The Midnight Dress Read Online Free Page B

a little faster.
    ‘End of Hansen Road,’ says Pearl, eventually. She smiles and nods at Rose. See, she says with her eyes, there is a dressmaker for you. A mysterious one, who will entirely suit your needs.
    ‘Still not that interested,’ says Rose, expressionless.
    There are long silences between them. The silences make Rose twitchy but Pearl doesn’t seem to notice them. She lies back on her bed and smiles right into them.
    ‘My father’s last name is Orlov. It’s very common. There are about one hundred of them living in Moscow.’ She reaches under her bed and pulls out several pieces of paper stapled together. ‘My mum got them from a man on a bus who knew someone in the embassy. The buses stop here every day – you wouldn’t believe the kinds of people we meet. She said she got the addresses because I wouldn’t shut up about trying to find him, even though it’s probably a crime or something, to have the addresses I mean. I’ve written to all the A. Orlovs.’
    ‘Has anyone written back?’
    ‘Not yet,’ says Pearl. ‘I only sent them a week ago. It takes weeks and weeks for the letters to get to Moscow.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘I said, Hello, my name is Pearl Kelly and I’m looking for my father, Bear Orlov .’
    ‘Bear?’
    ‘That was his nickname, that was all my mother knew him as. She only knew him for a night.’
    Pearl rests back again, closes her eyes, leaves Rose sitting there holding the Muscovite Orlovs.
    ‘My mother was a dancer and he met her in the night – she says he had to bow his head to get through doorways. He was really handsome and even though he didn’t speak much English they talked and talked and talked all that night. It was love at first sight. They talked at the bar and then the cafe, they talked on the metro. They talked beneath the Eiffel Tower, and finally they talked outside her little apartment until the sun came up.
    He was going back that day, he was an attaché or something, something to do with the government but she can’t remember what any more and it didn’t really matter at the time. My mother wrote down her address on the back of a serviette and he put it in his coat pocket, but it must have fallen out on the train or on the platform of the Gare du Nord, because he never wrote to her. She waited for him and everything, like the whole nine months, but he never came back, so she came home with me.’
    Pearl opens her eyes, sits up.
    ‘I kissed Jonah Pedersen on the Friday night before he went away for rep. football,’ she says. ‘He wants to go out with me. I mean a permanent kind of thing.’
    Rose bites her bottom lip.
    ‘I mean I like him. He’s the best-looking boy in the school and in Year Twelve but . . . Can I tell you a secret? He’s a really bad kisser. I mean it was like he was drooling or something. It didn’t . . . excite me.’
    Rose listens to her own heartbeat. Still trying to think of something interesting.
    ‘But it’s kind of expected. Everyone says it was meant to be.’
    ‘Oh,’ is all Rose manages.
    Pearl thinks of her other secret. It’s much bigger, and when she thinks it she feels fluttery and breathless. She won’t tell Rose now, the other secret will blow Rose away.
    ‘You look full of secrets,’ Pearl says. ‘You’re a real closed book.’
    ‘No I’m not,’ says Rose.
    It’s almost dark when Rose gets dressed in the bathroom again. She folds up the kurta neatly and tries to give it back to Pearl’s mother.
    ‘Oh no, darling, you keep it – it’s a welcoming gift to you.’
    Rose holds it in her hands and imagines it in the caravan, like a bright slash of blood. Pattie insists on driving her home and Pearl sits in the back beside Rose. The rain is so heavy that twice Pattie has to pull over.
    ‘Rose is getting her dress made by that old lady on Hansen Road,’ says Pearl, when they are stopped waiting for the rain to ease.
    ‘Edie Baker?’ says Pattie. ‘How do you know about her?’
    ‘They