The Dress

Epilogue



A letter arrived this morning, addressed in familiar copperplate handwriting. As I unfolded the pink paper at the kitchen table, two photographs fell onto my plate.

One is a photograph of Mamma and me. The other is older, faded black and white. A little girl in a white dress standing in a garden. A statuesque woman in high-waisted trousers and a man’s cotton shirt is holding the little girl’s hand. She looks squarely into the camera. A smile plays at the corner of her mouth.

I flip it over. On the back someone whose writing I don’t recognise has scrawled ‘Farah, aged 2’ in pencil.

I prop the photos against my coffee cup and smooth out the letter.



Ella-issima,

I wanted to send you these photos. David says I could scan them in and email them to you but you know me. I’d rather do it this way.

One photo is, of course, of you and me from your last trip. Wasn’t it fun, tesora? And don’t we look good?!!

It was so, so lovely to see you all. I couldn’t believe how much Grace had grown. And she just looks so much like you!!! I’ve been boring everyone here with all the photos we took and David still insists on calling me Granny Fab.

The other photo is of me and my beloved grandmother. It arrived in the post from Madaar-Bozorg this morning and I absolutely wanted you to have it. Because I would have been almost the same age as Grace is now. Can you believe that? Madaar-Bozorg is 97 now – and, as she says in her last letter, still with all parts working.

Yes, tesora, I wanted you to see for yourself that you and Grace come from a long line of very strong women.

David’s new job is going really well. He loves living here – and so do I. But he’s still working out how to grow his roses in the California sunshine.

I think about you all the time, tesora. I still wish you’d consider moving out here. I miss you so much. But, as you say, England is your home in a way that it really never was mine. As long as you’re happy, carina.

One more thing and then I must go and open up. We’re so busy these days. People here are mad about vintage. I can’t keep up with these ladies.

I saw Katrina yesterday in Luccia’s, having breakfast! Well, brunch as they call it here. Can you imagine? It was such a coincidence. I almost couldn’t believe it was her.

She’s living in LA with her new film star husband. He’s terribly glamorous – and so is she. Her next film is a drama about pirates. Katrina plays the pirate queen. She’ll be filming in New Zealand, apparently. But she especially asked me to send you her love.

So tesora, call me when you get this.

All our love to Billy, Grace and you.



Baci,

Mamma



I look up from the letter and over at baby Grace, who’s already getting impatient with me. She’s wriggling her legs and holding out her fat little arms.

‘Mamma,’ she says. ‘Mamma.’

I smile and pick her up and balance her on my hip. She wrinkles her nose and pushes her face into the crook of my neck. She smells of baby and toast and Marseilles soap and something I can’t quite place, a fragrance that’s distinctively hers.

I pick up the photo of Mamma and me again, holding it safely out of Grace’s reach.

We’re standing together, leaning on a white fence. Beyond us is the Californian ocean. Mamma is laughing into the camera. She’s wearing red lipstick and giant sunglasses. Her black hair is blowing out behind her in the wind.

My face looks better than it usually does in photographs, probably because I too am wearing oversized shades. And for once, I’m smiling. Mamma’s arm is draped around my shoulders and I look surprisingly relaxed.

I’m wearing the blue 1950s swimming costume that Mamma found for me, double-layered and meticulously lined, with ruched sides and a halter neck.

‘It was made for the hourglass figure,’ she said, ‘For real women, not today’s stick insects.’ And even I can see that I look good in it.

I take both photographs and tuck them into the top corner of my dressing-table mirror. With my one free hand, I attempt to tidy my hair.

‘Mamma,’ Grace says again, her face dimpling. ‘Mamma.’

I wonder if she’s laughing at me?

I go back to the kitchen, pick up my steaming coffee cup and drain it in one gulp. Now I’m ready. I carry Grace carefully down the stairs to the shop.

Five years ago, when Billy and I announced that we were moving in together, some people were very worried for us. They said that we were too young, that later we’d make different choices.

All except Mamma.

‘Love is love is love,’ she said, kissing us each on both cheeks. Later, she offered me the lease to the shop.

In our first year, we did so well that I was able to take over the café next door, which has given us a little more space. These days, Happily Ever After isn’t just a bookshop any more but a thriving community café where people can browse through our stock and enjoy a meal or a snack or a glass of wine and, of course, our coffee is the best in town.

Today, I’m planning our next writing workshops, which are proving extremely popular.

Lots of Billy’s students like to hang around in the shop. We put on seminars and hold reading groups in politics and philosophy, which are Billy’s great passions, of course, and then seminars and signings by foreign writers. We’re getting quite a following.

We live over the café now. It’s a bigger flat, with three large bedrooms, so I can use the old flat - the little livingroom and kitchen and the bedroom that Mamma and I used to share - as a storeroom and a rather luxurious office.

Tonight, when Billy gets home and we’ve put Grace to bed, I’ll slip over there and dial Mamma’s number. We’ll chat a little, about this and that. Then I’ll settle down to an hour or so of writing.

My first novel was a quiet word-of-mouth success. What we call, in the trade, a slow-burner. But there’s a new story that I’ve been carrying around in my head lately.

I know how it begins, the shape of it, the feel of it, how the words sound in my mouth when I say them out loud, how all the different pieces might fit together.

And now I think I know how it ends.

But this old photograph of Mamma and Madaar-Bozorg has sparked off new connections. My mind won’t stay still.

I’m trying to make sense of it, trying to relax my mind to that single, still point, let my breathing go quiet, let the raw edges find their own pattern and the rougher seams smooth themselves.

What would Mamma do?

I can feel her now, all around me, even though she’s thousands of miles away. A faint crackle under my fingers, a squiggle of blue, a flicker of yellow.

‘Shhhh.’ The Signals whisper. ‘Shhhh… Listen…’

And I can hear her now on the other side of the ocean, her voice with its slow rich vowels as she stirs the sugar in her cup of coffee, seven times and always anti-clockwise.

‘What do you feel, carina?’ she says, ‘What do you feel, deep inside you? What does this fabric already know? What does it want to be?’

Grace sits in the middle of the shop floor and looks at me with her calm, clear eyes. I smile at her and scribble quickly in my notebook:

‘An overcoat, a pair of leopard print shoes, a plume of emerald green feathers…’

I can’t wait to get started.