Margot blushes as she closes the door.
‘He seems reasonable,’ Lavinia says.
‘Yes,’ Margot squeaks. ‘Tea?’
She doesn’t wait for an answer before she goes to the kitchen and boils the kettle, wondering why her heart is beating so fast.
THE
LITTLE GIRL’S DRESS
It was a special dress, made of white broderie anglaise with a yellow sash, and the little girl loved it more than anything else she owned. More than the doll she was given for her birthday that she’d asked and asked for. The dress was by far the prettiest thing she had ever seen.
It could have been a bridesmaid’s dress but there was no wedding for her to attend. Instead, she wore it to her parents’ Christmas party in 1976.
Held on Christmas Eve, the party was full of adults laughing and eating small things that the girl helped take around on plates. Some of the adults patted her on the head, some didn’t even look at her. She was mainly focused on trying to not spill the food.
Her brother, three years older, wore a blue shirt tucked into long blue shorts. He hated the shorts and thought they made him look stupid, so he was in a bad mood until his friend arrived.
Once the little girl had finished helping hand around the food, she went into the garden to play with her brother and his friend. They didn’t want her there, though, and told her to go away.
She couldn’t go back inside – all those adults were in the house and she didn’t like the idea of having to walk through them to reach her bedroom. Not that her mother would allow her to do that; she said that the children should make conversation with the adults.Which was hard, because they wanted to talk about grown-up things and the little girl didn’t know about grown-up things.
So instead she stayed in the garden and tried to keep out of her brother’s way. He glared at her a couple of times, but she pretended she didn’t see and went back to looking at the flowers on some of the bushes. Some were red, some were white. They were so pretty.
She was looking at one of the red flowers when suddenly she was pushed into the garden bed.
‘Go away!’ her brother’s friend yelled at her.
She crawled out of the dirt, crying, not because she was hurt but because there was dirt on her dress. Her perfect dress was ruined.
Not wanting to be shoved into the dirt again, she went to the spot under the house where she sometimes hid when she was upset, and waited for the party to be over.
Her mother called her name over and over, and after a while she came out, still sad about the dress.
Her mother asked her what had happened to the dress and the little girl considered lying, because she didn’t want her brother to be even angrier. But nor did she want her mother to catch her in a lie – that might be worse. She told the truth, and her brother got a smack, and he hated her for that.
The dress wasn’t washed, and by the next year the girl had grown out of it anyway and her mother gave it away. When she found out, the little girl went back under the house and cried and cried. It was her favourite dress and she only got to wear it once, and now it was gone.
The next mother who had the dress washed it, and her daughter wore it to her confirmation. Then she packed it away in plastic, because it was a special dress.
The dress stayed in the plastic until, years later, the mother was moving house and decided to donate it to charity along with half of her own wardrobe. Her new home didn’t have as much cupboard space, and she wasn’t going out much any more, so she didn’t need all those clothes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Russell had won, in the end. Lucy had pleaded with her father in particular, saying that she barely made any noise with the sewing machine, and certainly no more noise than her mother made when she used it, so there was no reason why Russell should have a problem with it.
‘I know,’ he’d said, taking her hands. ‘But will you do this – for me?’
Thiswas confining her sewing to the dry-cleaning shop, which wasn’t a great solution either because Russell would still be there. If he had a problem with noise at home, she wondered how he coped working in a noisy drycleaner’s. But, of course, the problem wasn’t the noise. The problem was her. The problem would always be her.
Her mother found her later and apologised; by then, though, Lucy had worked on hardening her heart.
Her whole life, neither of her parents has put her first. Russell has always been the priority – and he still isn’t happy. Or maybe that’swhyhe’s never happy: his expectations of how life is meant to be are out of whack with the reality.
At least her mother helped Lucy move the calico and other fabric to the shop, and gave her a dedicated spot in the office to keep things.
‘I know you’ll need to be here later than normal,’ her mother said, as if she was making a concession. As if being there with her sewing – instead of at home with its heaviness – isn’t exactly what Lucy prefers.