Page 34 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop (Vintage Dress Shop Romance #3)
A couple of days later Sophy put up Christmas decorations and in the time it took, the atmosphere in the shop changed completely.
From frosty with the threat of storms to a gentle breeze and the promise of sun.
Of course, if Phoebe had decorated, she’d have chosen either silver or gold. Not both. Never both. But this was clearly what people meant when they said you should pick your battles.
‘Very nice,’ Phoebe managed to say when she came down from the atelier after attending to a private client who’d tried on ten dresses and hadn’t bought a single one. She knew her smile was quite brittle, but she nodded her head effusively. ‘Very nice indeed.’
She couldn’t resist adjusting a stream of tinsel – the bougie, very full tinsel, not the nasty straggly cheap kind, which was wound round the end of one of the dress rails. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Then the bell above the door tinkled and Phoebe hurried to the safety of the back office.
The shop was busier than she could ever remember from Christmases past. Though it was quite hard to tell who was there to shop or who was there to simply gawp at Phoebe and try to stealthily video her so she wouldn’t notice.
Phoebe didn’t really know what this business meant for their profits.
If they were up year on year and far greater than their outgoings?
It wasn’t something she could ask Freddy.
Not now. Not anymore. There was an accountant who handled their payroll, probably the best person to contact if she wanted to start docking Anita’s wages for poor timekeeping too, but buddying up to accountants really wasn’t playing to Phoebe’s strengths.
It would be a far better use of her time if she could think up ways to get more people in the shop to buy more dresses.
Drumming up the good kind of publicity would be a start, instead of the bad kind.
At least their social media numbers were through the roof (although the trolls and the mean comments continued apace) and so were their website orders.
Bea said they’d hit 25,000 followers on Instagram and that they needed to finesse their TikToks and Instagram Reels and memes.
In between customers, she’d spent quite a lot of time filming Sophy and Anita as they decorated the shop.
Then even more time trying to make a TikTok and swearing when it kept refusing to upload.
Phoebe hadn’t even known that Bea knew how to swear, unlike Anita who needed her mouth washing out with soap given how frequently she dropped the F-bomb.
Still, they felt like a team in a way that they hadn’t in ages.
Things were even cordial between Phoebe and Cress, though they could be friendlier, but last time Phoebe checked Cress had still gone behind her back to launch a business with Freddy.
And – it was a really big and – hadn’t even named a dress after her.
Talking of Freddy, though even thinking his name made Phoebe feel clammy, he’d stopped dropping in. Or rather it was now Friday and no one had seen him all week though Bea had mentioned that he’d emailed her a couple of times.
As Anita ushered the last customer out of the shop and turned the sign to closed and Sophy began to cash up, all Phoebe could think about was Freddy. Though she’d been thinking about him, or trying not to think about him, all week.
If he was keeping a low profile then maybe he wouldn’t even come to The Hat and Fan for the usual Friday night drinks. As soon as Phoebe thought it, Sophy’s phone beeped.
Sophy frowned because she was in the middle of some heavy-duty counting, her fingers flying over the sturdy shop calculator as she tallied up the card receipts. Not that Sophy could ever ignore her beeping phone for long.
She wrote something down. Shuffled the card receipts into two piles, then picked up her phone.
‘Charles, Miles and Freddy are already in The Hat and Fan and some selfish people are sitting at our table,’ she reported.
‘It’s not actually our table,’ Cress said as she rubbed Coco Chanel’s belly while she sprawled next to her on one of the pink sofas. ‘Though I do think that one of the bar staff should stick a reserved sign on it for us.’
‘Oh my days! Not again!’ Anita suddenly exclaimed.
She was meant to be vacuuming but wasn’t doing a very good job of it as she was staring at her phone screen too.
Phoebe didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to tell Anita off, which just showed how off her game she was.
All her emotional bandwidth was currently being used to process the information that Freddy was in the pub and she’d soon have to face him.
Neither Phoebe nor her frantically racing heart was ready for that.
‘What? What’s happened?’ Bea asked from behind Sophy where she was breaking up some cardboard boxes to be left outside for recycling. ‘Has that bloke from Hinge sent you another dick pic?’
‘Why he even bothers I don’t know,’ Anita snorted. She looked up from her phone but held it aloft. ‘It’s actually worse than that. Rosie Roberts has reposted her clip of Phoebe going off on one.’
There was a collective sigh though no one sighed as loud and as long as Phoebe. ‘She’s already posted it once. I can’t see what difference posting it a second time is going to make. I’m already cancelled and still the most hated woman on the internet.’
‘You’re not even close to being the most hated. I think Kim Kardashian would have something to say about that.’ It was nice of Cress to stick up for her even in a half-hearted fashion, but Phoebe wasn’t convinced.
Especially as Anita was still waving her phone around. ‘Except this time she hasn’t muted what you’re saying.’
It all felt like it had happened years ago.
‘I can’t even remember what I did say. Something about women saving up for their wedding dresses, I think, but the rest of it is a blur,’ Phoebe said, her stomach one gigantic, gnarly knot as she took the phone to watch herself call Rosie Roberts a monster.
Phoebe’s open mouth resembled a dark void.
Her neck was very cordy and she looked utterly deranged.
‘I absolutely don’t need to see any more of this. ’
She pushed the phone back to Anita. ‘That’s just part one of four,’ Anita said with an undercurrent of delight, because whatever beef Rosie Roberts had with Phoebe, Anita’s beef had been cooking for a good three years. ‘You don’t want to see any more?’
It was a very easy decision to make. ‘I think I’ll pass,’ Phoebe said.
By now Sophy had completed the cashing up. Somehow Anita had finished vacuuming, though she’d done a very poor job of it, and Bea and Cress were waiting by the door so they could all go to The Hat and Fan because it was Friday night and drinks and devoted boyfriends were waiting for them.
Five minutes later, they were assembled outside the shop.
In the distance they could hear the crackle and bang of fireworks, pink sparks lighting up the night sky.
It was cold and there was a smell of autumn in the air; an earthiness from the damp leaves that had been swept up and placed in bags waiting for the council to collect them, chestnuts roasting from a street cart further down the road.
Phoebe wasn’t the type of optimistic and carefree person who loved the regrowth and promise of spring or the long sultry days of summer.
She was a clear autumn and a true winter, which could be why she currently felt like a small woodland animal.
Instead of parading the frost-sparkled streets of north London in a variety of fabulous coats and accessories as she’d loved to do in previous Novembers, now Phoebe wanted to burrow deep into her den and not emerge until March.
Of course, if she did hibernate then she wouldn’t be able to see Freddy when she wanted to see Freddy desperately.
She missed his face. She missed his easy grin.
She missed so many things about him. Then again, she didn’t miss the way the light had gone out of his eyes, his strained voice, his disappointment, all qualities that would be much in evidence when he discovered that Phoebe had gone viral again.
‘Actually, I’m not really in a pub kind of mood this evening.’ Her words came out much croakier than she’d intended. Almost as if she were on the verge of tears, even though Phoebe was proud not to be a crier.
‘Oh, come on, if anyone needs a drink then it’s you,’ Sophy said because they might never become friends but they were now friendly. ‘There’s a gin and tonic with your name on it.’
‘It’s Friday night,’ Bea pointed out. ‘It’s bad luck not to come to the pub.’
‘That isn’t even a thing,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ve got a headache and also last week I’m sure Coco ate a pork scratching off the floor because she had a very upset stomach. Very upset.’
‘OK, more information than we needed,’ Anita said, again positively delighted at the thought of Phoebe bowing out. Probably so they could all moan about her. ‘Well, we’ll see you tomorrow then. Bye!’
‘Do come if you change your mind,’ Cress muttered but Phoebe could tell her heart wasn’t in it. It was odd that of the two sisterfriends, it was Sophy who was currently on better terms with Phoebe.
Phoebe had never been surer of anything.
She watched the four women walk down the street, then turn the corner.
Once she was certain they were gone, she looked down at Coco who was straining at the lead, her face scrunched up in confusion as to why they too weren’t going to the lovely place on the corner where there were always crisps on the floor and a lap for her to sit in. Usually Freddy’s lap.
‘I know, Coco. I know you miss him. As a special treat, I’ll make you some chicken tonight,’ Phoebe murmured.