The Count of Monte CristoChapter 58 M Noirtier de Villefort
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‘Well, good morning, sunshine!’ Alice trilled across the shop as I closed the door behind me, her tone laden with sarcasm. I located her position by the cash desk just in time to witness her pointed glance at the clock. ‘We were starting to wonder if you’d make it in today, weren’t we Roxy?’
Eighteen year old Roxanne, our magenta-haired Saturday girl, was on her knees in front of a heavily pregnant customer, half a dozen dress pins protruding from her cherry red lips. She sent me a sympathetic eye roll before bowing her head again and continuing to adjust the hem of the customer’s dress.
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ I responded, cringing as I heard the automatic apology fall from my mouth. ‘It turned into a late night, that’s all.’
‘A boozy late night too, by the look of it. You look awful.’
God bless Alice for pointing out the obvious. ‘I had two glasses of champagne,’ I objected, picking my way around the racks of clothing and trying to ignore the blatantly curious but amused looks of my customers.
She uttered a soft snort. ‘Of course you did. I think I need to have a word with that nephew of mine. That’s the second time in a week you’ve let him get you plastered. For someone who refuses to take painkillers, it’s amazing how blasé you seem to be about alcohol intoxication.’
‘Alice! I swear I didn’t…’ I stopped in defeat as she cast me another disbelieving look. Why was I even trying to defend myself?
‘Well, at least he had the decency to bring you into work.’
Did anything ever get past Alice? Having first taken me home to dump my overnight bag, Drew had merely laughed when I’d told him that if he was going to insist on dropping me off at the shop as well, we’d need to concoct a cover story—then laughed even harder when I bashed my knee in my haste to scramble out of his Audi before she spotted us. Still, at least the painful moment had overshadowed what I’d feared might be an awkward farewell. I could still see his shoulders shaking with mirth as he drove off, the bastard.
‘He stayed over last night,’ I fibbed, dumping my handbag besides Alice’s vast hold-everything-bag beneath the counter. ‘I didn’t have the heart to wake him up when he crashed out on my sofa.’ Not that it was difficult to make that sound convincing—it had happened on more than one occasion in the past.
She uttered a harrumphing sound under her breath but made no further comment, instead fixing a smile in place as a customer came to the till with a white shirt over her arm. ‘Hello dear, can I take that for you?’
I resisted the urge to sigh loudly then muttered, ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on then, shall I?’ And after exchanging another glance with Roxy who nodded gratefully, I turned on my heel and headed for the door marked ‘Private’ at the back of the shop.
But as I headed for the kitchen sink, pausing en route to check out my reflection in the full length mirror on the wall—occasionally we used the kitchen as an extra changing room—I had to concede that Alice could be forgiven for assuming the worst. It certainly looked like I had a hangover. It felt like a hangover. The mere act of filling the kettle made my arms ache.
‘Ow-ow,’ I whimpered, setting it down on the base and flipping the switch before slumping over the counter with a groan. And to think the day was relatively young. If having a night of passion equated to how one might feel after climbing to the top of Ben Nevis—and heaven help me, it was starting to seem as though it might—then the worst of the discomfort was surely yet to come. Would I even be capable of putting one foot in front of the other by the evening?
‘Thank God you’re here,’ Roxy said behind me, making me jump. ‘You won’t believe how mad it’s—oh holy crap.’ She broke off as I turned around, amused astonishment in her voice. ‘You look completely shagged.’
‘What?’
She laughed, her heavily-kohled eyes hawk-like as she inspected me from head to foot. ‘Shagged,’ she affirmed confidently. ‘As in like, totally fucked.’
‘Roxy!’ Startled by her candour—and her unnerving accuracy—I forced a ‘how-could-you-even-think that?’ laugh. ‘It was just a late night, that’s all. Late night, too much wine—’
‘And lots of sex,’ she finished triumphantly. She grinned. ‘Way to go, boss. I was starting to think that you and Drew were never going to get it on.’
Uh oh. How was I going to nip this in the bud?
‘Get it on?’ I gasped, striving for innocence. ‘Me and Drew?’ I tried another laugh, this time managing a much more convincing noise. ‘No!’
She shot me a dubious glance.
‘Seriously,’ I protested. ‘It’s not like that, honestly. We’ve been friends for years. Just friends, okay?’
‘Friends?’
I nodded, surprised to hear something approaching disappointment in her tone. ‘Drew and me—we could never have that kind of relationship,’ I explained, struggling to keep my words light as the reality of that statement started dragging at my chest. ‘It just wouldn’t work. He’s not interested in me like that. And that goes for me too,’ I continued hastily before my heart could remind my head I was lying. ‘I’m not interested in him like that either.’
‘Right.’ But Roxy still looked sceptical. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought that you two…’ She trailed off, shaking her head. ‘I don’t usually get this stuff wrong.’ She gave me another considering stare. ‘You certainly look as though you’ve been up all night—and up in a good way, if you know what I mean?’ Her face crinkled into a smile. ‘And you and Drew—I’ve seen you two together. You look like you should be getting it on.’
‘Ah well, looks can be deceiving.’ Hearing the kettle boiling behind me, I turned to reach into the cupboard for some mugs, relieved that I’d only needed to sound convincing this time.
How the hell could she tell?
‘What is it about being your age?’ I burbled, overcompensating now. ‘God, I remember being eighteen. Thinking that everybody was getting it on, and if they weren’t, there must be something wrong with them.’
Fuck, that was patronising. Not to mention another bare-faced lie. Thanks to the botched transplant, I could hardly remember being eighteen at all—and as for getting it on—well, I hadn’t, had I? I’d been nothing like confident, self-assured Roxanne.
Though quite how she’d managed to become confident and self-assured, I had no idea. Needing an extra pair of hands in the shop at weekends, Alice and I had taken on a shy, mousy-haired sixteen year old girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Two years later, Roxanne sported spiky pink hair, wore only black and thought nothing of saying exactly what she thought. Our customers—once over their initial shock at her appearance—loved her, not least because she was also a dab hand with a sewing machine, willing and able to alter garments to fit at a moment’s notice.
And if her lurid accounts of her personal life were to be believed—and I suspected they were, having met a few of her boyfriends—she knew more about relationships than I ever would. She definitely knew more about sex.
‘Right.’ To her credit, Roxy sounded decidedly unfazed. ‘My bad.’
At her age I’d have been mortified to think I’d got something like that wrong. How I envied her ability to let the moment pass.
‘Oh, no problem. Easy mistake to make,’ I said brightly. Much too brightly. ‘It’s not like you’re the first person to think something might be something going on between us. But it isn’t. So…’ I found myself glaring at the neat row of mugs on the shelf, fighting back unexpected tears. ‘What do you fancy, tea or coffee?’
‘Tea.’ But suddenly, Roxy’s arm was around my shoulders. As though she was the woman who’d just turned twenty-five and I was the eighteen year old Saturday girl.
As though she knew damn well I hadn’t been telling the truth. Could she tell? Or was she simply picking up on my vulnerable state? Having clo
cked my appearance in the mirror for myself, there was a good chance she’d simply decided I felt every bit as awful as I looked.
‘Go on,’ she said, in the manner of a mother chivvying a reluctant child into school. ‘I’ll make it. Alice needs you out there.’ The role reversal effect was as comical as it was touching. ‘Mrs Lewis is in the changing room getting out of that dress I was just pinning up. Can you tell her I’ll have it hemmed by three so she can wear it tonight?’
‘You sure?’ I risked a sidelong glance in the hope I’d be able to work out how much she’d guessed.
Instead of getting a clue, I was rewarded with a grimace. Roxy-the-teenager was back. ‘Sam, it’s your shop,’ she said with exaggerated patience. ‘You pay me to make the tea, remember? Get out front and serve some customers. I’ll bring it out when it’s brewed.’
Roxy had clearly spent far too much time with Alice, I decided ruefully, already trotting obediently towards the door.
But the thought flew out of my mind the moment I stepped back into the shop.
‘Whoa, what happened?’ I muttered, sliding behind the counter beside Alice and motioning to the first in a long line of queuing customers to bring her purchases to the till. ‘Did we just have a coach load turn up or something?’
She sent me a harassed grin, deftly folding a pair of our best-selling maternity trousers and slipping them into a bag. ‘Now you know why we were pleased to see you,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s been like this all morning.’
After taking a burgundy chiffon dress from my customer and shooting her an absent smile, I turned back to Alice. ‘Really? Why, what’s going on? How come it’s so—?’
But before I could finish, she reached under the till and slapped a slightly crumpled newspaper on the counter in front of me.
Britain In Full Bloom, the headline screamed, before adding underneath in smaller letters, What the nation’s best-dressed Mums-to-be are wearing this festive season.
‘Oh my God,’ I breathed, running a finger across the pictures that followed, recognising them from the shoot that had appeared in Mamma magazine a few weeks before. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No!’ I could feel Alice’s curious gaze on me as I stared at the two-page spread. ‘I mean, they said something about permission for syndication, but I never thought they meant anything like this.’
‘That’s how I found out about you,’ my customer put in helpfully.
‘And me,’ the woman next to her agreed, causing my head to jerk up from the paper. ‘It’s so hard to find decent things to wear when you’re this shape.’ She nodded down at her sizeable bump with a resigned smile. ‘You’ve got some fantastic things. Wish I’d known you were here when I was pregnant with Freddie.’
‘Thank-thank you,’ I stammered, suddenly rather overwhelmed. ‘You really came in here today—because of this?’ I scanned the top of the page for the date and saw my birthday, at the same time spotting that I was looking at the Daily News.
Holy hell. My little shop had been recognised by a national newspaper?
‘Well, let’s see.’ Swiping the newspaper out from beneath my gaze, Alice held it aloft and raised her voice to address the queue. ‘Ladies? I’m guessing quite a few of you are here because you read this yesterday? Where have you all come from today?’
As I forced myself to snap into action, switching my attention back to the long line of customers who needed serving, I listened in mounting astonishment to their replies.
‘Northampton.’
‘Cambridge!’
‘Coventry.’
‘Milton Keynes—well, just outside Milton Keynes.’
‘Sheffield,’ my current customer said, watching with a smile as I wrapped the dark red Maretti evening gown, folding in layers of tissue paper to protect the delicate fabric.
‘Sheffield?’ I echoed, gobsmacked. ‘Really?’ It had to be a two-hour journey from here.
She nodded, grinning now. ‘Well worth the trip. I’ve been looking for something like this—’ she motioned to the dress ‘—for weeks now.’
‘It is beautiful,’ I agreed wholeheartedly. All of Marco’s dresses were gorgeous, but this one had that certain something that set it apart from the rest this season. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, there was only one of these left now, the one that adorned the mannequin in the window.
‘Seems almost a shame that it’s a maternity dress,’ Alice’s customer said wistfully, peering over for a closer look as I reached for a box. ‘It’s the sort of thing you’d like to wear more than once.’
‘Oh, but you could,’ Roxy chipped in, slipping behind me to place my mug of tea on the bench at the back of the shop, well out of harm’s way. ‘Easy peasy to alter that design so that you could wear it after the baby’s born. All you’d need to do is gather in the fabric here—’ she motioned towards the bodice of the folded dress ‘—and bring this part up so that isn’t too long at the front. It’d look fantastic.’
‘Really?’
I watched with amusement as the woman’s doubtful gaze travelled from Roxy’s startling hair to the dress and back again. It was only too clear what she was thinking. But before I had a chance to leap to my young employee’s defence, another voice chimed in.
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Lewis gushed, beaming across at us all from her position towards the back of the queue and holding up the dress Roxy had been adjusting when I’d first arrived. ‘Roxy’s a star. I can’t tell you how many clothes she’s altered for me. That’s the trouble with being five foot nothing tall,’ she added with a laugh as Roxy beamed back, making my heart swell with pride. ‘Everything’s too long for me. I don’t know where they found this girl—but she’s a treasure, believe me.’
‘She is,’ Alice concurred, earning another self-conscious smile from Roxy as she hastened towards Mrs Lewis to collect the dress. ‘And still at school, this one. Goodness only knows what we’re going to do without her when she goes to university next year.’
It was a thought I’d had numerous times over the last few months. But having been denied the chance to study fashion myself, I could hardly begrudge Roxy’s designer dreams.
‘They’ll manage,’ Roxy threw back over her shoulder cheerfully, already heading for the sewing machine in the stockroom. ‘Sam’s pretty handy with a needle and thread as well.’
True enough, but trade was much brisker now than it had been two years ago. I simply didn’t have the time to spend on alterations these days. No, I reflected, looking out across the crowded shop floor before smiling a welcome at the next customer in line, should Roxy leave, I’d have to consider taking on another part-timer. Or another full-timer, if we carried on being this busy.
But at least being busy meant I had to keep going. I couldn’t pay attention to how my body ached or take any more than fleeting notice of my yearning to sleep. It was only when the morning rush died down at last and I found myself struggling to muster up the enthusiasm to change the window display—a task I usually loved—that I experienced an almost overwhelming urge to lie down in front of the mannequins, in full view of passers by on the High Street.
It didn’t help that it was so dark this time of year, even at noon. I pulled a face as I peered out into the gloom, despondent at the thought that by the following weekend it’d be December and I’d be duty bound to put up some decorations. As it was, it seemed as though mine was the only shop in town whose window wasn’t already bedecked with tinsel and fairy lights, my neighbours having declared the approach to the festive season within days of Halloween.
‘Bah humbug,’ Alice said good-naturedly, coming up beside me. ‘No prizes for guessing what you’re thinking about.’
‘I’m thinking about taking the frock off this dummy and putting one of those cream bat-sleeved tops on it with one of those stretch-top corduroy skirts we got in yesterday,’ I lied smoothly, lookin
g up at the red chiffon dress on the mannequin before letting my gaze fall to the gorgeous gold strappy sandals on its feet. They were actually my gold strappy sandals, the result of an expensive impulse buy back in the spring. But having found no occasion to wear them, I’d figured the shop display might as well benefit from my act of stupidity.
Alice gave me one of her looks. ‘No, you’re not.’
I sighed, rolling my eyes. ‘I hate bloody Christmas,’ I said with feeling. ‘Can’t I just go to bed and have someone wake me up in January?’
Slipping her arm around my shoulders, she hugged me to her ample bosom. ‘Well, going to bed’s probably a good idea. You look terrible,’ she said bluntly. ‘Why don’t you go home and grab a couple of hours so that you’re a bit fresher for your date with Marco tonight?’
‘We’re only going out to dinner,’ I protested, feeling oddly guilty at the very idea of it being a date, memories of the previous evening flooding back full force. ‘To talk business,’ I added firmly as Alice gave me another look. ‘And I can hardly go home right now and leave you both in the lurch. What if we have another mad splurge of customers like we had this morning? Besides, I’m going to have to leave at three as it is. See if I can figure out what the hell I’m going to wear.’
I bit my lip in consternation, mentally rummaging through my wardrobe. Wearing a white shirt with my favourite denim skirt wasn’t going to work tonight. Having eaten out with Marco before, there was one thing I knew for certain. We wouldn’t be dining at KFC.
Alice shook her head. ‘That doesn’t matter. You still need a break—and we’re not busy right now, are we? Tell her, Rox.’ She steered me around to face the door as Roxy entered with an armful of bulging paper bags from the bakery at the end of the street. ‘Tell her that she needs to take half an hour off and put her feet up.’
‘Take half an hour off and put your feet up,’ Roxy fired off, her expression matching Alice’s perfectly. ‘And eat your sandwich,’ she added, thrusting one of the bags under my nose. ‘Plain cheese, no rabbit food. Just like you ordered.’
Growling under my breath, I gave the pair of them a ‘who’s-the-boss-around-here?’ look, took the sandwich and stomped off to the kitchen.
Not that I really objected to their heavy-handedness—my protest was only for show. As I sank down on to the ancient brown sofa that had once taken pride of place in Aunt Sarah’s front room, it occurred to me that I’d never been more relieved to sit down in my life.
‘What the hell did you do to me, Drew Barnett?’ I whimpered, wincing as I shuffled around so that I could stretch my legs out lengthways across the cushions. ‘I’m broken.’
But the sudden image of Drew in my mind, the recollection of the way he’d gazed down at me as he settled over me, his brown eyes liquid with desire, made me realise with a start that it wasn’t just my body that felt bruised.
How on earth had I managed to convince myself that nothing would change between us? I’d known right from the beginning that our relationship might suffer—so why, in the end, had I ignored that nagging core of doubt? Why had it never occurred to me that I stood to lose far more than my virginity?
How could I have been so blind to the possibility that I might just lose my heart?
‘Oh no—stop,’ I muttered, jerking my head up from the armrest, alarmed to recognise the destination of my thoughts. I hadn’t lost my heart. Drew was my friend, my best and oldest mate. Nothing more, nothing less. And I didn’t need him to be any more than that, did I?
Or did I?
Oh God…
‘Praying?’ Roxy asked as she came back into the kitchen.
I’d said those words aloud too? ‘Not exactly,’ I said, straightening up with a frown when she stared at the paper bag discarded beside me. And as she continued to fix me with an Alice-worthy glare, I reached for it and pulled out the sandwich. ‘Just thinking.’
‘You know,’ she began after a pause, ‘you could try having a power nap.’
‘I look that bad?’
‘Well…’
Roxy’s hesitation said it all. Sighing, I peeled back the clingfilm and took a bite of bread and cheese.
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