The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1)

by Nicholls, Sophie

  Fabbia looked and looked. As with any new garment she encountered, she began to explore with the tips of her fingers, examining the spill of oyster-coloured silk, each seam fine, supple, creating such fluid lines, the hem perfectly hand-rolled, the body cut on the bias to dip deep between the breasts and drape just so.

  Ferretti? Balmain? No, here was the label. Chanel. She ran her fingers over the tiny embroidered letters.

  She had to try it on.

  Of course, she thought, in the privacy of the fitting room, it was a little too small for her, a little too long. She’d known that. Jean Cushworth was taller, thinner, her body angular, exercised, kept in perfect trim by a personal trainer and private yoga lessons. The silk rucked a little across Fabbia’s more softly rounded stomach, straining just a touch over her hips. Her breasts pushed against the silk, giving it the wrong line altogether. She’d had to balance on her toes to prevent the silk from puddling around her feet. But yes, on the right person… well, this dress would be nothing short of magical.

  Fabbia wondered when it had last been worn and how Jean could possibly bear to part with it.

  Unless it no longer fitted her either, she thought, with a flash of spite for which she quickly chastised herself.

  This was very kind of Jean. Really, very kind. Wasn’t it?

  Because as she unzipped the dress, stepped carefully out of it, and searched for a suitably padded hanger, she wasn’t sure.

  ‘My mum’s been going through a few old things…’ Katrina had said.

  Was Jean trying to make a point? Was this her way of saying that she, Jean Cushworth, could afford to send her unwanted clothes in the direction of someone like Fabbia, someone who made her living selling other people’s cast-offs?

  Fabbia could hear her now and the loud laughter.

  ‘This old thing? Oh, you’re welcome to it, darling. Plenty more where that came from.‘

  She could hear the whispers behind the manicured hands.

  ‘Oh, yes, I sent her my old Ferretti, my Missoni. Well, I didn’t need them any more. She may as well make something of them…’

  Fabbia didn’t like this possibility at all.

  But then, she thought, if it really was a … how would David say it? Yes, that’s right. A dig. If Jean Cushworth really did want to humiliate her, would she have asked Fabbia to make a dress for her? Would she have recommended Fabbia to all her friends?

  Fabbia hated how suspicious she’d become. She just wasn’t herself since, well, since everything that had happened, that great black rent in the fabric of her life, that part of her that she still couldn’t really let herself think about. Such a long time now. Thirteen years since Eastbourne and Enzo’s death and everything that had happened after. Time to move on, she kept telling herself.

  Because the past itself was like a dress and you could keep it very close like a second skin. It might shield you in some way, from the cold, from whispers and bad words, from memories of other people’s kitchen floors. You could use a dress to make you look stronger, more beautiful in other people’s eyes, to help you to stand out or fit in.

  Or you could simply ease down the zip, unbutton the buttons and step out of it, any time you chose.

  And maybe this dress was like that for Jean Cushworth, something she’d like to unfasten and step out of, something she’d rather not wear any longer.

  Now, with her head bent over her work, following the grain of the panel with her needle, an idea began to form itself in Fabbia’s mind. She felt it take shape, like the curve of a sleeve or the soft drape of a neckline and, once it was there, it seemed perfect.

  She smiled to herself as she sewed, forming the bold descending stroke of the final letter ‘a’, tying off the work, clipping the thread and dropping the end into the jar on the counter.

  Sunlight slipped through the window and across the backs of her hands, soft as butter. It glistened on the silk panel, highlighting the word she’d just embroidered: Aurora.

  She stroked the letters with her fingers, the sharpness of the ‘A,’ the roundness of the ‘o.’

  Aur-or-a.

  Goddess of Sunrise. Coloured lights in the northern sky.

  There were so many beautiful words in the world. Words with such power, to enhance, to protect, to transform. She thought of them softly caressing the delicate skin of their wearers, a long curved ‘l’ on the inside of a sleeve brushing against a hand, a hidden ‘m’ kissing the nape of a neck. Her secret words were like charms or promises - and perhaps a little of their magic would rub off, making her customers bolder or lighter or stronger.

  So many words to choose from and yet, by the time her work was finished, one word always made itself known. Calypso. Plume. Shimmy. Petal. Arrive. Open. Sparkle. Resound. They each held their own particular kind of future.

  And now this word. Aurora. She savoured the taste of it on her tongue. The perfect word for this customer, a brave and lovely woman who was beginning her life all over again.

  And she, Fabbia, was beginning again too. Shedding the darkness. Stepping into the light.

  As she laid the finished piece carefully aside and stretched herself, she realised that she had a plan. An idea for her own little celebration. Yes, that was it. That was what she’d do.

  *

  ‘Going to pass me the scissors, then?’

  Billy was pulling a chair up to the kitchen table and cramming his long legs underneath.

  ‘Who let you in?’ Ella heard her voice come out all ugly and misshapen. She hated herself like this but it was as if she couldn’t stop, couldn’t push her way out of the blackness that kept ravelling up around her.

  She watched Billy take a handful of invitations from the pile, and square them in front of him.

  He looked at her, unperturbed. ‘Well, that’s a nice welcome. How about “Thanks, Billy. It’s so kind of you to help me”?’ A smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘Your mum let me in – who do you think? She said you could probably do with an assistant.’

  Ella sighed. No doubt her mum was overjoyed to see Billy. She’d been going on about it for the last two weeks, trying to get it out of her, what had happened, why Billy wasn’t coming round any more.

  ‘Everyone has their little fights, carina. It’s usually all about nothing,’ she’d said. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance.’

  ‘Anyone would think he was your friend, Mamma,’ Ella had said, but she’d felt something pulling at her insides. A big black gap that seemed to get wider and deeper as soon as she thought about it, so that she tried not to, tried to edge her way around it, like a painful blister that made you walk a different way, a sore bit of skin that you tried not to touch.

  That first day he’d called for her to walk to school, she’d made him stand in the courtyard, feeling the rage pushing its way up in her. How dare he? Who did he think he was?

  “I’m sorry, Billy. She’s not coming,’ she’d heard Mamma say from the doorway and she’d seen him glance up then from her look-out place at the bedroom window, that hang-dog look on his face.

  ‘Don’t expect me to do your dirty work for you,’ Mamma had said to her crossly as she came down the stairs.

  ‘I don’t. Just ignore him, mum. It’s none of your business…’

  Mamma had sighed and begun to fold a basket of silk scarves, shaking her head sadly and it was her quiet disapproval, the purposeful movements of her hands, that had been harder for Ella to bear than anything.

  If she was honest, really honest with herself, she’d have loved to find a way back to how things had been before, between her and Billy. When they were friends. Just friends. Uncomplicated and easy. But the truth was that she didn’t know where to start.

  Now Ella sat back in her chair and looked at him, his shoulders with their slight stoop, his mad hair, those earnest blue-green-grey eyes, and she just didn’t have the energy to be angry with him any more.

  ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Go on then. And then you can sho
w me what to do.’ He held up one of the invitations and read aloud in his movie-trailer-voice-over voice:

  Fabbia Moreno

  invites you to

  a special Charity Auction of finest designer dresses.

  21 June, 2011.

  In aid of Medicine Sans Frontiere.

  Champagne and cupcakes.

  RSVP

  ‘Mmmm. Very nice.’

  He picked up a spool of black ribbon and ran it between his finger and thumb, then poked dubiously at a pile of silver sequins.

  ‘Don’t know why your mum doesn’t just get an email list together, though, start emailing all her customers. So much less hassle. And it’d save her money.’

  Ella tapped old coffee grounds into the sink, running the filter under the tap.

  ‘You know what Mum’s like. A total technophobe. And she likes to do things her way. Technology makes her feel dizzy, she says. I’ve tried to show her but… well, what’s the point?’

  ‘Yup,’ Billy smiled. ‘She’s something else, your mum. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. She’s so…’

  ‘Irritating? Embarrassing?’

  ‘No. She’s different. That’s what I like about her. She’s not afraid to do things differently.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were me. I’m sick of being different. Why can’t she just be normal, like your mum, like other people?’

  She held down the coffee grinder for a few seconds, enjoying the angry buzz of it under her palm.

  ‘She’s always telling me to keep my head down, work hard, don’t draw too much attention to myself, don’t get myself, heaven forbid, a reputation, and now she’s busy spraying posters and flyers all over the place and inviting everyone and his dog to this stupid auction. It’s going to be so embarrassing…’

  She saw the smile playing over Billy’s mouth and suppressed the urge to fling the coffee measure at him. Instead, she reached for two white saucers, banging them down hard on the wooden tabletop, scattering sequins.

  ‘Steady,’ Billy said and she hated that he was trying not to laugh. Why couldn’t he understand how important this was? It wasn’t as if she could tell him what she really felt, that she just had this feeling, something she knew in a way that she couldn’t explain, something that had a colour to it, dark red with jagged edges. That every night, when she closed her eyes, the feeling grew stronger, moving in a wave from her stomach up into her chest and spreading out all around her in angry ripples.

  He’d just laugh. Tell her not to be so soft. Tell her she was a headcase.

  Now she let the coffee run through the machine, watching it pool in the cups, setting them down, gently this time, on the saucers. She sat and sipped and felt the heat flow through her.

  ‘It’s not such a bad idea, though, is it, this auction party thing?’ Billy looked so awkward, holding the tiny cup in his big hands. He was looking at her carefully from under his lashes.

  ‘And it’s not such a bad thing, being different, is it?’ he said, when she didn’t reply. ‘For instance, it’s what I’ve always really liked about you…’

  Ella felt the familiar flush begin to creep up her neck.

  ‘OK,’ she said, spearing a sequin with a cocktail stick. ‘You take one of these, like this… Are you watching?’

  17.

  A silver sandal with a red sole. Christian Louboutin. 2010.

  Fabbia loved the shop at this time of day. The courtyard filled itself with evening sunlight and each leaded pane in the shop windows cast an oblong of light onto the wooden floor. Everything glowed or sparkled and at such moments, Fabbia could almost believe that she really had made something magical.

  The floorboards were freshly washed with a special solution of cinnamon and brown sugar, dissolved in white wine vinegar. Now the floor seemed to shine with more than just reflected sunlight.

  The effect was intensified by a small table that she’d draped with a white cloth and stacked with a pyramid of champagne glasses. David had assured her that he knew that trick, how to pour the champagne into the first glass and let it fizz down, not too slowly, not too quickly, in a cascade of bubbles, until each glass brimmed.

  Where did he learn such a thing? She remembered her own most popular act, the one most frequently requested for the parties of wealthy businessmen, how she’d leap out of a giant perspex cocktail glass wearing only her emerald green feathers, smiling and singing: Happy birthday, happy birthday to you…

  Twenty years ago now. More.

  A lifetime.

  Outside, a marmalade-coloured cat stretched herself on the cobbles and played the light between her paws.

  Fabbia checked the final details, adding a vase of peonies, her favourites, the tight pink fists just beginning to burst into bloom. She shifted one of the dressmaker’s dummies, a little to the left then back to the right. This is how she’d chosen to display the various outfits to be auctioned, the Donna Karan kaftan now accessorised with gold wedge sandals and enormous sunglasses, the two dresses she’d made specially as her own contribution and, of course, the centrepiece in the window, Jean Cushworth’s oyster silk dress.

  She opened the cash register. Yes, her newly-charged green malachite was safely in the change drawer, hidden beneath a pile of copper coins. She wondered if she had time for just a little extra touch. She knew that she shouldn’t. But, really, there was no one around and what harm could it possibly do?

  She took a small silver hand mirror from under the counter and held it up to the sunlight. It sent a wobbly disc of light dancing over the white ceiling.

  ‘Hellooo! Sorry I’m a bit late!’ Mandy was making her way expertly across the cobbles in yellow patent wedges, her handbag swinging from the crook of her elbow as she balanced two precarious trays.

  ‘Sorry, Fabbia. Only just got them finished!’ She whipped off the teacloth covers to reveal rows of miniature cupcakes iced in pink and white, each topped with the tiniest flake of gold leaf. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Perfect!’ Fabbia breathed, tucking the mirror back under the counter, clasping Mandy’s hands in hers. ‘Exquisite. Thank you so much, Mandy. And, by the way, you look absolutely… well, delicious! Just like a cupcake yourself!’

  Mandy’s face dimpled. ‘You don’t think it’s too much?’

  She smoothed her vigorously back-combed hair and ran her hands over the fitted pink bodice of her dress, shaking out the full skirt.

  ‘Not at all. I told you that dress was just meant for you. As soon as I saw it, I just knew…’ Mamma rubbed a fold of the soft pink cotton skirt between her finger and thumb and sighed. ’It has you in it, this fabric. All through it. Like… like a special ingredient in one of your concoctions…’ She smiled. ‘But I love what you’ve done with the shoes too. Yellow and pink together – like butter icing…’

  Then she narrowed her eyes teasingly, in mock disapproval. ‘But wait a minute. This handbag, I recognise. Lovely. Just lovely. But those shoes are not mine, I don’t think?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  Mandy blushed. ‘I found them at a carboot sale. Couldn’t resist them…’

  ‘Brava,’ Fabbia laughed. ‘A woman after my own heart.’ She gave Mandy’s arm a squeeze and then, to distract herself from the nervous feeling that had begun to flutter inside her, she busied herself plucking the cakes from the trays, arranging them on the coloured pressed-glass stands.

  ‘Erm, Fabbia…’ Mandy blushed, twisting her hands together nervously. ‘I’ve got something to show you. I’ve been meaning to do it for ages but…’

  She fumbled in her handbag and drew out a thick wad of paper bound with a thin black ribbon.

  Fabbia wiped her hands. The handwriting was firm and confident, a perfectly-formed script that swept boldly over the thick creamy envelopes. She thumbed through them. There must be a dozen letters or more.

  ‘I found them in the pocket of the dress,’ Mandy said. A red stain spread over her neck. ‘I feel bad. I should have told you earlier. But I wanted to
read them. I couldn’t help myself… You know, you told me that the woman who owned the dress before me was an incredible person and I was so curious to know more… but now I feel terrible…’

  Fabbia took the letters and stroked the paper.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’d have done exactly the same.’ She noticed that the top envelope was postmarked 1949. Wasn’t that the same date as the careful entry in Eustacia’s journal: Day dress. Bought in Selfridges, London, for lunch with R?

  She slipped a single folded sheet out of the envelope.

  ‘My darling,’ it began.

  It was so good to see you, if only for that snatched hour together. You looked radiant, as always, dearest Eu. Quite the loveliest I’ve ever seen you. I cannot get that image of you out of my mind. You sitting there, among all the china and paraphernalia and those vile souffles and the dreadful women chatting about nothing at all. You were like something from another world, another time, and I felt like the luckiest chap alive to be sitting there with you.

  And that’s why I simply can’t accept your decision, my darling. Now that you’re a part of my life – a part of me – I don’t know how to be without you. We have to be together, Eu. We simply have to.

  I don’t care about your father. You may think me callous, but I really don’t care what Mitzi thinks either. She doesn’t love me. She never did. To be frank, I think she’d be happier if I was off the scene.

  And you and I, we’d be free to start again. I don’t care if we have to elope somewhere, live as exiles in some godforaskaen place – and anyway, wouldn’t you like that, darling? An adventure, a chance to see something of the world, like you’re always saying.

  Forgive me, please forgive me for this outburst. I’ve thought long and hard about writing to you. But I can’t have any peace until I’m sure that you don’t feel the same. And you do, don’t you, Eu? I know in my heart that you do.

  Please, my darling…just say the word and I’ll…’