Page 30 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop (Vintage Dress Shop Romance #3)

‘Sophy came to see me,’ he said at last. His lips twisted, so far from his usual ready smile, when Phoebe shrugged at the mention of her arch-nemesis’s name. ‘Then I called Cress and she said that you’d be working late. Among other things.’

Phoebe could only imagine. ‘Cress is hardly an impartial third party. She’s always going to take Sophy’s side on account of them being sisterfriends or whatever it is that they call it.’

‘That’s hardly fair,’ Freddy said mildly, but his voice sounded tight. ‘Cress isn’t like that.’

‘Well, I know why you’d stick up for Cress what with the two of you having a secret side project,’ Phoebe reminded him bitterly.

Freddy shook his head and took a step back. ‘No, I’m not getting drawn into an argument about that all over again.’

‘Then why are you here?’ Phoebe asked and she felt just as weary as Freddy. It was clear that he wasn’t here to take her side or even try to understand where she was coming from. ‘To tell me off, I suppose. Go on, then!’

She sat down on one of the sofas and picked up Coco so she could wrap her arms around her comforting, chunky little body.

‘You called her an imbecile,’ Freddy said, which admittedly hadn’t been Phoebe’s finest moment.

‘Not specifically. And anyway, did she tell you why I called her that?’ she demanded.

‘She screwed up, she admitted that but your reaction was . . .’ Freddy sighed and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Once again, it was a complete over-reaction and in a shop full of customers too.’

‘There were maybe two or three customers and you didn’t see what it looked like, Freddy. There were dresses everywhere, not just shoved onto hangers in a random fashion . . .’

‘Sophy said that she arranged them by size . . .’

‘Oh my God, will you just let me finish a sentence!’ Phoebe exclaimed, flexing her fingers in frustration.

‘Sophy had no business arranging everything. The shop has a system. I have a system, which has worked perfectly well since long before Sophy so-called Stevens turned up to show us all the error of our ways.’

‘I don’t understand why you’re always so hard on Sophy,’ Freddy said, running a hand through his hair so that it was in more disarray than usual.

‘Of course you’d take her side even though she made a complete mess of the shop during our busiest period of the year and it’s taken me hours to put it back.

’ The sheer injustice of it all, of Freddy, made Phoebe want to contort her body into odd shapes.

She couldn’t stay seated for a moment longer and slid Coco off her lap so she could jump to her feet.

‘This isn’t about taking sides,’ Freddy insisted, his words sounding as if they were being forced out of him. ‘The way you spoke to her was inexcusable . . .’

‘Yes, I admit I shouldn’t have called her an imbecile but she called me a ridiculous woman,’ Phoebe recalled in an angry rush. ‘I bet she didn’t tell you that.’

‘I know what she called you because the whole exchange, once again, has been posted online,’ Freddy said, a muscle now pounding away in his cheek.

He dug his phone out of the inner pocket of his Harrington jacket and swiped the screen a couple of times before handing it to Phoebe, who had to relive the whole unpleasant scene all over again.

It had been shot from a very unflattering angle so she was all nostrils.

‘Who took this?’ She clicked on the username but their avatar was just a greyed-out silhouette and their name a random collection of letters and numbers. ‘I hope it wasn’t the woman with the nice coat and scarf. I’d expect better from someone so well dressed.’

‘It doesn’t matter who took it, what matters is you can’t keep doing this, Pheebs,’ Freddy said, his voice softening. ‘It’s not good for the shop; it’s not good for staff morale. You can’t enjoy being like this . . .’

‘Being like what?’ Phoebe asked, because she was who she was and she didn’t know how to be anyone else.

‘Do I care that people keep taking videos of me and putting them on the internet? Of course I wish they wouldn’t but I’m always going to stand up for the dresses when they’re being badly treated. ’

She looked at Freddy in disbelief. If he knew anything about Phoebe at all, then he’d know that.

‘But, at the end of the day, they’re just dresses,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s people who are important. It’s people who will love you. A dress will never love you back.’

Phoebe thrust Freddy’s phone back at him, flinching as their fingers brushed because she didn’t like being touched when she felt this angry.

‘What on earth are you talking about, Freddy? I do know that dresses aren’t, like, sentient, but they are reliable in a way that people aren’t.

There is no better feeling in the world than when you’re wearing your favourite dress. ’

Phoebe’s favourite dress in the world was a 1930s white silk jersey cocktail dress with the most exquisite drape and a scattershot pattern of crystals over it.

It had originally belonged to a debutante, who’d been photographed wearing it in Harper’s Bazaar .

Whenever she slipped it on, which wasn’t often because it really was a special occasion dress and was so precious that she saved it only for the absolute best, she felt beautiful. Invincible. Incredible.

There wasn’t a person in the world, not Mildred, not Johnno and especially not Freddy right now, who could make Phoebe feel like that.

She realised that Freddy was talking, his mouth making shapes, his hands now out of his pockets, to make stabbing motions. ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he was saying.

Finally, something Phoebe could agree on.

‘You’re right, we can’t,’ she said crisply.

‘I’m not putting up with this absolute nonsense any longer.

I don’t care about silly people taking videos and trying to make fun of me just because I care about my job, about the vintage dresses that have been entrusted to me.

It hasn’t stopped our customers from visiting and quite frankly, if I was in the market for a vintage dress, I’d want to visit a shop where the staff were passionate about their work. ’

Freddy folded his arms. ‘Have you quite finished?’

‘Not even close,’ Phoebe assured him with a brittle smile.

‘Also, I know that times are hard and we need to increase our profits and I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen, which is why I’m reverting back to my role as manageress and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You are not the boss of me and can’t sack me. Johnno wouldn’t hear of it.’

Phoebe was pretty sure about that. Johnno wouldn’t take sides. He never did. He would just tell them to sort it out between them and he couldn’t stick around to chat because he had to go and see a man about a dog.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ Freddy said, his expression and his voice both flat.

‘You’ve already said that.’ Phoebe rolled her eyes.

‘I’m not talking about the bloody shop. I’m talking about you and me,’ he suddenly snapped in the most unFreddy-like way. ‘It’s been years now and in all that time I thought loving you would be enough to make you change. But it’s not. I’m not.’

‘You don’t love me!’ Phoebe spluttered because they’d never talked about love. In fact, she’d always been very keen to avoid the topic altogether. ‘I never wanted or expected you to love me.’

Freddy turned his head away as if he couldn’t bear to look at Phoebe. ‘I do, I did, I wish I didn’t, because there’s no room in your heart for me.’

‘You’re just being silly, Freddy,’ Phoebe told him sharply because this turn in the conversation, his words, sent panic shooting through her veins. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Is there even an outside chance that you love me? If not now, then one day?’ he asked and now it was Phoebe who couldn’t bear to look at him, at the desperate expression on his face, his eyes and his voice imploring. She hadn’t signed up for this.

‘You knew exactly what I was like before we got . . . involved,’ she reminded him. ‘I don’t do . . . love. Never have and I never will. I’m just not wired that way.’

Time had proved, over and over again, that Phoebe wasn’t lovable. And if she’d never known love then it stood to reason that she didn’t know how to love. One could manage perfectly well without love. Mildred was proof of that.

They hadn’t really gone in for heart-to-heart chats but Phoebe knew that there had been a man in Mildred’s past. She’d been very vague on the details, but he’d promised Mildred the moon and hadn’t delivered.

Phoebe always suspected that he might even have run off with Mildred’s sister because she was Mildred’s only relative but they didn’t speak.

‘She did something unforgivable, Phoebe, and anyway, only fools forgive. It will only show people that they can take liberties again and again. Better to harden your heart so it can’t be stamped on. ’

Phoebe’s heart was as hard as a diamond. Formed, shaped and polished by circumstance. Circumstances that she wasn’t going to share with Freddy because then he’d feel sorry for her and she didn’t need his pity.

‘You knew that from the start, Freddy,’ she reminded him and though her heart was hard, her voice was soft and shaky. ‘I like you a lot, even now although you’ve hardly stood up for me at all, but I can’t love you.’

‘Yeah, yeah, because you only love clothes. Well, I’m not doing it anymore, Pheebs,’ Freddy was already walking towards the door, but he stopped to turn and look at her. ‘I refuse to come second to a load of old dresses anymore.’

For one long moment, they were frozen in time. It was odd. Phoebe had thought that she’d long since lost the ability to be hurt by other people, but Freddy’s words were like a thousand tiny cuts slicing through her skin and leaving her exposed to the elements.

She hated feeling that way. Raw. Vulnerable.

All she knew how to do was to fight back.

She scooped up Coco Chanel who’d been sitting on one of the sofas all this time, her head tilting first in Phoebe’s direction and then towards Freddy, again and again.

Phoebe held the little dog in front of her like a canine shield.

Her hands were shaking again. Coco also trembled in her grasp.

Freddy had his hand on the door and Phoebe had to be quick, before he opened it and disappeared.

‘Actually, Freddy, you don’t even come second,’ she said in her most callous voice, her words punctuated by the door closing behind him.

A full stop.

The end.