The Second Chance Boutique

by Louisa Leaman

  “Sweet,” says Rafael cynically. “And just out of curiosity, do you have interests other than wedding dresses?”

  “Well, I quite like evening gowns.”

  Rafael smiles and rolls his eyes. Inside, however, his interest is unfurling. Take away the veneer, he thinks, get rid of all the distracting vintage wedding dress madness and there it is: that rare ephemeral brilliance, sparkling light, the essence of fairy-tale heroines and first loves. Francesca Delaney.

  Suddenly Janey perks up.

  “I know you,” she slurs, prodding Fran in the ribs. “You were at the house. I tell you though, you’re no way his usual type—”

  Rafael tenses, tries to shush her.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Silence the wicked little sister. Bundle her home, out of view. Make sure she doesn’t spill the dirt—”

  “Janey! Shh!”

  But Janey gets louder, as though announcing to a crowd. “Oh yes! The illustrious Colt family, great givers of humanity, we love a good ruckus. That’s because behind the altruism we’re all a bunch of drunks, thieves, philanderers, and bullies—”

  “Janey! Enough!”

  The doctor calls her name. The relief on Rafael’s face is transcendent as he ushers his sister to the consulting room. He returns twenty minutes later with coffees for himself and Fran and a decidedly frazzled expression.

  “They’ll patch her up and keep her overnight,” he explains wearily. “I’ll collect her in the morning. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  As they return to Rafael’s car, the air between them is different. They are comfortable together. More than comfortable. They are keen. As though one intense hour in a hospital waiting room has equaled three evenings of mannered chat. When Fran climbs into the passenger seat, she feels a flutter in her stomach. The last time she experienced something similar she was…so young. She glances at Rafael, finds new interest in the details of his face, his dark, brooding eyes, the slight curl at the corners of his mouth that only shows up when he smiles. With a smile, she gathers the folds of the wedding dress on her lap. The car pulls away, and rather than being their last journey of the day, somehow she wishes it were their first.

  As the city lights twinkle around them, they slip into contented chat about their favorite places to go in London. Fran remains loyal to the markets around the East End, the city churches, the elegant serenity of the Queen’s House in Greenwich, and a certain secluded spot in Regent’s Park where she likes to hide on a summer day, eating strawberries and reading short stories by Somerset Maugham. Rafael declares his allegiance to Saint Pancras station and to the riverside at Richmond—both of which, Fran notes, represent a means of exiting the city.

  The chat then turns to their favorite films (Fran: Top Hat with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; Rafael: The Shawshank Redemption), favorite books (Fran: anything by Austen or any of the Brontës; Rafael: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins), favorite cocktails (Fran: a French 75; Rafael: a dry martini), and favorite doughnuts (Fran: classic jam; Rafael: none, far too unhealthy). Then to family matters. It seems safe to venture there again.

  “Why do you think she does it?” says Fran, sighing as she thinks of poor Janey.

  “She’s an addict.”

  “Yes, but…what makes her an addict? It doesn’t come from nothing. You’re her brother. I assume you had the same upbringing and yet you seem so…”

  “Different?”

  “So why aren’t you an addict too?” she asks plainly.

  Rafael balks, shocked by the candor of this question. It feels like she is looking right into him. “That—that’s none of your business,” he says.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

  A lull follows, but to Rafael’s surprise, he finds himself crawling out from his armor, willing, wanting to fill the silence with an answer. “If you must know, I was groomed to be the responsible one. There’s no place for three-day vodka benders when my work is so intensive. Besides, I spend too much of my life keeping my errant younger sister out of the newspaper gossip columns. I don’t have time for addictions of my own.”

  “What do they say about her?”

  “‘Another privileged princess turned wild child.’ I’d laugh it off except it really doesn’t help her recovery. And it certainly doesn’t help the image of the foundation.”

  “I never read gossip columns,” says Fran. “In fact, I try not to observe the news in general. Too depressing.”

  Rafael rolls his eyes. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Where do you want to be dropped, Fairy Land?”

  “Walthamstow.”

  “The East End. Very trendy. Where all good vintage wedding dress experts reside, I suppose.”

  “On that note,” says Fran, “I’d like to talk to you more about your mother’s dress.” She picks up the hem, clutches the silk to her.

  Rafael stiffens. What is her obsession with this dress?

  “Do you have the remotest idea how valuable it is?” she asks. “I could sell it to a private collector for tens of thousands.”

  “So do it. Cash in.”

  “But it’s your mother’s dress, your family’s history. Don’t you care? Its monetary value is nothing compared to its romantic value.”

  Change the subject, thinks Rafael, fixing his gaze on the road ahead.

  “Well, if you’re really not interested,” Fran huffs, “then I’ll do my thing. I’ll find a worthy bride and sell it on. The only trouble is”—she pauses, checks his body language—“there’s something about it that bothers me. I mean, it’s radiant in every way, and yet, when I tried it on in the house—”

  “You tried it on again?”

  “Well, obviously. To feel its energy.”

  Rafael exhales.

  “The thing is, it had a rotten energy…really, the worst…” Her voice trails off as she thinks of what to say next, careful words, not to disturb or freak him out. “I went into her bedroom, stood in front of that old armoire.” Fran pictures it. “It was so intense, so real, like I could sense her, right there, standing in front of the mirror. Normally that’s a high point for a woman—the moment of becoming, when they look and see themselves for the first time, reconfigured as the icon bride. It can be nerve-racking for some, unsettling even, such a monumental change. But it’s always a happy occasion, unless of course…”

  She looks down, sighs. “The things is, I could tell she wasn’t happy, not at all happy, which only makes me wonder—forgive my intrusion—but were there problems in the marriage?”

  “That’s it!” says Rafael, astounded. “I’ve heard enough of this.”

  The engine lags as he presses on the accelerator. He wants it to stop, needs it to stop, to open the car door and flee from this facile intrusion.

  “I know it sounds bonkers,” says Fran, desperately trying to claw her way back, “but there you go. It was in the dress. It came from the dress. My mum—she was a costumer. She worked in all the London theaters. That was my upbringing, hiding backstage with a Chelsea bun and a sewing box. We had this guessing game we used to play. She’d bring things to me—giant bloomers, velvet bodices, Tudor robes, animatronic fairy wings…whatever she could find in the dressing rooms. We’d try them on and then make guesses about who wore them, how they felt onstage. It was like magic.”

  The car slows to a halt as Rafael pulls into a turnout. “Get out. There’s a garage up ahead. You can call a cab.”

  “I’m not crazy. I promise I’m not crazy. This matters. You need to know—”

  “I need nothing from you except for you to leave me and my family alone.”

  “She punched a mirror.”

  “What?”

  “On the eve of her wedding, she punched a mirror and cut her hand—”

  Rafael’s knuckles go stiff at the wheel. His head throbs with fury.

 
“Am I right?”

  “Just go!” he hisses. “Take the damn dress and leave me alone!”

  chapter 3

  Mick listens patiently as Fran complains. He doesn’t mind. Over the years, she has repaired an awful lot of shirt buttons for him, taught him to hem, listened for hours to his “only Victorian dandy in the village” teenage angst. Three failed relationships have left him with an alarming black hole of emotional turmoil, and she has picked up the pieces every time, kept him going. She’s a diamond. He doesn’t quite follow why she’s so keen to pursue that tricky little family dynamic they’d had the misfortune to witness at the house clearance, but then, this is Fran, always on the trail of one wedding dress saga or another. He also has to question why she talks so persistently about the rudeness of the man she now calls “Mr. Colt,” but again, this is Fran—her feelings toward men are more mercurial than the weather.

  “He’s hiding something,” she insists, as they prepare the ’60s minidress with the silver plastic collar for its final fitting. “And I’m going to find out what. Can you believe he just abandoned me on the roadside like that?” She glances at her wall of dead grooms. “James Andrew Percy would never do such a thing. And to think I was starting to like being around him, only to be reminded of what a hateful man he is.”

  “‘Hate’ is a strong word,” says Mick sagely. “For someone you’ve met only once.”

  “Twice,” Fran says, correcting him.

  “And have you ever thought there might be more to it than hate?”

  “Such as?”

  “Attraction.”

  “Oh please.”

  “Seriously, I read about it in one of those psychology magazines. Hate and love are very closely linked. It’s all about the brain chemicals.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” says Fran. “But honestly, I’m not interested. I don’t need or want a boyfriend, and Rafael Colt, no matter how striking—”

  “And rich.”

  “—is not my future. Not a chance.”

  “Even though you’ve talked about nothing else all morning?”

  Fran sighs, shapes the dress, then sees Kate Michaels advancing through the shop door.

  “Enough now,” she whispers. “Here comes the bride.” She turns to the doorway, breaks into a smile. “Kate—”

  Kate spills in, snappily stylish in a tan raincoat and Jackie O sunglasses. “Hello, Fran. Hello, Mick. Lovely to see you again.”

  “You must be so excited,” says Fran, beaming, switching on her wedding joy. “Only a few days to go.”

  Kate smiles. “I’ve dreamed of this day since I was six years old, when me and my sisters used to marry the neighbor’s cat in a mock ceremony that lasted half a minute and involved copious amounts of daisy petals. Thirty years on, after a decade of artful idea implanting, I’ve finally gotten my wish.”

  “How’s Rick?”

  “Nervous, I think.”

  “And how’s his kilt?” says Mick. “I do like a kilt.”

  “Itchy,” says Kate. “But as I’ve told him, one can’t have a wedding in Scotland without a bit of tartan.” She glances around the shop, spies her prize: the ’60s dress, artfully displayed in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror. She rushes toward it, clapping her hands with glee. “Oh! Look at it! The coolest non-meringue wedding frock ever!”

  “For the coolest bride,” says Mick. “I mean, what’s not to love about a rock and roll wedding in a proper Scottish castle, wearing a dress with a hemline as high as the sky?”

  Kate grins.

  Fran, meanwhile, stands back and delights in the fact that the Sandy Dorit minidress, with its edgy, exciting legacy, now has another chance to shine. Sandy, she discovered, thanks to many chats with the Dorit daughters, was something of a late bloomer. After snubbing four previous offers of marriage, she finally made her own proposal to a bohemian jewelry designer named Lars. The ceremony took place at the Brompton Oratory on March 18, 1966. Despite parental concerns about so much flagrant flouting of convention—apparently Sandy’s mother had pinned her hopes on a very traditional gown—Sandy and Lars forged a happy union, traveling the world and photographing rock stars. So when Kate Michaels first walked into Fran’s shop, sassy and smart, yet worried that, at forty-two, she’d look like the oldest bride on the block, Fran knew that a good match was in the ether.

  “I’ve taken in the waist a tiny bit, as we discussed, just to get the perfect silhouette. Try it on, then you should be good to go.”

  Kate slips behind the damask curtain with the Sandy Dorit dress in her arms, then emerges minutes later, the ’60s cool bride in all her glory.

  “Nearly there,” says Fran, “just one more thing to add. I discovered this at an auction the other day and immediately thought of you.”

  She opens the drawer of a dresser and lifts out a short, pearl-studded veil. “It’s a 1965 original,” she says. “And it belonged to a well-known actress.”

  Kate’s eyes bulge with joy. “It’s amazing! Quick, put it on!”

  Fran obliges, wishing all brides could be as enthusing and easy as Kate. The veil sits neatly upon Kate’s thick chestnut waves, bringing brightness and youth and just a hint of playfulness to her gracious features. She catches herself in the mirror and blows a cheeky Brigitte Bardot kiss.

  “Love it!” says Kate. “Now I know you’ve said it’s hard to get away from the shop, but please won’t you come to the wedding? You’ve played such a major part in my enjoyment of all of this. I was never destined to wear a big, daft ball gown, but I didn’t think I’d have much choice…until I met you. Please say you’ll come.”

  Mick glances at Fran, gives her an encouraging nod.

  Fran twitches, feels a tiny panic rising in her stomach.

  “She’ll be there,” says Mick, speaking up for her. “Fran always accepts a wedding invite.”

  “Indeed I do,” says Fran.

  Mick shrugs, turns to Kate. “Would you believe she’s in love with love, loves dressing brides, loves everything to do with weddings, but gets the fear whenever she’s invited to one?”

  “It feels like an intrusion,” Fran protests. “When a bride has a dress, my work is done. Besides, I hate going alone…and I can’t dance…and I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “Now that, coming from you,” says Mick, “is the lamest excuse of all.”

  “Come on,” urges Kate, squeezing Fran’s hand. “Be my guest. You’ll have a lovely time, I promise. The castle is stunning, and it has its own lake. My friends are great, and I expect they’ll all be desperate to meet the genius responsible for finding the coolest wedding dress on the planet!”

  Fran sighs. She really would like to see the Sandy Dorit dress make its mark in the traditional chapel of a Scottish castle—such a wicked, playful contrast.

  “I’ll be there,” she says, heaving a sigh.

  “Excellent,” says Kate, changing back in to her civilian clothes. “Well, I better go. I’ve got a hair appointment across town, sort out the gray roots. But I’ll send you all the details, okay? See you on the nineteenth!”

  Just as she’s leaving, she catches sight of the Alessandra Colt dress, its enormous bulk swallowing the entire sewing table it sits upon.

  “That’s a grand one,” she remarks, kissing Fran goodbye. “Who’ve you got in mind for that?”

  But before Fran can answer, the door opens. Another customer, a walk-in with immaculate ice-blond hair, bursts in. “I need a dress,” she demands.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” says Mick.

  With Kate Michaels merrily on her way, the new customer is welcomed. “What’s your name?”

  “Rachel. Rachel Pointer.”

  “And how about some background? Tell us a bit about you and your wedding plans, then we can figure out what kind of dress you might need.”

&n
bsp; They are duly given a monologue. “I suppose you could say I got the proposal I wanted—one knee, big diamond, champagne on ice, New Year’s Eve boat party, just as the fireworks went off. Thankfully, Elijah was paying attention to my hints; otherwise”—Rachel smiles, assassin cold—“I might not have said yes.”

  Fran and Mick swap glances. Every now and then, one of them gets through the door: a Bridezilla.

  “And now I’m having the wedding day to match,” she continues, constantly smoothing the sides of her hair. “The Cedars. Have you heard it? It’s a mansion near Windsor. We’ve rented the whole place. We’ve got a harpist, a jazz trio, a funk band, two decorative swans, a five-tiered cake, a dozen classic floral displays, a bus to ship guests around, and guaranteed all-day sunshine. The only thing is”—her face falls flat—“I’ve been let down by my dressmaker.” The flatness then turns to fury. “Bitch.”

  Fran leaps into action. “No matter.” The words burst out. “Put it behind you. The Whispering Dress is here to help. How did you hear about us?”

  “A work colleague recommended you. She said your methods are unorthodox, but that you find really special dresses. And mine has to be special. I don’t want to look like anyone else. I want a dress that will have people’s jaws dropping. I want to be a princess. Not just any old princess. The princess.”

  Fran nods. A match is forming. “Mick,” she says, “bring out the Sarah-Anne Bootle dress, will you? I think we might have found its perfect bride.”

  “But I like that dress,” says the woman, pointing to the Alessandra Colt gown, which is hard to ignore since it fills half the shop.

  Fran flinches, finds herself walking in front of it, shielding it. “That dress isn’t for you,” she says, feeling weirdly protective.

  “Well, what is for me? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this way of doing things. You say you can help, but I’d really like to know what you expect me to wear on the most important day of my life in precisely three weeks’ time. I’m putting huge trust in you. I expect something brilliant. Otherwise, I’ll have you know, I’m watching a Vera Wang on eBay.”