If I planned carefully, I could fill those twelve long hours, and then the day would be over.
I could watch a box set or read a book. I could bake something, but there was no one who’d eat it except Adam. I could make soup. A huge pot of nourishing soup that I could take to work with me for lunch to save me spending a fortune in Pret every month. I could go to the gym, even though it would be full of preening Instagrammers drinking protein shakes. But then I remembered I’d cancelled my membership as part of my new austerity regime.
If Charlotte had been here, we could have gone out for a coffee together, or to the cinema, or even just hung out drinking tea and chatting. But she wasn’t here: she was basking on a beach somewhere exotic with a man who adored her.
I could start getting ready for Sally’s party at five thirty – five, even, if I painted my nails as part of my preparations. And then I’d be with other people, at least. I’d have fun.
And then, I thought grimly, it would be Sunday and I’d have the same problem all over again – a long, lonely day stretching out before me.
Through the French doors, I could see the grey morning brightening slightly. I looked out and saw that the rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking apart, revealing a pale, cold sky.
I could go outside, then, at least.
I put my breakfast things in the dishwasher, showered and dressed in jeans, my purple jumper and boots. I looked at myself in the mirror and grimaced. I was hollow-eyed and pale. My eyebrows needed tinting and my hair needed a trim, but both those things would have to wait until next payday at least.
I put on tinted moisturiser, swept on some bronzer, added mascara and a slick of matte-pink lipstick, so at least I looked a bit less like a ghost, even though I still felt like one. I put on a woolly hat and my old, shabby grey coat. (God, I missed my beautiful shearling, but the proceeds from its sale were paying Mum’s rent, so I couldn’t complain.)
Putting my phone and my keys in my bag, I left the house and walked to the bus stop with no real idea where I was going.
I’d get on the first bus that arrived, I decided, and stay on it until I got somewhere interesting.
Just my luck; I’d misjudged which bus stop to wait at, and instead of a route heading into town, the bus route fairies gifted me the 276, which was headed out into deepest suburban east London. But I’d made my decision and there was no going back, so I got on and went up to the top deck.
Instead of getting my phone out and flicking idly through my social media, I looked out at the streets of Hackney creeping past the windows. I breathed and I watched. I was in no hurry; I had nothing special to do and nowhere important to be. I could just be here, on my own in the warm. I studied the signs above the shops the bus passed: fried chicken shops, betting shops and charity shops, mostly, with the occasional ethnic food store, on-trend coffee shop or vegan restaurant.
I listened as stop after stop was announced, enjoying the sound of the names: Marsh Hill, Crowfoot Close, Wick Lane. I let myself wonder where the marsh had been, what crow had been important enough to have a street named after it, and whether there had once been a candle factory somewhere nearby.
Then the electronic announcement said, ‘Roman Road Market.’
Almost before I registered that I’d made a decision, I was down the stairs and waiting for the doors to open. But my mind wasn’t on whether centurions wearing cloaks and helmets had driven chariots down a track here two thousand years ago. I was thinking about clothes.
When I was first in London, working as an unpaid intern and staying with Debbie’s friend Sasha, she’d brought me to Roman Road Market. It was high summer then, and we bought fresh cherries from a stall and ate them out of brown paper bags as we strolled along. I had forgotten all about that day, but now it came back to me in a rush, so clearly I could almost taste the ripe sourness of the fruit, smell the incense drifting out of shop doors, hear the stallholders shouting, ‘Three for a pound! Only one pound for three. Four for you, beautiful!’
It had been packed, I remembered. It had taken Sasha and me the best part of an hour to make our way from one end of the market to the other.
‘If you want to learn about fashion, Tansy,’ she’d said, ‘places like this will teach you far more than college or work experience. Look at that young woman there – her entire outfit probably cost her under a tenner. But she’s nailed it.’
The girl in question had been wearing what looked like an old nylon nightie, with battered Doc Martens, a feather boa and a trilby hat almost covering her hair, which was bleached and dyed into a rainbow of pink, lilac and silver. She looked fabulous. And this was long before unicorn hair was even a thing.
There had also been second-hand clothes stalls, I remembered. Sasha had bought a pair of tailored wool trousers with a Chanel label in them for fifteen quid, and I’d found a fringed, beaded shawl that might or might not have been a 1920s original but looked the part. I loved it so much I still hadn’t been able to part with it, even though I hardly ever went anywhere I could wear it.
I might find a new coat, I thought, jumping off the bus and hurrying down the road, following the signs directing me to the market. Or a handbag to take the place of the one I’d sold, one I could take genuine pleasure in this time. Or, at the very least, find inspiration for my new collection.
The only problem was, I was too early. It was still not yet ten, and the market hadn’t opened properly for business. Stallholders were heaving armfuls of clothes onto garment rails, arranging jewellery on tables, draping scarves over mannequins and plonking hats on their wooden heads. But no one was selling anything. The man at the discount French Connection stall I’d had my eye on sent me away with a curt, ‘Ten thirty we open, love. Not a minute before. Have a cuppa and come back.’
So I followed his advice and headed across the road towards a coffee shop, but before I got there, I stopped. I may have gasped. There was a girl, a few years younger than me, setting out her stall. She herself was stunning, about nineteen or twenty as far as I could tell, with a bright red, side-swept, angular pixie cut (the sort you can only get away with if your bone structure is literally perfect), multiple piercings in her ears and sparkly false eyelashes. She was wearing a denim playsuit over ribbed scarlet tights, a vintage faux-fur coat over that, and stripy wristwarmers to protect her hands as she arranged her garments in the biting wind.
She was striking, for sure, but the things she was lifting out of a blue Ikea bag and onto a rickety frame lined with hessian were something else again. I stopped to look, and then I found myself staying and gazing.
There were jeans, most distressed or destroyed, and heavily embellished with beading, criss-cross lacing and embroidery. There were skirts made from alternating panels of denim and bright silk. There was a black lace evening dress with a deep swish of fringing around the bottom of the skirt, and another, a white dress that was…
I came closer and looked. Yes, it was made from old wedding dresses: panels of silk, lace and tulle in shades of white, cream and ivory, the whole thing a spectacular, unique creation that would make you feel like a princess in a fairy tale the moment you put it on.
Everything was custom-made, I realised, and upcycled from other garments. As different as they could possibly be from the mass-produced sequinned frocks I’d taken from the office sample room. (What the hell was Felicity doing there that night, anyway? I wondered for the thousandth time.)
‘I’m not open,’ the girl snapped. ‘And no photography.’
She turned back to her bag and lifted out a tailored, emerald-green silk shift and arranged it on a hanger.
‘Are these your designs?’ I asked.
‘Look, I’m busy, innit. Come back in half an hour.’
I suppressed a smile. I’d worked with enough designers in my time to know that some of them – actually, a lot of them – could be total divas, but I didn’t think I’d ever met one as downright rude as this.
I stepped back a little and wa
tched as she took out a portable garment steamer and ran it over the dresses so the creases dropped away. Then she adjusted the fall of each garment on its hanger, turned one dress around so the embellishment on the back was visible, and carefully arranged a necklace over another. Her attention to detail impressed me.
At last, she stepped back, surveyed her work and nodded. Then she picked up a coffee cup from the table, took a sip and grimaced.
‘Cold?’ I said. ‘Can I buy you a fresh one?’
‘Look, I thought I told you to… Oh, all right then. Macchiato, two sugars. And a custard Danish.’
She stared defiantly at me, daring me to point out that she was taking the piss. But I didn’t. I smiled and said, ‘Sure thing.’
The queue in the coffee shop was long and, ridiculously, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find her stall again, or that she would have packed up and spirited everything away. But she hadn’t, of course. When I got back with her drink and pastry, and a coffee for myself, she was with a customer.
‘Could I try that on, please?’ the woman asked, pointing up at the green dress.
‘No.’
‘Er… Is it not for sale?’
‘It’s for sale,’ the girl said. ‘Just not to you. Not your colour, and a size too small.’
‘Oh.’ The woman actually blushed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Here,’ the girl said, as if making a huge concession. ‘You can try this one.’
From the rail behind her, she produced an ice-blue dress in a similar style, handed it over and gestured to a curtained-off corner of the stall.
The woman looked doubtful for a second, and I didn’t blame her – the idea of getting my kit off and getting into a cocktail dress with only a flimsy curtain to protect me from the cold wind and the eyes of the passing crowd made me shiver, too. Then she looked longingly back at the dress.
‘No refunds, no exchanges,’ the girl said. ‘Cash only.’
Reluctantly, the customer disappeared behind the curtain. I handed over the cardboard cup and the paper bag and the girl nodded, but didn’t thank me.
‘My name’s Tansy,’ I said.
She narrowed her eyes and sipped her coffee, and for a second I thought she wasn’t going to respond. Then she replied, ‘Chelsea.’
But that was all she had to say. We waited in silence for a couple of minutes, until the customer emerged from behind the curtain, looking chilly but with an expression on her face that told me she’d seen a version of herself in the mirror that she hadn’t thought was possible. Her face said, ‘I can look beautiful!’
‘I’ll take it,’ she said aloud. ‘It’s incredible. I’ve never… How much is it, by the way?’
‘One seventy-five,’ Chelsea replied, folding her arms as if challenging the woman to argue.
But she didn’t. She counted the cash out from her purse – looking briefly panicked that she wouldn’t have enough, and scrabbling around for change – and handed it over without hesitation. She would have paid twice as much, I knew. She’d probably have parted with a kidney in exchange for that frock.
Chelsea folded the dress and placed it carefully in an unbranded brown paper bag and passed it to her.
‘Thank you,’ the woman gushed. ‘Thank you so much. I’ll be back.’
Chelsea did the hard stare thing again, unsmiling, eyes narrowed. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said reluctantly.
The woman practically skipped away, clutching her purchase to her chest.
Chelsea turned back to me. ‘Now, what do you want? You’re not shopping.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to ask you a couple of things about your work. You make all these yourself?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you been doing it for long?’
‘Three years, since I left school.’
‘You’re not at college?’ I asked, amazed that someone with no training could be this good.
‘Nah. Look, why are you—’
Then another customer interrupted us, and a few minutes later she left, two hundred quid lighter, clutching the fringed black dress in a brown bag and smiling like it was Christmas.
I said, ‘I work in fashion, too. I’m a buyer at Luxeforless, you know, the online boutique?’
Chelsea nodded, her mouth full of custard Danish. She didn’t say anything, but I could see a spark of animation in her face for the first time. I knew what she was thinking: this could be her big break. Her clothes could be stocked in a high-end online store.
I said, ‘Would you be able to meet up, during the week maybe, when you’re not so busy? I’d love to find out more about you.’
‘Okay.’
I reached into my bag and rummaged around, hoping there was a business card in there somewhere. And then I thought, she won’t contact me. However eager she is, she’ll be too frightened of being knocked back. She’ll keep my card and stare at it every day, and maybe she’ll dial the number and hang up when it rings, or compose an email and never press send, and eventually, one day, she’ll look for my card and not be able to find it. But I won’t hear from her. She’ll carry on doing what she’s doing and either she’ll survive or she won’t.
So instead, I took out my phone. ‘What’s your number?’
She recited it and I saved it, and again, I saw that flash of longing and fear in her eyes and, again, I was pretty sure I knew what she was thinking. She’s not who she says she is. And even if she is, she’ll never call.
The Ninth Date
Two weeks after Renzo and I got back from Paris, I had an idea. We’d been out together four times since then, twice for cocktails and dinner at swanky restaurants in Mayfair, once to see La Bohème at the Royal Opera House (I’d never been to the opera before, and to be perfectly honest I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I loved sitting there next to Renzo, admiring the costumes and the set and soaking up the atmosphere), and once to the cinema and then for dinner at Pizza Express.
Each time (except the pizza and movie night, which was my treat), Renzo had made the restaurant reservation or bought the tickets, and each time we’d spent the night together afterwards at his flat.
So for our ninth date I decided to plan something different. After spending hours trawling the internet and studying reviews on TripAdvisor, I booked two nights at a hotel in the Cotswolds. I told him to take the afternoon off work and meet me at Paddington station at midday on Friday, but refused to give him any more details, saying only that he should pack for two nights away and that the rest would be my surprise.
I was practically hyperventilating with nervous excitement as I waited for him on the concourse, my little wheelie suitcase at my feet and a carrier bag with snacks and two small bottles of cava in my hand. It wasn’t the vintage champagne Renzo bought for us when we were out, but it was fizzy and reasonably cold, and I hoped it would make the train journey feel like a romantic celebration.
You know how it is when a relationship is still quite new: it seems like everything is possible, everything is thrilling, yet at the same time everything is still so uncertain. What if some crisis erupted at Renzo’s work and he wasn’t able to make it? What if I’d messed up the train tickets somehow and we were supposed to leave from Marylebone or somewhere? What if I couldn’t find him in the crowds of people? What if he told me he’d changed his mind, not just about the weekend but about me?
I checked my phone again and again, making sure I knew the numbers of our reserved seats and the address of the hotel where we were going off by heart. I was just tapping through to WhatsApp to see if there was a message from him, and the platform for our train was just being called, making fresh panic surge inside me in case we missed it, when Renzo appeared in front of me.
‘There you are,’ he said, wrapping me in a hug that made all my worries melt away.
As always, I felt a thrill of happiness when I saw him. He was wearing his work suit, although he’d taken off his tie. His hair was swept back from his face in a glo
ssy black wing. His perfect teeth flashed in a grin of pleasure as he looked at me. He seemed to have arrived from a different world to the crowds of sweating tourists and harassed families – almost too perfect and glossy to be real.
‘All set?’ he said. ‘Come on then, you’d better tell me where we’re going.’
And I realised I’d been standing there like a lemon, staring at him without saying a word.
‘Platform ten,’ I said, and he took my hand and we hurried along together and found our seats.
‘So when are you going to reveal the mystery destination?’ he asked, as I twisted the cap off a bottle of cava and passed it to him. ‘I even brought my passport, in case we were getting a flight somewhere.’
I laughed. ‘Nothing as ambitious as that. We’re going to Chippenham.’
I watched his face carefully for a flicker of disappointment, but there wasn’t one, so I went on, ‘The place where we’re staying is in a little village near there. It’s really picturesque, apparently. There’s lovely countryside around, so we can go for walks and stuff. Maybe even hire bicycles, if we want. But mostly just chill.’
Our eyes met and he smiled, reaching for my hand again and caressing my palm with his thumb. We both knew what ‘just chill’ meant. Walks and cycling were all very well – on our second date, we’d been for lunch at a country pub, and he’d surprised me by being able to name all the birds we’d seen and lots of the plants, too – but what I really wanted was to spend long, languid hours in bed with him.
‘Here we are,’ I said a couple of hours later, paying the cab driver who’d brought us from the station. ‘The Cow and Bell.’
The pub, with its golden stone front half-concealed by ivy, was just as pretty as it had looked on TripAdvisor. A fat ginger cat was perched on the front step, and the door stood open to a hallway that looked gloomy in contrast to the brilliant sunshine outside.
It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy Page 8