The Second Chance Boutique

by Louisa Leaman

  “Tell me your secrets,” she whispers, running the silk through her wounded fingers, hunting, searching. “I have to understand you. I have to know what it is that has made Raf so disregarding of love, so afraid to commit. Otherwise, we’ll never make it, will we? I know there’s an amazing man in there, a man I trust with my heart, but unless he’s honest with me, honest with himself…”

  She looks in the mirror, then down at the dress. A sense of anticipation flutters through her body, the tantalizing pep of a dress whisperer’s challenge. Whether it is good for her or not, she will follow it. She looks over at her dead grooms, not the same now that they’ve been trashed and trampled on.

  “Maybe it’s time,” she whispers. “Time to move on from you, take a chance on a modern man.”

  Her reverie is suddenly broken by the ring of her phone. She reaches for the handset but doesn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Is this the Whispering Dress?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “To whom am I speaking?”

  “My name is Francesca Delaney. I own the Whispering Dress. Are you…are you looking for a wedding gown?”

  “I could be, but this is not business. It is something of a…personal interest. I’m a designer and fashion collector. My partner and I have a large compendium of fine and historic evening wear. It is our passion. And we believe you have a dress, Ms. Delaney, that is rather extraordinary to us, designed by Garrett-Alexia.”

  Fran sits up. “But I only recently put it online.”

  “Indeed. I hope I’m your first inquiry. It was forwarded to me by one of my eagle-eyed scouts. It is a fine dress, no?”

  “It’s remarkable.”

  “Introductions maybe. My name is Fabian Alexia.”

  Fran gasps. “Fabian Alexia? As in…?”

  “The House of Garrett-Alexia. Gilles Alexia was my father.”

  Fran laughs, incredulous. Her head fills with questions, so much to ask, so much to say.

  “You know something of fashion history, Ms. Delaney?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bravo. Then we should talk. I live in Paris. I have to be in Milan next week, then Los Angeles, but maybe I can fly to London after that. I would like very much to see the dress. It has a lot of history for my family. Just out of curiosity, how did you come to own it?”

  “I—I acquired it in a house clearance.”

  “A house clearance? You mean to tell me that no one wanted that incredible piece of couture?”

  “I found it at the bride’s family estate, which was being cleared for sale. I believe there were two brides actually, Janice and Alessandra Colt. Both wore the dress and both are now dead. And it seems the next generation of Colts have little interest in family wedding gowns.”

  “Then they have no idea. My goodness, Ms. Delaney, I have known of the dress’s potential existence for many years, but the established wisdom is that it was lost, destroyed even. And now you have found it. We must meet. In a few weeks perhaps?”

  “How about sooner?” says Fran.

  “I’m afraid I’m tied up with business. I have my own fashion label in Paris. We have a shop near the Champs-Élysées, the same building where the House of Garrett-Alexia was begun by my father and his colleague all those decades ago. We still have their old sewing machines in our lobby. I like a sense of history, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, I do.”

  “If you would be so kind as to keep the dress aside, I will get to it as soon as I can.”

  Fran’s eyes widen. “My intention is to find a bride for it, but if you’d like it for your collection—”

  “I’m not saying I want to buy it, Ms. Delaney.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have a curiosity of another kind,” Fabian Alexia explains. “How do you say…a score to settle?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I want to know what the dress can tell me.”

  “You and me both,” says Fran.

  “I must go now, but I hope we can talk again. Until next time. It’s been a pleasure, Ms. Delaney, and delightful to know that you share my sympathy for beautiful old things. Ciao.”

  * * *

  Rafael kisses Janey goodbye, urges her to stay on track, and promises he’ll return over the weekend. He then gets back in his car and drives aimlessly for an hour, eventually arriving at Dryad’s Hall. The house looks ghostly with its lifeless windows and rustling overgrowth. As he unlocks the front door, he sighs. Soon the estate will be sold forever, to be bulldozed no doubt, turned into luxury gated apartments. The house has little value to anyone other than him. The land is the asset.

  He misses her now, remembers the sight of her alone in the kitchen, rolling pastry on cold marble, twisting it into plaits, sprinkling the surface with olives, pine nuts, and rosemary—a favorite recipe, good Neapolitan food. The family didn’t like her going in the kitchen, even though it was the one thing, other than her garden and her children, that gave her pleasure. The Italian. His father always referred to her as “the Italian,” in a derisory way, treating her Mediterranean heritage as a misplaced mistake. The way he marginalized her, left her out, cast his attention everywhere else. The way he spoke about her, over her, around her, but never to her, as though, in choosing a silence, she had somehow denounced her right to exist. How she didn’t rise up and punch him, he’ll never know, but perhaps, by then, she’d been broken, her will snapped in pieces. Suddenly he regrets he wasn’t there for her more, to look after her, protect her. But it was never his choice to go to boarding school or spend every summer jetting abroad, spending two weeks touring the “poor countries” and the rest on a yacht in Monaco. He would have liked to be here with Alessandra, living quietly in the glades of the forest. Her silence never bothered him. What seemed strange to other people was normal in his world. Words, he thinks, are not the only way to talk.

  He knew what was in her heart, probably far better than her own husband ever did. How she’d hoped for so much more, catching the eye of an eligible young man, having him chase her, court her, trap her. A shy girl from Southern Italy with dark almond eyes, pummeled and pressed and pushed into uncommon shape by Colt family dysfunction. If she’d known when she’d accepted the marriage proposal that, along with her name, she was giving away her freedom, would she have said yes?

  He thinks of the wedding photo that used to hang above the stairs—that bandage on her hand, such an ugly accessory for a wedding day. Fran doesn’t understand. She sees the dress’s beauty, all its sparkly surface opulence, but she doesn’t know what it represents, what it really represents. She sees something in it that he simply can’t, something hopeful. And maybe that’s the difference. When he saw her that day, when he caught her trying it on, the radiance in her, it was…overwhelming.

  * * *

  “A date?” says Fran, yawning from sleep, her brain not quite alert.

  It is early in the morning, not the romantic time to call, unless of course he has been up all night thinking about her, twisting in the sheets, too restless with want to wait for a civilized hour. Fran stares across the sky, to the city in the distance, the sun dazzling bright between sheets of darkening gray, like a poster for a sci-fi movie.

  “Only if you’d like to,” says Rafael. “Maybe tonight?”

  “Like a grown-up date?”

  “We can call it that.”

  She smiles, the frisson of flirtation waking her up. A raindrop lands on the window and slithers down the glass. They both look up as the rain sweeps over the city. It comes hard and fast, the kind of rain that soothes and revives and leaves everything bright. Down in the streets of Walthamstow, the market traders wrap themselves in tarpaulins and the early-bird commuters pump open umbrellas. Out on the Thames, in front of Rafael’s penthouse, the river dances with ripples and the dog walkers take cover under trees.

 
“Where are you?” says Fran.

  “Watching the river.”

  “Wave.”

  “Wave?”

  “I might be able to see you. If I stand on tiptoes I can see the London Eye from here, just about.”

  “You’re daft.”

  “At least that’s better than some of your other appraisals of me.”

  “Which I didn’t necessarily mean…”

  “I think you did, but you’re forgiven…and probably not wrong.”

  “How self-reflective of you,” says Rafael. “Francesca Delaney, are you about to tell me you’ve suddenly realized you spend half your life in a fantasy land?”

  “No.”

  “Either way, could you possibly put aside your bride-boosting schedule and allow me to take you out this weekend?”

  “I have wedding dresses to repair.”

  Can they wait? Should they wait? Is a date—an official date—the first she’s been on in years, with the only real-life man that she’s liked in a decade, more important than other people’s wedding dresses? She wavers, the devil of exaltation on one shoulder, the angel of duty on the other.

  “I’d really like to take you out, Fran. It’s the least I can do, after everything Janey did.”

  Fran frowns.

  “So, dinner?” he suggests. “Or maybe lunch? Or both? Where would you like to go? Name a place. It doesn’t have to be local or London even. We can travel. I have a few restaurants in the country that I prefer, but the choice is yours.”

  “Anywhere?”

  “Anywhere.”

  A thought creeps across Fran’s mind. “How about Paris?”

  chapter 6

  She looks beautiful in emerald satin, strolling along the Left Bank, her dress fluttering in the breeze. They walk and talk and laugh, and all the while Rafael cannot help but keep glancing at her, to see that she is really there. Does she always set her hair and paint her lips, or is it just for his benefit? Some muted, mysterious part hopes it’s for him, although he guesses, given her proclivity for sartorial drama, it’s her natural way. She seems awed by Paris, but of course she would be. The city of love, crowded with history, is everything she treasures. From avenue to boulevard, the old swamp groans with the weight of its Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance domes, neoclassical theaters, Napoleonic military monuments, and flamboyant palaces of the belle epoque, but its true charm is much subtler than its grandiose catalogue of architectural styles. At its core, Paris is a city for walking and eating and watching, for taking the time to feel pleasure for pleasure’s sake. This, thinks Rafael, is the pace of holiday he needs, and Fran, with her habit of living from moment to moment, seems like the perfect companion. Once again, with her as his muse, he has dared to step outside of confinement, to shed the order of his daily existence, and it feels like a brilliant liberation.

  Fran cannot believe she is here in Paris with a man, a living man. Her mood soaring, strolling along the sunlit riverbank, the water in the Seine sparkling, the bateaux-mouches cruising up and down, she chooses to reject all doubt for the day. When she suggested Paris, she hadn’t expected such an easy, delighted yes. She had assumed Rafael would defer to his assistant or make some excuse about his hectic work schedule, but instead he gave her a thirty-minute warning to get dressed and find her passport. Champagne at Kings Cross, Eurostar first class, and now they are here, looking for lunch.

  “I know a place in Saint-Germain,” he says, eager to please her.

  They take the metro, which is hot and noisy and full of buskers, and alight in a perfect Parisian square, plump with clichés—canopied cafés with iron seating and marble bistro tables spilling onto the cobbles, a mounted bronze statue in the center, a domed newsstand, and a dozen elegant people watchers. More Paris than Paris. They take a table outside at Les Deux Magots and eat fat, garlicky chicken and perfect frites, washed down with goblets of cold French larger.

  She has the address of Fabian Alexia’s shop in her pocket. It wasn’t hard to find. Before leaving, she typed his name into her laptop and learned he runs a small, discreet fashion label for the mature woman. If she can only meet the man who cares as much about the dress as she does, instinct tells her she will unlock its ghosts. But time, in a city where clocks come second to unplanned journeys of decadence, is not on her side, and the pressure of it thrums in the back of her thoughts, becoming ever more bothersome as the second hand ticks.

  “If you check your phone one more time,” says Rafael, “I’ll make the assumption that I’m boring you.”

  “No, no,” Fran hastens to tell him. “I’m just thinking about all we want to do here. There’s so much.”

  “Well, I thought we could get macarons at Ladurée. They do these incredible little pistachio ones, with centers that ooze. Then maybe have a browse through the Galeries Lafayette. Or the Marais district. Or there’s always Montmartre if you want to be mobbed by other tourists.”

  “Sounds lovely. All of it.”

  She is definitely twitchy, he thinks, more distracted than normal. Is she nervous? Is this too much? It isn’t his intention to show off. He senses she’d see right through any attempt to impress her with Colt money or Colt status, but he wants to give her Paris in her hands, because he wants to make her happy.

  “We could walk some more,” he suggests. “Through the Jardin du Luxembourg or along the river? Or see some art. Name a gallery, Fran. Just don’t say you want to see the Eiffel Tower.”

  Fran fidgets. She knows what she wants to do but is scared to expose it, for fear he will take offense and then all the momentum that has gathered between them will collapse.

  “We have all day, all night. Just tell me what you’d like to do.”

  Understand a dress, thinks Fran, breathless with the burden. A bus passes by, direction Champs-Élysées. She takes it as a sign.

  “I’d like to see the most famous street in the world,” she says, unnerved by her ability to lie with conviction.

  * * *

  The sheer graciousness of the wide avenue, cutting a straight groove from where they stand in Place de la Concorde, to the Arc du Triomphe, is enough to make Fran gasp with astonishment.

  Rafael is quick to explain that its history is not all glorious. “This used to be called Revolution Square. It’s where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were executed during the French Revolution. Not a good time to be born into money.”

  “You’d have been done for then.”

  “I like to think I’d have been with the revolutionists,” he says, a glint in his eye. “I want respect for the things I do and how I act, not for what I was given.”

  Fran smiles to herself. “You are every inch worthy of any dead groom.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” she giggles, tipping forward and kissing him on the cheek.

  They walk hand in hand down the wide, tree-lined pavement, past the designer boutiques and flagship stores. When they come to the turning of the Rue de Berri, Fran veers, tugs Rafael with her. The air is quieter here, away from the main drag. Tall stone buildings flank either side. Voices sing across the road, from the high shuttered windows and wrought-iron balustrades. After a few meters, they come to the shop front that bears the name Fabian Alexia. Mannequins wearing crinkled, mustard-colored smocks over gray felt palazzo trousers stare vacantly from the windows.

  “You want to go shopping?” says Rafael, perplexed.

  “I want to go to this shop,” says Fran, holding her breath and smiling. “It belongs to the son of Gilles Alexia, of the House of Garrett-Alexia, the designers who made your mother’s—originally your grandmother’s—wedding dress.”

  Rafael freezes midmotion, drops Fran’s hand from his. A chill sweeps over him, destroying all sense of joy. Why? Why is she ruining it?

  “Does your wedding dress obsession know no boundaries?” he snarls. “I thought I
made it clear. I don’t want anything more do with that dress. I thought you’d taken the hint, but this…this… You planned this, didn’t you? You knew all along you wanted to come here. You led me here. How could you?” He barges past her, leaving her crushed, ashamed of herself for triggering such a reaction.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, pleading, addressing the empty space where he was standing. “I only wanted to…”

  Rafael stops, breathes, tries to compose himself, his fists in tight balls at his sides. He hates it when anger consumes him, but internally, he feels besieged, the slicing invasion of his mother and her anguished nighttime howls—the only impassioned sounds she ever made—terrorizing the moment. He opens his mouth to explain, but no words come, trapped by the emotional whiplash of all the dysfunction he’s worked so hard to bury.

  “Please,” he says, jaw tightening, throwing the words over his shoulder as he continues to walk, “take the dress, enjoy it, sell it, burn it, turn it into curtains. Do what you like, Fran, but don’t bring me to some random shop in the middle of Paris like a fucking ambush and expect me to play along with your absurdist fantasy that wedding dresses talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Raf, really sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a raw nerve. I just thought it would be an opportunity to—”

  “Raw nerve? Oh, Fran, you have no idea.”

  She goes to him, heels pressing into the paving slab beneath her, body tall, desperate to be brave. “I went to see Janey,” she confesses.

  “What?”