Wonder Women (12 page)

But then, after lunch, something changed. The crowds seemed more relaxed, more inclined to spend longer browsing, happier to part with money. Two teenage girls came and tried on a few dresses, giggling and taking
pictures of each other with their phones. It attracted more people to the stall, and suddenly Holly had four or five people leafing through her stock. Then one of the teenagers reached into her purse and brought out some crumpled notes to buy a pretty red and white spotted blouse with a pussy-bow neckline, and Holly had made her first sale. She fought hard to be nonchalant and resisted the urge to kiss and hug the girl. It didn't start a flood, but there was a determined little trickle. By the end of the day, she had sold one dress, three blouses and a skirt. She'd covered the cost of the stall for the day and made a little more. She'd learned that she needed a bigger changing-room facility than the flimsy screens she'd set up, and that the retro office wear sold better than the evening dresses. If someone asked her to define her mood, she would have said, ‘Cautiously optimistic.'

That was, of course, until she went to work the next day, when Susanna met her at the door with pursed lips. ‘What's this I hear about you opening a stall at the flea market?'

‘Er … yes,' Holly said tentatively. ‘I made a few things to sell.'

‘Evening wear?'

‘Some of it.'

‘So you've set up in direct competition with this shop?'

‘No!' said Holly, outraged. ‘This stuff is all couture. I just made a few frocks …'

‘On our sewing machine, I suppose.'

Holly had no answer for that.

‘Pack up anything you have in the back. You can work today as you're here, and I'll pay you till the end of this week.'

It took Holly a full minute to work out that she had just been fired. She was outraged, but in the same moment knew she had no recourse, as she'd been working illegally anyway. She stood tall, walked into the back of the shop and collected the few belongings she'd left there. As she came back into the front of the shop, a customer was pleading with Susanna to get a dress altered in time for a function in two days' time. Susanna turned smoothly to Holly and said, ‘Holly, dear, do you have time to take up the hem on Mrs Pienaar's gown today?'

‘No, I'm afraid I don't,' said Holly, ‘because I've just been fired. But, Mrs Pienaar, if you'd like a bespoke dress made in time for your event, please call me.' She handed the woman one of the cards Pierre had printed for her, picked up her bag and walked out. It was a small victory, and she got no comfort from it at all when she got back to the quiet, empty house and lay on her bed sobbing. No job, next to no money, and now no sewing machine. Things were not good.

After a good cry, a nap, a hot bath and a peanut-butter sandwich, however, Holly felt a little better, and ready to fight back. Her mum had given her a credit card when she left to go travelling. ‘It's for emergencies,' she had said over and over again, ‘real emergencies.' Well, as far as Holly could tell, owing two new friends a lot of money and having no way to pay it back except sewing was an emergency. She got online and looked at the price of second-hand sewing machines. On the Gumtree local website she found one similar to the one she'd been using, and rang the seller. He was happy to hold the machine for her for a few hours. She
went to the bank, drew out the necessary cash and took a taxi to the seller's house. As soon as she got home, she set about making a few more blouses in a wider range of sizes and altering a couple of the dresses that hadn't sold at the market.

She carried on throughout the week, buying a little more fabric on her mum's credit card and making carefully chosen items. She gathered names from Pierre and the few other friends she had made, and sent out a mass email encouraging people to visit her stall at the market that Sunday and offering a ten-per-cent discount. She didn't give herself time to think about the enormity of the gamble she was taking. She just worked.

Sunday dawned, and her fear and trepidation increased a thousand-fold. The stall looked better than it had the week before, that was for sure, but the stakes were so much higher. She was less concerned that the morning was quiet, remembering the last time, but she began to get antsy as soon as lunchtime came. Just as she was about to panic, a girl she vaguely remembered from the night of the drag show came over. ‘I'm looking for something for a hot date tonight,' she said. ‘Pierre said you could sort me out with something glamorous.'

She was small and slim with white-blonde hair, and Holly knew just the thing. She had made a strapless, knee-length dress in a bright emerald green that would be a perfect fit. The girl looked dubious when Holly brought it out, but she tried it on. When she saw her reflection in the mirror, she stared at herself for ages. ‘It's amazing!' she breathed. ‘I'd never have chosen this colour, but it really works!'

The dress wasn't cheap, and Holly prayed silently that the girl would take it. She did, and a flirty miniskirt in neon pink. After that, the floodgates opened. Holly was kept running around for the rest of the day, and even when the market was closing up, she was still selling. She'd brought needle and thread so she could make minor adjustments to clothes if they needed it, and that proved a big draw too. She also took a few orders for items in different sizes, and those people had been perfectly happy to pay a deposit. As the afternoon flew by, she was too busy to keep track of the money she tucked into her money belt, so it wasn't until she and Pierre were sitting in a bar, sipping cold beers, that she dared count it.

It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough. She could pay her mum back the money she'd spent on the credit card, give Pierre an instalment of the money he'd invested and put aside enough for her rent, which was due the next week. It was a start.

She needed to be more self-sufficient, so she took driving lessons, got her licence and bought a second-hand estate car, which the South Africans called a ‘station wagon', like the Americans do. It made her more independent and meant she could travel to suppliers and to the market without Pierre's help. It wasn't an easy life: she worked long, long hours and her income was very erratic, but somehow, month after month, she met her expenses. She wasn't saving anything, so her travel plans seemed, for the moment, to have been shelved. With Pierre's encouragement, she sought permission to stay legally in South Africa, and set up a bank account and a legal business entity.

Once she was mobile she became a little more adventurous. She found a couple of other flea markets around Johannesburg where she could get a stall on other days of the week. As demand increased, she needed someone to help with the sewing. She spoke to Portia, the domestic worker who looked after their house, and she recommended a friend of hers who was a talented seamstress. Phumi was a broad, sturdy woman with quick, capable hands, who could assemble and press a garment in half the time it took Holly. She also knew some very reasonable fabric suppliers, and business began, if not to boom, at least to rattle along.

One morning, Holly woke up and realised she had been in Johannesburg for three years. It was home. She hadn't consciously admitted it up till now, but she definitely wouldn't be heading off to travel up Africa any time soon. She was twenty-three, doing work she liked and she had a great crowd of friends. She loved the sunshine and the lifestyle, so different from grim, grey, rainy London. She loved the big airy house she lived in. She couldn't imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

Some of her clients suggested that she might want to set up a shop, but she quite liked the itinerant life of the fleamarket stallholder. She did, however, approach a few trendy boutiques to see if they would like to stock some of her stuff, and a couple said yes. It gave another arm to her business and she enjoyed making things she didn't actually have to sell herself. She also hired a couple of well-spoken, willing young students to sell at the market on days she couldn't or didn't want to attend, and allowed herself the odd weekend off or night out.

She was so busy that there was little time in her life for romance. She met a lot of people at the markets, and she'd had a few short-lived flings with other stallholders and once with a busking musician, but she hadn't met anyone that rocked her world. Until Damon.

She had gone out for the evening with a crowd of mates to a trendy jazz bar in Melville. A Brazilian band was playing and the vibe was steamy and exciting. She was wearing a sexy little ice-blue dress she'd made herself: close-fitting and shimmery. She had a great tan and her short, curly hair was shiny and unruly. She knew she looked like a million dollars. The guy standing at the bar, however, looked like a million and a half. He was taller than her despite her heels, blond and handsome, and he had that easy confidence that comes either from being very, very rich, very successful or extremely well endowed. As it turned out, it was all three. She had muscled her way up to the bar to get a drink and he turned and looked at her, smiled lazily and gestured to the barman. He was one of those guys who got served instantly. He leaned over the bar and spoke quietly to the barman, who produced a bottle of champagne and an ice bucket from nowhere, which he handed to him along with two glasses. No money changed hands. The handsome man took Holly's hand and led her to a small table towards the back of the bar. They had not spoken, and she didn't even know his name. He hadn't bothered to find out her name or who she was with. At the time, she had found his arrogance quite thrilling.

Oblivious to the noise of the band, they talked intensely for three straight hours. He was a property developer, of
Afrikaans descent. He was successful, articulate and well read. He told her he had gone to university in Edinburgh and had spent two years travelling the world. He'd hitchhiked through South America, and had backpacked through Southeast Asia. He was fascinated by the story of her clothing line and how she had started it from nothing, and asked lots of probing questions about her plans to expand. She wasn't all that interested in talking about it, to be fair, especially once they had finished the bottle of champagne and another had appeared, and he was somehow holding her hand across the table. She kept staring at his unbelievably handsome face in the candlelight. She had forgotten all about her friends at the next table, and she was vaguely aware that she was way too drunk to drive home. She thanked the heavens that she'd arranged for her student helpers to run the stall the next day. There was no way she was going to be ready for a 7 a.m. start and heaving boxes of clothes.

The bar gradually emptied around them. Holly's friends came over to say goodbye and left. She had stopped drinking, but she felt drunk on desire. She didn't want to get up from the table and break the spell of this amazing evening, but Damon abruptly stood and took her hand. ‘You'll come back to my place,' he said. It was a statement, not a question. Holly nodded, and they headed for the door. She stopped suddenly. ‘The bill! We didn't pay the bill!'

‘I own the bar,' said Damon shortly. ‘I've paid for that champagne once. I'm not paying for it again.'

*

Damon's house was quite insanely luxurious; in fact it could only be called a mansion. It was short drive from the bar,
on the crest of nearby Northcliff Hill. Holly gazed around, intimidated, at the great marble staircase and the atrium, which seemed the size of a football pitch and opened out on to a pool that looked roughly Olympic size. She didn't get much time to sightsee though, as Damon matter-of-factly unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor.

They didn't sleep that night. Holly saw the sun rise as Damon did delightful things to her as she reclined on a lounger by the pool. He'd already ravished her halfway up the stairs, on his king-size bed and in the shower, before announcing it was time for an early-morning swim. Swimming was not what he had in mind though, or at least not yet, as he lay Holly down on a lounger the size of a double bed, spread her legs gently and began to pleasure her with his mouth and fingers. She gazed dreamily out over the view of the city, her body tingling and aching delightfully. It didn't get better than this, surely. This was as fabulous as life got.

But things were set to get a lot better, she discovered. Damon literally swept her into his life. She didn't go back to sleep in the house she shared with Pierre again. She worked there during the day, and made occasional trips to collect clothing, until after a few weeks, Damon sent a van to move all her stuff to his house. He paid off the remainder of her rent for the year, so Pierre got to keep the house to himself. He set her up to work in a big airy room at the back of his house, with room for clothing rails, cutting tables and the machines she and Phumi used.

Suddenly, she was living a very different life. Damon had plenty of money, and he was very generous. He refused her
offer to pay rent, and he was happy to splash the cash whenever they went out. They ate in the best restaurants, entertained at his house all the time, partied in the trendiest nightspots and whenever Holly could take time off from the markets at the weekend, went off for luxury weekends in Cape Town or on exclusive game reserves. It was like living in a dream. But that wasn't true, thought Holly. Because sometimes dreams went all weird, and you almost always woke up just as the good bit started. No, it was like living in a film. She was head-over-heels in love with him. He was handsome, attentive and clever, he adored her, he made every aspect of her life easier and happier and the sex was just fantastic.

She wasn't at all used to being a kept woman, and at first it made her uncomfortable, but he was always happy for her to treat him, even if her offerings were more modest than his. He also never discouraged her from working. On the contrary, he was always on at her to work cleverly and more efficiently. He suggested she narrow her range down to the ten most popular designs, and that she should work hard to develop the side of the business selling to stores and retail outlets. Through his connections, he set up a meeting with an exclusive department-store chain, and she got a small concession in their flagship Sandton shop.