The Dress

16.

Full-length slip dress. Oyster-coloured silk. Bespoke Chanel. Date unknown.



What was Jean Cushworth thinking?

Fabbia turned the question over in her mind as her needle dipped in and out of the beaded panel. She liked the feel of the silk in her fingers and the way that her mind stilled to the rhythm of the needle. In and out, in and out.

Since the party, everyone had been so kind. So many nice words. So many new customers.

Perhaps she’d been wrong about Jean Cushworth. She certainly knew how to throw a party. And it seemed that, if she decided that she liked you, that was that. You were in.

‘A monstrous woman, ‘ David had said. ‘That poor husband of hers. I don’t know how he puts up with it.‘

But Fabbia didn’t like to be cynical about people. She could see Jean Cushworth now in her mind’s eye, silhouetted against her enormous French windows, her hair perfectly coloured and coiffed, her perfect nails, her perfect make-up. Everything always so perfect on the outside. Who knows what she felt on the inside?

Loneliness, maybe? Wanting to be good enough? Wanting to be loved? Fabbia know how all those things could change a person.

But now there was the problem of this dress.

Yesterday evening, after school, the girl Katrina, such a strange young girl, always looking so unhappy, had arrived at the shop door with a parcel.

‘My mum’s been going through a few old things and thought you might be able to use these,’ she said.

She’d turned away then, sweeping out of the shop as quickly as she’d come in. Hardly time to thank her.

‘Give your mother my regards,’ she’d called, but the girl was already across the courtyard, turning the corner, that funny half-smile on her face. So rude, thought Fabbia, but then her eyes never seem to smile. My heart feels heavy for her.

When she cut carefully through the brown paper and separated the layers of tissue, she couldn’t help exclaiming to herself.

Dio mio. A headpiece, such a thing, confection of white feathers, diamante and crystal-studded veil. So theatrical, so dramatic. So Jean Cushworth, really.

A silk clutch sewn with what must be thousands of crystals. Swarowski, thought Fabbia, nodding her head, approvingly.

A silk kaftan-style sundress in palest toffee-coloured silk. Fabbia didn’t even need to check the label to know that this was Donna Karan, circa 1995.

And, finally, the dress.

As she lifted the layers of tissue, it slithered into her hands and spread itself across the counter.



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 show 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?’