The Dress (39 page)

At this stage Lily just petered out. The old woman looked briefly over at the picture, but as Lily held it out tentatively to her, she kept her hands firmly in her lap then turned her face to the window. It was as if she was willing them to not be there and yet would not say anything directly to make them go away. Lily sensed Honor had something to say but the atmosphere was so tense she didn't know if she'd be able to stick it out long enough to hear it.

‘So,' Honor finally said, ‘I was working for the designer Breton when Joy Fitzpatrick came in and commissioned me to make a gown for her thirtieth birthday. The Dress took us months to make, I can't remember exactly how long. It caused a sensation. It was, as the press said, the most magnificent dress ever made.

‘You saw the pictures, obviously or you wouldn't have been able to make that.' Her hands waved over the garment on the bed as if it were no more than a discarded dressing gown. ‘So, I suppose you want to know what happened to Joy and I after that?'

Actually, Lily (and certainly Sally) thought, what we
really
want to know is are you willing to be scrubbed up and dragged along to a fashion ball at The Met tomorrow night to be a historical mascot for a high-street fashion label? A prospect, now that they had actually been confronted with this truculent old woman, that seemed so distant as to be laughable.

‘Yes,' Lily said, raising her eyes and shrugging at the others out of Honor's eye line. ‘Tell us what happened next.'

Honor kept her face pointed towards the window and spoke out into the middle distance as if they weren't there.

*

‘Joy and I fell out over Frank. I won't go into why. For one reason and another, The Dress came back into my possession but I decided that, as Joy had given me some of her own mother's jewellery to work into the bodice work, I should return those trinkets to her, so I removed them from The Dress to give back to her. I thought it was only right I should return them.'

Honor briefly looked up at Lily for approval, but when Lily nodded it, the old woman seemed annoyed with herself for having ‘asked' and looked out of the window, seemingly lost in thought for a while, before she went on.

‘The Dress itself was destroyed in a fire in my studio – and after that happened I became rather ill for a time. Six months after that, Frank and I separated. I decided that, quite simply, I did not love him anymore. The business of how we had met, with his being married to Joy, had never...' She paused and closed her eyes. ‘...sat well with me, and after the fire in my studio and another... more personal matter that I won't go into, I decided I couldn't be married to him anymore.

‘Before I left him I decided to make amends to Joy and return her mother's jewels. They were, I thought, of no value other than sentiment, but it was my way of saying sorry for having...' Another pause. ‘...stolen her husband from her, if you like.

‘In any case, finding Joy was not too difficult. Frank had been cruel to Joy, trying to cut her off without a penny. I knew Frank's lawyer, Mr Cohen, to be a kind man, so I went to him, in confidence, and explained the situation. He gave me an address for her.

‘I found Joy in a small apartment in Brooklyn where she had remarried, a car dealer of some kind according to Frank's lawyer, a strange name...'

‘Daniel Podmore, my grandfather,' said Zac.

The old woman closed her eyes to indicate that she needed silence to talk and it was then that Lily realized she was not merely being unfriendly – she was making a confession.

‘Joy answered the door. She looked well and, despite all that had happened between us, she was a madwoman for the drink, a raging alcoholic...'

Lily jolted at the revelation and saw Sally muffle a snigger. Imogen looked visibly riled and Zac curious as Honor continued. ‘Anyway, she seemed quite well; obviously this man had straightened her out. I would never have had the guts to face her after stealing her husband except that she had written to me a few months beforehand apologizing for her appalling behaviour towards me and Frank, so I knew it was unlikely there'd be a scene. We had a nice exchange, although she didn't invite me in and before I had the chance to give her what I had come for, she cut me off and said, “I have a good life now, Honor, but I have had to leave my old life behind so I don't think it's a good idea for us to be friends anymore,” then she turned and went inside.

‘As I tried to give her the package her husband came out and saw me leaving it on the step. I explained they were some trinkets I was returning to her and he said, “Joy doesn't need anything from you or your husband. We are doing just fine, please leave us alone and don't leave anything behind you. My wife doesn't need any reminder of her past; she has a new life now.” Then he closed the door in my face. So that was that.

‘It wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be leaving Frank. He would not leave me alone, would not take no for an answer. In the end I had to cut myself off from him completely. I even distanced myself from my parents because I knew he would go asking them where I was too. I went back to being a seamstress, but not in a design house where Frank might find me, just doing alterations in a small drapery shop in the Bronx. Then the shop closed, I got laid off and when I couldn't make my rent one month I went digging around for something to pawn and that's when I found...'

Honor paused and Lily noticed that she was breathing very quickly. She was afraid, the old woman was afraid of something, at that moment Emily came in with the tea and Lily motioned to her some concern for Honor.

‘...when I found Joy's jewels.' She paused and took a deep breath, closed her eyes and blurted out, ‘The man in the pawn shop said they were worth in excess of $50,000.'

It didn't sound like that much now to any of them but at that time it must have been a fortune. Certainly from the look of abject terror on the old woman's face it was clear she thought she was going to be slung in jail for it.

Lily reached out and took the old woman's hand and tears began to well up in her rheumy eyes.

‘I didn't take them back to her. I should have taken them back to her but I was so
angry
...'

Zac came over and knelt in front of her.

‘Joy was so beautiful and now she had a good husband and she seemed to be happy and content, despite everything and I thought if I kept her money maybe I could be happy again too. But...'

Then the old woman broke down into terrible sobs.

‘It's all right,' Zac said. ‘We're just glad we found you.'

Lily looked across at Imogen, and she looked, actually, as if she did mind. This had been a painful episode for her and Zac.

‘You look like her,' Honor said to Zac, touching his chin. ‘So beautiful...' And she started to cry again – the tears she had not allowed herself to cry for some fifty years.

It was such a powerful relief that as the tears came, they almost turned to laughter. Had fifty years really passed with her locked inside that guilt, holding the terrible secret, knowing she was a bad person? The door had opened; she had confessed and now Honor was free. Could it really be that simple? Could the truth really have opened the doors of her guilty prison? Was seventy-nine too old for her to be given a second chance?

Emily went over to her and was about to usher them all out of the room when Honor gathered herself and said, ‘No. I want them to stay. I want you all to stay. I don't want to be alone anymore.'

Emily brought them in tea and sandwiches and they stayed with Honor for the rest of that afternoon. After she had made her confession, the old woman was like a different person, full of anecdotes and chat. She seemed to become immediately fond of Zac, inviting him to come and sit next to her on the small settee and asking him all about his college course.

It was Zac who talked her into going to the Met Ball. ‘You
have
to come,' he said. ‘You'll be my date for the night. It's going to be the biggest night of my life, of all our lives. Please say you'll come.'

‘I'm seventy-nine,' Honor laughed. ‘My partying days are over.'

‘Nonsense,' Zac said. ‘We've just met so I can tell you now...' He did a Beyoncé click. ‘...your party days are just beginning, lady.'

Sally mouthed, ‘Yo!' at Lily and gave her a fist bump. The kid was good. He had the old lady wrapped around his finger.

‘Come for me, Aunt Honor. For Grandma Joy.'

Tears welled up in Honor's eyes. She wasn't Zac's aunt. She wasn't anyone's aunt, or wife, or sister. Yet this young man was inviting her to be his family, in such a warm and casual way, after all she had done.

‘I'll come,' she said, adding grumpily, ‘but don't expect any great style, I've nothing to wear.'

‘I took the liberty of putting a few frocks on hold for you,' said Sally. ‘I'll have them sent here care of Emily in the morning?'

That Sally was a cheeky strap, full of herself. Honor looked across at her icily.

‘I hope they're comfortable, otherwise I shall be wearing my pant-suit as usual. I think Emily has a clean one... somewhere.'

Honor and Emily exchanged a knowing look.

‘I'm sure we can get one laundered before tomorrow.'

Sally looked suitably terrified. ‘I'm sure, erm, there's a Carolina Herrera that will fit you. I'll make sure you get a good choice.'

Honor nodded her approval, and managed to give Lily a wink bringing her in on the joke.

They made practical arrangements for Honor to be collected by Zac in a limousine the following afternoon. While she and Zac became instant friends, Honor had noticed that Joy's daughter, Imogen, had remained aloof.

As they were leaving Honor reached out and took Imogen's hand. Imogen gave her a polite shake and was ready to pull away, but Honor held her grip.

‘I was not a good friend to your mother...' Imogen flinched, but Honor held on. ‘...and perhaps I contributed to some dark times in her life. But I want you to know...' She faltered, her voice so quiet that Imogen had to lean down to hear her. ‘...that for the time I knew Joy, I loved her.' She paused again. ‘Your mother was a most beautiful and lovable person.'

‘I appreciate your honesty,' Imogen said, ‘but it's a lot to take in.'

She tried to move her hands gently away from the old lady's grip but Honor was not ready to let her go.

She closed her eyes and, unable to open them for the pain in her heart, said, ‘Please. Let me make amends.'

Imogen melted. Her own mother had been around this woman's age when she died. Whatever had happened between then, Honor and Joy had clearly once been close. She leaned down and kissed Honor warmly on both hands. ‘Just having known and loved my mother,' she said, ‘is amends enough for me.'

*

Lily and Sally were booked into the Plaza on Central Park. Jack Scott was staying there too, as was Sharon. Jack was bringing her as his ‘official date' the following night so she could model Scott's new high-street plus-size evening wear collection. The theme of the Met Ball was How High Street Copies Couture and the Scott's–PopShop Dress-Off had earned such social media traction in the few weeks since it had been announced that the organizers had put the competition at the centre of the evening's programme.

On the day of the show, Lily and Sally had the task of finally choosing their model. They had already narrowed the girls down to twenty using look-books and video casting in London, and the New York agents understood this gig was a big deal so had put some of their best girls on first option. However, there had been a last minute glitch when the Met Ball production team insisted The Dress be delivered to them to be kept backstage twenty-four hours before the show. Something to do with insurance. Sally got into a huge fight with them insisting she needed it for the casting, but despite getting Jack's legal team involved, she could not wrestle it back off them. She managed to borrow a Vera Wang wedding dress sample as a stand in but it wasn't the same.

By lunchtime they had seen all of the models they had picked out and some that they hadn't. All of them beautiful but none of them quite right.

‘Thank you!' Sally said, waving one girl out and grabbing a chocolate strawberry from the VIP food platter she had ordered to calm her frayed nerves.

‘This is hopeless,' she said. ‘They all just look so bloody
ordinary
.'

The last half dozen girls they had not even bothered putting into the Vera Wang.

‘One more to go,' Sally said. ‘She had better be good or we'll be picking off the reject list.'

The door opened and a young model walked in who made their jaws drop. Svetlana, Russian, stunning. But there was more. With her razor-sharp cheekbones, almond eyes, shiny black hair and haughty expression, she was the image of Joy Fitzpatrick.

‘OMG. It's remarkable,' Lily said.

Sally nodded at the girl and said, ‘Start stripping, dear, we've a lot of buttons to do up.'

In the Vera Wang dress, she was perfection.

‘She looks exactly like Joy in the woodland pictures.'

‘You're happy?' Sally said. Lily nodded.

‘Then I'm happy.'

When Svetlana left, Lily was beaming.

‘This was meant to be, the perfect girl turning up last. If we had booked any of the others, we might not have seen her and she is so right. Our dress is sure to win now. With Svetlana in it, it has to. It's fate.'

‘Lils,' Sally said, ‘I'm glad we got the model you wanted but to be honest we could put wheels under that dress and push it on a shopping trolley down the runway with no model in it, and it would still win – it's that good.'

Despite her relief in getting the right model, over the next three hours as they were getting ready for their big night, Lily could feel a terrible tension rising up in her. Sally had booked a hair and make-up artist and borrowed a selection of clothes for them. Sally wore a knockout 80s Azzedine Alaïa with a rubber corset bodice. Lily picked out a vintage Jean Dessès copper and navy evening gown for herself. But as the hairdresser was smoothing down her Audrey Hepburn bun, Lily had to get up and walk around the room. She could feel her heart start beating ten to the dozen and her palms were sweating as if she was having a panic attack. Lily calmed herself down, telling herself everything was in place; The Dress was safely backstage, the model was booked, the car was waiting outside and they all looked great. Despite this Lily could feel pre-show nerves taking over her. As Zac and Honor arrived Lily managed to hold it together enough to admire his custom-made gold suit and Honor's stunning Carolina Herrera evening gown. Sally was thrilled that Honor wasn't wearing a velour pant-suit. Everyone was so happy; she needed to be happy too.