The Dress (29 page)

‘She would have been too young to retire, or maybe...'

Or maybe she found it all too hard and just gave up, Lily thought. Realizing this about Honor made Lily determined that she was not going to give up this time.

Lily's gate came up on the screen, so she thanked Zac and said she would keep him posted if she tracked Honor down. She thought about Jack's offer of a private investigator, but decided it should be family alone looking for her.

While waiting at her gate she searched Facebook and Twitter. Although it was unlikely a woman in her seventies, her eighties even, might be searching social media, maybe she had grandchildren or great-grandchildren with the same name? Lily found four Honor Fitzpatricks in the US – all young, none in New York, but she messaged them anyway. She would check the death records for that period on the family archive website when she got back tomorrow and if that didn't turn up anything, she would have to let it go. Although she felt she should keep trying to find The Dress's co-creator and her great-aunt by marriage, Lily knew that she had to manage her expectations. If Honor were still alive, it would probably mean checking every single retirement home in New York State, and there wasn't enough time for that. She put out another tweet:
Urgently seeking #HonorFitzpatrick #50sDesigner #TheDress
. But even assuming it went viral, if Honor had stopped designing in 1959, it was unlikely anyone who might have known her was still alive.

It was raining at Knock, and even though they were only an hour west of London it was noticeably cooler. As she descended the steps of the plane Lily felt as if she was in a different world. The Ryanair plane had landed in what seemed to her like a wasteland of bog stretching on for miles. It didn't feel like summer and the landscape did not have the green hilly charm of the Irish countryside she had seen from television programs and films. Lily picked up the keys at the Avis desk and went to find her rental car.

She thought of trying to ring Sally again. It was an automatic thing. This was the first time in all the years they had been friends that the two women had let a day pass without speaking. As girls they had been at school then college together, running up their parents' landline bills in the evenings, and as adults they spoke once, sometimes twice every day. Lily felt hurt that Sally was not there to share her adventure. She was on her own; this was her journey, her escapade into unknown territory. It was weird being completely alone but, as she walked through the wet, packed car park into the car hire lot, a feeling of freedom swept over her. Lily suddenly had the urge to switch her phone, not to silent, but completely
off
and as she pressed the button and blanked the screen her feeling of excitement bordered on elation. She was beyond the reach of anyone – of her friends and family, the world of Twitter, Facebook, her work, of every expectation, every judgement anyone had ever made of her, including, especially, every expectation she had of herself. Lily could do what she liked; nobody was watching her. She found the Nissan Micra, settled herself inside and smelt that unique scent of freshly cleaned hire car. For the next twenty-four hours this was her vehicle and Ireland was her domain; she was like Thelma and Louise – but without Thelma (or Louise). Who knew what she might find out about herself? As she was setting the car's sat nav to the address of the lace dealer in Westport, Lily had a crazy idea.

Bangor, County Mayo
, she tapped in and off she set in search of her great-Uncle Frank.

New York, 1959

After Frank left, Joy drank as if she had nothing to lose.

Jones gone, she sat in the apartment and ploughed through bottles of wine and whisky and listed her misfortunes.

Frank, the love of her life had left her. She had no husband and a woman with no husband was worthless. She was thirty, which meant she was too old to find another one and even if she weren't, Frank had spread a vicious rumour around town that she had a drink problem (the very idea!), so her reputation was in tatters, anyway.

Honor, a woman she had thought was a friend, had betrayed her and made a mockery of her name. Joy had no present and no future: drink was her only friend, now.

Hours passed, days passed, weeks, with Joy locked in her apartment. Even though she was ten floors up, she kept the drapes shut lest God Himself might look in the window and see the state of her. When she ran out of drink, she put on her long cashmere wrap coat, sunglasses and a headscarf and ran to the liquor store on 32nd and 3rd. Night and day ran into each other and Joy never knew if it would be midday, or midnight when she needed to scuttle past the doorman. Coming down in the lift, she would briefly hope he would not recognize her and pretend to herself that he couldn't know where she was going and why. Apart from the doorman, the man in the liquor store was the only person Joy saw for weeks. She was the richest looking drunk the man had even seen, but he'd been doing the late shift, selling liquor to truculent bums, for long enough to sense trouble, and he could tell she had enough in her to flare up, just by the way she walked in through the door.

‘I am having a dinner party,' she said, the first few times, when she loaded up her basket with enough spirits to fuel a battleship, and one or two mixers, just to look polite. The man remained silent, never sarcastically saying what was on his mind. Another dinner party? So soon? After the third or fourth trip, Joy stopped making excuses, loaded up quickly and stayed grateful for his taciturnity and the speed with which he bagged the bottles and checked her out.

Aside from these trips, Joy's life became nothing but a routine of drinking, smoking and sleep. Sometimes she would wake up, her tongue furry, her head hurting and a gnawing pain in her stomach from not having eaten anything for days. Feeling wretched, she would be determined not to drink, to try and put some sort of shape back into her life.

One morning, she decided to stay sober long enough to call Frank's office. If only she could get through to him properly this time, reason with him, she was sure she could persuade him to come back. She had learned her lesson. He had been right, she was a drunk – but if he came back, all this could come to an end. With his help she could stop, but she needed him to be there. She would forgive him for running off with Honor. They were still married. They could make it work again.

Frank's new secretary said she would get him to call right back. Joy paced the apartment, willing the phone to ring. If Frank called back, everything could go back to how it had been before. If only she had a friend to talk all this through with. Where were all her friends when she needed them? She remembered how that scheming bitch Honor had monopolized and manipulated her social life, so that old friends had been cut out of the picture; part of her vicious plan to set up her own couture business and steal her husband away. One hour passed, then two, and Joy became incensed that Frank was not calling her back. Her hands were shaking now, badly, she could feel the sweat building on her face, on the back of her neck, on her shivering palms. She could feel the panic rising, so she had a drink, just one, two – three to calm her nerves. Three. Three was enough to stop the shakes and the sweats, and then she'd be well enough to talk to Frank. She picked up the phone and, when the secretary asked who it was, she lost her temper and screamed at the woman to get Frank on the line, immediately. When the woman, with her snooty little English accent, said Frank was still in a meeting, Joy hurled a torrent of abuse at her. She slammed down the phone and drank until she passed out.

When she woke up again, vaguely remembering what she had done, Joy was flooded with the most crippling shame. How had she allowed herself to turn into such a wretched creature? Why did she do these terrible things? So she drank to make the pain go away – and when the pain went away, so did her inhibitions. She rang Frank's office all the time after that, as well as the offices of
Brand, Finkleton & Cohen
. It happened so often, over those few weeks, that the secretaries themselves grew used to it and knew not to hang up, but simply transferred her to an empty line, so she didn't jam the switchboard. Frank's office appointed a switchboard operator on a dedicated line, specifically to deal with his crazy wife.

Breton himself spoke with her, when she rang his salon, looking for Honor. Firstly, because the last thing his precious, pregnant designer needed was this type of abuse, whereas being French and artistic and a man, he was better able to handle it. Secondly, while he had some small sympathy for her, seeing such an elegant woman fall so low, he also could not quite help a slight flicker of schadenfreude after the way Joy Fitzpatrick had looked down her nose at him over the years.

Breton's attitude was echoed by New York society as a whole. Joy had fallen apart since Frank left, but the word was that she had been falling asunder long before that. Nobody called, nobody cared. Joy knew this and it just made her drink even more.

Joy thought she had lost everything, so she drank as if she had nothing left to lose. Except there was one more thing.

Her money.

After Joy had worked through the cash that Frank always kept in the house, for bills and the like, she started to get dressed up, to withdraw money from the bank. This necessity felt like a progress of sorts, to Joy. She needed a few drinks to steady herself, but the mere experience of making herself look respectable made her feel human, for a few hours at least. Withdrawing money from her own bank account, Joy would then buy drink, and perhaps a few groceries, then go back to the apartment.

One day, the bank teller looked up and said, ‘I am sorry, Mrs Fitzpatrick, but there is no money in your account.'

The note of apology in her voice was so gentle that Joy did not make a fuss. She tried Frank's account, to which she had always enjoyed access but, unsurprisingly, it was closed to her.

She went to the liquor store and filled her basket, then, at the till, pretended that she had left her purse at home. She asked the store-manager for a line in credit and as he stood looking at the pride in her pursed lips, he tried to see the eyes behind her dark glasses. In the end he decided to give it to her. She might prove to be the best customer he ever had, but if she didn't pay her bill, at least he now knew who she was and where to find her.

When Joy got back to the apartment, she went straight into her closet to look for The Dress. She could cash in the jewels and get her fortune back. Perhaps then everything would start to fall back into place for her. The Dress had marked the beginning of her life falling apart; if she took it apart, things might return to normal – the spell might be broken.

But it wasn't in her closet. She ran over to Frank's closet, thinking that maybe Jones had moved it there, by mistake, and it was then that she saw her husband's closet was completely empty. Somebody had been into the apartment and taken things out. Who? When? Had they been robbed?

Shaking, she ran to the phone and called Frank's office. Before the girl put her on hold she managed to say, ‘Tell Frank we've been robbed, my dress is gone.'

Half an hour later Jones, the butler, was at her door.

Joy was puzzled, but pleased to see him, nonetheless. She hastily looked around at the empty bottles and general mayhem and remembered the place had never been like this when Jones was living here, no matter how tardy her housekeepers might have been. Frank must have sent him around to help sort out the apartment and make sense of this mess with the money. He still cared about her; Frank must still care about her, if he had sent Jones to see that she was all right.

‘The place is a bit of a mess,' she said apologetically, leading him in. ‘You know I was never one for cleaning up.'

Jones, who had thought himself unshakable, was appalled at the scene of filthy squalor in front of him. Empty bottles everywhere, overflowing ashtrays, cigarettes stubbed out on the wool carpet, half-eaten containers of food that had been left open for days, weeks maybe. The place stank; there were surely rodents in here. Joy's long hair was matted into a lump on her head, as if she had not washed it for weeks, and she was skin and bone. She smiled at him and his heart broke.

‘I would offer you coffee,' she said, ‘but I don't know that I have any milk...'

The words trailed away as, suddenly, in his face, she saw what he saw. Living like this, she had been so focused on getting the next drink, making the pain go away, she had not noticed the mess; Joy's mess was always cleared up by somebody else.

She shouldn't have let him in, she now realized, until she had tidied up. But now he was in all she could do was mumble, ‘Again, sorry about the mess.'

‘Shall we sit down?' Jones said, his face inscrutable, picking his way across the floor as if the bottles weren't there and cleaning off a space on the stained Eames chaise.

Joy made a face, but humoured him and went and sat on the edge of the coffee table, hunched up, tense – she lit a cigarette and, to hell with it, rummaged around on the floor for an empty glass to fill with gin. She wouldn't drink out of a bottle in front of the butler; she wasn't a common drunk.

‘I am sorry to tell you,' Jones said, ‘that the rental and other bills have not been paid on the apartment for three months.'

What was he saying? This didn't make any sense? The bills just – got paid. This was ridiculous.

‘Mr Fitzpatrick sent me ahead of the bailiffs. He said he would pay them off and provide you with an additional monthly income if you were willing to move into a smaller apartment, somewhere more suitable to your needs.'

Joy closed her eyes. Move? From here? Focus. She needed to get some money. She needed to get her dress back.

‘Where's my dress, Jones? I need my dress.'

She gathered her dressing gown over her bony shoulders. She looked desperate. Whatever depths she had sunk to of late, Jones still considered Joy Fitzpatrick to be a lady. She was born to it. That sort of breeding can never entirely leave you. He coughed an apology and said, ‘I'm sorry, ma'am, but your husband instructed me to remove it from the apartment some weeks ago, when I came to pack away his things.'