Page 17 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop (Vintage Dress Shop Romance #3)

‘Leave that poor dog alone!’ The words were out of her mouth before Phoebe had a chance to think about whether it was a good idea to confront a drunk, violent, very unpredictable man.

‘What are you gonna do about it?’ he slurred, swinging round unsteadily so that Phoebe was now the focus of his attention.

Despite the icy chill of the evening, he was red-faced and sweaty. As he lunged at Phoebe she was hit with his fetid stench. Still, she stood her ground. She’d faced worse than this, though she really couldn’t remember when.

‘Leave the dog alone,’ she said again. ‘It’s just a poor defenceless animal and you’re a bully. Pick on someone your own size!’

‘I’ll pick on you, shall I!’ he bellowed, trying to swing an arm at Phoebe who hastily side-stepped out of the way.

People were staring now but still not wanting to get involved as the man let loose a string of colourful swear words at Phoebe, calling into question her parentage, what she did for a living and her appearance.

Again, she’d heard much worse than anything this sorry excuse for a human being could spit out.

He charged at Phoebe, again so suddenly that she had to jump out of the way, and the man lost his balance, teetered for a second, arms pinwheeling, before crashing to the ground and dropping the little dog’s lead.

The dog froze for a second as the man lay on his back, still swearing, then its eyes darted to the left, then to the right. Then back to the left as if it had decided that diving out into the rush-hour traffic was the best option.

It really wasn’t.

Once again, Phoebe didn’t stop to think. She grabbed the grimy rope-end that was lying on the pavement, crouched down and scooped the dog up.

Then she ran in heels that weren’t designed for running. She could hear someone, the horrible drunk man probably, shouting but she didn’t stop to find out what he wanted.

She didn’t stop running until she was at her front door. Still clutching the little black dog under her arm, who was shivering and shaking.

Phoebe’s flatmates were quite nice about having an unexpected guest. In the same circumstances, Phoebe would have been furious.

They put the dog in the bathroom sink and as they gently washed it with baby shampoo, they quickly realised it was a girl and though it currently looked like a shrivelled-up little gremlin with bald patches and angry red, oozing sores all over its tiny body, especially where the rope had been digging into her neck, in a former life it had been a French bulldog.

‘We’re not keeping it,’ Phoebe said, once they’d fed the dog some chicken and she was curled up on an old towel. ‘She’s clearly got some infectious skin disease and she was probably dognapped and her original owner must be missing her.’

Unless its owner was the drunk man who’d abused the dog so badly that every time they went to stroke her, she flinched and shook even more.

Also, Phoebe had stolen the dog and there was CCTV everywhere. No doubt, her picture had already been circulated to every police station in the Greater London area.

It was something she’d worry about in the morning. For that night, the little no-named dog slept curled up under Phoebe’s bed.

Except when she woke up in the morning it was to find the dog lying on her chest, her head tucked under Phoebe’s chin. Despite the sink-bath, she didn’t smell too great and although Phoebe was desperate for a wee, she didn’t have the heart to wake her.

The poor little thing was exhausted. So she just scratched the creature behind its huge batlike ears with her long fingernails and the dog made this rumbling noise, almost as if she was purring, and in that moment, Phoebe felt something hitch in her chest, like her heart was remembering how to beat.

There was no way she could keep the dog.

She should probably take it to the local dog warden or a rescue centre.

That sounded like a sensible course of action, except Phoebe had stolen the dog, although maybe she could say that she’d found the dog and hope that all the CCTV cameras in Tottenham had been out of order the previous night.

So even though Phoebe hated to ask anyone for help because she was perfectly capable of looking after herself and besides, she didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, she’d gone to Freddy.

Well, first she’d gone to Johnno. For someone who was always ‘going to see a man about a dog’, he didn’t have the first clue as to what to do with an actual, real-life dog.

‘If I were you, I’d go and see Freddy,’ he’d advised. ‘Then take it to a vet ’cause it’s got mange and fleas and God knows what else. Tell Freddy to pay and I’ll settle up with him later.’

‘You don’t need to do that,’ Phoebe had said stiffly. ‘You could take it out of my wages.’

‘Take what out of your wages?’ Johnno had winked then clapped his hands over his ears. ‘Whatever you’re going to drop from Mildred’s Greatest Hits, probably neither a borrower nor a lender be, I can’t hear you.’

Johnno and Mildred had met only the once when Phoebe had first gone to work at Johnno’s Junk as a weekend job and Mildred had wanted to check that everything was above board.

They had nothing, not one thing, in common but for some strange reason, even though Johnno had blue hair and was wearing cowboy boots and Mildred was in a tweed suit that she’d had for forty years, it hadn’t been the disaster that Phoebe was expecting.

There’d been some weird kind of mutual respect.

Mildred had died a few years before but it made Phoebe feel better about it, knowing that the two most important people in her life had come together, however briefly.

Freddy wasn’t the third most important person in her life. He was just a smiley, easy-on-the-eye bloke who gave her butterflies and kept asking her out though she couldn’t imagine why. But he was also a trained solicitor so she’d trotted off to his office with the dog.

‘I can’t go to prison,’ Phoebe had said once she’d reached the end of her tale of woe. ‘I mean, I could cope with going to prison but I was doing a good thing! He kept kicking her. What are the chances that he’ll actually go to the police to report me for stealing his dog?’

‘Slim to none, I reckon.’ Freddy had put a hand out to stroke the dog who was sitting on Phoebe’s lap and no doubt getting pus and flakes of infected skin on her dress, but the dog cowered away from his hand. ‘I doubt she’s got a microchip. You could just say that you found her tied up somewhere.’

‘But what about the CCTV? The witnesses?’

Freddy had grinned and Phoebe, as she always did when Freddy grinned, felt something inside of her melt. ‘I think the police have more urgent crimes to investigate than a woman rescuing a dog from a violent thug. It was very brave of you.’

‘It wasn’t brave. But it was the right thing to do. It’s wrong to treat anyone, even an animal, like they don’t matter,’ Phoebe had said fiercely. ‘Actually, it’s worse to treat an animal like that because they can’t stand up for themselves.’

Freddy had gone with Phoebe to the vet where they’d checked for a microchip, but the dog didn’t have one.

They’d cobbled together some story on the way there about the dog being a stray and although, by law, they were meant to inform the dog warden who’d take the dog for seven days, she was in such a poorly state that she was admitted to the vet’s for emergency heartworm treatment.

It must have cost Johnno a fortune, but he never once mentioned it.

Though the dog would be put up for adoption once she was better, Phoebe visited her every day.

Phoebe was a cat person, of course she was, but there was something about Coco Chanel (the vet had needed a name for the dog and Phoebe hoped that the little French bulldog would have the same tenacity as her namesake) that touched her more deeply than she liked to admit.

Phoebe knew what it was like to be badly treated through no fault of her own. Knew what it was like to be an inconvenience. And she especially knew what it was like to not be wanted.

‘Once she gets the all-clear from the vet, I think maybe I’m going to keep her,’ she said casually to Freddy when he popped into the shop to see Johnno.

‘Of course you are,’ he said as if he wasn’t at all surprised. ‘Perhaps she can give me tips on how to win you over. Like, if she came with you when we go out for that drink.’

‘What do you mean when we go out for that drink? Don’t you mean if?’ she’d asked, and Freddy had given her one of those smiles of his that made Phoebe forget exactly why she was still keeping him at arm’s length.

‘I’m an eternal optimist,’ he said and, although she still didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, Freddy had been very supportive and kept her out of prison and so it was only polite to . . .

‘One drink,’ Phoebe had said. ‘One quick drink to say thank you for your help. And I’m buying.’

‘Not only is she finally going on a date with me but she’s getting her round in.’ Freddy pretended to swoon and Phoebe had pretended that she was offended but her heart really wasn’t in it.

‘It’s not a date, Freddy,’ she said not-very-sternly. ‘It’s one quick drink.’

One quick drink was actually three drinks and then dinner at a Thai restaurant and the whole time they didn’t stop talking.

First they talked about what they thought they had in common – the shop, Johnno – and then they discovered that they had a lot more in common than that.

They both loved living in London, Regent’s Park on spring mornings, summer evenings in Soho, watching the firework displays across London from Primrose Hill in early November and in winter, hunkering down in a repertory cinema in Notting Hill, to watch a 1950s musical or a 1960s avant-garde film.

Maybe it was because Phoebe had been caught off her guard and maybe it was because Freddy really was an enigma, as Johnno often said. But she’d realised that there was more to him than she’d imagined.

Especially when he’d seen her home, all the way to her front door in Tottenham. ‘I know that this was only a quick drink,’ he’d said, eyes dancing in the streetlights. ‘But I’m still going to kiss you goodnight.’

Also, Freddy was very daring to make a statement like that and then actually take Phoebe in his arms. But she hadn’t protested, she’d even kissed him back because his first, tentative kiss had made her swoon like the time she’d found an Ossie Clark dress in a Cancer Research shop.

What would Phoebe’s life have been like if she’d never encountered that awful drunk man that one December evening?

Well, she’d be Cocoless for one thing. She might not love Coco Chanel, but yes, she spoilt Coco Chanel rotten because if anyone deserved to be spoiled rotten after her awful start in life it was Coco Chanel, who’d now overcome her tragic beginnings to transform into the beautiful, sassy and salty little princess she was always meant to be. And Phoebe and Freddy . . . ?

It had taken five years but he’d let her down as Phoebe always knew he would. Eventually.

As the day dragged on and time seemed to have slowed down without any customers to match with their perfect dresses, Freddy didn’t call. That evening, he didn’t even send his usual ‘goodnight’ text and Phoebe was damned if she was going to message him.

Like Mildred had always said, ‘Sooner or later a person will reveal their true colours.’