The Dress (25 page)

When Jones came in with her breakfast pastries, Joy gave him the rest of the day and evening off. Then she went back into her dressing room, fixed her hair and make-up, put on her magnificent dress and waited for her husband to come home from Boston.

Nearly a full day later, Frank was still at work.

His secretary had called to say that the delay was because the merger in Boston had not gone through. Whatever it was, Joy was not in the least bit interested. He had let her down, that was all that mattered.

When Jones came in from work, Joy was still lounging on her Eames chaise wearing her bedtime silks. It seemed as if she had been sitting here alone in the dark for some time. Jones put the coffee down on the table in front of his mistress and handed her the
New York Times
. It was already open on the society pages.

‘You looked magnificent, ma'am,' he said.

‘Really?' She smiled up at him, her most fetching, charming smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. Jones was not given to sentiment, but nonetheless he felt sad for Joy today. The very air in the apartment seemed heavy with anti-climax. The butler opened the curtains and shook out a couple of cushions.

‘It describes you as a goddess, ma'am, and...' He coughed discreetly. ‘...in my humble opinion – you were just that. I am not given to commenting on fashion but—'

‘It was one helluva dress wasn't it, Jones?'

‘It most certainly was,' he said, smiling. She returned it but again, there was no light in her eyes.

‘Would you like eggs for breakfast, or will I send out for some pastries?' he said.

‘I'm not hungry, Jones,' she said, but he called down for the bellboy to fetch some fresh croissants from the Jewish bakery, anyway. Joy would pick at something with her coffee and in any case, Frank would be back soon. Of course he would. The Fitzpatricks had their moments, but Jones believed Frank was a decent man. He wouldn't leave his wife alone for longer than he absolutely had to.

Joy picked up the papers and looked at a photograph of herself in the lobby of the Waldorf, flanked by Honor and Frank. Honor and Joy were smiling, glittering press-photographer smiles, but her husband looked distracted and worried. The rest of the pictures were of various guests, in the early part of the evening. There would be a bigger spread in the weekend papers.

Joy pushed the paper aside and felt the emptiness of her day, her life, echo inside her. She knew a drink would fill the crater of sadness but she would not have one – she would not. Frank would be home from his trip soon and when he came in the door she wanted to be sober.

Frank would make things right again. Only Frank could make things right.

London, 2014

‘Nice pad,' Jack said. ‘Reminds me of my student digs.'

‘I see,' Lily replied. ‘Slumming it with the Great Unwashed.'

‘If you say so,' he said, throwing himself down on the sofa. The cheap IKEA furniture looked suddenly more glamorous with his arm flung casually over the back of it.

His phone buzzed.

‘Aha,' he said, picking it up. ‘Here we go. PopShop announces Lucy Houston as their designer for The Dress. That was quick...'

They drank the beers and the champagne and made a start on a bottle of tequila she had brought back from a hilarious sun holiday with Sally five years ago. Lily opened up to him about how she had folded away her dreams of being a designer and Jack just listened. While Jack talked, mostly about work and about his dreams for Scott's, Lily sat across from him on the large, battered sofa and wondered if she fancied him. Jack was gorgeous looking and funny, so she certainly
should
and after all, here he was in her flat, drinking. Lily waited for that five second pause when they would be left looking at each other, then he would lean in. Men like Jack always got these things right; they didn't end up in awkward will-he, won't-he ‘Gareth' type moments.

Lily had assumed Jack had brought her back here to seduce her, but as the night wore on and talk kept turning towards The Dress, Lily began to realize that her kissing moment might not happen after all.

‘We need a story,' Jack said. ‘Durane's dress has no back-story, that's what will give us the edge. You need to go to New York and find the woman who made the original dress and we'll get the whole thing on film.'

‘The woman that was married to my great-uncle is dead,' Lily explained.

‘What about the designer who made The Dress?'

‘All I have is her name, Honor Conlon. She was never a big name or anything.'

Lily felt an affinity with Honor. A shadowy figure, featured only in one small photo in the drapery magazine, the designer who had made this extraordinary garment was clearly talented, yet had never made a name for herself.

‘Well, let's find out if she's still alive,' said Jack, ‘and if she is, let's get her on board. I have lots of people in New York, lawyers, investigators; I'll put them onto it.'

‘No need, I have
one
Irish cousin,' Lily said.

‘Well done, one Irish cousin is even better,' Jack replied. ‘Look at Obama...'

By this stage the tequila bottle was nearly empty and the two of them were quite drunk.

‘You might as well stay over,' Lily said, and when Jack nodded towards the open door of her bedroom she added, ‘on the sofa.'

‘Damn,' he said, jokingly. She knew he would follow her in to bed in a heartbeat if she invited him.

Lily slept badly, fizzing with the ridiculous fact that there was a world-class playboy sleeping on her put-you-up sofa.

She finally woke at seven to find Jack already up and getting dressed in her living room.

‘Sorry if I woke you,' he said. ‘Eddie's waiting in the car.'

‘Do you not let him sleep?' Lily laughed.

‘He works to my crazy hours,' Jack said. ‘That's what I pay him for.'

‘You can have a shower if you like,' Lily said.

It was weird looking at Jack's tanned, hairless torso. He must get himself waxed, she thought. When Gareth wore those awful comic-branded T-shirts in the summer, there was a little triangle of hair... Oh my God! Where did that come from?!

‘No, I'll wait,' Jack said. ‘I'll pop back home before work.'

Jack leaned down and kissed her gently and rather deliciously on each cheek then, as he reached her door he turned back and said, ‘You really are very clever as well as gorgeous, Lily Fitzpatrick – we are going to do some great things together,' before running down the stairs to his car.

After he had left, Lily was so churned up with this crazy turn of events that she quickly threw off her hangover and got dressed.

It was as if her whole life had turned on its head overnight. Her dream job had suddenly landed on her lap and The Dress was going to happen. The best thing, she decided, was to just focus on work, starting with, as Jack had suggested, finding Honor Conlon in New York.

Zac had sent her a couple of Skype messages when #TheDress had started trending on Twitter so she got onto him and they talked excitedly about the competition.

Zac had never heard his grandmother talk about Honor Conlon but agreed he would help find her.

‘Maybe she still has it?' he said. ‘I have
no
idea where to start looking for her, but I've got a friend who's on internship at the Berg Fashion Library. I'll get her onto it, there must be some record of Honor somewhere.'

‘If she's still alive she might be in an old folks' home,' said Lily hopefully.

‘Forget it, cousin. I love you but I am not trawling through retirement homes in New York, there are
thousands
of them...'

‘We'll both do some digging,' she said.

After she put the phone down she tried calling Sally. She was feeling overwhelmed with the mountain of stuff she had to do. Find an old lady in an old lady haystack (who may or may not still be alive), deal with the social media storm that was still surrounding her and, by the way,
actually make The Dress!

Sally went straight to voicemail so Lily left a message pleading with her to call back. She put the phone down and spent the next three hours dealing with her Facebook admin; she couldn't even look at her Twitter mentions. People were ‘taking sides' in the competition, pointlessly slagging off herself and Lucy Houston. She was a ‘nobody wannabe'; Lucy was a ‘boring has-been'. Even though it was stupid, infantile nonsense from idiots who had nothing better to do, it was still hard for Lily not to seize on the negative comments. Social media may have put her project on the world fashion stage but my goodness it was an ugly business. Lily checked through and ‘liked' as much as she could, scheduled some posts for the following week so she wouldn't have to turn on her computer for a few days then sent out a tweet:
Looking for the original designer of #TheDress lady in her eighties called #HonorConlon worked with #JoyFitzpatrick #50sCouture.

She went to the kitchen to make herself some lunch and as she picked up the empty beer cans from her coffee table she shuddered with excitement remembering all the plans she and Jack had for the project. She was desperate to share the news so she texted Sally:
Call me back – urgent gossip!

When Lily got to the kitchen she realized she was so churned up inside that she couldn't eat.

She checked her phone. Where the
hell
was Sally?

Lily was getting hyped up and there was only one thing that could calm her down when she got panicky like this: bad daytime TV and sewing.

She went over to her worktable and picked up a skirt panel she had cut, planning that, one day, when she had the money, she would farm it out to a couture tambour beading workshop in Soho. She realized now that she did have the money and it made her feel so excited that she decided what she really needed was to start sewing herself. She picked up a box of simple glass beads and some sequins. As she threaded the crystals and sequins, securing and looping, Lily started to feel calmer, and quietly put all her concentration into creating delicate arrangements of minuscule patterns. Each tiny bead played its part, making up a beautiful whole, and this was how Joy's dress would come together. Bit by bit, bead by bead, one moment, one day at a time.

After a couple of hours' work Lily looked down on her tray and found she had created three delicate butterflies of intertwined crystals and sequins.

The room dusky and her eyes hurting, Lily carried the beaded fabric over to the window. As she held it up to check her work a shaft of sunlight caught it, sending sparkles from the crystals across the room. As a child her grandfather had told her that such tricks of the light were Irish fairies come to visit her; she wondered now if perhaps he was right. She had certainly just created something beautiful. In seeing the work she had done come alive like this Lily felt, Jack and the New York adventure and all the Twitter fuss aside, that she could do this; she could create the most beautiful dress ever made.

When the phone rang she did not rush to it, but seeing it was Jack she picked it up and said ‘hullo' with a surprising sense of calm.

He sounded stressed.

‘Lily, I've got some bad news. Your friend Sally has gone to work for Durane. She's PopShop's new Artistic Director.'

New York, 1959

When Honor got back to her apartment she barely had the energy to take off her make-up. She crawled into bed and thought to herself, it's over. The dress had been made and launched, the party was a huge success, now she could relax. Except that she could not relax. Because all she could think about, was him. The more she tried to push thoughts of him aside, the more Frank Fitzpatrick invaded her mind. With those three words, ‘I want you', he had branded her. It was as if, by declaring his intent, he now owned her. Of course, such a thing would not have been possible had she not been attracted to him, for no matter how hard she tried to believe it was not true, Honor was drawn to him. Hopelessly.

For the next twenty-four hours, she locked herself in her small flat and devoted herself to quashing her rising feelings of longing for Frank Fitzpatrick. He was a rich rotter who wanted to cheat on his wife. He was a guttersnipe, from a bad home, who had stolen money from her parents. On and on she went, but all the time she just kept thinking of the certainty with which he had taken her hand and said, ‘I know you.'

By late afternoon the following day, Honor was going stir crazy. The phone had rung a few times, but she hadn't answered it. It would only be Joy, asking where she was, wanting to catch up and Honor just couldn't face her. In truth, she could not face herself.

She made coffee and sat at her kitchen table. The floor was littered with sequins and discarded fabric trim; her sewing machine still sat at the far end of the table, threaded with the final barrel of what had seemed like hundreds of spools of pink silk thread. As she looked around, Honor realized that this was not her home, not really. It was the home of the garment she had launched the night before, the birthplace of what, from the moment they had walked into the lobby of the Waldorf, had become known in New York society as ‘The Dress'.

The phone rang again and Honor jumped, spilling her coffee. She mopped it up with some discarded fabric and decided to get out into the fresh air and clear her head.

Twenty minutes later she was walking around the reservoir in Central Park, drinking in the sweet scent of the freshly blooming ornamental cherry trees. Her head was clear. This was what Honor needed – to reconnect with what she loved: nature. She sat on a bench and listened until, beyond the traffic and the bicycle bells and the laughing children, she heard birdsong. Life goes on, nature turns, the world was a bigger and more interesting place than a man who wanted her and a notion she might have of being in love. She wished for her sketchpad and, in just wanting that, was reminded of why she was here. Not for a man, this distracting, unexpected flash of foolish romance – but to work.