The Vintage Cinema Club

It wasn’t that Ruby was naughty, because she wasn’t especially, but Luce often found there just wasn’t enough of her to go around. She couldn’t work and constantly keep her child entertained.

However high her ideals on bringing up children had been before she had one, now she was in the thick of it she often felt she failed on every level. And it had been much worse since Izzy’s brother, Ollie, left to go travelling. It was only since he’d been away that she’d realised how much she’d grown to depend on him. Lying awake in the early hours, she kicked herself for how much she’d taken him for granted. And she kicked herself too for letting everything get so out of hand between them, and it being completely her fault that he’d left. In the first three years of Ruby’s life she’d been determined to go it alone. She still was. But the friendship with Ollie had kind of crept up on her as they’d worked together. And tonight, when she was feeling scared and very alone, she knew it was wrong, and she knew it was weak, and she knew it was against everything she’d ever intended, but she could really have done with leaning on Ollie. Except he wasn’t here.

Luce grabbed a few more pins, rammed them between her lips, and bent down to secure the last yard of silky hem.

‘You look beautiful sweetheart.’

Steffie’s mum, perched on the arm of Luce’s sofa, finally broke their silence. Since she’d been working with bridal wear, and more importantly, brides, Luce had noticed that taking on the role of Mother of the Bride seemed to transform reasonable women into a) control freaks, and b) emotional wrecks.

‘Hankie?’ Luce caught the tremor in Steffie’s mum’s voice and offered her the flowery, fabric covered tissue box.

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Beeston plucked out a tissue, gave a loud sniff, and dabbed at the corner of her eye.

In her sleepless times, not that she enjoyed the luxury of many of those, given she usually fell into bed exhausted, Luce was already rehearsing her own “give this wedding lark a miss” speech to Ruby, to circumnavigate that particular minefield, and save herself from what had to be the last piece of hell in a mother’s line of duty.

But she couldn’t help herself but say, ‘you do look amazing, Steffie. The antique lace is so pretty over the champagne satin.’

Despite the fact that Luce just couldn’t see the point in getting over emotional about weddings, by the time they’d all been to hell and back together over the wedding dress, Luce invariably loved her brides and their mums.

‘We’ve done so much work here. All the changes, and then you’ve dropped three dress sizes or more.’ Luce thanked her lucky stars that not every bride who chose one of her one off vintage dresses was going to put both the dress and herself through the wringer in quite the same way as Steffie and Mrs Beeston had done with this one.

‘I know we’ve changed our minds on the shoes three times now.’ Steffie said as she rolled her eyes. ‘But the first pair of Rachel Simpson ones were so high, and we were sure the second pair were perfect right up until the moment I saw the Charlotte Olympia ones.’

Luce tried not to think that each discarded pair had a price tag in excess of her monthly food spend. And despite the fact that Luce had been on her hands and knees three times realigning this particular roll edged hem, her smile was genuinely warm. ‘Let’s hope it’s third time lucky then.’

What Izzy and Dida couldn’t get their heads round, was that someone as anti-marriage as Luce should end up dressing brides. Luce’s true feelings on matrimony for herself – no fucking way – were a well-guarded professional secret, and they all kept their mouths firmly zipped for the sake of their joint commercial venture. Dida and Izzy were big on loyalty as well as support, although they did rip the piss out of her too at times, especially about her customer service ideas and her sex life. Definitely no link between the two of those things.

Luce managed her sex life meticulously, and it had nothing at all to do with being a mum. When Ruby went to sleep over with her granny some Fridays, Luce went out on the town, and sometimes brought a well-chosen guy back home. Well chosen as in nice, and not wanting any more than the one night, because no way could Luce allow a guy into her life. She’d never had a relationship, and it wasn’t fair to make her mistakes and involve Ruby too. Ruby being used to having Luce to herself was the final decider.

Ollie had been different somehow. He’d come around the back way, almost letting Ruby coax him in, when they’d been thrown together at the cinema. Ollie and Ruby had this perfect understanding, and Luce had known Ollie since Izzy turned up at school in sixth form. But once he dropped firmly on the Ruby side of the fence, that automatically disbarred him from the Friday night area of Luce’s life. It was non-negotiable. There was no crossing that divide.

‘Okay, I’m finished, Steffie,’ Luce put in her last pin, and sat up. ‘Try a gentle swirl, and we’ll see if it’s level.’

Not that she was a religious person, but a tiny part of her was pleading to the god of beaded sashes that this was the last time she was going to be on her hands and knees in front of Steffie’s dress.

Luce half closed one eye, and studied the dress as Steffie slid across the carpet, hands clasping a make-believe bouquet in front of her waist.

Luce turned to Mrs Beeston. ‘What do you think, Betty?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ Mrs Beeston was dabbing her eyes frantically again, as Steffie stopped in front of the full length mirror.

‘Steffie?’ Luce, smiled at Steffie’s reflection, and Steffie gave the kind of definite nod she’d given so many times before, but Luce had to sound optimistic here.

‘Well I reckon that’s a wrap. I’ll get the hand sewing done and you can pop around same time next week if that’s okay.’ Luce reined in her grin, and mentally punched the air, for now at least. ‘Lucky we’ve still got a couple of weeks before your big day. Fingers crossed we won’t need any more changes.’

‘I’m going to miss you once the wedding’s over.’ Luce folded out the screen for Steffie to change behind. ‘Wednesday evenings aren’t going to be the same without you two and your dress.’

No doubt about it, she’d also miss the money too. Another eeek to that, in the light of this afternoon and the ‘For Sale’ sign. Steffie and Betty’s mind changing had kept her and Ruby in luxuries this last six months. Hell, who was Luce kidding about the luxury part? In reality they’d probably kept them solvent. She’d dreamed of working with vintage clothes ever since she did her final degree show, which she’d somehow dragged together against all the odds a couple of months after Ruby was born, but the income was still precarious.

As she waited for Steffie to change Luce heard her phone ping, and looked at her watch. ‘Hmmm, nine o clock on the dot. That’ll be Dida, sending out the work rota.’

And how much longer would that be happening for? That thought alone was enough to make her heart jump against her rib cage, and kick up the beat rate to double speed. She tried to make her eyes less wide, before Steffie and her mum noticed she was sporting the saucer eyed loon look again. In the morning she’d meet up with Izzy and Dida, and together they’d find a way through this. But before then she had a whole night of worrying to get through. And for the first time since forever, she wished she didn’t have to spend the night alone.

5 (#ulink_12e30484-7426-55f8-a240-9cd5befdedf8)

Wednesday Evening, 4th June

XANDER & IZZY

His building site in Bakewell

A vandal would have been so much less trouble

‘At least lads would have legged it by now.’ Xander was muttering under his breath, not that it was helping any.

As he rubbed his hands absently on his biceps, he stared at the wobbling girl he’d just dropped onto the ground. Somehow he couldn’t shift the warmth of her off his skin. Broken glass might well have been preferable to a stroppy woman, who was so small and weedy she couldn’t even climb out of a skip. Given the appalling state of the house, a few more smashed windows would hardly have mattered anyway.

He’d bought what he thought was a house needing slight refurbishment, in an up market area on the outskirts of Bakewell, and thanks to the combined efforts of builders and vandals, he was now the proud owner of what passed at best for a shit heap. Even if Bakewell was on the Telegraph’s Top Ten Places To Live In The UK list, he was failing to see the attraction himself. Served him right for buying a place for the wrong motives, and shutting up your sister was no kind of good reason. Christina might be kicking his ass big time, but one land registry transaction was never going to transform his life from dysfunctional to socially acceptable. Although he hated to disappoint her, some leaps were too big to make.

He’d given up on relationships, stable friends, and places to live so long ago he’d forgotten what normal was. Glossy women throwing themselves at you came with the territory, when you were in film production and finance, but he had his avoidance tactics honed. One glance at the wasteland of a building site was enough to show anyone that even as a seasoned developer he was currently lacking the necessary motivation to push this large family house renovation to completion on his own behalf, let alone move into it. Now it was actually happening, it was going to be just another place to turn over, the same as all the rest.

‘Thanks for that.’ The words interrupted his thoughts. Her voice was smaller now, momentarily less objectionable.

Presumably she was referring to him putting her feet back on the ground. She was flapping her hands over her skirt, and the buttons on the front of her dress looked set to bust with every gasp. Worse still, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Today just got better and better. Not.

‘Okay, the show’s over.’ She said, attempting to straighten herself out. She then jutted her chin at him. ‘I’ll just get my shoes and I’ll be off.’

So that was good news. Right now his priority was to get her as far away from here as he could, and fast.

Shoes.

If he grabbed her shoes she could go. To his untrained eye, the pointy yellow heeled shoes he picked up looked completely inappropriate for scrabbling around on a building site, but what did he know.

‘There you go.’ He picked them up and tossed them in her direction, then turned away quickly.

‘Thanks.’

From the corner of his eye he saw her make a lunge to retrieve them. ‘Ouch.’

Xander heard her sharp cry, and pivoted in time to see her jack-knife to the ground.

‘Okay, what now?’ This time he made no attempt to hide his exasperation.

She crouched, then slipped back to sitting and grasped one bare foot, and a mile of thigh slid into view as her skirt bunched-up.

Christ. Not what he needed.