Authors: Daisy James
If the Dress Fits (3 page)
But it had all come at a price when, after years of religiously returning to Allthorpe to fan the flames of their courtship, she had returned that night, albeit late, to stumble upon the scene that had remained scorched on the inside of her eyelids ever since. The shock had galvanised her into taking her dreams to a new level and the eponymous Callie-Louise Couture had been born.
Every spare crumb of her love and affection had been lavished on her business. It was her baby and craved every moment of her attention. She was grateful for that as it meant she had no time to dwell on what had happened. But she had never forgotten Theo’s betrayal of their relationship.
However, Scarlet was also right. What was Theo to do when girls threw themselves at him? And things could only have got worse now that The Razorclaws had topped the charts with their recent album. She just couldn’t see herself as part of that itinerant lifestyle. And she definitely couldn’t handle the roller coaster of emotions that went along with dating a famous rock musician.
And, anyway, wasn’t Callie-Louise Henshaw about to become the most celebrated fashion designer in the country?
‘Look, come on. The courier will be here any minute now and we can’t risk him leaving empty-handed. I’m going to slide the dress into the wardrobe on the dressmaker’s dummy; less opportunity for it to crease. I’ll never forget that image of Princess Diana’s wedding gown on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.’ Callie grimaced as she recalled the profusion of crinkles the dress had displayed to the seven hundred and fifty million people who’d been watching around the globe.
‘This is, without a doubt, the most beautiful wedding gown I have ever laid eyes on – you know that, Callie, don’t you? It’s definitely going to win the competition and you’ll see your own design worn by one of the most famous actresses in the world. How exciting is that?’
Despite her natural reluctance to sing her own praises, Callie allowed herself a tiny nod to her ingenuity with a needle, coupled with her God-given talent, which had produced such dazzling results. It was one of her most adventurous creations to date, but every aspect of the gown had merged to form a true work of art. She had slaved through eighteen-hour days over the last three months to get the sample ready for the final judging the next day.
The gown’s pale ivory, organic silk flowed like ripples in a summer breeze. The strapless bodice draped exquisitely to enhance Lilac’s translucent, swan-like neck and pert breasts. The nipped-in waist would amplify her slender measurements, but it was the A-line skirt that drew the appreciative eye, ruched to the right where a darted panel of inlaid crystals and seed pearls shimmered like a sparkling waterfall whenever the bride moved, especially under the neon lights of Callie’s workshop. A fantasy dress for a fairy-tale wedding, putting even Cinderella’s to shame.
Of course, if the design won it would have to be custom-altered and remoulded, but she would do anything, work 24/7, if it meant her dress could be displayed to the fashion world on such a famous model. That kind of exposure could jettison the Callie-Louise name into the order books of every style-conscious celebrity in Britain. It was everything she had been working towards. Every single, painful sacrifice she had made would have been worth it.
Except maybe one.
The two girls gently gathered the gown’s delicate folds and straightened the underskirt and hem. Callie fought a cauldron of emotions not to shed a tear as she and Scarlet manoeuvred the cardboard wardrobe crate towards the dressmaker’s dummy and carefully inserted the textile sculpture.
They draped sheets of acid-free tissue paper around the dress until it was packed as tightly as possible without scrunching the delicate material and stood back to admire their handiwork before they sealed the door, knowing there would be no further tweaking allowed.
As Callie closed the door and sealed the box with the brown tape, both girls let out a sigh of pleasure and of satisfaction.
‘A true masterpiece, Callie. Lilac would be crazy not to pick it.’
Callie couldn’t speak. Her throat had tightened around a lump the size of a golf ball. ‘Oh, God, I nearly forgot! The paperwork for the courier.’
‘Callie? Callie?’ Flora’s voice floated down from the floor above. ‘Call for you in the Tumble Room. Said it was urgent!’
‘Okay, Flora, be right there.’
Callie exchanged a smirk with Scarlet as she slipped on her black ballet pumps, stretched her long, colt-like legs and wiggled out the kinks in her shoulder muscles to her full six-foot height. She flicked the sides of her bob behind each ear and slid the pin cushion from around her wrist.
Every call Flora put through was ‘urgent’. Despite being the salon’s receptionist since its inception three years ago, she invariably fell for the caller’s assertive demands.
Rolling her eyes and experiencing a sweep of relief at the conclusion of the most important project of her career, she took the stairs two at a time to their ‘ideas’ room. It had been nicknamed the ‘Tumble Room’ because it was where Callie hoped their creative juices and ideas would tumble forth from brain to paper. In reality, it was a small conference room they used to receive their clients and listen to their dreams, decorated with wall art ranging from framed photographs of 1950s brassieres to Callie’s prized David Hockney, the celebrated Yorkshire-born artist, which she’d inherited from her father.
‘Thanks, Flora. Hi, Callie-Louise Henshaw speaking.’
‘Callie, at last! It’s Seb,’ announced her cousin with none of his usual comedic preamble.
‘Oh, hi, Seb. What great timing. We’ve just put the finishing touches…’
‘Callie, it’s Mum. Delia’s just rung. She collapsed when she was shutting up the shop. She’s been rushed to Harrogate hospital by ambulance. You’d better get up here. Delia is with her but she’s unconscious. The medics’ early diagnosis is a perforated bowel and she’ll be going straight into surgery. I’m racing across there now.’
‘Oh, my God, Seb, I’m on my way.’ An anvil-heavy weight pressed down on Callie’s chest restricting the flow of air to her lungs. She gulped for breath, her body frozen in alarm.
‘Callie? Callie? What on earth’s happened?’ Scarlet rushed to Callie’s side, rousing her from her shock and sending her stalled brain into motion.
‘It’s Aunt Hannah. She’s collapsed. On her way to the hospital. Having surgery. Got to go. Now!’
‘Oh, Callie, no!’
Callie rushed past Scarlet’s blanched face, back down the wooden treads to her workshop and grabbed her handbag and mac. Fear wrenched at her gut. She couldn’t lose her aunt, she just couldn’t. When her parents had died in a head-on crash when she was only ten years old, Aunt Hannah had surrounded her with a comfort blanket of love and brought her up alongside her two older cousins, Seb and Dominic, in a home filled with chatter and homely warmth. She adored her. She couldn’t envisage life without her.
‘What about the dress, Callie?’ cried Scarlet as she darted in Callie’s wake down the stairs to the workroom. ‘You need to fill out the forms, and sign the seal and the courier’s documentations. It’s part of the requirements, as evidence that the entry hasn’t been tampered with.’
‘Oh, erm, you do it, Scarlet,’ Callie called over her shoulder from the top of the stairs, the helix of panic tightening in her chest and throat, her brain ricocheting off into myriad nightmare scenarios.
Scarlet jogged to keep up with Callie’s beeline for the exit and the car park at the back of the salon with a visibly upset Flora in her wake.
‘Callie…’
‘Scarlet. Just make sure it goes. It’s packed and sealed. It only needs a signature. I have to get to the hospital.’
Tears sprang into Callie’s eyes and trickled down her pale cheeks. Her shallow breathing induced a dizzy spell causing her to pause at the door to draw oxygen into her screaming lungs. An icy drench of panic rose up her arms, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
‘Look, Callie, you can’t drive all the way up to Yorkshire by yourself – you’re in no fit state. I’ll drive you.’
‘Scarlet…’
‘What use will you be to your aunt if you end up in the same hospital after an RTA? Give me your keys!’ Scarlet brandished her palm and the expression on her face brooked no further argument.
Callie realised that her objections were only serving to delay her journey. Any further refusals would only extend the time until she arrived at her aunt’s bedside.
‘Okay. Flora, if you can’t find Lizzie, will
you
stay until the courier arrives to collect the gown? All you have to do is fill out the documents and get a receipt.’
‘Sure, Callie. I hope your aunt’s going to be okay.’
Callie could not recall much of the journey up to Harrogate. Scarlet drove swiftly, the car’s headlights tunnelling two piercing beams through the London streets, strangely devoid of their daily bustle on that late March evening, the clientele of the busy bars ignorant of the curling veins of turmoil swirling around Callie’s ragged brain. Raindrops splattered sporadically on the windscreen, the blades flicking them away like irritating flies. The amber glow of the street lamps cast their mellow light into the inky black puddles gathered in the gutters and across the rooftops.
She couldn’t lose Aunt Hannah, she thought, panicking, especially as she’d already lost her parents. God couldn’t be that cruel, surely?
Silence pervaded the vehicle whilst Scarlet concentrated on handling the unfamiliar controls of the Mini Cooper and delivering Callie to the hospital as quickly as possible, her own features pinched and sombre in the half-light. Anyway, what words were there to ease the pain?
At last Scarlet pulled into the deserted hospital car park. Callie glimpsed the stout figure of Hannah’s best friend on the stone steps leading to the entrance hall, clearly keeping an anxious lookout for their arrival. Callie leapt from the car, grateful for Delia’s foresight – it meant she would not have to wander the neon-bleached corridors, going through the rigmarole of repeated questions to locate her aunt.
‘Delia? Where’s…’
‘Oh, Callie, I’m so, so sorry, my love. So very, very sorry.’ Tears streamed down Delia’s powdery, wrinkled face, her pale blue eyes gentle as she hooked her arm threw Callie’s elbow.
‘Delia?’ Callie’s voice trembled.
‘Come on. Seb and Dominic are just in here,’ and she steered Callie into a tiny, fluorescent-bright room just off the entrance-hall corridor.
As soon as the door swung back, Seb leapt out of the brown plastic chair and took Callie into his arms. Over his shoulder, Callie swung her horrified stare from Dominic to Delia as icy fingers of dread curled around her heart and squeezed.
‘No… no… no…’
‘I’m so sorry, Cal. Mum passed away twenty minutes ago during surgery. Heart attack. They did everything they could…’
‘No…’
A soft breeze laced with the fragrance of spring wove its way through the village of Allthorpe. Shafts of early April sunshine spliced through the leaden clouds clothing the church with a mantle of golden light. It was a picturesque venue and it was no surprise that the parish church, complete with rose-entangled lynch gate, was regularly chosen as the venue for much happier occasions. But no ivory ribbons rippled on the gateposts that morning.
How could life dispense such cruelty?
Callie wondered as she dabbed away the tears from her cheeks with the scrap of embroidered cotton Delia had given her that morning. First the Director of Fate had snatched her parents, leaving her an orphan, and now he had seen fit to take her beloved Aunt Hannah as well.
Seb and Dominic were her only real family now – her only remaining link to her life in Yorkshire. She laced her arms through theirs as they thanked the vicar for the very moving eulogy he had delivered to a packed congregation. Hannah had been a popular resident of the village of Allthorpe, a committee member of the WI as well as a regular church attendee, and the Reverend Coulson knew her well. There had been genuine sadness in his words of comfort.
The mourners spilled out of the church and meandered their way down the path towards the village green where a snake of black limousines waited. Those closest to Hannah had been invited to join the family in a toast to her life at her home in Harrogate ten miles away.
Callie had known Theo would be at the funeral to pay his respects to his best friend’s mother and the person who had taken his girlfriend under her loving wing when she was only ten years old. Her aunt had possessed an infinite capacity to love and had extended her affection to Theo, the boy who had loved her niece for as long as she could remember. But Callie hadn’t anticipated the depth of emotion she would experience when she set eyes on him for the first time in three years as he loitered on the worn-out steps of the church with his parents whilst they chatted to the vicar.
Her first reaction was to turn and run, but how could she?
Seb must have felt her arm tense. He glanced over her shoulder, a smile cracking his face for the first time that day.
‘Theo!’
Callie had no choice but to accompany Seb and Dominic to receive the heartfelt condolences of Theo’s parents, Geoff and Julie Drake. They shook hands with Seb and Dominic and then turned to hug her to their chests with such compassion that she had to swallow down hard not to open the firmly sealed flood gates. She knew the last thing her aunt would have wanted was for her to be a tear-strewn wreck. She managed a weak smile of appreciation, muttered how grateful she was for their words of genuine comfort, and was keen to move away before Theo took his father’s place and enveloped her in his embrace.
‘Geoff, Julie, I think Theo and Callie could do with a little space,’ announced Seb, his eyes lingering on Theo’s as he guided his best friend’s parents out of the churchyard.
‘Oh, no, Seb, I…’
Callie hadn’t intended to meet Theo’s gentle, silver-grey eyes. When she did, her heart dropped like a stone down a well before bouncing straight back up again, lodging somewhere between her chest and her throat. Her knees weakened under the strain of her swirling emotions as she drank in his familiar features.