bore it back across the garden like an army medic carrying a wounded soldier back from a battlefield.
It was tricky conveying a farthingale, hooped petticoats and several acres of silk back to her basement undetected, especially when the dress kept catching on the rose bushes or trailing through the beds.
At last she fed it all through the window and clambered in with it.
On close inspection, the damage was fairly superficial, but there was no doubt that it wasn’t as described in the advert.
Hurriedly, Legs created a new Gmail account and eBay identity under a false name and bid on the dress herself, putting in far more than she thought it was worth to be safe. She was immediately outbid.
‘You
what
?
’
She added another hundred pounds. Still it came back with the red cross. Another hundred, another red cross.
‘You are
mad,’
she hissed to her rival bidders, and upped her stake by several hundred. At last a green tick. She slumped back in her chair and gazed at the dress spread across the sofa with its hoops in the air like a whale’s skeleton on a beach. She doubted she could do much to repair it with just a stick of Pritt and her small collection of sewing kits pilfered from hotels.
Gordon’s name was striped bold at the top of her email inbox again.
Why do you buy wedding dresses on eBay?
You’re not the only one with an altar ego,
she replied.
She began Googling dress-menders in west London, but soon found herself distracted and clicking her way onto the Farcombe Festival site, unable to resist a snoop. Guest speakers for the literary side of the arts festival had been confirmed, and Legs hadheard of less than half of them, so guessed they must be very worthy and learned. A poet called Kizzy de la Mere seemed to be the feature act, and there were lots of photographs of a flame-haired wraith with big lips sitting on a rock looking moody. Legs looked at her thin, high-browed face and decided she’d suit the Ditchley dress perfectly.
The website made no direct mention of Francis, who remained as quietly behind the scenes as his father remained centre stage; there were endless photographs of Hector looking dashing with young Brit Art stars, experimental musicians and dancers, usually accompanied by wife Poppy in her customary smock and turban, a style she had first adopted almost a quarter of a century earlier in the belief that it made her seem more creative but, given her tanned and wizened slenderness, now made her look like a Moroccan Berber.
Legs forced herself to stop surfing and made a big mug of tea before composing an email to Francis, telling him in the simplest terms that she was planning to spend a few days in the cottage and thought it best to let him know. She hadn’t been to Farcombe since they’d split up. This was the first time she’d communicated since the day eleven months earlier that she’d crept out at dawn to post a hand-written six page letter baring her soul. She’d never received any reply. If that tearstained letter the previous year had elicited no response, Legs reasoned sadly, this brief missive was hardly likely to bear any more fruit.
She still had a first draft of that letter in her chest of keepsakes and photographs, a creased, ring-marked testament to her regret, full of misquoted Donne, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at it since copying out its more poignant paragraphs between weeping fits and breaks to consult the
Oxford Book of English Verse.
Even now, as she briefly thought about taking it out of its Pandora’s box to revisit the moment and try to see it through Francis’s eyes, the idea made her shudder in horror, ashamed of her own outpouring.
Yet after she’d had her bath, she was amazed to find that he’d already sent an email in return.
I am very relieved. Call me when you get here. We must meet up ASAP.F.
Legs let out a little cry of shock and, she knew it, glee. She only just stopped herself dancing around the flat. This
It was tricky conveying a farthingale, hooped petticoats and several acres of silk back to her basement undetected, especially when the dress kept catching on the rose bushes or trailing through the beds.
At last she fed it all through the window and clambered in with it.
On close inspection, the damage was fairly superficial, but there was no doubt that it wasn’t as described in the advert.
Hurriedly, Legs created a new Gmail account and eBay identity under a false name and bid on the dress herself, putting in far more than she thought it was worth to be safe. She was immediately outbid.
‘You
what
?
’
She added another hundred pounds. Still it came back with the red cross. Another hundred, another red cross.
‘You are
mad,’
she hissed to her rival bidders, and upped her stake by several hundred. At last a green tick. She slumped back in her chair and gazed at the dress spread across the sofa with its hoops in the air like a whale’s skeleton on a beach. She doubted she could do much to repair it with just a stick of Pritt and her small collection of sewing kits pilfered from hotels.
Gordon’s name was striped bold at the top of her email inbox again.
Why do you buy wedding dresses on eBay?
You’re not the only one with an altar ego,
she replied.
She began Googling dress-menders in west London, but soon found herself distracted and clicking her way onto the Farcombe Festival site, unable to resist a snoop. Guest speakers for the literary side of the arts festival had been confirmed, and Legs hadheard of less than half of them, so guessed they must be very worthy and learned. A poet called Kizzy de la Mere seemed to be the feature act, and there were lots of photographs of a flame-haired wraith with big lips sitting on a rock looking moody. Legs looked at her thin, high-browed face and decided she’d suit the Ditchley dress perfectly.
The website made no direct mention of Francis, who remained as quietly behind the scenes as his father remained centre stage; there were endless photographs of Hector looking dashing with young Brit Art stars, experimental musicians and dancers, usually accompanied by wife Poppy in her customary smock and turban, a style she had first adopted almost a quarter of a century earlier in the belief that it made her seem more creative but, given her tanned and wizened slenderness, now made her look like a Moroccan Berber.
Legs forced herself to stop surfing and made a big mug of tea before composing an email to Francis, telling him in the simplest terms that she was planning to spend a few days in the cottage and thought it best to let him know. She hadn’t been to Farcombe since they’d split up. This was the first time she’d communicated since the day eleven months earlier that she’d crept out at dawn to post a hand-written six page letter baring her soul. She’d never received any reply. If that tearstained letter the previous year had elicited no response, Legs reasoned sadly, this brief missive was hardly likely to bear any more fruit.
She still had a first draft of that letter in her chest of keepsakes and photographs, a creased, ring-marked testament to her regret, full of misquoted Donne, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at it since copying out its more poignant paragraphs between weeping fits and breaks to consult the
Oxford Book of English Verse.
Even now, as she briefly thought about taking it out of its Pandora’s box to revisit the moment and try to see it through Francis’s eyes, the idea made her shudder in horror, ashamed of her own outpouring.
Yet after she’d had her bath, she was amazed to find that he’d already sent an email in return.
I am very relieved. Call me when you get here. We must meet up ASAP.F.
Legs let out a little cry of shock and, she knew it, glee. She only just stopped herself dancing around the flat. This
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