Want to Know a Secret?

by Sue Moorcroft

  Relieved to reach fresh air, outside the station she was transfixed by a shop mannequin, wearing a red suit and a stupid hat, unaccountably left on a picnic chair in the middle of the pedestrian street with a guitar across his lap. Three giggling teenaged girls were waving their fingers in his face. Diane seemed to be the only one astonished when the ‘mannequin’ came to life and played a few bars on his guitar. He must be one of the famous living statues she’d read about.

  ‘What a bloody tedious way to make a living,’ she muttered, disgusted. Further down the busy paved street she found another of these curious creatures, painted entirely in silver and striking a pose he was only motivated to change at the chink of money in his basket. Mr and Mrs Tourist and all the little tourists were out in force and seemingly willing to break off their chatter in order to donate coins to this end. Good luck to them.

  Diane turned her attention to the right and a columned building, Covent Garden Market arching over the doorway in gilded lettering.

  The shop was in there, somewhere. The Monkee Box.

  A highly unlikely name for a clothes shop, it prompted an unpleasant uncoiling sensation in the pit of Diane’s stomach each time it floated through her head. On the journey down, surrounded by passengers on mobile phones or listening to MP3 players, she’d tried, and failed, to visualise marching in and challenging the origins of the shop’s stock.

  Too scary! She needed more time to gather herself and 11.30am didn’t strike her as the best time to confront the manager of a busy shop. She would wait until the other side of the lunch-hour and, meantime, explore this famous area of the capital city.

  Soon she was absorbed in testing hand creams in Crabtree & Evelyn and drinking tiny samples of tea in Whittards, entering from The Piazza and accidentally leaving by the other door.

  And there, on the other side of The Apple Market, hung the newly familiar words. The Monkee Box.

  No! She wasn’t ready! Heart fluttering, she swung back towards The Piazza.

  A street entertainer was preparing to walk a tight rope slung between two of the four enormous columns of St. Paul’s Church. Diane joined the crowd craning to see him try. But when, after quarter of an hour, all he’d done was talk about walking the tight rope, she detached herself from his audience in favour of a tour around the covered market hall, pausing to admire stalls full of glass and silver jewellery.

  At the end of The Apple Market – no apples on sale, but prints of watercolours of London scenes and elegant jewellery that she eventually realised with astonishment was made from forks – she was drawn by the aroma of coffee. Her stomach gurgled. She checked her watch.

  After queuing for ages, she then found it difficult to choose between creamy pasta dishes and exotically filled baguettes. Finally deciding on a parmesan chicken baguette, she got flustered trying to order cappuccino where she was meant to order food and then waiting for the food when she was supposed to move to where the food would be waiting for her. She somehow managed to order the cappuccino twice, but that, looking at the length of the queue behind her, was fortuitous, and she settled down at a table to enjoy her meal and watch over people’s heads as a man on a unicycle juggled bright blue clubs, coaching his audience to cheer, clap or boo on his cue.

  After the meal – very nice – Diane followed her ears into the next hall and downstairs into the lower courtyard where a string quintet was simultaneously creating wonderful rousing music and causing gusts of laughter. Intrigued, Diane bought a glass of red wine and took one of the little green tables – well back, because it was evident that the musicians considered those in the front row to be targets, especially two polished women who giggled and tossed their expensive haircuts as the musicians stole sips of their champagne.

  Diane resolved that one day she would buy champagne at Covent Garden – with money that she had earned herself – and sip away the afternoon, laughing and clapping and tossing her hair.

  At three, she could shelve the purpose of her visit no longer.

  She ate a mint, used the public toilets and forced her anxious legs to carry her to The Monkee Box.

  Although she had the garment Natalia had purchased with The Monkee Box and the astonishing sum printed on the receipt, it still seemed too incredible to Diane that something she’d made could sell here for £209. She half-expected that somehow there would prove to be some plausible explanation that would make her feel foolish, but relieved, and counting the cost of a wasted day.

  Forcing her chin up, she made her way to where The Monkee Box was painted in yellow above a royal blue frontage. Inside the door, a young member of staff beamed at her. ‘Hi!’

  ‘Hi,’ responded Diane, politely.

  ‘If you need any help at all, please ask any member of staff.’ She had a slight, pretty accent, perhaps Scandinavian.

  ‘Thank you.’ Diane moved over to the first rail wondering if that poor little girl had to spend her working life parroting the same redundant phrase to everyone who wandered in. She must be nearly fainting from the monotony.

  The shop was laid out on two floors, ground and basement. The clothes hung on simple chrome rails and Diane was soon engrossed in the ground-floor garments. The prices! £209 wasn’t unusual for a dress in The Monkee Box – which maybe should be renamed The Monee Box – and there were loads priced higher. And, astonishingly, although silk and linen were immensely popular, sometimes those prices were charged just for polyester. She couldn’t believe it.

  The current fashion for unfinished seams and hems had apparently been readily embraced by The Monkee Box clientele, although a requirement for lavish detail did kind of balance that out so far as the work involved was concerned. Diane could see how her own brand of boho would fit right in here, the diaphanous layers, threaded cord, D rings, straps, sequins, lace, rick-rack, ribbon, dull buckles and gleaming eyelets. She drifted among the rails and down to the basement, almost forgetting her original purpose as she stored in her memory bank diagonal waists and big floppy bows.

  As she studied a devoré skirt on a rail at the foot of the stairs something caught the corner of her eye. And there it was – a grey linen dress with pink ribbon executing a single twist each time it tacked from side to side of the garment. Snatching it up, she checked for the label and saw the familiar turquoise and yellow. And the price … £229.

  Angrily, she flicked through the rails but found only one other garment, a red skirt with a black lacing and flick-up hem. She carried them upstairs and pre-empted an offer from a smiling member of staff to show her to the fitting room by announcing loudly, ‘I need to speak to the manager about the origins of these garments. Immediately.’

  Like magic, an elliptical woman with skin of amber and a frizzy bun on the back of her head materialised. ‘Can I help?’

  Diane held up the two garments that almost blurred before her eyes, she was shaking so much. ‘You can explain to me how my work makes its way onto your racks – as I don’t sell it to you.’

  In seconds she was ushered to another door revealing another staircase, upwards this time, and the woman was settling her into a green leather chair and pouring coffee from a jug kept on a hotplate near the window, saying, ‘I’m Amelia Fountain, the manager. I’m astonished by what you’ve just said. Can you add detail?’

  Amelia was short and dumpy and draped in a khaki angora shawl over a long linen dress in shades of mud and a silk scarf belt coloured like a sunset. Her hair looked as though it could be knitted from angora, too, and she had a sweet voice that seemed at odds with her forthright manner.

  Still trembling, Diane laid the two garments over the pine table that served as a desk. ‘These are mine – at least, I designed and made them. I sold them to Rowan Chater at Rowan’s in Peterborough for sale in his shop.’

  Amelia nodded, her elbows out and her hands laid one on top of the other on the table in front of her. ‘There can be no mistake? Similar garments? Copies?’

  ‘None. My garments. My labels. My stitching.’
>
  Amelia nodded again, thoughtfully, reaching to finger the pink ribbon as if it might tell her its secrets. Her gaze was direct. ‘Are you accusing this company of shady dealings?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are they shady?’

  ‘I’m not the buyer,’ said Amelia, ‘but I do sometimes make recommendations and I recommended these garments be bought in. Rowan Chater came to the shop with an introduction from somebody I used to work with. He made a lot of being in the trade, wishing he could move his operation here, all that kind of thing. He said he had a local designer who was wasted in a small provincial city.’ Amelia replaced her hands tidily in front of her. ‘I agreed to look at it. I liked it. He said that he’d arranged to agent the designs and was taking 15%.’

  Diane choked back a laugh that might have become a sob. ‘Agent! He pretended that he sold them in his shop and had a job to get rid of them. He paid me peanuts. And all the time the slimy bastard was bringing my garments to you and making a big profit.’ She swallowed, hard.

  Amelia’s eyes were sympathetic. ‘It’s been going on for some time.’ She rubbed one of her hands on another as Diane fought her tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘But I don’t think anyone’s done anything illegal and I had no reason to believe that he was pulling a fast one. Unless you had a contract that he would sell what you sold him from a specific outlet, I think he’s free to sell stock on.’

  Diane nodded, throat stretched with tears.

  Then the urge to cry vanished as an interesting thought blossomed. ‘Did they sell? My designs?’

  ‘Oh, yes. No problems there. I like your stuff.’

  Sitting up straighter, Diane fixed on what she hoped was a businesslike expression. Miraculously, her trembling ceased. ‘So would you buy garments directly from me?’

  Amelia reached again for the coffee jug, with a glimmer of a smile. ‘It does seem the best arrangement. Let’s talk Monkee.’

  Back in Peterborough, James was waiting as the train groaned into the station. Carried by a wave of joy, Diane had bounced over to hug him before she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ Somehow, her hand touched his.

  His eyes smiled, despite the sadness in their depths. ‘Tamzin and George tried to ring you and Bryony told them that you’d just texted home with the time of your train. I came to see if you’d fill me in with what happened at Covent Garden.’ He grinned. ‘I promise not to press my unwanted and unwarranted advice on you.’

  Across a table in the steamy coffee shop she told him about her confrontation of Amelia Fountain in the Monkee Box. ‘It’s Rowan, exactly as I suspected. Nasty little worm. And,’ she paused, impressively, ‘I offered to sell my garments direct to the Monkee Box and Amelia said yes!’

  His face lit up. ‘You’re officially a successful businesswoman. Congratulations.’

  She laughed. Then she stopped. ‘Was I rude when you offered to help with Rowan?’

  ‘Bloody rude, but I didn’t offer to help, I tried to take over. A fault of mine. Sorry.’ His eyes smiled.

  She put her head on one side. ‘Humility doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘Nothing suits me.’ His eyes stopped smiling. ‘I’m in a nightmare. My wife’s dead, my daughters are distraught, my father-in-law is the personification of grief and I think it’s only his anger at his loss that’s preventing his heart from sending him after his daughter. Tamzin has announced that she’s done seeing doctors, counsellors and therapists.

  ‘Valerie’s affairs are orderly but complex and I’m her chief executor. I would never have believed that she could cause me more stress and paperwork now than she did when she was alive. And the girls are intelligent enough to realise that although it was her injuries that made her vulnerable to the embolism, being a heavy smoker and drinker almost invited it. So their emotions are all over the place.

  ‘And through it all, the weeks of hassle and heartache and the regret and even despite the awful, ever-present guilt, a tiny piece of me wants you to be sewing something quietly in the same room while I deal with the paperwork tsunami. Whenever the girls dissolve into tears I want you to appear with understanding words and hot, buttered toast.’

  He smiled, painfully. ‘You didn’t know how right you were going to be proved about it being the wrong time for us.’

  She sighed in unhappy acknowledgement. ‘Apart from Valerie, Bryony needs family stability and so do your girls.’

  He examined her hand, caressing the rough patch on her left forefinger with one square fingertip. ‘Do you think you’ll ever leave him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m trying to keep my marriage going in some form for Bryony and her unborn baby. I can’t see far past that, right now.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right to do that.’

  ‘I suppose I am.’ Despair tugged at her chest.

  He sighed. ‘So I’d better go home and cope with stuff.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  In the car park, they kissed cheeks by her car in an unexceptional manner.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Diane picked up her bag and car keys then tapped at Bryony’s door. ‘Come on then, if you want a lift into Peterborough.’

  Bryony’s voice was muffled. ‘Two minutes.’

  Downstairs, Gareth was already settled in his armchair, the newspaper and TV remote balanced on the arms, his crutches beside him and his legs on a stool. He frowned over his reading glasses as she passed through the sitting room. ‘Going out?’

  ‘Peterborough. Bryony’s coming, too.’

  ‘What are you going there for?’ His heavy brow shut down over his eyes.

  Had she always reported her movements to him automatically?

  He’d never seemed to feel a need to reciprocate, and somehow she hadn’t really expected it.

  An appointment at the bank was scheduled and she had no intention of sharing that information with him, nor the update to the business plan that James had shown her how to draw up, to her an unnecessarily formal method of saying, ‘I need more money because I now have two fabulous outlets to supply and will have to buy another machine and somebody to use it.’ To cope with Unity’s Christmas orders, plus supplying The Monkee Box, she was going to need someone who could cut patterns and machine- and hand-sew as soon as possible and Gareth was bound to explode when he discovered there would be a strange person in the workroom – which he insisted on still referring to as the dining room – every day. Until that hurdle had to be leapt she intended to keep her business as just that – her business.

  ‘I’ve got a few things to do. I’ll be back this afternoon,’ she answered. ‘There’s plenty of soup in the cupboard for your lunch, or you could make a sandwich.’

  ‘I suppose I can manage,’ he said shortly, and pointed the TV remote at the set.

  ‘I’m sure you can.’

  Bryony padded down the stairs. Her pregnancy showed itself as a soft segment of big naked tummy looming between her maternity jeans and a top the colour of blackberries. Diane wasn’t keen on the look. When she’d been pregnant the idea had been to cover up the bump and distract the eye with flamboyant collars, not display it for everyone to admire. But such observations only drew Bryony’s most exasperated, ‘Oh, Mum!’

  ‘See you this afternoon, Dad.’ Bryony dropped a kiss on her father’s cheek.

  His forbidding expression melted into a smile for her. ‘Mind how you go, darling.’

  ‘Want anything from Peterborough?’ Bryony perched on the edge of a chair and slid her feet into gold-coloured trainers with dark turquoise laces, bending awkwardly.

  Gareth’s smile broadened at her concern. ‘I could do with a new box of tissues –’

  ‘Kitchen cupboard,’ offered Diane.

  ‘– and a pen that works –’

  ‘Kitchen drawer.’

  ‘– and a sudoku book.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you do sudoku,’ commented Bryony, standing up.

  ‘Got to keep the
little grey cells going.’

  Diane looked at her watch and moved towards the door, heroically suppressing an unworthy remark that yes, he would need to find some activity to replace the deceit and duplicity with which he’d exercised his mind for so long.

  In the car, as soon as Gareth was safely out of hearing, Bryony burst out, ‘Well? Was it really your stuff on sale in Covent Garden?’

  Diane cast a glance behind her as she pulled away from the house, as if Gareth might be tuned into their conversation, somehow. ‘It was. But it’s all working out, because now I’m going to supply The Monkee Box myself!’

  Bryony’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘That’s so cool. A Covent Garden shop wants to sell your stuff. How cool is that? That’s so cool.’

  Turning into Purtenon St. Paul’s main street, making sure that she got out ahead of an oncoming tractor to avoid following it at 15mph for miles, Diane laughed. ‘I admit I hadn’t seen it in quite that light. I’ve been focusing on how some shit’s been buying stuff off me cheap and selling it on heavily marked up.’

  Bryony’s brows shot up. ‘Oh, yeah. So, are you going to speak to Rowan?’

  Diane accelerated away from the village. ‘He’s going to be my first call this morning.’

  The brown eyes shone again. ‘Can I come? I haven’t seen you in a strop for ages.’

  ‘If you think me in a strop is particularly entertaining.’

  Bryony giggled. ‘I love to watch you giving someone shit.’

  ‘Problem is that it doesn’t seem as if he’s done anything illegal. I didn’t sell him the stuff with any provisos.’

  ‘You could give him shit, anyway. He’s totally out of order.’

  They found Rowan’s shop busy, Yummy Mummies flexing their credit cards now that the children had returned to school for the autumn term and shopping, once again, had become an indulgence rather than a hideous endurance test.

  Rowan’s glance lit on Diane over the head of a customer in a floor-length, pale-grey, knitted cardigan that matched the colour of today’s sky. His hair was cut so close, it was like suede. ‘I’m busy, can you come back in an hour?’ His dismissive tone would have been perfect for the hired help.