He dumped his bag – a large-ish one, although not the enormous backpack I’d seen when he arrived – at the foot of the stairs, then went into the kitchen, and I heard the hum of the coffee machine.
I waited a moment, torn between going back inside and trying to talk to him, and the knowledge that, if I did, I’d be late for my interview. The interview won – if we were going to talk, it should be when we didn’t have to rush, when we had all the time we needed to explain and hear each other out.
But then, when I got home that afternoon, he was out again, and when I didn’t see him at all the next day, I realised he must be avoiding me. So I began to avoid him, too.
In the evenings, I went round to Chelsea’s mum’s place with my laptop and perched in the sewing room while Chelsea worked, admiring the ingenuity with which she adjusted the design of her dresses as she went along so every scrap of precious fabric was used. The sewing machine was mostly silent now; she was spending less time sewing and more time designing, planning and thinking, which was exactly as it should be.
I, meanwhile, was fleshing out the business plan I’d started for her, developing projections for her autumn/winter collection and the following spring/summer. If – and it was a massive if – the dresses continued to sell as they had been, she had the beginnings of something that could be a medium-term success, and perhaps even more than that.
Nathan had volunteered to act as courier on his moped, ferrying the pieces of fabric and the finished garments between Hackney and Canning Town, where Stitch Together was based, and was spending less time hanging around with his dodgy mates as a result. Optimistically, I factored a wage for him into my calculations of Chelsea’s overheads. I couldn’t carry on paying him in pizza and fried chicken indefinitely, anyway – Nathan, like Josh, ate like a horse and it was costing me a fortune.
Josh.
I hadn’t had a chance to even sit down and have a coffee with him, and try to explain why I’d behaved the way I did. My explanation was a valid one, I thought, even though I wasn’t proud of what I’d done. The way he treated me back at school – well, everyone knows it’s petty to bear a grudge, but who can honestly say they’ve never borne one? I wanted to ask him that question, and others, too. He said he hadn’t sent that text, but he must surely have known about it. Had he imagined me waiting there, all alone, outside the cinema for more than half an hour (or half an eternity, it had felt like)? Had he wondered how I was feeling: how foolish and friendless? Did he know that I’d run straight up the stairs to my bedroom in floods of tears when I got home, and stayed there for the rest of the weekend? Did he know how much courage it had taken for me to show my face at school the following Monday?
I was sure that the Josh I knew would hear me out, would realise that emotional wounds so deep don’t heal quickly or easily. He’d understand that, in my desperation to get Renzo back, he had seemed like a convenient solution, and that, when my feelings for him began to change, it was too late to change the plan I’d put into action – because, after all, if he didn’t know he’d been my fake boyfriend, how could I have told him when it suddenly started to feel real?
And then there was Renzo. The biggest barrier to our getting back together – that he refused to entertain the idea – had apparently been removed. He’d said he was sorry. And the other barrier – Felicity – was gone too. I turned all the different puzzle pieces of my life and my feelings over and over in my head, trying to get them to fit together in a way that made sense. But I couldn’t. I knew I needed to speak to Renzo, and part of me longed for the moment when I’d see his face and hear him say in person the words he’d written to me: I’m sorry.
I’d thought about texting him to thank him for the flowers, then realised I couldn’t – I’d deleted his number from my phone back in January to stop myself sending desperate late-night messages to him. So instead I’d emailed, and immediately received an out-of-office reply saying that he was working away for two weeks, travelling between Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, and might therefore be delayed in responding to my message.
He hadn’t been delayed responding to me, though. A few minutes after I sent it, he replied.
I’m glad you liked them. Let’s meet up as soon as I’m back in London. Love, R.
Love. A few months before – even just a week ago – that word would have left me delirious with joy. Now, I just didn’t know what I thought. I was glad to have Chelsea’s business plan to work on, the two interviews to prepare for, my own job to keep me busy. I’d had another massive clear-out of my wardrobe, only this time, instead of listing the clothes on eBay, I took them to the charity shop down the road. Adam had even caught me tidying out the cupboard under the stairs, which seemed to be a magnet for all the clutter our lives generated.
I was trying to distract myself from making the decisions I knew I needed to make, but it wasn’t working too well. My mind kept coming back to Josh, who I’d used and hurt, and Renzo, who’d hurt me. Renzo had said he was sorry, and I knew I’d have to apologise to Josh, too.
But I didn’t know where I was going to find the words.
So on Wednesday morning I got up early and made sure I showered and left the house while Josh was on his morning run. You can’t carry on avoiding him indefinitely, I told myself sternly. But I knew that I could – and would – carry on avoiding him for now.
Even at a quarter to seven in the morning, the Central Line was sweltering hot. The heatwave was showing no signs of breaking, and everyone on the Tube with me looked sticky and miserable, even in their skimpy summer dresses and flip-flops. It was too hot even for coffee – as soon as I got to the office, I poured a huge glass of cold water and took it to my desk, where I switched on my computer and clicked dispiritedly through to my overflowing inbox.
To my surprise, about halfway down my unread emails, was a message from the Taiwanese manufacturer I sometimes used for Luxeforless own-brand labels. The subject was ‘Samples for new line’.
Weird, I thought. The order I’d placed with him a few weeks back wasn’t due for another month. His factory’s turnaround was quick, but there was no reason for him to be running so far ahead of schedule.
My apologies for the delay, his email read. I’ve confirmed with the courier company and your delivery should be arriving by midday BST latest. Let us know if the garments are satisfactory and we will commence production of the full run of 3,000. Warmest regards, Kuan-Yu.
The email had arrived in my inbox just before midnight, so Kuan-Yu would have sent it around his close of business – or maybe not, given the brutally long hours I knew my Asian suppliers worked. But I had no idea there was a delivery coming for me in the first place, still less that it had been delayed.
Then I noticed that the email was copied to Barri, and turned cold all over, heatwave or no heatwave.
What the…? I’d been distracted, I knew, but not so distracted I could have placed an order for thousands of dresses and forgotten all about it. Could I have somehow duplicated an order from last season? Or could Kuan-Yu have made a mistake and sent me an email intended for one of my colleagues? But that wasn’t possible, either – as far as I knew, Sally, Kris and Felicity had never ordered anything from him and had no reason to do so.
I hurried through to the reception area, but the front desk was empty – it was still so early that hardly anyone else was in. I pushed open the door of the sample room. As always, it was in a state of slightly organised chaos. Rails of garment bags, teetering piles of shoeboxes and piles of sealed plastic-wrapped parcels threatening to slide to the floor at the slightest touch were everywhere.
But I didn’t need to rummage through it all. I saw straight away what I was looking for, right at the front of one of the garment rails, and unwrapped.
There were three dresses, each in a different colourway: one charcoal, grey and silver; one peacock blue, cerise and lilac; one saffron, tangerine and peridot green. They were all the same design, though: pieces of mismatched fabric se
wn together to form a harmonious pattern, cut on the bias with shoestring straps that laced down the back.
They were gorgeous. But I hadn’t ordered them. And, more to the point, they were blatant, near-exact copies of the dress Chelsea had made me, which I’d worn out to Home House with Felicity and Pru. That dress was unique, of course, made just for me. These were the prototypes of what would be a production run, presumably identical. Instead of recycled fabric, they’d be made from bolts of polyester, designed, ordered and dyed to our specification.
But whose specification, exactly? Who the hell had done this?
I heard the ping of the lift behind me and flinched, feeling as guilty as I had back in March, when I’d sneaked into the office to pick up those other dresses, the unwanted, delayed ones made by Guillermo Hernandez, to send to Mum to sell. Then, I’d known deep down I was doing something… not immoral, exactly, but certainly dubious. Now, though, I was just doing my job.
Only someone else appeared to have been doing it, too.
I heard the ring of heels on the marble tiles outside and turned around. Felicity stood in the doorway. She was wearing a tailored, sand-coloured shorts suit over a neon-green crop top and nude shoe boots with heels so high I knew she must have got a cab to work. Actually, the suit itself told me that – if I’d worn a lined jacket on the Tube that morning, it would have been a soggy, limp rag by now.
She still had her sunglasses on, but I could see her looking at the dresses on the rail, and then at me.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘They’re here.’
‘You knew about this?’
She hesitated, then nodded.
‘Felicity, was this your idea? Ripping off the designs of a young girl who’s just starting out, who’s got nothing – literally fuck all – going for her except talent and people who believe in her? Because if it was… Well, I think that’s a crappy thing to do.’
I’d meant to sound all assertive – aggressive, even – but somehow I couldn’t manage it. Suddenly, I just felt tired and defeated, thinking of all the work Chelsea, her mum and brother – not to mention the lovely refugee women who’d worked so hard, fuelled by chatter and endless cups of tea – had done to try and make her fledgling business succeed. And now, thanks to buying power and marketing clout and a manufacturer who, while he treated his workers well and paid them fairly, was able to undercut just about anyone, it was all for nothing.
I reached out and rubbed the polyester fabric between my fingers.
‘How much are these things retailing for, anyway?’
‘A hundred and fifty quid,’ Felicity said.
About half what Chelsea charged for one of her original creations, and they’d have cost about five per cent as much to produce. Suddenly, the business plan I’d laboured over looked like a silly work of fiction. If you abandoned the whole idea – the whole point – of Chelsea’s work, that she made unique garments from repurposed material, all one-offs, all special and sustainable, then of course there were generous profits to be made. But it was nothing to do with her vision, her passion or her purpose – it was just a tacky, mass-produced knock-off of her designs.
Looking at that dress, a cheap parody of the one I’d been given, and loved, and worn when I kissed Josh, I suddenly felt sick with shame and disillusionment about the job I thought I loved.
‘Right. As soon as Lisa gets in, I’m handing in my notice. I’ve been looking for another job anyway, but I’m done here.’
* * *
Felicity pushed her shades up onto her head. Her eyes were wide and alarmed, even more so than her fluttery lash extensions made them look anyway.
‘Don’t do that, Tansy.’
‘Why not? I’ve been ignoring my morals and my instincts for too long in this place. The sweatshop thing back in January, the way Barri treats us – it’s too much. It’s toxic. I’m out.’
‘Seriously,’ Felicity said. ‘Don’t do it. Not yet, anyway. Please? Just wait a week.’
I took a deep breath, biting back the surge of anger and hurt that threatened to overwhelm me. In a week’s time, I might have heard back from the two companies who’d interviewed me: the Kensington boutique that sold utterly adorable, ridiculously expensive designer clothes for kids, or the online fast-fashion retailer that was looking for a workwear buyer. Both looked like good options on paper, although realistically they’d come with problems of their own. I realised that I’d secretly been hoping to find a way to work with Chelsea longer-term, building her business up into the major label I’d believed it could become. But now, that ship had sailed.
And then something else occurred to me.
‘Wait, you knew this was happening. Why didn’t you say anything to me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Felicity said. ‘Honestly, I am. But I couldn’t. I’m not supposed to know about it myself. I had nothing to do with it, I promise. I just found out.’
‘You found out? How?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She was looking shifty, I thought, no longer meeting my eyes. And I remembered again the time I’d come into the office that Sunday evening, and how I’d seen Felicity there. I’d never asked her about it, because it would have meant telling her that I’d been there myself, and why.
‘Felicity! Of course it matters. Look, I saw you here. On a Sunday night, back in February. I’d come into the office for… something, and I saw you coming out of Barri’s office. What were you doing here?’
‘What were you doing here?’ she shot back.
We stood there, glaring at each other. For a second, I thought about demanding that she tell me first. But that seemed childish and petty. Then I thought of making something up – I was picking up some samples for a shoot, I could say. Or, I thought I left my phone in the office.
‘I asked you first,’ I insisted.
Felicity looked shifty for a second, and then she said, ‘I left my phone in the office.’
I didn’t believe her for a second, especially as she’d told me the very same lie I’d been planning to tell her. But I was done with that. I was done with lying, and with a load of other things too. I’d already made up my mind about that. I’d already booked a train ticket, to have a face-to-face conversation that was going to cause me more pain than anything Felicity could say or think about me.
So I told her the truth.
But a fat lot of good it did me. She said, ‘Oh, Tansy. You poor love. That must be so hard. And Barri was shitty about it? You mustn’t feel bad. Samples walk all the bloody time in this business. It wasn’t just you, anyway. I happen to know that Barri had that exact same conversation with at least five other people. He’s not going to sack everyone, is he?’
‘How do you know? How do you know all this stuff?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘I really can’t. But you’ll find out really soon. Please just trust me?’
I wasn’t sure whether I did. But, for now, I had no alternative.
This time, when I got off the train at Truro, Mum wasn’t there to meet me. Her message had said only how lovely it would be to see me, and did I mind getting a bus from the station. But I’d just missed one and there wasn’t another for half an hour, so I walked instead, along the high street where Debbie’s shop used to be, past my old school, past the park where Josh and his friends used to hang out and the fields beyond it where I’d gone with Connor, past Mr Nabi’s shop, where I stopped to buy a bottle of wine for Mum.
It all looked familiar, but different too: smaller, the way places you remember from childhood always do. It hadn’t really changed – even the displays of chewing gum, sweets and newspapers in front of Mr Nabi’s counter were the same, although his handsome son, who I remembered as a teenage boy, was a positively fanciable young man now, and told me he was married with two kids. I supposed, like him, I’d changed, grown up a bit.
The street where Mum and Dad lived was slightly shabbier than I remembered, the paint peeling off the fronts of the houses, an old washing
machine dumped in a front yard, grubby net curtains draped in an equally grubby window. Weeds were growing through cracks in the pavement outside their house, and I remembered how Mum always used to take pride in how tidy her house looked, inside and out. I guessed she didn’t have much time for weeding now, with all the extra shifts she was working, and I felt the weight of guilt I was carrying grow even heavier.
I fitted my key into the lock and pushed open the door, calling out a greeting. The house was spotless inside, at least, and the smell of roasting chicken filled the air.
‘Hello, love.’ Mum hurried through to meet me, her familiar zebra-striped apron tied over her jeans. She’d changed her hair, I noticed with a jolt of shock: it had always been mahogany brown, sometimes with plum or aubergine-coloured lowlights in it when she was feeling daring, but now it was dusty blonde, the roots showing, undyed.
‘New hair,’ I said, hugging her.
‘It’s meant to hide the grey better,’ she sighed. ‘But it doesn’t really, does it? I’m thinking I might just have to embrace my age and let it grow out. Come on through.’
I followed her and sat in my familiar place at the kitchen table, resting my elbows on the familiar oilcloth, its pattern of bright jungle leaves faded where the sunlight from the window fell on it. The seascape Mum had painted when we first moved to Cornwall hung above the table as it always had, and I remembered sadly how confident she’d been that she’d paint more like it, and sell them, and eventually maybe open a little gallery. But of course she never had.
‘It’s just you and me for lunch,’ she said. ‘But I roasted a chicken, anyway. It’ll do for sandwiches for your dad’s supper, and I can make soup tomorrow.’
‘I brought a bottle of Sancerre,’ I said. ‘And some of that coffee you like from the Daily Grind.’
It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy Page 27
