The Dress Read Online Free Page A

She paused as if she had something else to say, so Lily asked, ‘Why did he never go back to Mayo?’
    The old woman let out a sigh. ‘He never wanted to. Too many bad memories. I don’t know the half of it myself.’
    â€˜What about his parents?’
    â€˜They died when he was very small. He had a brother, though.’
    â€˜Still alive?’
    â€˜I doubt it, he was a good few years older. He went to America just after Joe got sent to the nuns.’
    â€˜What was his name?’
    â€˜Francis,’ she said, ‘or Frank.’
    â€˜And how old was Frank when he went to America?’
    â€˜I don’t know, darling, he never said.’
    â€˜What year did Grandad go into the orphanage?’
    Eileen got agitated and said sharply, ‘I don’t know, Lily, now for goodness sake will you leave me alone – I’m just after burying my husband!’
    Lily didn’t like upsetting her grandmother but at the same time she felt there was something else, something the old lady was not telling her.
    *
    As Lily walked home she thought about how different the world would be now with no Joe in it. A distant roll of thunder brought rain and as she wandered through the familiar streets of her childhood her stomach jerked with memories. There was the plum tree that had been splattering its fruit on the London pavement since she was a child, there was the corner wall where she used to stop and kiss boyfriends after youth-club discos, there was the broken down garage where her father used to park his old van and where she and Sally had slept one night after forgetting their keys and being afraid to get her parents out of bed. These streets were Lily’s comfort zone but they didn’t bring her any comfort today. As she reached her flat, the top floor of an old Victorian terrace house owned by her parents, Lily stopped and tugged at the gate. The catch had been tricky to open for as long as she could remember. For a moment it was as if the past had entered the present, as if nothing had changed. Except a lot had changed.
    It felt unnatural to know that someone who was so much a part of who she was, and where she had come from, simply wasn’t there anymore. Along with that there was a new sensation nagging at her. Talking to her grandmother had only intensified the feeling that she did not know as much about her grandfather, about his life, as she might have done.
    Lily had never been to Mayo where her own people were from. She didn’t even know if she had ‘people’ there. For all she knew she might have dozens of cousins all over Ireland. Joe Fitzpatrick had left Mayo as a young boy in the late-1930s and had never returned – not even for a holiday.
    How could it be that her grandfather had died, that she had known him for thirty whole years, and yet was left knowing so little about him now? How was it possible that she had never asked? The answer, of course, was that she had never thought that he would die one day and take a part of her with him. Lily had always known she had loved the old man but now that he was gone she felt something more than that, as if a link had been broken.
    When Lily got home, she was exhausted. She fell into bed but was too wired to sleep. She decided to go and catch up on some work, hoping it would wear her out. What with the funeral and everything, Lily had fallen way behind on her daily LilyLovesVintage.com posts, so she opened the blog up and resumed the last story she had been working on.
    People are making a big deal out of Lucy Houston’s new evening wear collection because of the full skirts, but it’s been done before. When a certain Mr Christian Dior launched his couture house on 12 February 1947 he became an overnight sensation with a collection of designs featuring sloping shoulders, big busts and tiny wasp waists above full, voluminous skirts. A rival couturier at the time described Dior’s ‘New