Dressing the Dearloves

by Kelly Doust

  ‘Shame,’ said Gigi, searching in the pockets of the coat before she found what she was looking for. ‘Aha!’ she exclaimed, pulling out a half-smoked joint and holding it up to the light, before pocketing it in the voluminous folds of her emerald YSL kaftan.

  Penns let out an amused little snort. ‘Venus in furs,’ she murmured, and Sylvie had the sudden realisation that they were birds of a feather, her grandmother and Penny. Penns was more together than Gigi, but they both had the same laissez-faire attitude.

  Tabs was still talking. ‘The cut is absolutely gorgeous, Gigi. I love the way it flares out at the bottom. And the shearling cuffs. Such a cool touch.’

  ‘I always felt very glam in it,’ Gigi reflected. ‘I wore this coat for years. I ended up sleeping in it on more occasions than I’d like to admit, but it was so cosy . . . Doubled as a pillow as well sometimes. God, that’s all I could use it for now, though, isn’t it?’ she laughed, looking down at her considerable girth.

  ‘What about you, Sylvie – does it fit?’ Gigi asked, turning to her granddaughter.

  Sylvie took off her kimono jacket and slipped one arm into the coat. It was snug but cosy, as Gigi had said. Gigi helped her into the other arm, the both of them moving over to look at Sylvie’s reflection in the mirror. Sylvie turned around, admiring the chic suede belt that did up with a tortoiseshell buckle around her waist. Gigi was right – the coat did carry a faint whiff of marijuana.

  ‘You know, I should really have done one of these in faux fur instead of wool,’ Sylvie murmured. ‘It was too expensive. White on the inside, tan on the outside. That would have been much better.’

  Tabs came over, studying the seams on the back of the coat as Penns lit up another ciggie, standing to blow the smoke outside the half-cracked gable window.

  ‘If you’d like, I could cut you a pattern from this . . . I know some really good suppliers for the faux fur as well. Looks like the real deal, and it’s just as soft. Stella McCartney uses them.’

  Sylvie smiled crookedly. ‘If I ever design anything again, you mean?’

  ‘You might,’ said Penns, surprising her. ‘Never say never!’

  ‘Atta girl,’ nodded Gigi. ‘Sylvie’s got to get back to her designing again, it’s where her heart is.’

  They were all looking at her suddenly, and Sylvie’s face went bright red with embarrassment. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said firmly, taking off the coat and putting it back on the hanger. ‘I went bust, remember? I’m not going there again.’

  ‘Nick’s here,’ said Gigi, changing the subject. ‘With a mate. Doing something in the garden. Wendy wanted me to let you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Sylvie went over to the window and looked down, trying to see him.

  ‘Other side – they’re out back.’

  The three girls and Gigi piled over to a window on the other side of the attic. Her grandmother gave an inappropriate whistle. ‘He’s a bit of a looker, isn’t he?’

  ‘Gigi!’ Sylvie said, scandalised.

  ‘Cor,’ said Penns. ‘I haven’t seen Nick for years. He’s grown up a bit, hasn’t he? Looking quite the wholesome country boy. Not my type, but I could make an exception . . .’

  Sylvie saw that Penns had that familiar hungry look on her face and she suddenly felt unreasonably irritated.

  ‘Who’s his friend?’ Tabs asked, nodding down into the garden.

  ‘Some guy called Sam, I think,’ said Sylvie. ‘He mentioned he might bring him along to help.’ Tabs was watching them both pull out weeds around the stables. Sam wasn’t quite as tall as Nick, and had darker, shorter hair, but he was just as filled-out and healthy-looking.

  ‘Forget the coat, Nick’s the dish,’ Penns sighed, flopping back onto the chaise longue and stubbing out her cigarette in an already full ashtray, shooting them all a wicked grin.

  Much later that night the girls were sipping martinis in their pyjamas and painting their toenails in Sylvie’s bedroom. Penn’s suitcase looked like it had exploded all over the room – she’d come to bunk in with the two of them when she’d spied a rat gnawing at one of the wires snaking its way out of her bedroom wall. ‘Maybe if there’s three of us, it’ll attack one of you first. I don’t fancy it nibbling my toes.’

  ‘Your grandmother’s a scream,’ Penns said now, slurring slightly, as she tried to put her empty glass on the bedside table but dropped it to the floor instead. It landed with a heavy thud. ‘God, sorry . . . It’s not broken though.’ She shrugged, not bothering to pick it up. ‘You know, I love all that seventies stuff she had up in the attic, and what she was wearing today.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s let herself go a bit?’ Sylvie asked, a little surprised – Penny had always been so ruthless about staying thin herself.

  ‘God, no! She’s totally fab. Completely authentic. The sixties and seventies were such an awesome era. I wish I’d lived back then, at the start of the sexual revolution. Everybody was so cool! I love the way cheap air travel opened up the world and suddenly everything became really ethnic-inspired. Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley in Essaouira . . . The Beatles in India . . . Your grandmother with the Stones in rural France . . .’ Penny trailed off, trying to focus her bleary eyes on applying her nail polish. She slipped, and a strip of bright red polish streaked across her pinkie toe.

  ‘Oops . . .’

  Tabs laughed. ‘You’re drunk, Penns.’

  ‘M’not . . .’

  ‘Gigi’s an old flake,’ said Sylvie. ‘You should hear how Lizzie talks about her. She’s completely scathing.’

  Penns propped herself up on her elbow. ‘I think Gigi’s awesome. She’s all like, Namaste, bitches . . . She clearly doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, and that’s brilliant. I hope I’ll be just like her when I’m old.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, you will!’ Tabs poked at her, laughing out loud.

  Penns sniffed at them both disdainfully. ‘I meant that cool. Unjudgemental . . . Wise.’

  ‘What?’ Sylvie was taken aback. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Hmm, she has a point,’ Tabs said, tipping her head slightly towards Penns. ‘Gigi’s definitely got that sort of wise woman energy about her.’

  ‘Really, do you think so? I never thought of her like that.’ Sylvie put her martini glass down on the bedside table and delicately leaned over the edge of the bed – careful not to ruin her polish – to retrieve Penny’s toppled glass. When she straightened up, she noticed that Penny had flopped back against the pillows and was lightly snoring, completely out for the count.

  ‘Typical,’ snorted Tabs. ‘Two-pot screamer is our Penns.’

  ‘I don’t know that Gigi’s wise,’ Sylvie said again, looking down into her glass. ‘She always struck me as kind of desperate . . . She’s only here because she doesn’t have a choice. She’s broke, essentially, and doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’ It sounded worryingly familiar, Sylvie thought. She took a deep breath. ‘Lizzie told me that Gigi almost begged her to come back here, about fifteen years ago. I think she’s lucky that Lizzie agreed, after leaving Dad with her the way she did, when he was a baby.’

  ‘Ah, love, you don’t really know what happened, though, do you?’ Tabs said speculatively.

  Sylvie stiffened. ‘I know what Lizzie’s told me.’

  ‘Yeah, but you know Lizzie doesn’t approve of Gigi. They just don’t get along, that’s plainly obvious. You’d never pick them out as mother and daughter, either. There’s clearly no love lost between them.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you could say the same about me and Mum,’ Sylvie said. ‘We’re so unalike.’

  Tabs looked at her askance. ‘You’re not that different, you wally! I think your mum’s great. And she adores you.’

  Sylvie threw a pillow at her head. ‘You think everyone’s great.’

  Tabs batted it away. ‘Besides, you can never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives.’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t bet on Lizzie giving you the whole story.’

  ‘Yeah, I sup
pose so . . .’ Sylvie remained unconvinced.

  ‘But still, I reckon you’re lucky, babes. You’ve got an amazing, supportive family. And this place is incredible.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Sylvie sat up abruptly. ‘It’s a mess! The taxes are crippling and it’s a bloody millstone, an albatross around our necks. You only think it’s so glamorous because you haven’t grown up here or seen all of it properly . . . You don’t even want to know about the east wing! It’s been shut off for years, it’s in complete decay.’

  ‘Even so,’ Tabs shrugged, ‘lots of people would kill to live here.’

  Sylvie sighed and flopped back onto the pillows. ‘It’s just so much pressure.’

  ‘You’re definitely going back to New York then? I suppose Ben and all your friends miss you loads?’ Tabs said quietly. Sylvie heard the slight catch to her voice.

  She thought about Gisele and all her other New York acquaintances – they’d been surprisingly quiet since she’d flown back across the Atlantic, rarely getting in touch by email or text, and no one apart from Ben had bothered to ring her at all.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, her heart sinking slightly. ‘I mean, what else am I going to do?’

  ‘Have you thought about what I was saying this afternoon, about Gigi’s coat? I was thinking, you have all that stuff up there in the attic to play with – why not re-create some of it as limited-edition pieces, and sell them on Instagram or something, or through a shopping site like Etsy? You could keep it really small at first. You wouldn’t even need to launch it properly or say it’s yours . . . It’s not like you’d have to bring out a proper collection each season, cause they’re not even in fashion any more. What do you say? We could do it together, it could be a bit of fun.’

  Sylvie looked uncertain. It sounded like the sort of idea she’d once have embraced with real gusto, but she was feeling so unsure of herself these days, always second-guessing her ideas, and herself.

  ‘I don’t know. That would mean I’d have to stay here for at least another few months. I’m not sure how I feel about that,’ she admitted.

  Tabs caught her by the hand. ‘That’d be so lovely, though! We could spend more time together.’

  Sylvie smiled thinly, the smile not quite reaching her eyes. ‘I really don’t know if I’ve got it in me, to be honest. I just feel so . . . burnt out.’

  Tabs suddenly swung her legs over the edge of the bed. ‘I’d better go brush my teeth,’ she said, standing up and padding over to the door. Tabs was halfway out when she popped her head around the door again.

  ‘You know,’ she said quietly, nodding at Penny and then looking at Sylvie searchingly, ‘I always thought we’d be there for each other, through thick and thin. We’re mates, right? I hope we’re all going to live on the same continent one day, and spend more time like this together. Don’t you want that too?’

  Sylvie waved her back in. ‘Don’t say that – of course I do. Hey, Tabs,’ she gulped, wondering if she should stop herself before she said anything more.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s something else I didn’t mention. About New York,’ she croaked.

  ‘What’s that?’ Tabs was frowning slightly as she came back to perch on the edge of the bed. She waited for Sylvie to speak.

  ‘Well, I—’ Sylvie’s mouth went dry. She took another swig of her martini for courage. ‘I kind of . . . well I slept with someone there who I shouldn’t have,’ she croaked. ‘With Ben’s best friend, actually.’ She screwed her eyes tightly shut, covering her face with her hands, before opening one eye to look at Tabs through her fingers. What must she think? Was she horrified? Sylvie told herself she was just like one of those awful people on Jerry Springer who get themselves into a sordid mess.

  But Tabs’s face didn’t give anything away. ‘Why?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t know . . . I was drunk, maybe. But it was more than that.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Sylvie went on to explain how she’d run into Josh in the street that day, after her disappointing afternoon of trying to design her next collection, and the way he’d made her feel so sparky and special, and how that had been, somehow, such an irresistible turn-on.

  ‘But you said Ben’s really supportive of you as well, didn’t you?’

  ‘He is, but— I don’t know, Tabs . . . There’s not that real chemistry there, you know? I so wanted it to work, I really did. On paper Ben’s pretty well perfect, but . . .’

  ‘But there’s no real spark between you.’ Tabs finished her sentence, smiling grimly.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, you can’t fake it, pet.’ She reached out and patted Sylvie’s cheek. ‘That’s your heart talking to you. God knows I’ve felt it often enough with all the blokes Mum keeps trying to set me up with . . . You have to listen to your heart. Maybe that’s an indication that you should really stay here, after all?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sylvie, turning the strange idea over in her mind and wondering if it were really possible. It would mean giving up on her New York dream for good. Was she ready to do that yet? She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Well, it looks like you have lots to think about. Let’s talk more about it tomorrow. But you know, don’t beat yourself up about it. We all do things we regret.’ Tabs stretched her arms above her head, and yawned uncontrollably, stepping over the mattress laid out beside Sylvie’s bed, which was already made up. ‘Gotta get ready for bed. I might have a bath first, though. Sleep well, sweetie, if I’m not back before you pass out.’ She blew Sylvie a kiss goodnight as she left the room.

  ‘Night,’ Sylvie said, blowing her one back, feeling relief and guilt in equal measure.

  Maybe Tabs was right – who else could she totally, one hundred percent, count on over there? For all that her new life in New York had given her, it hadn’t forged the kind of friendships that lasted a lifetime, not like the ones she had here, back home in England. It had a certain appeal, the idea of reconnecting with the old friends who had known her and loved her before she’d fucked up so royally, and maybe they could remind her of who she used to be, before she went away.

  Sylvie flopped back onto the bed, causing Penny to let out a small groan – before her friend rolled over and started snoring again, more loudly this time.

  Sylvie stared up at the ceiling. But what was there to return to here, if Bledesford was about to be packed up and sold? Would she move up to London, or would she move somewhere closer to her parents and hide herself away in the countryside? The thought made her shudder. But with the Daily Mail piece coming out this weekend, she realised she didn’t have much choice – her job prospects in London would be slim after that.

  The thoughts swirled around inside her brain, seeming to mock and plague her. Turning restlessly onto her side, Sylvie knew that she was in for another sleepless night.

  20

  The train slowly rumbled along the tracks, stopping and starting as it entered London’s scruffy outer suburbs before jerking unsteadily to a stop. A voice with a West Indian accent came over the tannoy: ‘We are experiencing some delays due to the heat today. Please make sure you are carrying water with you at all times. This train will be arriving at Victoria Station at approximately 10.15 a.m.’

  A frustrated sigh went up from the other passengers, but Sylvie felt almost relieved – the extra half-hour would give her time to compose herself and corral her galloping thoughts.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s not going to bite your head off,’ Tabs had reassured her last weekend when she’d registered Sylvie’s nervousness.

  ‘But I still haven’t finished, and I keep trying to find out what some of the key pieces were used for and who owned them!’ she fretted, throwing a pencil skirt back on the bed and reaching for a fun-looking fifties frock covered in Monet-style lilies. She just couldn’t decide what to wear to the meeting. ‘I can’t ask Lizzie without sounding a bit suss,’ she said, smoothing down the skirt with its voluminous petticoat beneath. ‘I’ve be
en going through all her photo albums, and she’s wondering why I keep asking so many questions – but I’m finding it hard to work out the provenance otherwise. Gigi and Mum can only help so much, and only some of the pieces have details of who they belonged to.’

  It had been a boon to discover the handwritten luggage tags scrawled with a curling cursive in faded indigo ink, explaining some of the pieces and who they were owned by (‘Birdie’s gown: Summer Ball, Scatterley Hall, 1906’). They were tied to the top of the padded hangers or popped in pockets, and Sylvie had thrilled at the discovery at first. But it appeared that whoever had been industrious enough to document them had only managed to complete roughly a quarter of the hanging pieces. And the rest in the steamer trunks and tea chests were completely jumbled up, with no order to the mayhem at all. Velvet Uzbek-style waistcoats shared space with sweat-stiffened dancers’ costumes, and pearl-buttoned gloves of an unknown vintage. Hand-stitched silk jackets with flimsy lace and organza bodices which Sylvie would have found a struggle to fit into at twelve had, from the curve of ample bosom space, clearly once belonged to a grown woman.

  ‘It’s just a first meeting. You can’t be expected to know it all.’

  ‘But didn’t you say the V&A would want to know the stories behind everything?’ Sylvie said, bunching her hands together in a maroon velvet scarf entwined with thick pewter threads and burnished beads. She wondered whether it was originally Prussian. Or from a gypsy caravan, painted with bold vermillion and bottle-green wheels . . . Her mind wandered off into a little fairy tale.

  ‘I mean, that’s the thing that usually appeals to me – the stories that come with the clothes, don’t you think?’ Sylvie slipped her feet into a pair of short black ankle boots, with the fifties frock and bare legs. There, she thought. Look complete.

  ‘Ideally, yes, but you’ve done so much of the cataloguing already, and the pieces you’ve chosen are exquisite. Come on, look at all the “likes” you’ve had on Instagram already! Ooh, that reminds me, you really must show them to her – I think she’ll be quite impressed.’