“Your sister needs this wedding more than you do, Claire. Try to remember there’s a baby involved.”
My mother said it while I held my wedding dress against myself. The seamstress had gone to find the shoes. Outside the fitting room, someone laughed, and I waited for a word that would make the sentence mean something else.
“Whose baby?”
Mum glanced at the door. I followed her eyes and saw my sister standing beside the man I was supposed to marry in three weeks. His hand lay against the small of her back. He had always done that when I was nervous.
“We didn’t plan this,” Sophie said.
I looked down at the dress. The lace along its neckline had caught on a tiny rough place beside my thumbnail. I freed it carefully. I had been so pleased with the neckline. It was ridiculous to remember that now, but only ten minutes earlier I had been a woman who could be pleased with a neckline.
“But you’ve planned the wedding,” I said. “Or did you think you could just use mine?”
Daniel stepped forward. “Nobody wants to hurt you more than necessary.”
That was when I stopped holding the dress against myself. I let it hang between us, suddenly too heavy for the fine wooden hanger.
Sophie looked at the floor. She was wearing the pale pink dress I had bought her last Christmas, the one she’d said was too nice to keep for special occasions. I could see the gold chain at her throat. That was mine too, lent on Sunday for lunch with a friend. There seemed to be rather a lot of me in the room.
“How long?”
Daniel’s hand left her back.
“Claire, we should sit down.”
“You’re an accountant. I’m sure you can give me a number standing up.”
“Don’t do this here,” Mum said.
I turned to her. We were in the place she had asked me to come, at the time she had told me to arrive. I had finished a drawing at two in the morning so I could take an afternoon off for this fitting. She had rung twice to make certain I wouldn’t be late.
“Where would you prefer?” I asked.
She rubbed at the fastening of her handbag. “I thought we could talk before Mrs. Avery made the final alterations. Once those are done, it becomes more complicated.”
I waited. She looked at the dress.
“The alterations,” I said.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
Beyond the open door, a little bell chimed. I could hear rain ticking against the window, the soft clatter of hangers from the shop. Ordinary noises, continuing without the slightest consideration for what was happening to me.
Sophie took a breath that shook. “I’m eleven weeks.”
I looked at her properly then. My little sister, who used to climb into my bed during thunderstorms and press her cold feet between my calves. Who had rung me from a motorway services crying because she couldn’t work out how to open the petrol cap on a hire car. I had always picked up. Even when I was angry with her, even when it was absurd.
“I asked how long you’ve been sleeping with him.”
“Since February,” Daniel said.
February. My birthday was in February. We had gone to the little restaurant by the harbor, and Sophie had sent a message saying she’d been caught at work. Daniel had spent half the meal looking at his phone. I had told him he didn’t have to answer clients at dinner.
“Right.”
Mum reached toward me. I stepped back before her hand arrived.
The movement brought the hem of the dress against my bare ankle. I was still on the fitting platform, a low upholstered square that made me taller than all of them. I wanted to get off it. I couldn’t seem to work out where to put my foot without catching the silk.
Daniel bent automatically to lift the skirt.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
I gathered the fabric myself and stepped down. Nobody spoke while I did it, as though I were performing something difficult that required concentration. Perhaps I was.
“You said yes to me in March,” I said.
Daniel’s mouth tightened. “I know when we got engaged.”
“I’m glad.”
We had chosen the date quickly because the harbor hotel had a cancellation. A summer wedding, small enough to be sensible and large enough that Mum wouldn’t be embarrassed by the guest list. I had moved fittings, argued with the florist about sweet peas, kept three Saturdays clear when I could have taken paid work.
Sophie had come to see the dress when it first arrived. She’d held the skirt against her waist and asked if she could borrow it one day.
After me, I’d said. You can have a turn after me.
She had laughed and kissed my cheek.
I looked at her now. “When you asked about the dress, did you know?”
Her eyes filled. She didn’t answer.
Mum drew in a breath. “We can’t undo what has happened. I’ve told both of them how disappointed I am.”
“Have you?”
“Of course I have.”
I wanted to ask whether disappointment had been mentioned before or after the availability of the hotel. Instead I tightened my grip on the hanger until the wooden edge hurt my palm.
“People have booked rooms,” Mum said more quietly. “Your aunt is coming from Scotland. Daniel’s grandparents can’t keep traveling up and down. I thought, if everyone was willing to be sensible—”
“I’m not.”
She stared at me.
“I’m not willing.”
Sophie pressed the heel of her hand beneath one eye. “I know you hate me.”
“I haven’t had time to decide.”
That silenced her. I hadn’t meant to be cruel. I hadn’t meant anything except that everything was arriving too quickly, and she was already asking me to choose an emotion she could respond to.
Daniel shifted beside the door. “The booking is in both our names. We need to discuss what happens next.”
I looked at the familiar face I had expected to wake beside for years. He had shaved a little too closely beneath his jaw. There was a small red patch there. This morning, if I’d seen it, I would have fetched the cream he never remembered to buy.
“Are you going to marry her?”
He glanced at Sophie.
“Yes.”
The word wasn’t loud. He didn’t make a speech. Somehow that was worse. Four years of dinners and lost keys and his hand reaching for mine in the dark, and there was still room for a small, tidy yes.
Through the shop window, Nick Arden caught sight of our faces. He stopped with his hand on the door, the best man’s suit slung over his shoulder. For once, he didn’t smile.
I looked straight at him when he came in.
“Tell me you didn’t know.”
Nick’s gaze moved from me to Daniel, then to Sophie. He lowered the garment bag from his shoulder.
“I didn’t know.”
“Nick,” Daniel said.
“About what?” Nick asked him.
Nobody volunteered to explain. I could almost admire that. They had been ready enough when I was alone.
“Daniel’s marrying Sophie,” I said. “Apparently there’s a vacancy at our wedding.”
Nick stared at his friend. He had known Daniel since they were twelve. There were photographs of them in school uniform, at university parties, on a boat in Greece before either of them had learned what sun cream was for. Nick had told me once that friendship got less complicated as you grew older. You knew where to find people. You knew which stories to let them tell again.
“You told me to pick up the suit,” he said.
Daniel looked away. “We were going to talk tonight.”
Nick put the suit on an empty chair.
“I’m going to get dressed,” I said.
I was wearing the blue slip I had bought for the fitting, and suddenly the thin straps felt inadequate. My coat was on a peg behind Mum. My shoes lay beneath a stool. I wanted clothes that belonged to a day I understood.
“Claire,” Mum began.
“Out.”
She hesitated. I had never told my mother to leave a room before. I had sulked through rooms, slammed doors on rooms, spent Christmas washing dishes rather than be in a room with her. But I had never simply stood and said the word.
Mrs. Avery appeared behind Nick carrying a box.
She took in the room with the expression of a woman who had spent thirty years fitting clothes around family disputes. Her eyes came to me and stayed there.
“Would you like a minute, love?”
“Yes.”
“Then everyone can wait in the shop.”
Mum opened her mouth, but Mrs. Avery had already stepped aside to show her the way. There was something extraordinarily comforting about a woman in a cardigan who did not require the entire history before recognizing a closed door was needed.
Nick went last. He didn’t ask me anything. He picked up the suit and held the door while the others passed, then pulled it shut behind him.
I hung the dress on the peg. My hand shook so badly that the hook struck the wood twice.
For a moment I stood very still. There was a little framed photograph on Mrs. Avery’s worktable of a child holding a fish, his face enormous with pride. A biscuit lay half-eaten on a saucer. I concentrated on those things while I breathed.
Then I took my own clothes from the chair.
My blouse had buttons. I had never appreciated buttons properly before. Something to do in the right order. One small task followed by another, each producing a result I could recognize.
By the time Mrs. Avery knocked, I had managed all but the cuff.
“May I?”
“Yes.”
She came in alone and closed the door. I looked at her hands rather than her face. There were little red marks on the pads of her fingers, the ordinary injuries of her trade and mine.
“I don’t think I’ll need the alterations,” I said.
“No.”
“I’m sorry about the appointment.”
She made a noise that dismissed that so thoroughly I almost cried.
“It’s your dress, Claire. What would you like me to do with it?”
Not what was sensible. Not what might be easiest for somebody waiting outside.
I looked at it on the peg. I had paid for it in three installments. I had picked up an extra commercial job to cover the last one, spending four nights sewing pockets into jackets nobody would see for more than fifteen seconds.
“I’ll take it.”
Mrs. Avery lifted the garment bag from beneath the table. I helped her ease the skirt inside. Between us we could fold it properly without dragging the lace or crushing the bodice, and for the length of that task I felt almost steady.
“The shoes are still in the box,” she said. “No hurry about those.”
“I’ll take them too.”
She nodded, zipped the bag and handed it to me. Before I could turn away, she fastened the button at my wrist.
That was the kindness that nearly undid me.
Outside, Mum and Sophie sat side by side on the upholstered bench. Daniel stood near the window with his phone in his hand. Nick was by the counter, looking at a row of cufflinks as though they had personally disappointed him.
“We’ll ring tomorrow,” Mum said.
“Don’t.”
“We can’t leave it like this.”
“You can leave me like this. For tonight.”
Daniel put his phone away. “I’ll drive you home.”
I looked at him. He had driven me there. He had kissed me outside the shop and said he needed to make a call before coming in. I wondered whether he had rung Sophie from the car. I wondered how many small pieces of the afternoon would keep changing once I was alone with them.
“No.”
“Claire, it’s raining.”
Nick picked up the shoe box. “My car’s at the end of the street.”
He said it to me, not Daniel.
I nodded.
Daniel caught Nick’s sleeve as we reached the door. “Can we have a word?”
Nick glanced at the hand, and Daniel let go.
“Not now.”
The bell sounded too brightly when I opened the door. Rain blew beneath the awning, cold on my face. I was grateful for it. Nick took the folded weight of the skirt while I held the hanger, and together we carried the dress along the pavement like something awkward we had bought without measuring the car.
At the corner he unlocked a dark green estate with a dent above one wheel. There was a script on the passenger seat and a banana so brown it had become an accusation.
“Sorry,” he said, removing both.
I got in. He laid the dress across the back seat and put the shoes in the footwell behind it. Then he sat beside me and shut out the rain.
The windscreen fogged at the edges. Nick turned the fan up, then down again when it roared between us.
“Where am I taking you?”
I had been about to give him Daniel’s address. The words were ready. Four years had made that house the place I returned to even though most of my things were still in my own flat, waiting for the move.
I put a hand in my coat pocket and found my keys.
“Up the hill,” I said. “I have a place of my own.”