Page 133 of Falling for You

‘Gone are the days where you’re expected to freeze to death in order to look good,’ I say, grinning at Mum as she laughs.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be the young one living it up in London?’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t be worried about being cold.’

I glance around my bedroom, my blanket firmly draped over my legs.

The first year we moved in, the three of us were still a bit naïve after spending three years living in ‘bills included’ accommodation at university. We went wild with the thermostat. I remember walking around the flat in December in aT-shirt. We were all, ‘we deserve a warm home’ and ‘we work hard for our money, we’ve earnt this’, and blah blah idiotic blah.

Well, we had the shock of our lives when our bill came through in the spring. We made a solemn oath to each other that we’d keep ourselves accountable and not turn the heating on until the twentieth of November at the very earliest, unless it snows.

We have thin, rattly windows and an attic that puffs all our heat away like a cheerful steam train. We haven’t had snow, but I’m pretty sure there are icicles forming in my nostrils.

‘I’m always worried about being cold.’

Mum still lives in our family home, an old farmhouse in the Cotswolds. It has wooden beams and sage cabinets, and an enormous reclaimed-wood dining table that stretches across the conservatory and sits our entire extended family every Christmas. All fifteen of us.

Growing up it was just us three, but our house was always full of friends from school, relatives and pals of my parents popping round for a cup of tea or a steaming Sunday roast.

On the odd occasion that I take Tanya and Penny backhome to ‘escape to the country’ (as Penny likes to call it), they cannot understand why I ever wanted to leave. Once, I caught Tanya ‘joking’ with my mum about lodging in my old bedroom (she swore it was a joke when I questioned her, but I saw her face when she bit into Mum’s apple crumble. The intention was real). Don’t get me wrong, I loved living there. But I love living in London too. Even if it does mean that the only person making me an apple crumble on a Sunday for under £11.50 is Mr Kipling.

‘What are you making?’ I ask Mum, as she picks up a wooden spoon and starts stirring an enormous pot.

She frowns, her glasses momentarily steaming up. ‘I’m batch-cooking some bolognese,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘It’s the best way to live these days.’

I go back to my sewing machine. This order came through on our site on Friday, with a desperate note that they need it by Wednesday at the latest to give them enough time to find an alternative in case it isn’t right.

Some people might see this as an insult, but I see it as a personal challenge to make this girl a costume so incredible that she’d feel silly for eventhinkingthat she’d need another option. She came to the Stitching Witches, and we are the best.

This month so far, I’ve made two Little ‘dead’ Riding Hoods, four evil cats, one pixie, and now one thermal ghost. I could have made double that if I didn’t work full-time.

Halloween is this weekend, and we’re bound to get more desperate orders as the week goes on. Mum always tells me that after the twenty-first of the month, I should say that thedeadline has passed and I can’t make any more. But I can’t resist – all I have to do is look at the weird and wonderful requests and I’m hooked. I get a bit possessive over it, as if it’s alreadymyproject. Nobody can make this outfit as good as I can, even if it means I stay up all night for an entire week cooped up in my bedroom and develop a hump in my back like Igor fromDespicable Me.

Actually, he’d be quite a good Halloween costume.

It’s all worth it when I receive a photo of the person in my costume, looking confident and excited. I know they’ll spend the night batting off compliments about how great they look. They’ll have a cloak of power draped over their body for the night, and I’ll have been the one to give it to them. How can I say no to that?

‘What are you dressing up as for Halloween, then?’ I ask, taking the fabric out of the machine as I get ready to sew the hem.

Halloween was always a huge deal in our house. In fact, we were ‘the’ house in the area. You know the one. People would travel there to trick or treat and have their photos taken outside. My parents would go nuts for it. Dad would spend hours decorating the outside of the house, sticking severed hands into the soil that stretched up, ready to snatch the ankles of any passing children. He’d drape fake cobwebs over the front of the house and drop a giant spider from my bedroom window that would glisten when the light of a passing car hit its back.

Even though I haven’t lived at home for over ten years, they still go full throttle. Everyone in the village loves it – somuch so that in my dad’s home office there are twenty-five framed pages from theCotswolds Heraldof Mum and Dad, grinning proudly in front of their terrifying house. I’m featured in almost all the pictures too, up until I moved out to go to university.

‘Well,’ Mum’s eyes light up, ‘I think I’ll go as a witch. I found this amazing YouTube video on how to reconstruct your face with make-up, so I’m going to give myself these huge eyes and I got this fabulous wig online.’

By fabulous, she means grotesque.

‘And I think Dad wants to go as a clown.’ She picks up a pepper grinder and twists it into the pot. ‘He’s been quite inspired by Stephen King’sIt. I said I’d help him out, I think we have some bits and pieces lying around. Did you finish your costume?’

I press my foot on the pedal and hold the fabric tight as the sewing machine whizzes over the hem of the dress.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Although I’m not sure if I can wear it.’

‘Why?’ Mum asks. ‘Does it not fit right?’

I try not to scoff. As if I’d make a costume for myself that didn’t fit properly.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Tanya and Penny want to go to a ball on Halloween.’

Mum’s mouth drops open. ‘A ball?OnHalloween?’