‘You will,’ I heard Annie say. ‘The evening-wear rail is over here – you’re a size 12, aren’t you?’
‘Gosh no.’ The girl snorted. ‘I’m a 16. I should go on a diet.’
‘Don’t,’ said her boyfriend. ‘You’re lovely as you are.’
‘You’re a lucky woman,’ I heard Annie chuckle. ‘You’ve got the perfect husband-to-be there.’
‘I know I have,’ the girl said fondly. ‘What are you looking at there, Pete? Ooh – what lovely cufflinks.’
Envious of the couple’s evident happiness together, I turned to the e-mail orders. Someone wanted to buy five of my French nightdresses. Another customer was interested in a Dior long-sleeved dress with a bamboo pattern, and was asking about the sizing.
When I say that the garment is a 12, I e-mailed back, that really means it’s a 10 because women today are bigger than the women of fifty years ago. Here are the dimensions that you requested, including the circumference of the sleeve at the wrist. Please let me know if you’d like me to keep it for you.
‘When is your party?’ I heard Annie ask.
‘It’s this Saturday,’ the girl replied. ‘So I haven’t given myself much time to find something. These aren’t quite what I’m looking for,’ I heard her add after a few moments.
‘You could always accessorise a dress you already have with something vintage,’ I heard Annie suggest. ‘You might add a silk jacket – we’ve got some lovely ones over there – or a pretty shrug. If you brought something in, I could help you give it a new look.’
‘Those are wonderful,’ the girl suddenly said. ‘They’re so … joyous.’ I knew that she could only be talking about the cupcake dresses.
‘Which colour do you like best?’ I heard her boyfriend ask her.
‘The … turquoise one, I think.’
‘It’d go with your eyes,’ I heard him say.
‘Would you like me to get it down for you?’ Annie said.
I glanced at my watch. It was time to go and meet Mrs Bell.
‘How much is it?’ the girl asked. Annie told her. ‘Ah. I see. Well, in that case …’
‘At least try it on,’ I heard her boyfriend say.
‘Well … okay,’ she replied. ‘But it’s way over budget.’
I put on my jacket and prepared to leave.
As I went out into the shop a minute later the girl emerged from the dressing room in the turquoise cupcake.
She wasn’t in the least bit fat, she just had a lovely voluptuousness. Her fiancé had been right about the blue-green complimenting her eyes.
‘You look wonderful in it,’ Annie said. ‘You need an hourglass figure for these dresses, and you’ve got one.’
‘Thank you.’ She tucked a hank of glossy brown hair behind one ear. ‘I must say, it really is …’ She sighed with a mixture of happiness and frustration ‘… gorgeous. I love the tutu skirts and the sequins. It makes me feel … happy,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Not that I’m not happy,’ she added with a warm smile at her fiancé. She looked at Annie. ‘And it’s £275?’
‘That’s right. It’s all silk,’ Annie added, ‘including the lace banding round the bodice.’
‘And there’s five per cent off everything at the moment,’ I said as I picked up my bag. I’d decided to extend the offer. ‘And we can keep things for up to a week.’
The girl sighed again. ‘It’s okay. Thanks.’ She gazed at herself in the mirror, the tulle petticoats whispering as she moved. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, ‘but … I don’t know … Perhaps … it’s not really … quite me.’ She retreated into the changing room and drew the curtain. ‘I’ll just … keep looking,’ I heard her say as I left for The Paragon.
I know The Paragon well – I used to go there for piano lessons. My teacher was called Mr Long, which used to make my mother laugh as Mr Long was very short. He was also blind, and his brown eyes, magnified behind the thick lenses of his NHS specs, used to roll incessantly from side to side. When I was playing he would pace up and down behind me in his worn Hush Puppies. If I fumbled something he’d smack the fingers of my right hand with a ruler. I wasn’t so much offended as impressed by his aim.
I went to Mr Long every Tuesday after school for five years until one June day his wife phoned my mother to say that Mr Long had collapsed and died while walking in the Lake District. Despite the hand smacking, I was very upset.
I haven’t set foot in The Paragon since then, although I’ve often passed by it. There’s something about the imposing Georgian crescent, with its seven massive houses, each linked by a low colonnade, that still makes me catch my breath. In The Paragon’s heyday the houses each had their own stables, carriage rooms, fishponds and dairies, but during the war the terrace was bombed. When it was restored in the late 1950s it was carved into flats.
Now I walked up Morden Road past the Clarendon Hotel, skirting the Heath with its trail of traffic trundling around the perimeter; then I passed the Princess of Wales pub, and the nearby pond, its surface rippling in the breeze, then I turned into The Paragon. As I walked down the terrace I admired the horse chestnut trees on the huge front lawn, their leaves already flecked with gold. I climbed the stone steps of number 8 and pressed the buzzer for flat 6. I looked at my watch. It was five to three. I’d aim to be out by four.
I heard the intercom crackle, then Mrs Bell’s voice. ‘I am just coming down. Kindly wait a little moment.’
It was a good five minutes until she appeared.
‘Excuse me.’ She lifted her hand to her chest as she caught her breath. ‘It always takes me some time…’
‘Please don’t worry,’ I said as I held the heavy black door open for her. ‘But couldn’t you have let me in from upstairs?’
‘The automatic catch is broken – somewhat to my regret,’ she added with elegant understatement. ‘Anyway, thank you so much for coming, Miss Swift …’
‘Please, call me Phoebe.’
As I stepped over the threshold Mrs Bell extended a thin hand, the skin on which was translucent with age, the veins standing out like blue wires. As she smiled at me her still-attractive face folded into a myriad creases which here and there had trapped particles of pink powder. Her periwinkle eyes were patched with pale grey.
‘You must wish there was a lift,’ I said as we began to climb the wide stone staircase to the third floor. My voice echoed up the stairwell.
‘A lift would be extremely desirable,’ said Mrs Bell as she gripped the iron handrail. She paused for a moment to hitch up the waist of her caramel wool skirt. ‘But it’s only lately that the stairs have bothered me.’ We stopped again on the first landing so that she could rest. ‘However, I may be going elsewhere quite soon, so I will no longer have to climb this mountain – which would be a distinct advantage,’ she added as we carried on upwards.
‘Will you be going far?’ Mrs Bell didn’t seem to hear so I concluded that in addition to her general frailty she must be hard of hearing.
She pushed on her door. ‘Et voilà …’
The interior of her flat, like its owner, was attractive but faded. There were pretty pictures on the walls, including a luminous little oil painting of a lavender field; there were Aubusson rugs on the parquet floor and fringed silk lampshades hanging from the ceiling of the corridor along which I now followed Mrs Bell. She stopped halfway and stepped down into the kitchen.