The Dress (38 page)

*

The following evening was their good luck, going away party. All the people who had contributed to the making of The Dress were invited to a soiree in Scott's design studio. Jack laid on champagne and sushi and everyone from the fabric suppliers to the tambour beading specialists joined the Scott's office staff in the converted Soho warehouse, including the lace lady from Westport who had given Lily the good luck charm.

Earlier that afternoon, Lily had called over to Old Things. Delivering a last-minute invite to Gareth had seemed like the perfect middle ground excuse to break the ice, except that he hadn't been there. So, Lily popped the invite in the door of the shop and walked away feeling flat and disappointed. She could not even be sure that Gareth would get it in time for that evening and even if he had, Lily felt pretty certain he wouldn't turn up.

So when Sally said, ‘Ooh, look who just walked in. Your nerdy friend Gareth...' Lily got such a fright that she felt virtually propelled by fear towards the drinks table. As she was pouring a couple of glasses of courage down her throat, Jack came over and started bending her ear about something boring like travel insurance. By the time Lily got rid of him and had gathered herself enough to turn around and face Gareth, he was already gone.

‘How could you have let him go like that?' she said to Sally. ‘I needed to speak to him.'

‘Didn't look like it the way you ran off. Anyway there was nothing I could do. He just scuttled off like a church mouse. Saw you were talking to Jack and got all weird. He said to give you this,' and she handed Lily a card.

She tore it open.

It was a generic ‘Good Luck' card with her list of clothes neatly folded inside, all items ticked off, and a cheque for £497.56.

Lily's heart sank as she handed the card to her curious friend.

‘Gee, this guy really knows how to woo a girl,' Sally said.

‘It's not his fault; we had a sort of row.'

Sally gave her a withering look. ‘A row?'

‘Oh, all right, I had a go at him.'

‘What for?'

‘It's complicated.'

‘Try me.'

‘We had a sort-of-a-thing going.'

‘A “thing”?'

‘Yes, you know. Then he saw me with Jack and—'

‘Aha. Jack would be pretty stiff competition for nerdy boy all right,' Sally said, acidly. Lily threw her a suspicious look.

‘Me and Gareth had a bit of a “thing” for each other and now we don't because I blew it. OK? Subject closed.'

‘Fine, fine,' Sally said, ‘only if you don't mind me saying so...'

‘I do.'

‘...it looks to me like you still have a bit of thing going for him.'

‘Drop it, Sally... Oh, look. There's Sandra. Really nice woman I bought the lace off in Westport. Sandra!'

Sandra came over and Lily forced herself to get distracted by talk of lace and Ireland, although the shadow of Gareth rushing off like that clung to her heart for the rest of the night.

*

The next day Sally and Lily and The Dress flew to New York.

They had packed The Dress upright in a tall box so they could squeeze it into the back of the taxi between them. Sally had insisted that The Dress have its own seat on the plane, it being too precious to go in the hold. Jack did not object. He had given Sally carte blanche. He had not even seen the finished dress himself yet, partly because, aside from transporting it to and from the specialist embroidery and beading studios in Soho, Lily had kept it under lock and key in her flat.

‘Any word from Gareth?' Sally asked, as they settled into their seats.

‘Why would I hear from Gareth?'

‘I don't know, I just thought he might have followed up that amazing romantic card with a phone call?' Sally said.

‘Ha, ha. He was trying to be polite in the face of my unbelievable stupidity. Can we leave it at that now,
please?
'

Sally took the hint and grabbed a passing hostess saying, ‘Bring us a couple of glasses of champagne there love, will you? We're on a tab here.'

Lily drank her champagne and pretended she was excited about the Met Ball but talk of Gareth had quietened her adventurous mood.

Zac and his mother met Lily and Sally and The Dress at the airport. Zac was taller than Lily had expected, but she felt as if she knew him after all the Skype calls and drama they had shared up to this point. It was great to finally put her arms around him and give him a hug. Imogen, his mother, was warm and inviting.

‘We are both so excited to see your dress. We don't have any other family except for each other, so this has been a really special experience for us – for Zac, especially.' Lily smiled and said it had been special for her too, until Sally, impatient as usual, bundled them all into the car.

Crammed into the back of Imogen Podmore's slightly scruffy saloon they headed straight to the address Zac had for Golden Acres nursing home in Jersey. Lily was on edge as she explained to Imogen that Joy's old friend, Honor, was living there. She had not explained that Honor did not want to see them, nor that that they were arriving on her doorstep uninvited and unexpected. To make things even more unsettling for Lily, Sally had refused to tell Lily what her ‘cunning plan' to get in the door was – only that she had one.

‘I can't wait to meet Honor,' Zac said. ‘This is going to be such a buzz!'

Lily shot Sally a panicked look.

‘Trust me,' Sally mouthed back at her silently. Lily tried, but she couldn't see how Sally was going to pull this off.

Golden Acres was a mock-Tudor manor with ornate gardens that suggested a wealthy, discerning clientele. Sally marched straight up to the desk and asked to see Honor Fitzpatrick's nurse, Emily, telling Lily, Zac and Imogen to wait in the large, lavishly furnished reception area. The five-foot tall dress box had a door at the front of it and looked somewhat like a coffin, so it got a few backward glances from the nursing staff as they scurried through.

When Emily came out Sally smiled as she noticed the pretty nurse was slim and six-foot tall, just as she had guessed from their stunted Skype call. Perfect.

Sally turned on full charm and explained that she was a friend of Honor Conlon's great-niece. Emily looked anxiously across at the group and Sally said, ‘We've come all the way from London to see her.'

‘I am so sorry,' Emily said, ‘but she is adamant she doesn't want to see any family. She was quite insistent.' And she looked over Sally's shoulder again, smiling apologetically. The nurse had a conscience; this was going to be easier than Sally thought.

‘Of course, we want to see Honor, but mostly, we have something to show her.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' Emily said, and then Sally looked across and gave Zac a nod.

On her cue, Zac opened the door of the box and unpacked The Dress.

Its ornate, glimmering skirts swished out onto the polished parquet flooring, and the nurse gasped.

New York, 2014

It was an ordinary day in Golden Acres; every day here was more or less like the last. Breakfast in her room was followed by her morning TV shows. Honor watched a lot of
Oprah
re-runs; she liked to see other people living out the complexity of their family lives in front of the nation, it made her feel grateful for her own simple, uncomplicated people-free existence. It wasn't much more than an existence, but she was happy with that. It was what she had chosen for herself a long time ago.

Honor had come to Golden Acres eight years ago after the arthritis began to take hold of her knees. She had been finding it hard to manage the stairs at home by herself and the regular day nurse had suggested this place. She liked it here although, in truth, Honor neither liked nor disliked any place. It was just food and shelter to her. The old woman was just keeping herself alive although, sometimes, she wondered why she bothered.

At around midday Emily, who Honor had decided was the only person she would have anything to do with in here, took her for a walk around the grounds. Sometimes she went in the chair if her knees were very bad, but if she was having a good day she would get out and walk part of the way. Then there was lunch, more TV and in the evening Emily insisted on taking her down to the lounge. They put entertainment on in there in the evening sometimes, but Honor always kept away from the other residents. She had no interest in making new friends at this stage of her life, especially not with boring ‘old' people. In truth, Honor had been living in isolation for a long time and that was just how she liked it.

That was why she had got such a shock when she had learned that a great-niece of Frank's in London was looking for her. She had been curious when Emily mentioned it and got the girl up on the computer to talk but then when she had mentioned that Joy's grandson was also on her trail, that was too much, and she had told Emily to switch the damn thing off. The nurse had tried to persuade her to speak with them but, although Emily was acting with a good heart, she didn't know anything about Honor's past. She didn't know about what Honor had done, how she had lived, how she had come to have all this money and was able to live out her days in this expensive, if isolated, luxury.

The last thing Honor wanted was the past rearing its ugly head – not after all she had done to avoid it, not after all the sacrifices she had made to keep it at bay. So she had told Emily that on no account was she to let anyone in through her door, even family – especially anyone ‘pretending' to be family, she emphasized.

‘I was an only child,' she explained to Emily, ‘and both my parents died long ago. There is nobody left. Anyone coming here looking for me now is only trying to steal my money.'

My
money. Even just saying it felt wrong.

Oprah
was a bit dull today and Honor was snoozing when she heard Emily come through the door. When she turned around Honor thought she must be dreaming.

Emily's dark skin against the rose-coloured fabric made it seem to glow as she walked towards her, beaming, incandescent. Honor blinked. The Dress featured in her dreams often, even now. Beautiful dreams she had tried to hold onto in her sleep, where she was a child floating through the sky above Bangor on a cloud of chiffon, her parents smiling up at her. Nightmares then, where The Dress, blackened with fire, was sucked down into the bowels of the earth through the floor of that cabinet in the shop Breton and Frank had made for her. She never dreamed about Joy.

‘The people that called you are outside Honor. They asked me to show you this. Isn't it beautiful?'

How could The Dress be here? She remembered destroying it before losing her mind that time and yet, this was surely the same gown, although it looked different somehow.

‘The young woman we spoke to on Skype, Lily, she made it. She said it is a replica of a dress you made for a friend. She thought you might like to see it.'

This was real after all. Not a dream. It was really happening.

Honor wanted to turn away. It was too cruel, too painful, the past ambushing her in this way, and yet she could not. The last time she had seen The Dress it had been lying, like a corpse, on her salon floor. She had set fire to it, and with that act, her very life, and what was left of her heart after losing the baby had turned to ashes. Now here it was, The Dress, risen from the dead. The ghost of her past, the subject of her dreams. Except this dress wasn't a dream, or a ghost, it was real.

As Emily moved closer to her, Honor's hand instinctively reached out to touch the fabric. She noticed the lace was different, a more golden colour to her original white. Still dumbfounded, and overtaken with an old curiosity, Honor studied the jewelled bodice and saw that, while it had the same opulent structure and elements as her own design, this was, after all, a different dress. There was not quite the same placing of the jewels. It was a good copy, a very good copy of her own and a fine piece of design in itself. She would not see the girl. Honor had no desire to have her life overturned in this way. However, she would ask Emily to congratulate the young designer on her work.

She was about to impart this information, when she saw it.

On the front of the skirt there was an embroidered imprint of her parents' faces. In silk, shimmering into life, as the unicorns and fairy tale images had on her original, were John and Clare Conlon. They were smiling, serene, happy – like a beautiful mirage.

The same picture was on her mantelpiece. It was the only one she had of them, on their wedding day. The one she had asked to be embedded into their gravestone. The photograph was the only thing Honor had connecting them to her. It was the only evidence that she had ever had a family, that she had ever been close to anybody. The girl, this niece, whoever she was, must have seen their picture on the gravestone. Maybe when she was visiting her great-uncle's grave. She knew Frank was buried there. He was dead too now; they were all dead.

Seeing this Honor felt a sudden ache in her heart for her parents, but not just her parents, perhaps, Joy, Frank, somebody.

‘Let them in,' she said to Emily, ‘let them in and I'll tell you all a story.'

*

‘You look a little like him – about the eyes.'

‘Thank you,' Lily said.

‘It wasn't a compliment.'

Silence again. The old lady was oppressively stern and the atmosphere in the room was heavy with her anxiety. Even Zac and Sally were stunned into an awkward silence. In the small but beautifully positioned bed-sitting room Imogen stood by the door ready to help Emily, who had taken off The Dress and laid it across the bed, before going to get some tea.

Lily took a deep breath, then reached into her handbag and pulled out one of Joy's pictures.

‘Imogen and Zac found a set of these pictures...' She took one of the woodland pictures from her bag and tried to hand it to her, but Honor waved it away as if it was a hand grenade. Lily kept going. ‘...and a magazine article after Joy died. I am a designer myself and I felt inspired by a picture of this dress I had found when I was looking in old
Vogue
magazines online searching for my great-uncle, Frank Fitzpatrick. My name is Lily Fitzpatrick, you see. My grandfather was his brother and he died...' Honor refused to acknowledge her, but Lily continued, ‘...then I found out that Zac was my cousin and he's studying fashion, and then he got a friend to look you up in a library and we found you too...'