The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1) (25 page)

She heard herself saying, very calmly, very clearly, ‘He’s lying. I didn’t steal anything. I was fetching my mum’s handkerchief from her coat. This man assaulted me. He put his hand up my skirt and… and tried to… well, things I don’t want to say here… And all because I caught
them
…’

She let her eyes meet Jean Cushworth’s then, saw the look of undisguised horror beginning to creep across her face.

‘I caught them together,’ she went on. ‘These two. Councillor Pike and Mrs Cushworth. I saw them together doing things that were… things that they shouldn’t have done… And
he
knew that I’d seen them and so he came after me…’

There was a shocked silence.

The silver sandal with its stilled red tongue leered at her from the middle of the floor.

Ella didn’t wait to hear what Pike would say next. She ran out of the shop and kept running.

*

Fabbia followed Billy, weaving through the streets, through the stream of people making their way to the station or back home to their families for the glass of wine, the evening meal.

My daughter, Fabbia thought, my poor daughter. How I’ve failed you. She felt a terrible straining and tugging at her insides.

‘We must find her, Billy,’ she said. ‘She mustn’t be on her own.’

Billy’s mouth was set, his shoulders thrust forward in grim determination. Fabbia let him take her hand and pull her along after him. She could feel his fury in the tight grip of his fingers.

They arrived at the river and Billy turned sharp left, kicking out impatiently at the geese that wandered in their way, heading upriver, faster, faster, towards the taller trees and the new bridge.

People here walked lazily along, making their way into town. Cyclists in fluorescent jackets swerved as they strayed onto the cycle path. Billy shoved past them all and headed on.

And there she was, sitting out there, half-hidden in the long grass, her legs tucked up, her arms wrapped tightly around her shins, her chin resting on her knees, staring out at the river. 

Fabbia began to run towards her, her feet in their high heels slithering over the damp paths trodden in the grass.

Ella heard her coming. She turned her face and Fabbia could see that it was pinched and red and streaky with tears. She crouched in the muddy grass and held her tightly, stroking her head.

‘
Tesora
. My Ella-issima. I am so sorry, so sorry.’

She felt Ella break against her then, her breath wrenched out of her in gasps and sobs.  She knelt and held on as tightly as she could.

‘Ella. Mrs Moreno. Could I…?’

Billy had been hanging back, waiting under the trees. Now Ella saw him come forward, running his finger around the inside of his collar, his face uncertain.

She nodded to him, tried to twist her face into a smile.

‘Billy… I’m sorry I…’

‘I’ll see you two later,’ Fabbia said. ‘Billy, make sure you bring her home safely. Don’t be too long now,
carina
.’

Ella watched as Billy threw himself down on the river bank. He tore at the grass, pulling it out in handfuls. She could see that his hands were shaking.

‘Billy,’ she tried again. ‘I’m so sorry. I…’

‘That bastard,’ said Billy, turning to her. ‘I’ll… I’ll kill him, I will. I swear. I’ll… That utter
piece of work.’

And that’s when his eyes met hers and she felt a trace of the old laughter begin to creep around the edges of her mouth.

‘Piece of work…’ she said. ‘Remember?
Piece of work
?’

And the laughter began to escape from her. It took hold of her insides and burst from her lips and went echoing and juddering over the riverbanks.

Billy was looking at her as if she’d gone mad. But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t hold it back.

‘It’s OK, Billy,’ she said, between gasps. ‘Really. It’s OK…’

And she put up her hand and stroked his cheek.

He flinched. His eyes closed.

‘Don’t, El,’ he said. ‘Please. Don’t.’

‘But I want to,’ she heard herself saying. ‘You see. I always did…’

He looked at her again, then, a long, searching look and then he took her hand in his, turning it over, carefully, hesitantly. She felt the warmth spread through her as he lifted her hand and pressed her open palm to his lips and then his arms came around her, and he pulled her into him. She could feel his heart hammering against her chest. 

She could feel the river all around them, the Signals shivering in her throat, her legs as he tilted her face up to his and kissed and kissed.

Fabbia leaned against the huge gnarled trunk of a chestnut tree. She  watched the river, wide and faster-flowing here and brown with peaty water. She thought of the rain falling on the hills and making its way, slowly, persistently, overground and underground, seeping through the fields and the layers of rock, burbling over channels of flat stones, swirling around the bulging tree trunks and then disappearing again, far beneath the surface, to emerge here in this one current pressing onwards, always onwards, sweeping everything with it, soil and twigs and branches and the small bones of animals and birds, gathering force, moving relentlessly on through the next towns, on towards the sea.

Fabbia thought that she understood how it would feel to be part of this river. She knew why Ella loved to swim and could lose herself in the water for hours at a time.

The surge inside her, the long, dark pulling feeling that had brought her out of the shop at a half-run, following in Ella’s wake, leaving everything, even David behind her, had not subsided. It was urging her on now, like many voices all speaking at the same time. And even as she tried not to listen, the voices grew louder, more insistent, and she could hear them speaking to her in the tiny rustlings in the grass and the wind moving through the leaves above her head and the sound of the river, pressing its smooth sides against the banks.

It was clear, firm, muscular, so much bigger than her. She felt her body already surrendering to it.

She thought of David, his horrified expression as the words, those terrible words, had fallen out of Ella’s mouth and into the silence.

She thought of those words - 
floozy, tart, thief, he touched me
- lying all around the shop where she’d left them. How in the weeks and months to come, they’d crouch in the shadows, covering the bright fabrics, the embroidered shawls, the glitter of crystals and sequins, covering them all with a fine layer of dust, making everything look suddenly cheap, tawdry, worthless.

And perhaps no one else would see it or know that the words were there. But she would. She, Farah Jobrani, which was her real name, the name given to her by her own mother. And she thought of all the other beautiful and powerful words that she’d stitched into seams and fastenings and that, right now, were being carried by women all over this city in the silk linings of pockets, in the turn of a sleeve and the flicker of a hem.

She had failed. She was useless. She’d allowed her daughter to be touched by something so awful that there were no words in the universe that could speak it. She’d betrayed Enzo and her promise to him.

There’s another way, another way,
the wind whispered.

But she shook her head stubbornly. No, she wouldn’t give in.

She watched Billy and Ella now, their heads tilted towards one another, seeing only each other, and she put her hand to her heart. Somewhere under there, beneath the layers of satin, the shaping and sparkle, was the real heart of Farah Jobrani. She thought of it like a peony, a flower that over the last few months had slowly begun to burst open and now – yes, she could feel it – was already furling each layer of petals around itself again, closing like a fist.

Billy was a good boy and he’d soon, very soon now, be a nice man, a kind man. Just like Enzo. Just like David. And that was just one more reason why they couldn’t stay here.

She turned and began to walk downriver again, retracing her steps, seeing the city come into view, the walls and spires shaped so long ago and that would still be here tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and long after Fabbia and Ella and David and Billy and Jean Cushworth and Pike were gone. Because one day they’d all be gone. Sinking back into the brown earth, tangling once more with the tree roots and the river. 

She knew what she had to do. She’d go back to the shop and climb the stairs to the little flat where David would be patiently waiting for her, back to what she now knew she had to tell him, and she’d take the suitcases from under the beds and begin, once again, to pack their belongings.

18.

Navy blue blouse, silk chiffon with hand-stitched embellishment. Late 1940s.

Although the boy was quite out of his mind, Jean Cushworth decided that she really quite liked him.

Pike had told her to beware of him, that he was trouble, a boy from the wrong side of the river, brought up –
dragged up
, he’d said – with half a dozen brothers in one of those poky little terraces with the bathroom downstairs. His dad was a foreman at the Nestlé factory, a union man who liked his beer and his football and thought he might stand in the next local elections. Fat chance, Pike had said.

And now the boy was here, right here, in the middle of her living room floor. Really quite presentable, she thought, with clean jeans and a pressed shirt and those intense blue-green eyes. His face was chiselled with high cheekbones. His mouth was moving very quickly. She found herself strangely fascinated by his mouth, the sounds that were coming out of him. His hands were cutting the air in quick gestures that she couldn’t make any sense of.

It was as if he was ablaze with something from the inside. Which was a shame, really, Jean thought. What a waste. Because the Moreno girl really wasn’t worth all this bother.

She’d be gone soon, she and her mother. That much was clear. You couldn’t go around making those kinds of accusations, casting aspersions, using that kind of language. And about the leader of the council, no less. It was bound to backfire. Yes, she had it coming to her, that Moreno woman and the strange girl, so silent, always looking at you, as if she could see inside you, see what you were thinking.

And what really gets to me, she’d said to Pike, is that she’s been here, in my house, so many times. Katrina was so kind to her when none of the other girls wanted anything to do with her. To turn on us like this just isn’t fair. It really isn’t good enough. 

Back there in the shop, she’d been caught out for a moment, when the girl had said that thing about seeing her with Pike. Her mind had whirred like a faulty clock, trying to remember what exactly had happened that night of the party. To be honest, it was all a bit of a blur. The champagne, the whisky, her tablets which, she had to admit, were making her forget things. But she was sure, quite sure, that they couldn’t possibly have been seen. She’d locked the door. Surely she had?  She was always so careful.

And even if the girl
had
seen something, or guessed something, well, it was her word against theirs, wasn’t it? And, quite frankly, who was going to listen to a common thief?

She forced herself to concentrate now on what the boy - Billy, yes, she remembered now, that was his name - what it was that he was saying. He seemed very worked up about it. On and on he went, that rosebud mouth moving endlessly, that nice clean jaw opening and closing. She really should tell him not to waste his breath. Plenty more fish in the sea, that’s what she’d say. Especially at his age. His whole life ahead of him. And he could really make something of himself, a handsome boy like him.

She lifted her hand and he paused for a moment. She tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come. She swallowed, made herself focus on setting down her wine glass, watching her hand move slowly towards the little mahogany side table.

She felt as if she were moving underwater, as if her bare arm in its silver bracelets was floating out from her shoulder and her hand wasn’t her own hand any more.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ the boy was saying. ‘You haven’t made sense of a word, have you?’

She smiled, nodding at him. He reminded her a bit of a naughty Yorkshire terrier with his fiery eyes, his thatch of black sticky-outy hair.

‘Where’s Katrina? I want to speak to her.’ 

His voice reached her from a long way off. She felt herself sinking backwards into the cushions, which were soft and deep and welcoming, the waves coming faster now, her arm buoyed upwards again, drifting of its own accord, floating out on the surface of the water, her finger pointing up, up through the white ceiling before it burst open and the sky closed over her.

*

Ella saw them from the bedroom window.

She was watching Mamma spread her silk blouses on the bed, folding their limp arms across themselves, straightening their collars, smoothing them between layers of tissue paper.

‘Mum, please,’ she pleaded and then, feeling the fluttery feeling under her ribs, ‘Well, if you go, I’m not coming with you.’

Mamma turned then to look at her, making that clicking sound with her tongue.

‘Oh, really? And where will you go,
tesora
? Where will you live? With Billy and his family? You think they’ll take you in? You think you’ll want to be here tomorrow, the week after, the week after that? When the name-calling gets worse and every small thing that goes wrong in this town gets blamed on you? Do you think Billy will be able to protect you, all day, every day, forever?’

‘Yes,’ said Ella, ‘Actually, I do. Everyone hates Pike. Well, everyone who really matters. And David. He’s already said that we can go and live with him. He wants to
marry
you, Mum, for goodness’ sake. And you
love
him, I know you do. This is all just because you’re scared…’

‘Ella, you don’t understand what you’re saying. You don’t even know my reasons…’