She hadn’t, actually, but it seems the kindest way to broach the subject.
‘Oh!’ Margot’s cheeks colour. ‘I …’ She purses her lips.
‘He won’t charge you,’ Daphne says. No point being coy. ‘As you’re looking for a job, I imagine your cupboard is a little bare, so to speak. He often helps people out in those circumstances.’
Now the cheeks are even redder.
‘Margot,’ Daphne says, more softly. ‘Will you do it for me?’
Margot looks confused.
‘You won’t be going for any interviews with a missing tooth – will you?’
Margot’s dropped gaze tells her the answer.
‘I just want you to have the best possible opportunities. So you can help yourself. And Lavinia.’
As Margot looks away and sniffs, Daphne hopes she hasn’t offended her. ‘We all get down on our luck, love,’ she says gently. ‘It’s no one’s fault.’
When their eyes meet, Margot’s are wet.
‘I don’t mean to upset you,’ Daphne says.
Margot nods slowly. ‘I know.’ More pursing of the lips. ‘I’ll go and make an appointment. I almost did … before.’
‘I’d like that,’ Daphne says, as if the woman needs her approval. She doesn’t, of course, but sometimes people like accountability to keep them on the straight and narrow. ‘Will you let me know when you’re going?’
The flicker in Margot’s eyes indicates that she had no intention of making the appointment and realises she’s been caught.
She clears her throat. ‘Yes,’ she says with more resolve than Daphne has heard in her voice in a long time.
‘Wonderful,’ Daphne says. ‘Now I’ll let you go. Give Lavinia my best.’
‘I will.’ Margot smiles but doesn’t show her teeth, then heads for the door.
Once she’s gone Daphne feels the need for a lie-down, but she can’t exactly do that here. So she settles for putting on the kettle for another cup of tea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Each time Lucy visits the charity shop, she comes away with an idea. Sometimes it’s for a dress. Sometimes for an embellishment on a dress she saw in the shop – one she can’t afford, but that doesn’t stop her dreaming about what she could do if she were able to buy the dress and alter it.
She’s altered everything she’s bought there – like the pink corduroy pants that had a flare at the bottom. Daphne thought they were from the mid-1970s and had only been worn once, or never, as they were in very good condition. Flares aren’t the fashion any more, so Lucy worked out where she should cut off the legs by trying on the pants, pinning the hems, then taking the scissors to them. Now they look like strange culottes, and she loves the way they have that bit of surprise to them. She also cut up the strips of fabric she removed and turned them into a belt for the pants. No one taught her how to do these things – she just experiments till she gets them right.
Her mother has a sewing machine at home for working on alterations from the shop, and Lucy’s been using it the past couple of weekends because her mother only uses it on weeknights. She’s still doing some hand-sewing at the shop when it’s quiet, but she likes having the machine at home too.
‘You’re becoming obsessed!’ her mother said one day, but she was smiling so Lucy didn’t think it was a criticism.
Not that her mum criticises her often. Not like Poppy’s mother, who’s always telling Poppy to stand up straight, make her hair neater, pull her stomach in and smile more.
‘It’s only because she cares,’ Poppy said once when Angelica said she thought it was mean.
Angelica and Lucy had looked at each other in disbelief. If that’s how a mother shows she cares, Lucy doesn’t want it.
It’s sort of like how Russell is with her, though, she supposes. He’s always criticising her, telling her she’s ugly and stupid, and their dad always says he’s only saying it because he cares about her and wants her to be the best she can be. Except when she told Angelica about it, her friend said it didn’t sound like criticism so much as cruelty, and Lucy didn’t really know what to say about that. If that sort of behaviour is all you’ve ever known, you get used to it, and you don’t want to think of it as someone being cruel, because what does that mean for your life?
‘It means your brother’s an arsehole,’ Angelica said, and Lucy had to admit this was probably true.
She first told Angelica and Poppy what her home life is like one day when she was feeling really down about it all, to the point where a teacher pulled her aside after class to ask if she needed to go to the sick bay. The teacher, Mrs Bradley, is always really kind and notices little things about her students. Lucy didn’t want to tell her anything, though, because it would get back to her parents, who’d get cross that their family matters were known to the school – her father, in particular, is big on privacy. And they’d do nothing about it anyway.