anyway, I’ve got Flora, although she’s as much use as a shop-window mannequin, and there’s Lizzie.’

  ‘You will ring me tomorrow as soon as you hear anything, won’t you?’

  ‘It’s a promise. Pinky swear. Now do what you have to do. Actually, the break will do you good. You’ve just had the most devastating shock, and on top of the hours you’ve been putting in for the last three months it’s enough to drive anyone to the edge of their sanity. And, hey, I’m loving the broad Yorkshire accent, by the way, Callie. How long have you been back up there? You sound like you’ve just stepped off the set of Emmerdale!’

  Callie smiled. ‘Thanks, Scarlet. You are the best friend ever. I owe you.’

  ‘Well, I might just extract a promise that you’ll take me along to every one of Lilac Verbois’s fittings as well as the wedding ceremony. That should repay the debt!’

  ‘Scarlet! We haven’t won yet.’

  ‘We will.’

  ***

  Tossing back the embroidered cotton sheet and ancient woollen blankets her aunt had favoured, Callie flicked the sides of her ebony bob behind each ear and dragged her sluggish bones to the bathroom to jump-start her senses. She felt as though she had been flayed by a dominatrix’s whip.

  Her heart leaden, she was aware that today held her fate in its grasp. But misery had enveloped any trace of excitement at the pending announcement, sorrow extinguishing any hopefulness. Every crevice of the tiny flat above Gingerberry Yarns where she was staying resonated with her aunt’s presence, her laughter, her jovial personality. The whole day stretched into the distance as she waited for her future path to be sealed.

  Nerves tingled their insistence at her empty stomach. The only sustenance she had managed to provide it with the previous evening after her decision to stay on in Allthorpe had been a mug of Earl Grey tea; anything more solid and it would have screamed its objection. As she sagged over the kitchen table staring out of the steam-covered window, she wondered when the director of her destiny would grant her asylum from grief.

  She ran her eyes over that morning’s newspaper story speculating on the identity of the designer. It listed the bookmakers’ favourite, even though the final choice would not be made public until Lilac Verbois walked down the aisle. The article displayed a selection of photographs from each of the finalists’ previous work. It was an impressive spread. The paper was obviously keen to give its readers their daily fix of the celebrity wedding fiasco that was sweeping the nation.

  Everyone and their granny was talking about it. Astute in their understanding that their special day would inevitably be a media circus whether they liked it or not, Lilac and Finn had decided to embrace this fact by inviting the public’s engagement rather than railing against the offensive intrusion of their privacy. They had made themselves available for interviews, photo shoots and had even run a competition for fifty of Finn’s lucky fans to win tickets to his concert in Paris a month after the wedding.

  On that crisp, clear morning, Callie did spare a thought for the other designers and their supporting teams. Today someone’s life would change for ever, if not that of their whole entourage. Of course she hoped it would be her team, but she empathised with the fact that, whoever won, it would mean others who had slogged their hearts out just as she had would be left reeling.

  By four o’clock she could bear it no longer. She grabbed her iPhone and, with her hand trembling, called Scarlet.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, God, that means we haven’t won.’

  ‘There’s still another couple of hours…’

  Callie’s stomach felt like it had contracted around a pineapple. Tears, always so ready to breach the surface, pressed up from the back of her throat to her eyelids, but she managed to gulp them down.

  ‘We worked so hard, Scarlet – all of us: you, Flora, Lizzie. But you know what? I can honestly say that was the best wedding gown design of my career so far. I couldn’t have produced anything better. So if we didn’t win, so be it. It’s back to the drawing board and I intend to work even harder to reach the pinnacle of bridal couture.’ She cursed the audible wobble that had crept into her voice. ‘I’m watching the TV as we speak and they’ve just shown Lilac’s PA, Nikki Coates, and her wedding planner, Tish Marshall, climbing into a limousine outside her house in Kensington. Don’t you think they would have called the winner before they left?’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Callie. Oh, God, I’m devastated. I really thought we were going to win.’

  ***

  ‘Nikki, you’re going to have to break it to Lilac that she needs to choose another dress.’

  ‘No way – that’s your job. You’re the wedding planner, Tish.’

  ‘But you’ve been her PA for years. She’s g
oing to take the bad news better from you.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure there was no documentation with the gown she selected? Nothing at all?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘What kind of high-end bridal designer goes to the trouble of painstakingly creating such an exquisite sculpture of silk and pearls only to submit their masterpiece without their contact details?’

  ‘And what kind of actress just has to pick their dream dress from one of the gowns their wedding planner can’t supply?’

  ‘What do you mean “one of the gowns”? There was more than one?’

  ‘Two of the twenty that were submitted had no paperwork and the documents of one were illegible.’

  Nikki watched from her desk as Tish, kneeling at the coffee table, shoved the scattered papers into a box file and cringed at the girl’s lack of orderliness. Whilst her haphazard attention to detail was unlikely to have been the cause of their current predicament, she still despaired of the wedding arrangements being perfect. Tish’s chaotic approach to life also extended to her appearance, yet Nikki had to admit she suited the tousled, just-got-out-of-bed blonde curls and not-quite-perfectly-applied blue eyeliner.

  ‘What about asking Lilac to go with her second choice?’

  ‘You were there, Nikki. You saw how she reacted to that dress. And you have to admit, it was stunning – totally made for her. I know she’s already a celebrity but she looked like a fairy-tale princess in that gown, didn’t she?’ Tish’s eyes, the colour of liquid sapphires, glazed over as she tumbled into her own fantasy world.

  ‘Tish, quit the Cinderella fantasy. We have to sort this fiasco out ourselves. We can’t burden Lilac with the problem. She’s got enough to worry about.’

  ‘So what are we going to do? I’m slammed as it is. I’ve not eaten since yesterday lunchtime. I’ve got the bridesmaids’ bouquets to finalise, the wedding cake topper to chase – you know the confectioner is crazy, don’t you? There’s the champagne still to source and I have a meeting with the printer tomorrow to finalise the wording on the invitations and orders of service. The invitations need to be sent out by the end of the week at the latest, although the whole world knows when the wedding is going to be.

  ‘The only thing that seems to be on schedule at the moment is the music. The organist at York Minster is sorted and he’s rehearsed the pieces Lilac and Finn have selected for the ceremony. And the band is booked and the lead singer has even written a song especially for the happy couple that he’s agreed to debut at the evening reception. Oh, Nikki, I’m so excited we’re getting to meet The Razorclaws. That lead singer, Theo Drake – what a dreamboat. I hear he’s unattached. Do you think he has come-to-bed eyes? My sister thinks he has.’

  ‘Good grief, Tish will you calm down with the hearts-and-flowers fixation. You’ll have to squeeze some time from somewhere and it’ll have to be straight away. We promised to inform the designer they’ve won the competition as soon as possible. Everyone who submitted will be thinking their design hasn’t been selected and they’ll start accepting new commissions. There’ll have to be a couple of fittings at least and Lilac is a busy girl. She’s on location in Croatia for three weeks before the wedding which, can I remind you, is just three and a half months away.’

  Nikki was used to lurching from one crisis to the next. In fact, she thrived on the daily adrenalin rush. It made her feel worthy of her position as Lilac’s right-hand woman – her Girl Friday. She almost hated it when things went smoothly. But this wedding had proved to be the ultimate headache. Tish was so involved in the romance of it all that, on occasion, she had to restrain herself from throttling her.

  Okay, yes, wedding planners had to be in love with everything ‘planet bridal’ to work in the industry, but Tish had taken her obsession to a new level. She was usually to be found floating around the office on the wings of Eros, constantly chattering about diamanté tiaras, personalised confetti (with pictures of the bride and groom printed on it, for God’s sake!), and sugared almonds, which she had the perfect excuse to indulge in. Annoyingly, Tish also seemed to have been blessed with a metabolism that ignored the onslaught of sugar. She, on the other hand, despite following a semi-vegetarian diet, still struggled with losing the extra stone that had crept up on her unnoticed – and it had nothing to do with the cupcakes from the Parisian patisserie that had popped up on the corner in the last three months.

  Tish had certainly thrown herself into her chosen career, happy to hunt down the most bizarre of requests as she waited patiently to play the lead role in her own fairy-tale Happy Ever After. Of course the girl had her own wedding day planned right down to the toilet paper she wanted in the ladies’ cloakroom of the Savoy. Only one tiny detail was missing – there was no groom loitering in the wings, or backstage, or even on the auditions list. So, whilst her own personal hearts-and-flowers scenario was on the back burner, she was content to pour all her energies into conjuring up everyone else’s dream wedding.

  ‘But where should I start?’

  Nikki rolled her eyes. ‘Look, make a list of all the designers who were asked to submit. Then go through the dresses that did arrive with the correct paperwork and tick them off. See what’s left. There may be a couple who decided not to submit, but at least we’ll have narrowed it down. I’m late for a meeting with Lilac’s agent, but I’ll be back in an hour and we’ll go through the list together.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll ring them.’

  ‘No! You can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, how do you plan on finding out if it’s their dress?’

  ‘Email them a photo – oh, no, right, I see.’

  ‘We’ve got to be careful not to disclose the final design of the most anticipated wedding dress this year to anyone. Absolute secrecy – we promised Lilac – nothing until it is unveiled to the world on the steps of York Minster. We can’t go around emailing everyone a photo. Especially the designers whose gowns failed to make the cut. Think about it!’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘I’ll think of something. Just get that list sorted and I’ll see you in an hour.’

  Nikki gathered up the Birkin handbag Lilac had given her for Christmas and a bundle of box files and left Tish to her task. This latest development was the last thing she needed, but her ordered mind was already clicking through the possibilities as she affixed her new badge of ‘Nuptial Detective’ to her already crowded breast.

  Solving problems was her forte, along with a mild addiction to list-making and fighting off the media, sometimes physically. Everything she did was organised with almost surgical precision. There was no conundrum that outfoxed her. She knew Lilac’s entourage gossiped about her for catering to the actress’s every whim, no matter how bizarre or outlandish, and her strategies for negotiating the best price would have embarrassed the head buyer of Poundland. They would locate the creative idiot who submitted the gown without the paperwork, but she’d have something to say to the designer about her business practices.

  As she stepped into the glass elevator for her ride down to the foyer, Nikki allowed herself a faint grimace. They would probably end up having to tour the whole country in their search for the elusive designer, which meant Tish had actually got her wish, after all. This wedding was turning into a real Cinderella story, just not the hearts-and-flowers bit – the Poirotesque bit.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Is everything okay, Scarlet? I’ll be back at the boutique by the end of the week.’

  ‘Look, why don’t you take this opportunity to have some time out, Callie? A sort of short sabbatical?’

  ‘No! After I’ve sorted out the shop I need to come back and bury myself in the studio. I have to keep designing for my sanity, especially after receiving this blow to my confidence. I need to return to my own life in London. There’s nothing left for me up here. I’ve got lots of new ideas for the Spring/Summer Collection next year. I…’ She failed at her attempts to control her emotion
s and huge racking sobs burst from her chest.

  ‘Callie, you’ve just lost your aunt, your only remaining parental figure. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact there’s no safety net to catch you if you fall. You have to take some time to grieve; let it out, don’t bottle it up. Of course we’ll miss you, but we can manage for a couple of months.’

  ‘A couple of months?’

  ‘Mourn, recharge your creative batteries, organise your family’s affairs. Spend some time with those handsome cousins of yours. Market the shop, sell up, or whatever you decide, but don’t rush this decision.’

  ‘You can’t seriously be suggesting that I run a little haberdashery shop in rural Yorkshire alongside a couture bridal boutique in Pimlico?’

  ‘I’m just saying, take your time. We’ll keep in touch, let you know if there are any panics or problems we can’t handle. It’s only a three-hour train ride away if you need to come down.’

  An invisible force pressed down on Callie’s shoulders, inducing a dark, heavy lethargy. She had no idea how long she remained at that scarred pine table in her aunt’s cosy kitchen, so familiar as the backdrop to many a teenage trauma that had been talked through with the aid of a strong cup of Yorkshire tea from the big brown pot. She, along with Nessa, had lurched from one adolescent crisis to the next; all of which seemed trivial, with the benefit of hindsight, compared to the current turmoil in her life. Sadness lanced her heart and failure sapped her self-esteem, but mingled in with the mix were spirals of indecision about what to do with her aunt’s beloved Gingerberry Yarns.

  Outside, twilight tickled at the branches of the trees that lined the high street as the traders began to close their shops for the day. If she did decide to carry on her aunt’s legacy – to honour her memory, to preserve Gingerberry Yarns for the community – at what cost would that be to her own dreams and ambitions?