Page 10 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop (Vintage Dress Shop Romance #3)
She was more concerned about the time. They’d been faffing for over an hour, shooting Rosie walking up to the shop and through the door countless times and she hadn’t even looked at the clothes Phoebe had selected.
Phoebe had a bride-to-be arriving in fifteen minutes for a second fitting and so she pulled Sophy into the back office for an urgent consult.
‘I can’t have anything interfere with my brides,’ Phoebe said in a forbidding tone. ‘They’re choosing the most important dress of their lives. You’re going to have to hold Rosie off for another hour.’
‘It will probably take her another hour just to film the fit check of what she’s wearing,’ Sophy said with an eye-roll.
It was very disconcerting to bond with Sophy over a mutual irritation.
‘Maybe she can shoot her party looks on the patio outside?’ Phoebe suggested. ‘It’s not that cold. Professional models shoot bikinis in the middle of winter, don’t they?’
‘She’s an influencer. They’re much more demanding than professional models.’
It seemed as if Sophy was regretting a lot of her recent life choices.
Phoebe didn’t have the heart to point this out.
She’d do it later when the current crisis had been averted.
‘Well, at least we don’t have to pay her like a professional model,’ she said, trying to see the silver lining, but all she could see was the sudden way that Sophy ducked her head so she wouldn’t have to look Phoebe in the eye.
‘We’re paying her,’ Phoebe guessed grimly.
Sophy nodded. ‘Freddy agreed.’
‘I do not know where Freddy’s head is at lately.’ Phoebe clutched her chest at this new betrayal as Bea stuck her head through the door.
‘Pheebs, your bride is here and, Sophy, Rosie wants you to get her some more bubble tea,’ she said apologetically.
‘Deal with this, Sophy, or I will,’ Phoebe said.
Sophy knew that it wasn’t an idle threat. Her head hung low and she groaned.
Phoebe had no sympathy for her. It was all she could do to plaster on a wide smile as she ventured back into the shop to fetch her bride.
‘Padma! So good to see you again,’ Phoebe said, clasping her client’s hands. ‘I cannot wait for you to try on the dress.’
Phoebe wasn’t laying on the fake flattery either.
Padma, to honour her father’s Indian heritage, wanted to wear a red wedding dress.
Charles and Phoebe had sourced a beautiful scarlet crêpe and satin draped 1940s gown from a dealer in Hollywood.
Even though it had been a little too long and a little too tight, the first time Padma had tried it on, she, Cress and her mother had all cried.
Phoebe hadn’t cried because well, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d cried, but she had gasped in wonder and there had been an unfamiliar prickling sensation in the general area of her eyeballs.
‘I haven’t had a single carb in the last four weeks,’ Padma said as she followed Phoebe up the stairs. ‘I hope it will fit now.’
As well as being beautiful and willing to take a sartorial risk when it came to her wedding dress, Padma had vowed to swear off bread, rice, potatoes and pasta, not to mention chocolate, until she was on her honeymoon.
It made both Phoebe’s life and her job much easier.
Cress was also someone who made Phoebe’s job easier. Not like their former alterations lady, the redoubtable Reenie, who’d worked for Hardy Amies back in the day but had refused to be based on site. She was also a heavy smoker so all the dresses used to come back reeking of Benson & Hedges.
But now, though Rosie Roberts and her hangers-on had been quite the distraction, Phoebe remembered that she was furious with Cress. Not just furious but very disappointed and judging from the pinched look on Cress’s usually open and expressive face, she was cross with Phoebe too.
It could all wait until later. Padma was their priority and all Phoebe really cared about was making sure that she was as happy with her dress as she was with her choice of a groom.
Phoebe had never met Adam but she doubted he could be as perfect as the utterly stunning red dress Padma was poured into when she emerged from the dressing room.
It was long-sleeved and high-necked in the bodice, then the skirt was artfully gathered up and draped in a waterfall of delicate pleats. Phoebe wouldn’t even know how to begin hemming a skirt like that but Cress . . .
‘Oh, this is everything !’ Padma exclaimed once she was up on the dais and slowly rotating so she could see what she looked like from every angle in the mirrors that captured her on three sides. ‘I’m wearing my wedding Louboutins and this is just the right length now.’
‘Is that the underwear you’re going to be wearing?’ Cress asked.
‘I’m just wearing M&S’s finest, but it looks all right.’ Padma craned her neck. ‘Even my bottom.’
‘Oh, you’d look gorgeous in a just-around-the-house tracksuit,’ Cress said, as she approached the dais. ‘But the dress has got an in-built corset so you can wear something quite, quite . . . you know, sexy , if you wanted to. As it’s your wedding day.’
‘Well, I have got a reinforced bodysuit as one option and also a quite indecent underwear set from Agent Provocateur as another option,’ Padma said with a grin.
Phoebe allowed herself to sigh in relief as Padma and Cress discussed the final alterations. Little details that probably didn’t matter to anyone else but they mattered to Cress and Phoebe.
‘So, are you happy for Cress to make those slight changes then come in for a third and final fitting?’ Phoebe asked with her appointment book open. ‘When do you think the dress will be ready, Cress?’
‘I can get it done for this Wednesday,’ Cress said because she really was an absolute alteration goddess.
‘Look, I trust you guys so I’m happy for you to courier the dress over when it’s done,’ Padma said, which was music to Phoebe’s ears. A whole symphony. ‘It’s my hen next weekend and then it’s only two weeks to the wedding so anything that’s going to make my life easier.’
‘If you’re sure . . .’
Phoebe never found out if Padma was sure because there was a thudding noise and the gold spiral staircase began to shudder because it wasn’t designed to have five people thundering up it all at the same time.
Rosie Robert’s head was the first to appear, then the rest of her, her face showing her displeasure as she took in the atelier.
‘I suppose this will do to shoot some fits though the dresses up here are, like, really boring. So one note.’ She bypassed Phoebe and the furious look on her face, to light upon Padma still standing on the dais and, to her credit, still smiling even though her most special bridal experience was currently being ruined. ‘Oh, I like that. I’ll try that on.’
‘You absolutely will not be trying it on,’ Phoebe said in a low voice because it was taking every fibre of her being not to go all the way up to eleven. Sophy was the last to come up the stairs then stood there, wringing her hands and mouthing what looked like, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Seems like you’re really busy,’ Padma said because really, she was a saint. ‘I’ll get changed and we’ll sort out the details if you can help me out of this.’
They might be very angry with each other but they were still friends, so Cress could tell that Phoebe was five seconds away from losing her shit. Maybe it was the clenched fists and the flared nostrils that gave her away.
‘Pheebs, can you help Padma?’ Cress asked diplomatically. ‘I need to finish making my notes while they’re fresh in my head.’
‘I’m so sorry that you had your special moment interrupted,’ Phoebe said when she and Padma were in the changing room and she was carefully inching down the concealed zip.
‘No problems,’ Padma assured her. She was the most laid-back bride that Phoebe had ever met. ‘I used to follow Rosie on Instagram but after a while it was all #sponcon and not even humble bragging, just bragging, so I had to unfollow her.’
If Phoebe didn’t already have ominous dread settling over her like a fine mist, then Padma’s words would have sealed the deal. Why hadn’t Sophy, or Freddy for that matter, properly vetted their influencer of choice?
By the time that Padma was back in her everyday clothes and Phoebe had delivered the dress in its garment bag to Cress, Rosie and the entourage seemed to be contained on the sofas and Sophy was opening one of the bottles of champagne they kept in a little fridge up here.
To make each bride and VIP feel as if they were getting a special experience.
Not for ungrateful people who said loudly, ‘I can’t believe this isn’t Cristal. ’
Phoebe was trying to stay calm. She practised taking deep breaths in and out as Sophy asked in a tightly controlled voice, as if she too was hanging on to her sanity by the thinnest, most frayed of threads, if Phoebe wouldn’t mind bringing up the dresses from the shop for Rosie to try on.
Usually, Sophy didn’t tell Phoebe what to do.
She wouldn’t have dared. But Phoebe was only too happy to make her excuses and hurry down the stairs to the shop, which was heaving with customers.
There was a queue for the two changing cubicles, which snaked around the shop floor.
Bea was having trouble changing the till roll and Anita was trying to mediate an argument between two women who had both fallen in love with the same 1960s mod-inspired minidress in navy blue with a red trim.
‘If you like the mod look then we have another minidress in a chequerboard print on the white rail over there,’ Phoebe said, eyeing up the women.
She was not in a mood for messing and they both quaked under her gimlet gaze.
One of the women was a cool-toned blonde, the other a striking brunette with warm-toned skin with yellow undertones.
‘You’d look better in this. You’d look better in the other one. ’
It was Phoebe’s party trick that she only had to glance at someone to know whether they were a warm autumn or a true spring. She was never wrong and the brunette grudgingly relinquished the navy blue dress so she could investigate the other option.
By now, Bea had succeeded in changing the till roll, Anita had instigated a strict three dresses only changing-room policy and said, ‘I’m sorry, people, but you can’t be doing fit checks in there and posting them to Instagram when we have a massive queue waiting.’
It was good to know that Anita had learned some of the lessons that Phoebe had tried to teach her.
Pausing only to tell a woman that teal and taupe were two completely different colours and not interchangeable shades of blue, Phoebe retrieved the dresses she’d selected for Rosie, and with heavy heart and heavy tread, she returned to the atelier.
But what she saw with her own actual eyes, heard with her ears . . . Phoebe went hot. Then she went cold. Still standing on the top step, she teetered very precariously in her heels.
No.
No!
NO!
It was a sight too awful to contemplate.
Rosie had stripped down to her Kim Kardashian SKIMS undies and even though she’d professed to love vintage fashion she was struggling into an antique 1930s dress made of silk and lace so fragile that Phoebe winced every time anyone went near it.
‘Yuk! I’m not loving this. It’s so dull,’ Rosie exclaimed once she was fully in it and yanked hard at the skirt.
‘That is not a rental dress. You need to take it off now,’ Phoebe said in a voice so strained that something at the back of her throat pinged. She wanted to move, to run and delicately pry the dress away from Rosie, but she was paralysed with shock and horror.
Rosie snorted as if Phoebe was being completely unreasonable and then with much huffing and puffing and exaggerated eye rolling, she pulled off the dress.
Her entourage was chattering away but the ripping noise was still absolutely deafening and as Rosie flung the dress down on the nearest sofa, Phoebe could see the orange streaks of fake tan staining the delicate dress.
Instantly, instead of the orange streaks, all Phoebe could see was the red mist of utter rage.