The first version made her look as though she had borrowed a bathrobe from a woman with a much more interesting life.
Coralie stood on the low fitting platform, holding the front closed. In the mirror, the cream cotton fell heavily from one shoulder and gathered at the other hip in a lump. There were no sleeves yet. A strip of blue fabric hung from a hook beside her, lovely and quite unhelpful.
Farah had been silent for too long.
“You can say it,” Coralie said.
“You haven’t finished.”
“That’s not the same as saying you like it.”
“I like the color.”
“It’s cream.”
“The actual color. The blue.”
Coralie turned sideways. The lump turned with her. She had drawn the dress six times, every version on a woman whose hip accepted a graceful fold and whose breasts appeared willing to obey a pencil. On her actual body the fold stuck out like a handle.
Farah reached for the fabric strip. “Will this behave differently?”
“A little. Not enough to rescue whatever this is.”
“It’s a first go.”
Coralie knew that. She had said exactly those words to women standing here while their unfinished hems threatened to destroy their faith. Usually she believed them. Today her own reflection seemed to have obtained special permission to ignore her expertise.
“Maybe I should just buy something.”
Farah looked at her. “You asked me to come and help you make something.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“I haven’t been given a job. I’ve been standing here being frightened of cotton.”
That earned a reluctant laugh. Coralie stepped down, catching the unfinished hem under her heel. Farah made a small movement to catch her and then caught the blue instead, which was probably the more valuable of the two.
“Hold this against me,” Coralie said. “Across here. Forget the fold.”
Farah draped the fabric over her shoulder. The midnight blue did something that the cream hadn’t. It warmed the skin at Coralie’s throat; it made her eyes look clearer. She lifted her chin without meaning to.
“There,” Farah said.
For a second Coralie could see it. A dress in which she would not need to stand carefully. Something that moved when she walked, that left room for her body rather than treating it as a problem to be disguised. She pulled the mockup open at the hip and allowed the fabric beneath Farah’s hands to fall more freely.
“Can you hold it another minute?”
“Yes, but my arm’s going numb.”
“I’ll be quick.”
She wasn’t. She reached for chalk, changed her mind, took a photograph, then saw another possibility and asked Farah to move her thumb. By the time she had marked the new line, her friend was staring at the clock above the door.
“I need to leave in fifteen.”
“I thought you had the afternoon.”
“I said until half past three.”
Coralie knew, the moment Farah said it, that she had. She had read the message while opening a delivery and replied with a heart. Nevertheless, disappointment came up hot and unreasonable.
“Of course.”
Farah released the fabric. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it sound as though I’ve suddenly decided not to bother with you.”
The cotton sagged. Coralie looked at the clock instead of her friend. They had already had a version of this argument in May, after a canceled plan. Apparently recognizing a flaw did not prevent her from taking it out for another afternoon.
“I wanted longer,” she said.
“So did I. One of them has a dentist appointment. You don’t want the details. I don’t want the details and I’m in charge of them.”
Farah’s phone vibrated on the cutting table. She glanced at it and turned it facedown without answering.
Coralie unfastened the cotton from her shoulder. “I’m sorry. You told me.”
“I did.”
“It wasn’t a fair noise to make.”
“It was quite a talent. Two words, whole accusation.”
Coralie folded the mockup over her arm. She had asked Farah here because she wanted her company, and then had turned her into a pair of patient hands. Beneath that lay a smaller, more embarrassing wish: that somebody would consider her new dress important enough to abandon an afternoon for. She could hear how that would sound aloud. She left it where it was.
“Tell me something that isn’t about me,” she said.
Farah raised her eyebrows. “You sure?”
“Not if it’s your dentist.”
“Work. They’ve changed the numbers for next week’s lunch without changing the order. Again. I spent this morning being asked why I couldn’t simply make forty extra portions out of enthusiasm.”
Coralie listened while she changed behind the curtain. Farah’s story involved a missing email, a delivery entrance blocked by a visiting van, and a person who believed the phrase a little flexibility could perform feats normally requiring food. It was very far from Coralie’s dress. It was also the most relaxed they had been together all afternoon.
When she emerged in her linen pants, Farah was rubbing her wrist.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. I carried an unreasonable number of potatoes. Your dress is innocent.”
Coralie found the folded chair and put it beside the open door, where a breeze reached them. They sat for the remaining eight minutes. Farah told her about an excellent insult one of her children had invented, and Coralie said she intended to steal it without credit.
Only when Farah got up did Coralie ask, “Do you think the blue’s too much?”
“For what?”
That was the trouble. There was no occasion yet. There was a wedding in July at which she would deliver a dress and perhaps attend with Stellan, although she had refused to assume anything about invitations. There were dinners, and summer evenings, and her own mirror. None of those had sounded sufficient when she bought the fabric.
“Just me,” she said.
Farah gave the blue a final touch. “I think you’ll look good. I think you know that bit already.”
Then she left at the time she had said she would, calling from the sidewalk that Coralie should send a picture when it stopped being a bathrobe.
Alone, Coralie laid the mockup flat. She did not undo everything. The shoulder worked. So did the deeper curve across the front, once she stopped trying to make it behave like the drawing. She marked two changes and left the rest for tomorrow.
There was something pleasant about having made a mistake on cloth that belonged entirely to her. No appointment waited on it. No woman’s important day depended on her pretending she knew the answer already. She could put it aside without apologizing.
She locked the studio at six with the blue strip in her bag.
On the way home she passed the shop where she had bought the shoes for June third. The window had changed. A pair of green sandals occupied the place where the ivory ones had stood, their narrow straps arranged around invisible ankles. She slowed, irritated by the ordinary efficiency of it. Of course the shop had changed its window. It could not keep an empty space for every customer whose plans had gone wrong.
Her own shoes were still in their box beneath her bed. She had missed the return period while dealing with other things. Sometimes that bothered her more than the larger losses, the absurd amount paid for something nobody else would want in precisely her size.
She went inside.
The assistant remembered her, which was unfortunate until Coralie discovered she could survive it. She asked whether the ivory shoes could be dyed. The answer was uncertain enough to require a call to somebody else, and Coralie said she would think about it. She tried the green sandals instead. They hurt almost immediately.
“They look lovely,” the assistant offered.
“They do. But they appear to hate me.”
She left without buying anything. Outside, she sent Farah the photograph of the mockup, complete with the offending lump, and received an answer while waiting at the crossing.
Definitely a pocket for an emergency loaf.
Coralie laughed aloud. The man beside her glanced over, and she showed him nothing, keeping the private little pleasure as she crossed toward home.
Stellan arrived at her apartment with a small scratch across one forearm and a shirt that had clearly been changed in a hurry. One edge of the collar pointed up. She straightened it before letting him fully through the door.
“Bad?” he asked.
“You looked as though you’d fought your wardrobe.”
“I won. This is the shirt I wanted.”
He kissed her, one hand resting at the side of her waist. She had become accustomed to the first brief contact and less accustomed to the way he sometimes stayed close afterward, considering a second. This evening she saved him the decision. She caught the front of his shirt and kissed him again until his bag slid down his arm.
“I’ve brought the book,” he said against her mouth.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
He blinked, then laughed, a short surprised sound. “No. The actual book. You said you wanted to see the pictures of the garden before we started.”
“I did.”
“There are pictures.”
“You’re making it irresistible.”
She took the book from him. It was not a professional portfolio. He had printed photographs and put them into an ordinary album, several at a slight angle. The first showed the old walled garden before his crew had started clearing its crowded beds. In another, Stellan stood beside an uneven patch of ground, pointing at something outside the photograph.
“What were you pointing at?”
“Something the person taking the photograph ought to have included.”
They sat on the floor because the light was better there. He showed her a corner he had changed his mind about, then another that he had wanted to keep and had lost the argument with the owner. He did not make the owner sound foolish. He sounded disappointed, and a little defensive when Coralie thought the new version looked nice.
“Nice isn’t what I was trying for.”
She looked again. “Tell me what I can’t see.”
He turned back three pages and showed her. She understood perhaps half of it, but she liked the concentration in his face, and the way he forgot to arrange his explanation for a customer. A fingertip with a nick beside the nail moved between two photographs. She put her hand over his when he finished.
“I see why you’re disappointed.”
“I may be being stubborn.”
“You may. I still see it.”
He closed the album. Outside, someone was carrying on a conversation beneath her window, every fourth word rising clearly into the room. Stellan waited for a burst of laughter to pass.
“Would you come tomorrow?”
Coralie turned toward him. “To the garden?”
“The lake. With Bryony and Kit. We arranged it yesterday. I said I’d ask you.”
Her hand remained on his, but it no longer felt effortless.
“Does she know it’s me you’re asking?”
“Yes.”
“And not because you need somebody to look at anything?”
“No dress. No jobs. Just the four of us.”
She watched him. The last family invitation had been made in a room where he had wanted her, then failed to say why she was there. This one was plain enough that asking again might become punishment. She did not want to punish him. Her body, however, remembered the table before her thoughts had finished with it.
“I’m nervous,” she said.
“Me too.”
“That doesn’t make it more tempting.”
“I know. I had a better version on the way over.”
She leaned back against the sofa. “What does Bryony want?”
“To go to the lake. To make Kit stop practicing his wedding speech at her. Probably to discover whether you and I can eat a sandwich without looking as though we’ve been summoned somewhere.”
Coralie smiled despite herself. “Can we?”
“I can.”
“A bold claim.”
“I have years of sandwich experience.”
She rested her head against his shoulder. He let the question remain unanswered for a while. His arm lay along the sofa behind her, close but not enclosing her.
She wanted a day with him in daylight. She wanted to learn whether Kit was as quiet away from the studio as he was on the telephone, and whether Bryony could be annoyed with her father without everybody rearranging themselves around it. She did not want to pass a test set by a daughter who had never asked to administer one.
“I’d like to come,” she said. “But I won’t know exactly how to be.”
Stellan turned his face into her hair. “I was hoping you might. That would make one of us.”
She laughed. After a moment he did too.
Later, while he washed his hands, Coralie took the strip of blue from her bag. She held it against the mirror in the hall, then against herself. He came out of the bathroom and stopped behind her.
“Is that yours?”
“Eventually. At present it’s mostly a disagreement.”
His eyes moved from the fabric to her bare shoulder. She saw the change in them before he spoke.
“I’d like to see eventually.”
“You may have to wait.”
“All right.”
There was nothing patient about the way he kissed the place where the fabric ended. Coralie dropped it onto the hall table and turned in his arms, one hand finding the warm skin beneath the troublesome collar.
He caught her closer when she stepped backward. She liked his strength most when he wasn’t thinking about it, the easy adjustment of his hands, the way her weight against him caused no interruption. She kissed the small crease beside his mouth and felt it deepen beneath her lips.
For several minutes she forgot tomorrow altogether.
When he left, she set an alarm for the morning and put her lake shoes beside the door. Then she checked the weather, found a prediction of rain after three, and packed a towel anyway.