Tales of the Gypsy Dressmaker. Thelma Madine

them, I just sat on the end of the bed. I felt loads of things, but mostly glad that the dress was complete, and relieved that it was gone and out of the house. I didn’t have the same happy feeling that I got when I finished the kids’ dresses. I felt inadequate, to be honest, because that dress just wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t perfect. Even when it was finished it still wasn’t the way I wanted it, but there was no more time to do it. All the same I was happy knowing that young Mary was so thrilled, and her mum was so proud of her in it.

      Even now I smile when I think about that bloody train. In the end, we’d had to roll the train up on a pole, like a scroll, with a handle at either end, so that they could carry it to the church and then roll it out and put it on when they got there.

      That day, sitting on the bed, I could still hear Dave talking to them outside. Finally the van door slammed shut. I put my head down. I could feel my body sinking into bed. ‘This must be how you feel when you die,’ I thought. But I can’t remember what happened after that, because I slept for two days.

      Someone had told the local paper about the wedding dress and its huge train, so the next time I saw it was in the paper. They’d photographed it from above, and you could see this tiny little figure at the altar and the train just going on and on and out the church door.

      I must admit, when I saw it there on the page it did look good – even though it would have looked a lot better with a smaller train – and I started feeling a slight sense of achievement. It felt good to know that finally, despite everything, it was out there. It’s funny because, looking at it now, young Mary’s dress itself isn’t even big. It looks more like one of our Communion dresses.

      I suppose that most people would think I was mad to carry on doing all that, but I was just so determined to rise to the challenge. Mary had pushed me, then pushed me further than I ever felt it possible to go, but also, in a way, she got me started doing what I do now. So I have a lot to thank her for, not least for teaching me about the travellers’ way of life. I’d still be doing the kids’ clothes if she hadn’t asked for that wedding dress. And all the extras that went with it.

      And there was another reason for wanting to do right by Mary. All that time she came to my flat when I was making that first ever gypsy wedding dress, which she had pushed me so hard to do even when I hadn’t wanted to, and which had nearly killed me, we’d got to know each other. We told each other things and we’d become friends.

      After the wedding, everyone was talking about young Mary’s wedding dress, as well as the after-party outfits and bridesmaids’ dresses we had made. Because the travellers all go to the same events and all know each other, news travels quickly. So then I started getting phone calls asking, ‘Is this the woman from Liverpool who makes the dresses?’ Then they’d say, ‘Can you make me one of these, love?’ It would be all make me this, that and the next thing. ‘I’ll send you the money, love.’

      So now I had all these phone orders, which meant I had to call the travellers a lot too, and this is when I really found out that gypsies don’t communicate like settled people do. For a start they never, ever return your calls. And, on the rare occasion that they pick up, they’ll tell you that they don’t know who or what you’re talking about. ‘Oh, I don’t know her, love,’ is what they’ll say, even though you’ve talked to them face to face a hundred times before.