The Dress (23 page)

‘Back to your house,' he said casually.

She stopped and looked at him. ‘Why?'

‘You think I am going to get involved in some great Machiavellian scheme with somebody when I haven't even seen where they
work
?'

‘I work from home, Jack.'

‘I know. Tea and biscuits all round,' he said.

Lily had stopped and was staring at him.

‘I don't know if I want you in my house...'

‘Sorry? Where was it you said you
did
want me?'

She laughed. He was incorrigible but very funny.

As they passed Old Times, Jack swung into the off licence next door and Lily casually looked in the window. The mannequin was wearing one of her favourite tea dresses and she felt a pang of sorrow. She wondered if it was worth it, letting go of all these things she treasured, or was making The Dress some sort of pact with the devil? She noticed that Gareth's mate Fergus was behind the till. Gareth must be away on a sourcing trip and she didn't know if she was annoyed or relieved that he wouldn't see her walking around Kilburn with Jack, who now came out of the off licence with beer and champagne and held them aloft saying, ‘To celebrate our new
arrangement
.'

Jack knew just where the line was between tacky and sending himself up and Lily decided that whatever new adventure the afternoon brought, she was going to roll with it.

*

Sally was just turning into Lily's street when she saw them. Jack and Lily walking, arm in arm, towards her apartment. Jack swinging a bottle of champagne in his free hand and Lily laughing, clearly delighted with herself.

Sally had been furious when she received the
Fashion Daily
Twitter alert about #TheDress @LilyLovesVintage. They were all just back from Miami and she had dropped Lily off in Kilburn from the airport. But Lily had said nothing about Scott's involvement in her silly dress project. There was only one possible explanation: Jack and Lily had been having conspiratorial talks behind her back in Miami and had hatched this plan for a major campaign without consulting her.

Sally was stunned. How could they betray her like that? Jack was a scoundrel, although she had hoped he had
some
loyalty to her, but Lily? That really was a slap in the face. Her first instinct was to ring Lily and scream at her but as Sally brought the number up on her phone, she thought again. Maybe Lily didn't fully know what was going on? She was a bit of an ingénue when it came to business and Jack could be a manipulative bastard. It would be better to see Lily in person to thrash it out. Sally hopped in her car and headed up to Kilburn.

Now, as she sat there, with the evidence of their treachery in front of her eyes, she felt a raging fury sweep through her, coupled with a sense that her heart was breaking. If they thought she would take this lying down, they were sadly mistaken. They had picked the wrong girl to double cross in Sally Thomas.

New York, 1959

‘Is it all right if I leave now, Mr Fitzpatrick? I want to get ready – for tonight.'

‘Of course, Nina.'

‘Would you like me to fix you a drink before I go?'

She wasn't even sure why she said it, except that her boss had seemed so melancholy earlier, not at all like a man whose wife was about to throw New York's party of the year.

‘No, Nina, I'm fine. You go.'

Frank's secretary smiled and said, ‘I've left your tuxedo behind the door – you're not going home first?'

‘My wife wants to meet me there. She wants her dress to be a surprise.'

Nina beamed. God, how happy he and Joy sounded.

‘I am so looking forward to the party, sir.'

‘Well,' he said smiling, ‘so am I.'

What a good liar he was.

‘I'll see you later, then,' she said.

Frank had insisted that all twenty people in his office be invited to Joy's birthday party.

‘I don't know where I'll
put
them,' Joy had said. ‘I mean, you know what snobs people are.'

‘
Your
people are snobs,' he said.

‘
Our
people, darling, don't forget that. I'll put all your office together, at one table – that way they won't have to mix until after the meal. By that time everyone will be so drunk no one will care
who
they are dancing with.'

Frank went to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a small whisky, then stood in the middle of his large office and drank it back. He had a whole floor of this building in Midtown, the headquarters for his various business interests: properties in Manhattan and Boston, the steel company in Washington, then there were his partner companies, two hotels, a department store and all the various stocks and shareholdings to be managed. Frank's companies were so diverse he couldn't put a name to what he did. He could no longer call himself a carpenter, a builder, or even a property developer, or landlord. Frank was in the abstract business of making money. This meant that he owned everything while, essentially, doing nothing; he was an important man who, despite his wealth, felt worthless. Frank Fitzpatrick was an illusion.

Meeting the Conlons' daughter had really thrown Frank. Honor Conlon – she had been a baby in a pram the last and only time he had ever seen her.

Most of the Irish who came to America stayed among their own. They married, often people from their own county – from their own town, if they could find them – they gave each other work and lived, as much as possible, as they had back in ‘the old country'. Frank had expected to do the same. When there was business to be done, Frank could be as Irish as the next man, but when in Joy's world, he hid it well.

People speculated about Frank's background, but they generally guessed up. From the suave, confident way he carried himself, nobody would have suspected the rural destitution he had been born into.

This girl did, though. If she had not realized who he was, she would find out from her parents soon enough.

Rags to riches was the American dream and Frank was not ashamed of where he had come from: it was just that he did not like to think about it. This office, all the money, Joy, these were the things that occupied his mind now. His early years – his childhood, running barefoot across the black bogs of Bangor to fetch the doctor to his mother, after his father had beaten her in a drunken rage – were things he had left behind. He had locked the door on Bangor and built another, bigger, better life around it, so that he could believe his childhood had never happened.

Then he met Honor Conlon and the door flew open.

In the weeks since their flirtation, Frank had been haunted by his past, he had bad dreams at night and ugly memories popped into his head during the day. In business meetings he would look down at his hands resting on the leather desk and see his father's clenched fists, or his own knuckles and remember how bruised they were for weeks after he beat his father. Frank saw his young brother Joe in the face of every child that passed him in the street, his mother in every old woman, his father in every broken, raving street bum.

Mostly he stood in his big office, with its designer furniture, its deep carpets, its perfectly pretty secretaries and its deferential young executives and remembered that he didn't belong here. In truth, Frank had never felt entirely at home in the world of high-end business; his connection to the people around him was tenuous, built on a lie. Now it had been broken. Frank felt exposed and vulnerable and out of depth in his own life. He really did not want to see Honor Conlon again.

When Joy had told him, only a couple of weeks previously, that Honor was sweet on a man called ‘Francis', who worked in one of his buildings, Frank's first reaction was one of dismay.

‘Will your designer friend be at the party?'

‘Of course, she is sitting at our table.'

So she didn't know who he was and if she did, she hadn't said anything to Joy.

‘I may have to go to Washington on business, Joy... something really big has come up...'

He was never going to get away with it. Joy's face fell so fast, he was afraid she might start crying, or drinking, or both, there and then.

‘You will be here, Frank, won't you? You
have
to be here.'

He heard the terror and panic in her voice and soothed her. So now, here he was, about to endure another one of his wife's showy parties and come face to face with his own troubled past, all in the same night. Frank poured himself another whisky and got changed.

The Waldorf had pulled out all the stops for the night. The ceiling of the ballroom was like a fairy tale, lit up like a warm starry sky. The crowd of two hundred or so guests was a who's who of New York society. Apparently. Frank seldom bothered looking around a room. If people wanted to talk to him, then they could come and find him. Unfortunately, the first person to do that this evening was Betsy Huntington. She always reminded him of a parrot, with her rich, fat bore of a husband, Geoff, who now came over to point out the great and the good to him.

‘There's Jack Kennedy and the wife,' Geoff said, puffing on a cigar and pulling himself up to his full height, which was a little under Frank's shoulder. ‘I don't know what
he's
doing here – really, this new-money Irish thing is all getting a bit much...'

‘Geoff!' Betsy said.

‘Sorry, Frank,' he said, only slightly deflated. ‘Never think of you as Irish, somehow – married to Joy and all that.'

Even by Betsy's standards, her husband could sometimes be a very stupid man.

‘Go and get me one of those champagne cocktails, Geoff – make it two, they look rather small.' As he trundled off, she apologized to Frank. ‘Sorry, Frank, Geoff means well, but he can be a bit of an oaf.'

Frank gave her a withering smile and said nothing, but Betsy was not so easily deterred. ‘I can't see Peggy Guggenheim. I'm sure Joy invited her but I think she said she was going to be in Miami this weekend but, oh, look, there's a Lesser Spotted Roosevelt – not one of the
real
ones, of course, but a relation. Well done, Joy, although I think he might be the trouble cousin – you know the one who
drinks
...'

Enough was enough.

‘Excuse me, Betsy,' Frank said, ‘I see some of my staff over there; I had better go and mingle.'

Betsy's face fell, then she rallied, ‘Joy invited your staff? How very
egalitarian
.'

‘Good evening, sir,' Nina said.

‘Call me Frank tonight, Nina. You look nice.'

She blushed.

‘Steady on, boss,' said Stanley, one of his young executives. ‘Not too much fraternizing with the ladies, on your wife's big night.'

Nina gave him a slap on the arm.

‘If I didn't know better, Stan, I'd say you're looking to keep young Nina all for yourself tonight.'

‘Well, boss, she's certainly the best looking woman in the room, you'd have to agree...'

‘Mrs Fitzpatrick hadn't arrived yet,' said Nina, and she looked at Frank. ‘You do know they call her the most beautiful woman in New York? You must be so proud.'

‘Ah, yes,' Frank said, taking a sip from his whisky. ‘Very proud indeed.'

‘Have you any idea what she'll be wearing, sir? I am so excited – the girls and I have been looking in the magazines for months, trying to imagine what it might be.'

Dear God, Frank thought, this is
worse
than Betsy Huntington.

‘I honestly have no idea, Nina. Would you excuse me, I need to call home and see if she's left yet.'

As he headed through the room towards the hotel reception desk, Frank looked around for Honor. He wasn't even sure if he would remember what she looked like now, and that thought alone gave him some comfort. Perhaps she had forgotten him, would not recognize him. People come in and go out of our lives, he thought, nobody matters that much to each other. He looked at the faces of one or two women, asking himself, is that her, whilst knowing that it wasn't, then remembered that, of course, Joy had said Honor would be helping her get dressed. She would meet him in the lobby of the hotel at seven, and they could walk in together. It was now ten past seven. The fact that he had forgotten this arrangement sent a frisson of fear through Frank.

He lit a cigarette and asked the receptionist if he could use the phone. The Waldorf lobby was the grandest of all the New York hotels. That was why his Joy had chosen it; his wife liked to make an entrance. Every surface was adorned with a veritable forest of fresh flowers and the gleaming chandelier at the centre of the gold domed ceiling made the intricate floor tiles sparkle like jewels. It seemed, even in Frank's dark mood, that there was some strange magic in the air that night.

As he held the receiver to his ear and heard his house phone ring, Frank decided on his escape plan. He would tell Joy the Washington business was back on. He would ignore Honor, walk his wife into the room and then, after the second course, he would disappear. There was no need for him to engage in any way with the Conlon girl. When this stupid party was over, he would dissuade Joy from their friendship. Honor and her dressmaking was one of his wife's fads, like the decorating. She was too much of a snob to make real friends with an ordinary person. Honor wouldn't be hard to get rid of.

As the phone rang, Frank noticed that everyone had stopped what they were doing and had their heads had turned towards the door. His wife was making her big entrance. Even by Joy's standards, the dress she was wearing was extraordinary. Under the bright lights of the hotel lobby it glittered as if it was, literally, not of this world. The bodice was encrusted with shimmering gems that flicked shards of golden light across the room. The skirt beneath was a hill of fabric the colour of rose-petals. So soft and light it had the appearance of a cloud and was covered in images – unicorns and fairy tale towers and clambering roses – fine, complex drawings layered one on top of each other. Each image was meticulously decorated with diamonds and pearls and sequins – if you had a lifetime to look you would not be able to take it all in. As Joy moved through the parting crowd of awe-struck guests a long train followed her, its sequinned, beaded glamour as opulent and indulgent as a pool of pink champagne. The word dress or even gown did not begin to describe this feat of engineering. Even to Frank's uneducated male eye it seemed more like an elaborate piece of jewellery than a dress. It was certainly a work of art. The women in the room stood open-mouthed. Even the men were raising their eyebrows at this display of remarkable opulence. The dress was beyond beautiful; nobody could take their eyes off it, or Joy.