It probably isn’t – Lucy knows she has a lot to learn – but she loves the encouragement.
For the blouse she’s chosen a baby-blue nylon that she bought at an offcuts place in Camperdown. She had to take a bus, then a train, then another bus to get there, and she didn’t tell her mother where she was going – she just took off. When she got back, Connie didn’t ask her where she’d been. It was impossible for Lucy to tell if her mother was scared to ask or just didn’t care.
The sewing machine at the shop is better than the one at home, so that’s something, and Lucy likes having the place to herself even though it’s a little spooky being there on her own. She tries to leave the shop before sunset, which gives her a couple of hours of sewing time.
Her mum doesn’t wait dinner for her on these nights, just leaves her something in the fridge. It makes Lucy feel like she’s shifting between parallel lives: one as the schoolgirl, one as the sewer who has big dreams. Perhaps one day she’ll get lost in between them and won’t know where or who she is. Would anyone miss her? Would anyone come looking?
Lucy’s pinning the sides of the striped business shirt, and thinking about what she should do with the hem, when the back door of the shop crashes open so loudly that she jumps.
Her first thought is that someone’s come to rob the place. Her parents put the cash in the safe each evening, and Lucy doesn’t know the combination so she’ll be useless for a robber. She doesn’t want to be attacked. Will she be attacked?
She casts around for something she can use to defend herself while her chest feels like it’s being squeezed by an outside force and her breathing becomes rapid. All she has are pins and scissors, and the scissors could be used against her.
Should she hide? Maybe amongst some of the clothes? If she’s really still, whoever it is may not notice her legs.
Think think think quick quick quick.
‘Lucy,’ booms a voice.
She feels relief flood her legs at the thought that this is someone she knows, then tenses as she realises it’s Russell.
What’s he doing here? She and Russell are never alone together at the shop – which is something Lucy’s only just realised, because it feels so strange that he’s here without her parents, or at least their father, being here too.
‘Lucy!’ he thunders.
‘Yes,’ she replies meekly, not sure if he’s heard her.
But then he appears in the doorway that leads to the back room, almost filling it. He’s over six feet tall and has never seemed as enormous as he is now, slightly swaying, his face ruddy.
Lucy’s seen him look like this before, when he drinks at home. But usually he drinks himself to sleep, so she hasn’t seen him upright and drunk.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he says, lurching down the one step that separates the main shop from the back room.
‘I’m sewing,’ Lucy says, then clears her throat. She needs to sound stronger. She can’t be weak around him.
‘Why the fuck are you doing it here?’
She stares at him. Is he really asking her the question or being sarcastic? Either way, it’ll do her no good to answer. She’s livedon tenterhooks for too long to not understand that. Except if she doesn’t answer, he’ll probably keep asking. Or worse.
‘Because I like it here.’ It’s not a lie. She does like it here when it’s quiet and no one’s bothering her.
He puts his hands down on one of the workbenches and leans forward. It’s almost an intimate gesture – like he wants to get closer to her – but Lucy knows that really he wants to pounce.
‘House isn’t good enough for ya?’ he slurs.
She frowns. ‘What?’
‘Think you’re too good to fucken make your stupid little clothes at home.’ He leans even closer. ‘Don’t ya?’
Again, she wonders if he’s really asking her the question. He must know why she’s not at home – that he’s the reason, with his complaints about the noise she hardly makes with the old sewing machine and its pedal.
‘I like it here,’ she repeats, swallowing.
There’s something pinging deep inside her brain, some warning signal telling her to get out of there. Except the front door is locked, and he’s standing between her and the back door. And this is herbrother. He’s mean to her, but she’s never felt truly afraid of him until now.
He sneers. ‘You would. All these fucken stupid clothes. Suit ya right down to the ground. That’s all you care about, isn’t it?’
There’s nothing she can say that’s going to make this situation turn in her favour. She knows this because last year three boys bailed her up against the toilets one lunchtime and told her that she thought she was too good for them. After realising she could hardly say, yes, she did think she was too good for them, she said she didn’t. So they spat on her and told her that made her a slut. That thinking she wasn’t too good meant she wasn’t any good at all. If they’d done it even a few months before, Lucy would have believed them. But by then she’d started going to the charity shop at lunchtime and talking to Daphne. She’d startedto see that there was a life beyond the school that was so much better, and if Daphne liked talking to her she must be all right.