Chapter Thirty-Two
London, January 1957
Rose Pickford exhaled a small sigh of relief as she opened the door and stepped into the familiar scented warmth of her aunt Amber’s Walton Street shop, with its smell of vanilla and roses–the scent blended especially for her aunt.
One day–or so her aunt had told her–Rose would not just be managing the exclusive Chelsea shop where the furnishing fabrics from her aunt’s Macclesfield silk mill were sold, she would also be in charge of advising clients on the most stylish ways to redecorate their homes.
One day.
Right now, though, she was simply a raw, newly qualified art student, working as little more than a general dogsbody for Ivor Hammond, one of London’s most prestigious interior designers.
‘Hello, Rose, we’re just about to have a cup of tea. Would you like one?’
Rose smiled gratefully. ‘Yes, please, Anna.’
Anna Polaski, who currently managed the shop, had originally come to England with her musician husband, Paul, as refugees from Poland at the beginning of the Second World War. Anna was always very kind, and Rose suspected that she felt sorry for her–because she recognised that Rose, too, was, in a way, an ‘outsider’?
‘I hate January. It’s a horrid month, so cold and miserable,’ Rose said to Anna, as she pulled off the beautifully soft Italian leather gloves that had been a Christmas present from her aunt.
‘Pah, you call this cold? In Poland we have proper winters, with snow many feet deep,’ Anna told her. ‘We shall be having lunch soon,’ she added. ‘I have brought some homemade vegetable soup and
