this? Long-lost sister?’
‘Almost,’ Jennie said, as she and Alice smiled at each other. ‘I was engaged to Alice’s brother for a couple of years. The fact I didn’t get to be Alice’s sister-in-law was the thing that made me the saddest when we broke up,’ she said.
‘Anyway, what are you doing selling vintage lace and platform shoes? The last I heard your IT consultancy was just getting off the ground.’
‘Oh, I’m still doing that. It helps pay the bills. In fact, that’s how I met Coreen…’ She paused briefly to introduce the two women properly. ‘When Coreen started selling her stock online a few years ago, she decided to upgrade her system. I sorted her out with what she needed.’
‘That doesn’t explain how you’ve ended up selling Wham! T-shirts on a chilly Thursday morning rather than hooking up cables to PCs,’ Jennie said to Alice.
Just at that moment another customer walked up and asked Coreen something in-depth about alligator handbags. As she talked to the woman, Coreen made shooing motions with her hands. Bless Coreen! Alice mouthed her a silent thankyou and guided Jennie away from the stall, so they could walk and talk, browsing the clothing and arts and crafts stalls and catching up on over ten years’ worth of gossip. She filled Jennie in on what the family were doing now, and she seemed genuinely interested in what Alice had been up to since she’d known her as a shy sixth-former. Alice gave her a potted history—there really wasn’t that much to tell—and finished up with how she’d fallen in love with vintage clothes herself after getting friendly with Coreen.
‘We’re saving hard so we can open up our own vintage clothes boutique,’ she said as she finished off.
Jennie smiled at her. ‘That’ll be just fabulous,’ she said, nodding her head, and then she pressed her lips together and looked skywards. ‘Tell you what, when you finally open your shop give me a call—I’ll organise a launch party that will put you firmly on the map.’
‘A party?’
Jennie reached into a soft leather handbag the colour of clotted cream—the stitching on it was fantastic, and screamed quality. She pulled out an elegant business card and handed it to Alice.
‘You’re an event planner?’
Alice couldn’t have thought up a better job for Jennie if she’d tried.
Jennie nodded. ‘Isn’t it a scream? I get paid to have fun!’ She sighed. ‘Actually, sometimes the “planning” bit of event planning is a bit of a drag. That’s why I’m down here at the market this morning—hunting for inspiration.’ She gazed at a stall filled with home-knitted baby cardigans. ‘Did you ever meet my stepbrother?’
Alice blinked. Okay—swift change of subject, but she could keep up. She’d heard a lot about the stepbrother during the years Jennie had gone out with Patrick, but he’d been away at university for much of the time they’d been together.
‘Tall?’ She resisted adding skinny, mainly because she hated being described that way herself. ‘With glasses?’
Jennie laughed. ‘Yes! That was Cam back then. He hasn’t shrunk any, but he’s lost the specs.’
A flood of memories entered Alice’s head and she smiled gently. She’d met Cam—Cameron—just once or twice, the most memorable occasion being at a Christmas do at Jennie’s parents’ house. She’d been living in fear that she’d get picked next for charades, and had sneaked into Jennie’s father’s study to hide. She’d almost jumped out of her skin when she’d found a tall, lanky young man sitting in an armchair with a book. He hadn’t said anything—just raised an eyebrow and nodded at the other chair.
They’d spent a couple of hours like that, reading quietly, chatting occasionally, until Jennie had discovered them and dragged them out again to join the ‘fun’. They’d both pulled a face at the same time. Then he’d smiled at her, and she’d smiled back, and just like that they’d become co-conspirators.
The details of their conversation that evening were fuzzy in her memory, but she hadn’t forgotten his smile—or his eyes. Dark brown, streaked with warm toffee, like the tiger’s eye stones in a bracelet she’d inherited from her grandmother. What a pity those eyes, with all that warmth and intelligence, had been hidden behind a pair of rather thick, ugly glasses.
‘I remember him,’ she said quietly. ‘He was nice.’
More than nice. But he’d been older. And she’d been sixteen, and still a little terrified of boys she wasn’t best buddies with. But that hadn’t stopped her wishing it had been New Year’s Eve instead of Christmas Eve, just in case he’d been in need of an available pair of lips when midnight struck.
‘Well, he’s driving me nuts at the moment, because his company is doing up some old building and he wants—and I quote—a “different” opening bash. Something distinctive, he says.’ Jennie gave a little huff, as if she were offended that anyone would think she would do anything less.
They’d come full circle, and were now standing next to Coreen’s stall again. Jennie reached out and lightly touched the bow on the front of the sixties cocktail dress. ‘This really is exquisite,’ she murmured.
‘Try it on,’ Coreen said brightly. ‘I’ve got a deal going with Annabel, who runs the posh children’s clothes shop over there. She lets me send customers across to use her changing cubicles as long as I give her first dibs on any gold lamé that comes in.’
Jennie bit her lip.
‘Go on—you know you want to,’ Alice said. ‘The dress is lovely, but you need to see if it works for you. Things that look great on the hanger can suddenly look all wrong once you get them on.’
‘And sometimes,’ butted in Coreen, ‘you find something that’s—oh, I don’t know—more than the sum of its parts. Like somehow you and the dress combine through some kind of synergy to create…well, a vision…’
Alice smiled, glad to see that Coreen wasn’t as oblivious to the magic of her stock as she claimed to be. Jennie disappeared with the dress into the ultra-white, minimalist decor of Annabel’s emporium.
‘Just you wait!’ Coreen punched Alice lightly on the arm. ‘One day you’ll put a dress on and it will happen to you. You’ll see!’
Alice imitated one of Coreen’s little snorts. ‘Yeah, right. Like that’s ever going to happen.’
Coreen shook her head. ‘You’ll see…’
There was only one way to deal with Coreen when she got like this: agree, in a roundabout way, and then change the subject quickly. Alice started off gently. ‘You’re right about some dresses looking magical…’
Pretty soon she’d managed to steer the conversation on to the fashion shows the vintage clothessellers staged each year, to advertise their spring and autumn ‘collections’. They were always a huge success, and Coreen had heaps of tales about amateur models, slippery-soled shoes and fragile vintage stitching. It wasn’t long before they were giggling away like a pair of schoolgirls.
All laughter stopped when they realised Jennie had emerged from Annabel’s shop and was staring at herself in the full-length mirror Coreen always placed next to her stall.
‘Wow!’
