Page 21 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop (Vintage Dress Shop Romance #3)

F riday was a much better day. And not just because it signalled almost the end of what had been a truly horrible week.

Phoebe had been woken by her phone ringing at some ungodly hour.

Her first thought was that it was Freddy calling to apologise.

Her second thought was that it was actually more likely to be someone in a call centre on another continent who wanted to scam her out of her life savings, though joke would be on them as her life savings were non-existent.

Her third thought when she unearthed her phone from under her pillow and saw Johnno’s name flashing on the screen was that he really needed to figure out the time difference between London and his parents’ Australian sheep farm.

‘It’s not a sheep farm, it’s a sheep station,’ he said when Phoebe told him this. ‘I get so confused with the clocks going back and forward and what have you at this time of year.’

‘They’re going back in a week or so,’ Phoebe said, snuggling into Coco Chanel’s sleep-warm and biscuit-smelling little body, the phone on speaker on her pillow. ‘I love this time of year.’

‘So, I hear you’ve been in the wars. Gone viral and all that,’ Johnno said without preamble.

‘You’ve spoken to Freddy then?’ In the space of a few days, even saying Freddy’s name made something in Phoebe’s chest hurt.

‘Might have exchanged a few words . . . Then I spoke to Soph last night. She’s worried about you.’

Phoebe snorted like a furious little dragon. ‘I doubt that.’

‘Now, now, Pheebs,’ Johnno said mildly. In all the time that Phoebe had known him, which was some sixteen odd (very odd) years, she’d never once seen him angry, or even heard him raise his voice.

Not even when he was confronted by shoplifters, bailiffs or once the husband of a woman he’d been seeing who ‘swore blind that they were separated’. ‘How are you doing, kid?’

Johnno was also the only person who could call Phoebe ‘kid’ and not have their head bitten off. ‘I’ve been better. Freddy says he’s going to sack me.’

‘Not exactly what he said, Pheebs,’ Johnno corrected her in the same mild tone. ‘But you can’t get so aerated about a frock. It’s just a frock at the end of the day. Not worth all this heartache and aggravation, is it?’

When Johnno put it like that, it wasn’t. But then, Phoebe knew where she was with the frocks. It was the people who were an unknown quantity.

‘He’s been horrible to me,’ she said because she had very few secrets from Johnno. Before she’d finally agreed to go on a date with Freddy, he’d always been bending her ear about how she should give him a chance.

‘Kid, he’s a good kid,’ he’d say every time she turned Freddy down. ‘You could do a lot worse.’

‘The video doesn’t look great though, does it, and between you and me, the shop could be doing better,’ Johnno said and the unpleasant feeling in Phoebe’s chest spread out to her neck and, when she looked down, she could see her skin was mottled and red.

‘But we’re always busy. We’re especially busy right now.’ Maybe she should have been keeping a better eye on the business side of things rather than just the frocky side of things. ‘Are our takings down?’

‘It’s not that the takings are down. The problem is that our rent and our rates and the water bill and even the price of the fancy carrier bags have gone up,’ Johnno said. The mottled rash now extended to Phoebe’s arms and legs.

‘You’re going to have to close the shop!’ Where would she be without the shop? What would happen to the dresses? What would happen to her and Coco?

‘Nobody’s closing the shop,’ Johnno said firmly. ‘But Freddy has been talking my ear off about overheads and growing our revenue streams and whatnot. So . . .’

‘So . . . me reacting a little fiercely when some influencer ruined shop stock hasn’t helped matters,’ Phoebe supplied.

‘Though I really don’t understand how she was going to help Sophy shift a lot of rental dresses.

Oh God, I’m going to have to just grin and bear it when people come in with coffee and burgers and get their greasy hands everywhere, just in case they decide to buy something.

Bite my tongue! Even though we’ll actually lose money if . . .’

‘Hey, kid, do I sound like I’m in a panic?’ Johnno asked gently.

‘Well, no . . .’ Phoebe admitted. ‘But, quite frankly, Johnno, you could have one arm hanging by a thread and you still wouldn’t sound like you were in a panic.’

Johnno chuckled. Such a rich, deep sound and, although Phoebe knew you couldn’t rely on people and especially you couldn’t rely on Johnno, who’d disappeared to the other side of the world with just a day’s notice, she missed him so much.

‘True that. But you only need to panic when I start panicking. Can you do that?’

Phoebe thought about it. ‘Well, I can try .’

‘Good enough, and be nice to Freddy.’

She didn’t need to think about that at all.

‘Well, Freddy hasn’t been nice to me.’ She flailed her legs just thinking about it.

‘He’s banned me from the shop floor. Threatened to sack me if I don’t turn into some simpering, smiling fool who lets customers walk all over me and walk all over the dresses.

Literally! It’s like he doesn’t know me at all. ’

‘Oh, I think sometimes he knows you better than you know yourself,’ Johnno said and, before Phoebe could protest that in the strongest possible terms, he said he had to go. ‘Got to see a man about a dog,’ he insisted though it was half ten at night where he was.

She and Coco were walking along the canal path when her phone pinged once more. Again, her first thought was that it was Freddy because that was what happened when you reluctantly let someone in your life against your better judgement.

But it wasn’t Freddy. It was a message from her friend Marianne, who had her own tiny little vintage shop just down the road in Kentish Town.

Darling! You’re all over TikTok. What’s the story? Would rather hear it from you than believe some random and quite basic influencer. Charles and Sophy have invited us to their Halloween party tomorrow night, so I’ll see you and Coco there. And Freddy of course!

It was a reminder that although The Vintage Dress Shop was a huge part of Phoebe’s life, it wasn’t all she had in her life. She had Coco and she did have friends. Friends who even knew about her and Freddy because what happened outside the shop, stayed outside the shop.

Me and Coco can’t wait to see you , Phoebe messaged back and although she still felt heavy in her heart the feeling had definitely lightened a little bit by the time she arrived at the shop.

She was still trying to come to terms with the entirely new worry that the shop might not exist this time next year, another victim of the cost of living crisis and late-stage capitalism, but for the moment, it was there in all of its glory.

Freddy was nowhere to be seen that morning.

Clearly, he’d got bored with issuing edicts and decrees and new punishments.

Phoebe still headed down to the basement to slave away or rather to persuade Bea that instead of shooting all the dresses for the website as flat lays, they should shoot them on real people.

It was an idea she’d had last night when she was still too cross about everything to sleep.

‘You and Anita,’ she clarified. ‘Cress would never agree to it and Sophy’ – she lowered her voice – ‘she doesn’t have the right look.’

‘I’m not very photogenic,’ Bea protested, which was a lie.

Bea’s vintage aesthetic was very much 1950s pin-up girl.

In summer, she could even wear a sarong-style halter-neck dress (they’d been very popular in the 1950s) whereas when Phoebe had tried one on, it made her shoulders look like a pair of coat hangers. Very bony, very knobbly coat hangers.

‘I have never once seen you take a bad selfie,’ Phoebe insisted.

‘That’s because you haven’t seen the hundreds of selfies I take and reject,’ Bea said as Phoebe backed her into the little anteroom they used for a studio.

‘Nonsense. And the camera loves Anita,’ Phoebe said, as she approached the big ring light and wondered how to turn it on. She was learning new skills at a frightening rate this week.

‘Anita also loves the camera.’ Bea looked at Phoebe then she sagged in defeat. ‘I can’t argue with you anymore, Pheebs, it’s exhausting. Take some photos of me; then when the website orders dry up because they’re being modelled by a woman who resembles Shrek, you’ll only have yourself to blame.’

Bea said it lightly, but Phoebe wondered if she really was that exhausting.

Even before the events of this week, she’d imagined that Freddy seemed tired when they were together.

Not even tired but defeated. How his eyes had lost their twinkle as if something, or rather someone, had made his glow flicker and fade.

‘I just think we should try something new on the website. It can’t hurt.

Then we can also use the pictures on social media.

Didn’t you say that the algorithms prefer pictures of people rather than things?

’ Phoebe said in a soft, pleading tone, which felt very awkward.

‘Now, could you give me a quick tutorial in how to use a ring light? I hope it’s easier than understanding Camden Council’s website portal. ’

It was, but then manning the controls at NASA would be easier than Camden Council’s online interface.

They used a proper camera to take pictures and Bea, of course, looked stunning in the dresses that Phoebe put her in because, despite her many faults (and it seemed to Phoebe that currently certain people thought she was ninety-nine per cent faults and one per cent woman) she had a very good eye.

So, it was hardly a surprise when Sophy came down to the basement after lunch and didn’t look very happy about it.

‘Are you busy?’ she asked Phoebe who wasn’t at all busy but watching a YouTube video on how to increase web traffic. ‘Can I borrow you?’