The woman stirs, eyes flickering, gathering awareness.
“Raf,” she murmurs. “Where’s Raf?”
“I’m afraid you fell down some stairs,” Fran explains, knowing she can’t leave her despite it being the simple answer. “You’ve hit your head.”
“You’re not Raf,” groans the woman. “Where’s Raf?”
“I—I don’t know. I can call him for you? Do you know his number?”
The woman moans, shuts her eyes, then Fran remembers his number is still in her phone from earlier. Triumphant, she calls it, but as she waits for an answer, she questions herself: Is Rafael really the person to speak to, given the previous scene she’d witnessed between him and this woman? And will he even answer, or will she get the frosty assistant again?
“Hello?”
“Is—is this Rafael?”
“Yes.”
How to say this? Fran takes a breath… “Sorry to bother you, but I’m at your late mother’s house, Dryad’s Hall—which I can totally explain, so don’t think I’m crazy or anything—but the important thing is, your girlfriend or wife or whoever she is, the one you argued with, she’s here too. And it looks like she’s fallen down the stairs and knocked herself out. She’s quite badly hurt, and, well, she’s asking for you.”
Fran has already made up her mind that if he isn’t interested—which seems likely given his general hostility—she will go to plan B and find a way to get the woman in a cab, then send her wherever she wants to go, but to her surprise, Rafael’s response is quick and concerned.
“Where is she? Is she bleeding? Is she conscious?”
“I’m with her. Don’t panic.”
“Oh thank god.”
“She’s coming around, but… Look, I don’t mean to be nosy, but is she…on anything? She’s not really with it, like she’s really drunk and—”
“Who is this?” he demands.
“Um, Francesca. Francesca Delaney. I helped at your house clearance the other day. The wedding dress, the one you threw in the dumpster—”
“You?”
“In a word, yes…me.”
“Wait there,” he says. “Stay by her side, won’t you? Don’t let her out of your sight. You mustn’t let her out your sight. I’ll be straight over.”
With that, Fran stares down at her dreadlocked charge. “Oh boy,” she whispers, amazed at her capacity to find trouble in the unlikeliest of ways.
* * *
As Rafael emerges through the doorway, he isn’t interested in Fran’s whys and wherefores. He rushes to the woman, kneels beside her, cradles her head in his arm—so tenderly, so differently from the way he treated her before.
Fran doesn’t speak. She just looks on, lets them have their moment.
The woman stirs. “Wha—? Where am I?”
“Janey, I’m here.”
“Raf. Oh, Raf…”
He holds her face, almost smiles, strokes her forehead, then his expression tightens. He starts rifling through her bag. “What are you on?” he demands.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie.”
“Vodka.”
“And?”
“Codeine.”
Rafael throws his gaze to the ceiling.
Fran shuffles uncomfortably—this isn’t a conversation for strange ears. She contemplates slipping away, but he catches her in his sights, looks straight at her.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for calling me. Um…do you have a tissue or a handkerchief, something I can wipe her head with?”
“This?” says Fran, fishing a vintage Liberty print scarf from her bag—one of her prize possessions, but it seems like the right thing to do.
Rafael dabs the blood around Janey’s eye and encourages her to sit up. Her head lolls and droops as she grins in her daze. He attempts to stand her up but struggles under the intoxicated recklessness of her limbs.
“Here, let me help,” says Fran. Despite her slight frame she bears the strength of the determined, courtesy of her mother, who raised her in the costume departments of various London theaters, working extreme hours with extreme people. She steps forward, takes Janey’s other arm, and hoists her into an upright stance. Together they semi-walk, semi-drag her through the front door to a gleaming silver Jaguar E-Type.
“Nice ride,” whispers Fran wistfully.
They bundle Janey into the back seat, where she flops, arms folded, bottom lip pushed out like a sulky teenager.
“Will she be all right?”
“Will she ever be all right?” growls Rafael.
They stand opposite one another, feet grinding into the gravel.
“Hopefully she’ll feel better in the morning,” says Fran, filling the silence, unsure of the next move. “Is she…your wife?”
Rafael laughs. “She’s my sister.”
“Oh, I—”
“Her name is Janey. It’s okay. We don’t exactly look alike…or behave alike.”
She feels bad for him suddenly, that she misread the situation, that perhaps he can’t help the hardness of his shell for the burden of his wayward sibling, who clearly he cares for, despite the brittleness between them.
“It’s fortunate you were here,” he says. “Otherwise she might not have been found for days, but”—he looks confused—“why were you here?”
“Good question.”
“The clearance is done. You had no need to come back. This is private property you realize?”
Fran lowers her gaze and winces. “I—I came back for the wedding dress,” she admits. “I got the gist you really didn’t want it, so I came and pulled it out of the dumpster. In fact, I need to go in and get it. I let it go once. I can’t let it go again. It’s in the house still—”
Rafael glares at her now, a moonlit flash in his eyes. Is he angry? It’s hard to tell. His general demeanor seems to be fixed on angry of one level or another.
“Trust me,” urges Fran, “I don’t go to this kind of trouble for any old dress. This one is special. I—I can’t get it out of my head. I believe there’s a bride out there whose world will be…transformed by it. Your mother, her story.” She pauses, spooked by the thought of Alessandra’s anguish in the mirror. “My hunch is there’s a lot of history in those fibers, a lot that needs to be said. Honestly, a dress like this, it’s worth so much—”
“My mother’s wedding dress isn’t worth anything to anyone,” says Rafael coldly. He eyes Fran, as though he is puzzling over her, trying to decipher her intentions. “We’re a private family,” he warns. “I’m responsible for a large charitable foundation, and I protect its reputation at all costs.”
I know, thinks Fran, realizing this probably isn’t the time to mention the research she’s already done on him.
“I can’t have strangers digging around in my history. Do you understand?”
Fran nods, slighted by his patronizing tone.
“Our work is the reason why two million children get a decent school education. Any misrepresentation could put that at stake.”
“I hear you,” says Fran, affronted. “I can’t compete with that, can I? Wedding dresses are just frippery by comparison. Hell. You can keep the dress.” She marches off.
“Wait,” says Rafael. “You can’t just wander into the night.” He hesitates, sighs, shakes his head. “If you want the dress that badly, go and get it. I’ll give you a lift. I have to drive three-quarters around the North Circular to get Janey checked out at the hospital first, but then I can drop you where you want.”
“Really?”
“Go. Before I change my mind.”
“Thank you,” she says. “You won’t regret it.”
* * *
The bright moon casts leaf-fringed shadows across the dashboard as they drive, mostly silent, through the forest lanes. Janey sits s
lumped in the back, spitting the occasional cuss word, too messed up to take more aggressive action. Quite how Francesca Delaney has become embroiled in the never-ending wild-child sister saga, he cannot fathom, but here she is, perched on his passenger seat with her silk and beads, the wedding dress piled at her feet. Dumpster diving, breaking and entering, plus all that near-mystical nonsense about bridal wear—as if more weddings are what the world needs. Possibly she is not of sound mind. He checks his pocket for his phone, wonders whether his security team might need an alert. He’s known his fair share of troubled individuals, and she bears a few hallmarks. Yet, something…something about her…those sparkling green eyes, that beguiling half smile. She fills the air with grace and light. Her perky energy is magnetic. He blinks, steels himself.
“So you sell wedding dresses?” he says, trying to make a connection but only succeeding in sounding more patronizing.
“Not just wedding dresses,” she asserts. “Whispering wedding dresses.”
“Rrright. So you like clothes?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I’ve never much considered it.”
He senses the coming judgment as she stares him up and down, eyes assessing his tastefully bland shirt and trousers, the same most days. Gray and black are his preferred colors. He finds Selfridges very reliable for shirts, but his best suits come from a tailor on Savile Row, where his father and grandfather were customers.
Fran sits forward, eager to claim his focus despite his responsibility to concentrate on the driving. “You may think you don’t consider it,” she says, pestering him, “but your shirts, that tailoring, those silk socks…they’re all a choice. You’ve considered it more than you realize.”
“It’s work wear, what’s expected of me.”
“And if you turned up in dirty jeans and trainers?”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“No. Because clothes matter. People think they’re frivolous, but they say more about our lives than anything else. Throughout history, our fashions have embodied the changes around us, our shifts in class, status, work, style…attitude. Whatever you wear, from your filthy, comfortable robe to your polished best, you’re displaying a decision that represents you, your state of mind, your hopes, your doubts, your insecurities, your ambitions.”
“Okay,” says Rafael, intrigued. “But let’s be clear, I have never owned or worn such a thing as a filthy, comfortable robe.”
Fran laughs heartily and it takes him by surprise. Laughter is not a common occurrence in his life. He hadn’t intended to be funny, but clearly she enjoys his mannered snobbery. And he enjoys the sight of her enjoying it.
“I mean, does anyone own such a thing?” he adds with mock disgust, playing along.
She catches his eye. “Are you always this stuck-up?”
“No, I—”
“Yesss,” slurs Janey before falling asleep.
“Because the other day”—Fran ventures—“when we were clearing the house, you were pretty rude to Mick and me. Not to mention very forceful with your sister. We thought—”
“I realize it looked bad, but trust me, I’ve had ten years of this. Ten years of trying to save her from herself. I love her more than anything, but she’s on a one-way self-destruct mission. I ran out of patience years ago, but I won’t ever give up.” He sighs. “She’s all I’ve got.”
They sit quietly for a moment, then out of the darkness, he speaks again.
“This is a routine we know too well,” he says. “The drunken messes, the angry rants. She’s been through rehab, had a stint in a sober house. She’s had whole years where she’s been fine, but then she loses focus and goes back to square one. What more can I do? I flew her to Barbados once, sat with her for a month in a hotel room overlooking the ocean. My first holiday in six years, and all I did was watch her wretch and argue her way through detox. Naively I hoped that, among all those beautiful palms and tropical flowers, she’d see that the world has beauty, that it’s there regardless…” He sighs again.
Fran is thoughtful. There is more beneath the surface, she thinks, more than she credited him with. She rearranges the folds of the wedding dress and waits for him to continue.
“She gained some weight and got her glow back,” he explains. “Then the minute we landed at Heathrow, she ditched her luggage and went on a three-day binge.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your problem.”
Eventually they pull up outside a small, discreet building in Saint John’s Wood, which turns out to be a hospital with a private Accident and Emergency service. Fran stares at the smart entrance, more like a hotel than an emergency room.
“No queues, no long waits, and above all…discretion,” says Rafael. “I expect she’ll need stitches. You can wait here while I get her checked in, or—”
“I could come in too,” says Fran, hoisting aside the bundle of embroidered satin hummingbirds. “Keep you company?”
Rafael ponders the prospect. “Yes,” he says, to his surprise. “Yes, that would be good.”
They both exit the car hastily, self-conscious of their mutual interest in each other. Rafael coaxes Janey from the back seat. He checks her wound, covers her frail body with his jacket, then instructs her to put one foot in front of the other. His methodical action reminds Fran that he has done this—not once or twice, but possibly dozens of times before.
As Janey grows aware of what’s happening, she starts swiping and clawing to get Rafael away.
Undeterred, he swings her over his shoulder and marches her to the entrance. The lobby smells of peonies.
“You don’t get that at the National Health Services,” says Fran.
Rafael smiles wryly. It isn’t his idea of a night out and it certainly isn’t a date, but somehow he is glad that this strange evening with Fran can be prolonged. They take seats in a clean, bright waiting area, with Janey wedged between them. An awkwardness arises, as though the harsh lighting and disinfected floors have exposed the erroneousness of their circumstances—like a badly lit dressing room mirror. They sit quietly, watching the clock. Fran flicks through a pile of lifestyle magazines. Rafael takes out his tablet and starts tapping the screen.
“So,” says Fran, desperate to save the atmosphere, as she casts her gaze to Rafael’s scroll of official looking emails, “if you weren’t here now, where would you rather be?”
Rafael glances up. “Work,” he says definitively. “I’m that exciting.”
“Oh dear.”
“The foundation is my life. My family made their money buying unwanted farmland and selling it for profit to housing developers and trailer parks. By the mid-1950s, they were sitting on a fortune. My grandfather, Samuel, decided his conscience was due a spot of philanthropy, so he set up the family foundation to support initiatives in education and public health. The responsibility for the foundation then passed to my father and now it’s mine. I want the money to make as much a difference as it can. As well as making donations to various charitable organizations, we’ve recently developed our own school building scheme.”
“Wow,” says Fran. “I really can’t compete with that.”
Rafael smiles. “Well, if I make sure their minds are educated, you can make sure their hearts are full of love.”
“I’d say the two are connected, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” says Rafael, staring at her curiously.
“And how hard is it to build schools?”
“More headache than I’d like, but”—his focus drifts back to his emails—“it’s a way to keep busy.”
“Oh, come on,” says Fran. “Don’t downplay it. It sounds incredible. Do you always have to be so closed up?”
“Mostly. Do you always have to wear your heart on your sleeve?”
“Yes,” says Fran. “Mostly.”
&nbs
p; “So where is it that you’d rather be, Francesca? Other than this peony-scented center of sterility?”
Fran thinks for a moment.
“Haworth,” she replies out of nowhere. “I rather fancy running around the moors in a cotton nightgown à la the Brontë sisters, lost to the wilds and the haunting vim of Heathcliff. As it goes, I recently invested in an excellent Victorian bridal gown from rural Yorkshire. Not everyone’s idea of a big dress, and, in fact, the cut of it was outdated from the start—bearing in mind this was long before Instagram, when fashion trends were slow to spread from the cities—but it’s ever so lovely. Someone will adore it. Brides turn up at my shop in all states of bewilderment, mostly refugees of the chain stores. At the Whispering Dress, they get a gown like no one else, a gown with a beating heart.”
“And where do you find these ‘whispering’ dresses? Apart from dumpsters, of course.”
Fran flashes him a scolding look, still sore that he threw a Garrett-Alexia wedding gown away.
He evades her stare.
“I’m always on the hunt,” she explains, “but to be honest, the hard work starts once I’ve found a dress. Then it’s all about the research. That’s where the magic is. I spend months growing each dress’s history, building its narrative from fragments: photographs, diary entries, newspaper cuttings, church accounts, census records…whatever I can find. Sometimes I actually meet people, talk to those who knew the bride and groom.”
She thinks of the Meryl Percy dress, how she spoke to several old Percy acquaintances who were only too happy, amid the niceties of biscuits and tea, to share memories of their dear, departed friend whose infamous red wedding dress had once been the talk of the community. She even visited the shop where the dress had been shaped and stitched, then walked the aisle of the little stone church at the top of the hill, where they married—it was like Meryl and James were there, actually there. Every detail—from the perfume mark at the collar, to the tiny rip in the hem, thanks to a tipsy attempt to Lindy Hop—she felt it all.
“My aim is to bring joy,” she says, sighing. “To make brides feel great and, in turn, help them create happy, lasting marriages.”
The Second Chance Boutique Page 6
