The Dress

12.

Robes of pale blue velvet. Origin unknown.



Mamma picked up the letter from the mat and slipped her fingernail under the flap.

‘Oh no,’ she said and then, ‘Catzo!’

It was Saturday morning. David had stopped by between home visits and was balancing on a stepladder, his arms stretched above his head, replacing a bulb in the chandelier. He laughed and the stepladder began to shudder, the chandelier swinging precariously in his hands.

‘I don’t even know what you’re saying, Fabbia, but I know that it’s very rude.’

Mamma pulled a face. Today, in her little powder blue suit with the peplum jacket and short neat skirt, Ella thought that she could easily pass for a schoolgirl.

‘Agh. It’s one of my regular suppliers. He’s let me down about the Chinese silk I ordered,’ she sighed. ‘He’s saying he can’t get hold of it but I need it for Jean Cushworth’s gown. Dio mio. I have to have that dress ready for next Friday, Saturday morning at the very latest... Disastro.’

Ella stepped out from the doorway.

‘Mrs Cushworth? Katrina’s mother?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mamma grimaced, mimicking a regal voice and pose. ‘“I want only the very best, Fabbia,”‘ she says to me. “It has to be very special, better than any of the dresses you’re making for the other ladies… I have a certain… how can I put it, Mrs Moreno, without you thinking me frightfully arrogant? There is a certain expectation from people in this town. One mustn’t disappoint…”‘

‘Well, can she choose a different fabric? A different colour, perhaps?’

Mamma laughed.

‘David, you obviously don’t know women. When we make up our minds… And I really don’t want to disappoint her. She’s brought me a lot of business already.’

Then her face suddenly brightened.

‘I could go to the wholesalers myself and pick up the silk. I’ve been making do for a while now with so many of my little bits and pieces… I wonder…’

‘We could make a day of it,’ said David. ‘Monday’s my day off.’

Mamma clasped her hands together.

‘What fun! And Ella could come with us. Wouldn’t you like a trip to London, carina?

Ella screwed up her face.

‘Honestly, mum. What are you like? I can’t just take a day off school. You have to get special permission. And I’d miss stuff. I’d have to catch up. I’ll be fine here on my own, though. Go. Have a great time.’

As she turned away, she caught Mamma’s expression of dismay, reflected in the shop window.

‘Such a good girl. Too good,’ she was saying.


But Ella knew that she wasn’t that good. She had her own reasons for staying behind. She thought about them all the time now. She couldn’t stop thinking about them.

On Monday, when the bell rang for end of school, she turned down the corridor past the girls’ cloakrooms, and there was Katrina, leaning on the wall, hips forward, shoulders back, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

‘Hi, Ella,’ she said, flashing a smile. ‘I saw your mum at the station this morning. With David…’

Ella felt prickles of irritation tingle down her arms at the thought this seemed to imply: that it was a bit of a joke, the idea of her mother and Doctor Carter going anywhere together.

‘I thought I’d come home with you,’ she said. ‘Keep you company, so you won’t be all lonesome.’

Ella’s heart plunged. They were out of the door now and heading across the playground where she could see Billy hovering by the school gates. He saw Katrina and instantly, like an automatic reflex, his head snapped down and he started to walk off, his hands in his pockets, staring determinedly at the ground.

‘Billy! Wait a minute!’

Ella turned and glared at Katrina. ‘You can do what you like,’ she said, ‘but I’m walking with him.’

Katrina raised an eyebrow. ‘Okey dokey. You’re in charge.’

When they reached the shop and Billy had helped Ella wrestle with the complicated doorlocks, Katrina ran ahead of them, up the stairs into the flat and began to walk into each of the rooms, picking up a book here, a trinket box there, saying, ‘How sweet!’ and ‘So tiny. How abso-lutely darling!’

Ella exchanged a look with Billy and went into the kitchen. She banged the coffee filter loudly against the sink, scattering old damp coffee grounds.

Katrina appeared in the doorway. ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’

‘Making coffee. What does it look like?’

‘Erm, honestly? Like you’re brewing up some weird kind of spell in the sink,’ said Katrina, wrinkling her nose. ‘Smells awful…’

‘Right then, I’m off.’ Billy shoved his hands into his pockets.

Ella’s heart banged in her chest. ‘But we only just got here…’

‘Things to do, people to see,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll leave you ladies to it.’

‘I’ll see you off then,’ Ella said, perhaps a bit too quickly. ‘I mean, I’ll have to unlock the door and lock it again behind you.’

She followed him down the stairs and, whilst she fumbled with the keys once more - middle latch, top and bottom bolts - Billy hissed at her under his breath.

‘God, El, how can you stand ‘er?’

‘Oh, do I have a choice? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Here, I’ll do that.’ He slipped the key out of her hand. His fingers were firm and warm and sent little jolts of feeling through her.

The door gave way. The bell jangled.

‘Well, then. Be seeing you,’ he said, winking. ‘Don’t forget to have fun.’

‘Billy…’

He turned, expectantly.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. Doesn’t matter…’

She watched him cross the courtyard, under the low archway. She felt flat, limp, like a party balloon with the air gone out of her. What had she even been thinking, anyway?

And then, as she stood there, Billy’s head suddenly reappeared around the far wall, a clown’s head without a body, eyes crossed, mouth pulled askew, tongue waggling.

She stuck her tongue out back at him, sensing the strange new pull of feeling between them. He’d known she would still be standing here, watching.

This wasn’t at all like the usual kind of Signals, colours and movements in the air around her that she could tune into. This was something that came from inside her. It felt as if she and Billy were attached to opposite ends of a piece of elastic, each of them tugging in their own direction, straining as the elastic got tighter and tighter, wondering exactly how far it would stretch before snapping them back hard.

The bottom stair creaked. Katrina was standing there, her back turned, running her hands up and down her sides, wriggling her body as if held in the grip of a comedy embrace, making fake kissing sounds.

‘Oh, get lost, Katrina,’ Ella sighed.

Later, as they sat at the kitchen table, sharing the timballo, the round cake of pasta and cheese and sausage and rich tomato sauce that Mamma had left, Katrina prodded the air with her knife.

‘Don’t you ever get sick of it?’

‘Sick of what, exactly?’

‘Oh, you know. Life in general. Being an only child. Not that I’m actually a proper ‘only’, you know… I mean, you’ve probably heard that there was… I mean, I had…’

Ella waited. She watched Katrina lay down her fork and scrutinise her plate. When she looked up again, she said, ‘What really bugs me is the way that my mum – mine and yours – are always going off with someone. All that business….’ She pursed her lips, making more air kisses.

‘But mine doesn’t,’ Ella said. ‘It’s the first time she’s ever been anywhere.’

‘Well, mine does it all the time.’ Katrina frowned. ’And I hate it. It’s always Mr So-and-So this, Mr So-and-So that. Katrina, sweetheart, I must introduce you to my new friend, Mr So-and-So. Lately, it’s that awful Pike person. You know the one...’

She squinted her eyes and combed her hair across her forehead with her fingers in imitation of Pike’s greasy fringe.

‘Yes,’ Ella said. ‘He came in the shop.’ She felt a stab of fear at the sound of the name, remembered those eyes slithering over her.

‘Really?’ said Katrina, suddenly interested. ‘What was he doing in a dress shop, for God’s sake? Did he buy anything?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Ella formed her words carefully, realising her mistake. ‘It was just when we first got here… something about the council. That’s what he does, doesn’t he?’

‘He’d be trying it on with your mum, probably. Eyeing her up,’ Katrina said. ‘He’s a snake. But your mum’s not stupid enough to get mixed up with someone like that, whereas mine’s got no common sense. There’s always bloody someone. It’s so embarrassing – she’s like a teenager. And then there’s all the committee meetings. Committee for this, Circle for that… so that she can feel important, I suppose.’

‘But what about your dad?’

‘Oh, my so-called father,’ said Katrina, rolling her eyes. ‘An idiot,’ she said. ‘Completely clueless. Wouldn’t know what she was up to from one minute to the next. And even if he did, he wouldn’t be interested. He’s old enough to be her father and he’s almost always in France or America or Hong-bloody-Kong, selling his stupid equipment…’

‘What kind of equipment?’

‘Oh, I don’t flippin’ know, do I? Stuff for making your lights go on and off and watering your garden automatically and air-conditioning and heating. Stupid. Totally ridiculous. But all Terribly Important, of course…’

Katrina chased a piece of penne around her plate, trying to spear it with her fork.

‘What is this stuff, anyway? It’s weird.’

‘It’s timballo, which means drum. You take a bowl and you line it with penne pasta - you know, it’s called that because it’s shaped like feathers… well, actually, like little quills – and then you put all these different things in – meat and peas and more pasta and cheese sauce and tomato sauce – and then…’

‘Blimey. I don’t need the bloody recipe,’ Katrina said. She pushed her plate away, rudely. ‘It tastes funny. Too many flavours. It’s kind of confusing my taste buds.’

She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her finger where a bead of tomato sauce clung on.

‘No, I can’t wait to get out of this place. Get out for good. Do something useful.’

‘Like what?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just something. Anything.’

‘I quite like it in York, actually,’ Ella said.

‘Well, you’ve only just bloomin’ got here,’ said Katrina and then her eyes lit up meanly. ‘And, of course, you’ve got Billy-boy following you everywhere like a lovesick puppy. I mean, who wouldn’t stick around for that?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Ella said, scraping her chair back from the table, clattering plates together. ‘Just. Shut. Up.’


When Katrina had left, trailing her veiled insults and bad jokes, Ella stretched herself across the sofa, flicking through TV channels.

She tried not to think about Mamma’s box in its hiding place under the bed but the more she wanted to resist, the stronger its pull became.

She knew, anyway, that she’d been thinking about taking a look for herself since Mamma had left that morning.

It was the book especially that intrigued her. She’d seen Mamma turning the pages, the well-thumbed paper whispering under her fingers. She hadn’t been close enough to see anything clearly – but it looked, from where she’d been standing, as if every part of the paper was covered in tiny handwriting along with sketches and diagrams. A recipe book, Mamma had said, but it didn’t look much like one. And if it was, why didn’t she keep it in the kitchen along with her Elizabeth David and the faded red Larousse?

Her phone bleeped with a text message: Got 7pm traiN. HOMe 10ish. LoVe M xxx

OK x, she texted back.

Not much time left.

She pressed the ‘mute’ button on the TV remote and watched as a woman in a sombrero stood with her feet planted firmly in a turquoise ocean, throwing her arms around and miming her excitement at the glittering water.

She would look. Just one look, she promised herself. Five minutes.

She went into the bedroom and knelt by Mamma’s bed, feeling into the gap for something box-shaped.

It was gone.

She threw back the duvet and pressed her cheek to the dusty floorboards. Nothing. Only shadows and fluff and a crumpled tissue imprinted with red lipstick.

She dragged a chair from the kitchen and clambered up, feelign with her hands along the top of the wardrobe. It wasn’t there, either. She looked through Mamma’s drawer, her hands moving through the layers of silk and lace, being careful not to leave anything disturbed.

So Mamma was hiding something, after all. She must have moved the box right after they’d had that conversation.

Ella clenched her fists. She clattered down the stairs and went through the boxes under the shop counter, the reels of gift ribbon, the neatly folded piles of tissue paper. She peered into the musty understairs cupboard where Mamma kept dusters and the mop and bucket and shelves of cleaning supplies.

She ran back up the stairs again, taking them two at a time, and slipped her hand under Mamma’s pillow. Her fingers closed over something. She drew out a single tarot card, a picture of a woman sitting on a throne in pale blue robes with a large cross around her neck and some kind of strange horned crown on her head. Her face was inked with a serene expression and she held what looked like a scroll in her hands. Behind her, between two pillars, was a pattern of palm leaves and pomegranates, their skins split to reveal glistening red seeds. At the woman’s feet was written: THE HIGH PRIESTESS.

Ella felt her heart banging against her ribs. Her skin felt hot and tight with frustration. What did that mean?

The card seemed to quiver slightly in her hands and she thought she could almost imagine the air stirring around her again, and voices, somewhere out there beyond the corners of the room, laughing and laughing at her.

She threw the card on the bed and then, thinking better of it, replaced it carefully under Mamma’s pillow, smoothing the quilt.

But later as she lay in bed with her book, the words swimming in front of her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being laughed at, tricked in some way. It wasn’t fair. What was it that she wasn’t allowed to know?

She let her eyes close, let her mind contract to that still, quiet point and then let herself drift backwards inside her mind, back to the day when she’d first seen the book.

She’d been standing in the doorway of the bedroom, just a few days after they’d arrived here, watching Mamma stooped over the bed, the book lying on the quilt in front of her. She could just glimpse flashes of colour and hear a crackling sound, like dry leaves, as Mamma carefully turned the pages.

‘Mamma?’

She saw Mamma whip round, her tight, forced smile, the way that she’d closed the book with a snap.

‘Mamma, what are you doing?’

‘Oh, just looking at a few old things, tesora. Things I’ve found in all these boxes. Things I haven’t seen in ages. Be a darling, would you. Put some coffee on for me? I’m exhausted…’

And then, as she’d turned to leave the room, Ella had seen, through the chink in the door jamb, Mamma kneeling by the bed, lifting the quilt, pressing the floorboards with the flats of her hands, the faint creak of wood.

That was it. That was Mamma’s hiding place. It all made sense now. She threw off her covers and scrabbled on her hands and knees under Mamma’s bed, feeling along the edges of the painted floorboards for a break, a gap, a loose nail. Her fingers butted up against a splintered edge. She pulled the quilt impatiently over her head and peered into the darkness, levering with her fingernails. There was a groaning sound as one of the boards came up in her hand, revealing what she could just make out as a long narrow cavity.

When she put her hand in, carefully at first because the dark space made her cringe, thinking of the scratching sounds she sometimes heard at night - mice perhaps, or even something worse - her fingers closed around a long flat box and she lifted it out, running her hand over the red, cloth-covered surface that was slightly grainy with dust.

And even though she knew that she was alone in the flat, she couldn’t help looking quickly over her shoulder before setting the book in the middle of the rug. She felt the air gathering again, bunching up all around her, heard those voices, half-real, half-imagined: She’s here, she’s here, she’shereshe’shereshe’shere…

She lifted the lid. Yes, here it was. The book.

It was a strange book, its covers made from two rectangular pieces of board, covered with green watermarked silk and tied together with thick black ribbon. The cover was stained in places, marked with grease and age, and the pages were thick and uneven. At certain points between the pages, scraps of fabric and what looked like the edges of paper dress-making patterns poked out.

Ella’s fingers fumbled with the ribbon. She felt her heart banging again, noticed that her hands were trembling slightly as she opened the cover, turned to the first page and read the inscription:



‘This book belongs to:

Zohreh Jobrani

Farah Jobrani

Fabbia Moreno’



The first name – Madaar-Bozorg’s name – was written in small, neat cursive handwriting, the ink faded to a brownish-black. Ella recognised the style – but firmer, less spidery back then - from all the blue airmail envelopes with the exotic stamps that had arrived intermittently through the letterbox throughout her childhood.

The names beneath it were added in what Ella immediately knew as Mamma’s own confident copper-plate. And Farah, of course, was her mother’s original birth name, her given name from the Old Country, carefully scored out here with the tip of her fountain pen.

She turned the pages again, noticing the faint rustling in the corners of the room and the way that the air stirred over the backs of her hands like the beating of a thousand tiny wings.

Here was one of Mamma’s sketches, a red tea gown with a sweetheart neckline, a few tiny red beads stitched to the page, a scrap of red silk.

And then the notes, scribbled in the margins: ‘Red: ruby, scarlet, vermilion. Look for a good red fabric with a warm orange base, rather than blue. This sample from Borowicks of Berwick Street, London. Variations – remake from red wedding sari, edged with gold lace? Chinoiserie – too stiff? ’

She flipped forward in the book again, stopping at a page that shimmered with green – a green feather, sewn to the paper with carefully-matched embroidery silk, a short length of sequin trim in emerald, a little pouch made of bottle-green satin with a card spool of glittery green thread tucked inside it. A picture cut from a magazine, showing a model wearing a green pillbox hat at a jaunty angle, a large peacock plume falling half over her face. ‘Vogue 1948,’ Mamma had written underneath. ‘Use dyed ostrich feathers?’

Samples, sketches, ideas. Nothing here to be hidden away, surely? Why all the secrecy?

She turned back to the front of the book, which seemed to be written mainly by Madaar-Bozorg, with Mamma’s notes squeezed into the margins.

‘The story of the selkie,’ she read, fingering a folded pattern in translucent paper, one edge stitched to the page. She pulled at it carefully and it opened in a concertinaed arc, forming the shape of what looked to her untrained eye like a bodice. And yet, she’d never seen Mamma use a pattern. She always cut the cloth directly on the table, her scissors snipping swiftly, barely hesitating as she formed the shapes that she would piece together.

Ella held the pattern up to the light, squinting to make out the miniscule writing that covered it: ‘Once upon a time,’ she read, ‘in the land of long hot summers and short cold winters, where the corn grows high and golden, where the oranges glow like lanterns in the trees and the bread is the sweetest and most delicious that you’ve ever tasted, there lived a sad and lonely man…’

She smiled to herself, thinking of the many times she’d heard those same words from Mamma’s lips. Carefully, she folded the pattern back into place, imagining Mamma as a little girl, her head resting on her grandmother’s shoulder, as Madaar-Bozorg told her this same story of the sealskin.

But still, this wasn’t magic. Certainly not secrets. It didn’t explain why Mamma was hiding this book away. Her fingers moved between the pages more hastily now, looking for clues.

‘Placement of charms,’ she read, finding a well-thumbed page. ‘The effect of a particular word can be augmented by combining it with a particular charm, or by placing it in a certain position in the garment. Placement at the collar, for example, can give extra confidence, helping the wearer to hold her head high. Placement at the hem can have a grounding effect. (Consider also the insole of a shoe.) The edge of a sleeve can assist with interactions with others, ease relationships.

‘The combination of charm placement with chosen totem words and especially colour should also be considered carefully. Some colours – red, for example - are often powerful enough and need no further help. We should aim for subtlety and comfort for the wearer. Over time, this will always have the appropriate effect.

Before use, charms should be ‘cleansed’ by placing them on a windowsill in sunlight or moonlight, by burying them in complete darkness or passing them through the flame of a red candle…’

In complete darkness, thought Ella, thinking of the gap under the floorboards. She reached back into the box. And yes, here was a bundle of red candles tied with a white ribbon and here was a small screw-top jar. The contents rattled against one another – charms, the little brass and silver weights that Mamma liked to sew into the hems of lighter weight fabrics, so that they hung just so. Ella tipped a handful onto her palm: an owl, not much larger than her little fingernail, but still perfect in its detail, with eyes and beak and tufted ears; a lucky horseshoe; a pair of angels’ wings.

This was more interesting. And she’d been right. It was magic. Everyday magic, maybe. But magic just the same. Mamma’s charms and words. They were more than a game. Madaar-Bozorg, at least, seemed to think of them as spells.

Ella had never seen anything lying around on a windowsill – although now she thought about it, it was certainly true that Mamma liked to sit in a patch of sunlight to do her most delicate work, what she called ‘finishing,’ the last point in the fitting or alteration of a garment. She’d angle her chair to catch the sun or, when the weather was warm enough, she liked to sit outside.

Her heart fluttered in her chest as she turned to the next page.

‘Words,’ Madaar-Bozorg had written, the letters fiercely underlined. ‘The best words are not chosen. They choose themselves. Whilst working on the garment, try to relax your mind and focus only on the feel of the fabric, the movement of your fingers. Let the words find you.’

Underneath, in tiny cramped script, she’d made a list of dates and details:

‘19 June 1953 – blue scarf, both hems – open your heart.

6 July 1953 – yellow silk gown, interlining at décolleté – courage, a sunlit hour.

18 September 1953 – embroidered housecoat, hem – patience.

29 February 1954 – red wool suit, jacket pocket lining – carry your truth.’



At the end of this list, in large capitals she’d added: ‘I EVENTUALLY CONCLUDED THAT WORDS SHOULD NOT BE RECORDED ANYWHERE BUT IN THE CLOTHES THEMSELVES.’

Ella shivered. Was she imagining the little breeze that seemed to blow quite suddenly through the chinks in the old wooden window frame and whirl around the room? She felt a cool touch on her cheek.

It was clear that Madaar-Bozorg had believed in the power of these charms and word spells, that she’d passed them down to Mamma. So why was Mamma so determined to keep these things hidden from her? Why did she go on insisting that it wasn’t magic? She felt that hot bead of anger bubble up in her again. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t Mamma trust her? It wasn’t as if she was a child anymore. Why couldn’t Mamma just explain these things instead of being all cloak and dagger about it?

She closed the book, tying the black ribbons in a precise bow, returning it and the jar and the candles to the box, replacing the lid, being careful to wipe away her fingermarks from the film of dust.

She lay staring up at the ceiling for a long time, watching the patch of orange from the nextdoor café’s security light waver over the pale plaster. She counted the Minster bells chiming the hour – ten and then eleven…

And just as she was drifting down that familiar wide black river, the stars swooping down to touch her face, she heard the jingle of the shop bell far below her and the sound of Mamma’s muffled laughter. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands, tucked her knees up under her and dived deeper into the cloudy darkness.


Mamma came back from London minus most of her hair. When Ella woke up the next morning and came into the kitchen, she was there, peering at her reflection in the kettle, patting and primping the cropped tendrils.

‘Blimey,’ Ella said, still feeling cross. ‘That’s drastic.’

Mamma spun round and crossed the kitchen, flinging her arms wide. ‘Tesora. There you are. Were you OK? You weren’t too lonely? I had such a lovely time! Next time, you have to come with us…’

Her eyes were more luminescent than ever in her small heart-shaped face, newly framed by the short dark hair.

Ella let herself be hugged.

‘Are you alright, Ella? Has something happened?’

She shook her head, helping herself to a piece of toast, buttering it fiercely.

Mamma bent over the chrome toaster and examined her reflection. She fingered a tendril of hair.

‘It was just… how do you say?... an impulse? We were walking past a salon and I thought, well, I haven’t done anything with it in so long… And then I thought, why not cut it all off! Be modern! Be brave!’ Her voice was higher than usual, coming out in little breathy gasps.

Ella remembered all the evenings that she’d taken the tortoiseshell comb to Mamma’s hair, moving her arm down its shining length, feeling it softness stroking the backs of her hands, the rhythmic motion calming her.

‘It’s lovely, mum,’ she relented. ‘It’s cool. It really suits you.’

Everything was changing so fast.