The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Sophie Nicholls
papers? Passport? How long do you intend to stay here? Taking our jobs. Why don’t you just go home?
What had this man said as he stood, holding her flyer between his long wormy fingers? She tried to remember.
‘I take it you have a permit for this little opening party. If you’re going to serve alcohol, Mrs Moreno, well, you’ll need certain permissions from my office. But I’m sure that can all be arranged…’
Fabbia knew exactly what that meant.
‘Oh,’ she’d said, offering him her best smile, ‘I wouldn’t want to cause your office any extra trouble, Councillor. In that case, I will offer my guests some very nice homemade lemonade. Thank you so much for advising me.’
4.
A plume of emerald-green feathers with Swarovski crystal clip. Bespoke stage costume jewellery from Paris. 1990s.
Jean Cushworth frowned at herself in the mirror.Like this, with her hair sticking out in clumps all over her head, each clump wrapped in a piece of carefully folded tinfoil, she could see every wrinkle on her forehead. She moved in closer, trying not to look at the jowly bit under her chin, whilst inspecting her crows’ feet, which even ludicrously expensive pots of eye cream didn’t seem to be preventing from becoming so much more noticeable. She passed a hand over the skin at her collarbones, noticing the way that it no longer sprang back under her fingers.
She watched this woman in the mirror, this woman who was herself and also strangely not herself, a woman she no longer recognised, and let out a long sigh. The woman in the mirror sighed too so that she noticed now, along with the baggy skin under her eyes, a delicate web of lines at the corners of her mouth.
Jean Cushworth knew women with mouths like that. They were the main reason why, years ago, she’d finally managed to kick her thirty-Marlboro-Lights-a-day habit. Those women couldn’t wear lipstick any more without it creeping up from the edges of their lips, giving them a slightly mad expression.
Now she saw that she too would very soon be one of those women.
Maybe she’d go for the Botox option, after all. Perhaps even full-on surgery. God knows, Graham could afford it. And he owed her. That much was clear.
She thought of her mother and how she’d let herself go in the last decades of her life, the cardigans with the splotches of gravy down the front, her hair, the lustrous chestnut curls, her ‘crowning glory’ as she’d always liked to call it, left to fade to a wiry grey thatch and hacked at every couple of months by that awful woman who came to the nursing home.
‘Only seven pounds, she asks for,’ her mother had announced jubilantly. ‘Special OAP rate. And to think I’ve spent all that money in salons over the years. Yes, that’s one good thing about getting older. You don’t have to give a damn anymore.’
But Jean Cushworth did give a damn. She made a little grimace at the woman in the mirror and saw her mother – the raised eyebrows, the disapproving glare – grimace back at her.
No, she was not going to give in. She’d fight it just as long as she possibly could. She wasn’t and was never going to be her mother.
Vincent, the colourist, was faffing over her, adjusting the towel around her shoulders and then carefully unwrapping one of the foils.
He caught her eye in the mirror. ‘Just seeing if you’re cooked, Mrs C.’
She grimaced again and flicked through the pages of a magazine, lingering over the soft spray-tanned curves of some young celebrity presenting her new baby to the camera. No laughter lines on her face, Jean noticed, despite the fact that this girl was smiling in that way they’d always told her you really never should, back in her own modelling days. It was a smile that bared all of the girl’s perfectly straight white teeth.
Probably touched up, Jean thought. Lots of air-brushing. We never had any of that back then. We even did our own make-up.
Now Vincent was removing the foils, one
What had this man said as he stood, holding her flyer between his long wormy fingers? She tried to remember.
‘I take it you have a permit for this little opening party. If you’re going to serve alcohol, Mrs Moreno, well, you’ll need certain permissions from my office. But I’m sure that can all be arranged…’
Fabbia knew exactly what that meant.
‘Oh,’ she’d said, offering him her best smile, ‘I wouldn’t want to cause your office any extra trouble, Councillor. In that case, I will offer my guests some very nice homemade lemonade. Thank you so much for advising me.’
4.
A plume of emerald-green feathers with Swarovski crystal clip. Bespoke stage costume jewellery from Paris. 1990s.
Jean Cushworth frowned at herself in the mirror.Like this, with her hair sticking out in clumps all over her head, each clump wrapped in a piece of carefully folded tinfoil, she could see every wrinkle on her forehead. She moved in closer, trying not to look at the jowly bit under her chin, whilst inspecting her crows’ feet, which even ludicrously expensive pots of eye cream didn’t seem to be preventing from becoming so much more noticeable. She passed a hand over the skin at her collarbones, noticing the way that it no longer sprang back under her fingers.
She watched this woman in the mirror, this woman who was herself and also strangely not herself, a woman she no longer recognised, and let out a long sigh. The woman in the mirror sighed too so that she noticed now, along with the baggy skin under her eyes, a delicate web of lines at the corners of her mouth.
Jean Cushworth knew women with mouths like that. They were the main reason why, years ago, she’d finally managed to kick her thirty-Marlboro-Lights-a-day habit. Those women couldn’t wear lipstick any more without it creeping up from the edges of their lips, giving them a slightly mad expression.
Now she saw that she too would very soon be one of those women.
Maybe she’d go for the Botox option, after all. Perhaps even full-on surgery. God knows, Graham could afford it. And he owed her. That much was clear.
She thought of her mother and how she’d let herself go in the last decades of her life, the cardigans with the splotches of gravy down the front, her hair, the lustrous chestnut curls, her ‘crowning glory’ as she’d always liked to call it, left to fade to a wiry grey thatch and hacked at every couple of months by that awful woman who came to the nursing home.
‘Only seven pounds, she asks for,’ her mother had announced jubilantly. ‘Special OAP rate. And to think I’ve spent all that money in salons over the years. Yes, that’s one good thing about getting older. You don’t have to give a damn anymore.’
But Jean Cushworth did give a damn. She made a little grimace at the woman in the mirror and saw her mother – the raised eyebrows, the disapproving glare – grimace back at her.
No, she was not going to give in. She’d fight it just as long as she possibly could. She wasn’t and was never going to be her mother.
Vincent, the colourist, was faffing over her, adjusting the towel around her shoulders and then carefully unwrapping one of the foils.
He caught her eye in the mirror. ‘Just seeing if you’re cooked, Mrs C.’
She grimaced again and flicked through the pages of a magazine, lingering over the soft spray-tanned curves of some young celebrity presenting her new baby to the camera. No laughter lines on her face, Jean noticed, despite the fact that this girl was smiling in that way they’d always told her you really never should, back in her own modelling days. It was a smile that bared all of the girl’s perfectly straight white teeth.
Probably touched up, Jean thought. Lots of air-brushing. We never had any of that back then. We even did our own make-up.
Now Vincent was removing the foils, one
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