Free A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff Page A

say.
    ‘Well … okay,’ she replied. ‘But it’s way over budget.’
    I put on my jacket and prepared to leave.
    As I went out into the shop a minute later the girl emerged from the dressing room in the turquoise cupcake.
    She wasn’t in the least bit fat, she just had a lovely voluptuousness. Her fiancé had been right about the blue-green complimenting her eyes.
    ‘You look wonderful in it,’ Annie said. ‘You need an hourglass figure for these dresses, and you’ve got one.’
    ‘Thank you.’ She tucked a hank of glossy brown hair behind one ear. ‘I must say, it really is …’ She sighed with a mixture of happiness and frustration ‘… gorgeous . I love the tutu skirts and the sequins. It makes me feel … happy,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Not that I’m not happy,’ she added with a warm smile at her fiancé. She looked at Annie. ‘And it’s £ 275?’
    ‘That’s right. It’s all silk,’ Annie added, ‘including the lace banding round the bodice.’
    ‘And there’s five per cent off everything at the moment,’ I said as I picked up my bag. I’d decided to extend the offer. ‘And we can keep things for up to a week.’
    The girl sighed again. ‘It’s okay. Thanks.’ She gazed at herself in the mirror, the tulle petticoats whispering as she moved. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, ‘but … I don’t know … Perhaps … it’s not really … quite me.’ She retreatedinto the changing room and drew the curtain. ‘I’ll just … keep looking,’ I heard her say as I left for The Paragon.
       
    I know The Paragon well – I used to go there for piano lessons. My teacher was called Mr Long, which used to make my mother laugh as Mr Long was very short. He was also blind, and his brown eyes, magnified behind the thick lenses of his NHS specs, used to roll incessantly from side to side. When I was playing he would pace up and down behind me in his worn Hush Puppies. If I fumbled something he’d smack the fingers of my right hand with a ruler. I wasn’t so much offended as impressed by his aim.
    I went to Mr Long every Tuesday after school for five years until one June day his wife phoned my mother to say that Mr Long had collapsed and died while walking in the Lake District. Despite the hand smacking, I was very upset.
    I haven’t set foot in The Paragon since then, although I’ve often passed by it. There’s something about the imposing Georgian crescent, with its seven massive houses, each linked by a low colonnade, that still makes me catch my breath. In The Paragon’s heyday the houses each had their own stables, carriage rooms, fishponds and dairies, but during the war the terrace was bombed. When it was restored in the late 1950s it was carved into flats.
    Now I walked up Morden Road past the Clarendon Hotel, skirting the Heath with its trail of traffic trundling around the perimeter; then I passed the Princess of Wales pub, and the nearby pond, its surface rippling in thebreeze, then I turned into The Paragon. As I walked down the terrace I admired the horse chestnut trees on the huge front lawn, their leaves already flecked with gold. I climbed the stone steps of number 8 and pressed the buzzer for flat 6. I looked at my watch. It was five to three. I’d aim to be out by four.
    I heard the intercom crackle, then Mrs Bell’s voice. ‘I am just coming down. Kindly wait a little moment.’
    It was a good five minutes until she appeared.
    ‘Excuse me.’ She lifted her hand to her chest as she caught her breath. ‘It always takes me some time…’
    ‘Please don’t worry,’ I said as I held the heavy black door open for her. ‘But couldn’t you have let me in from upstairs?’
    ‘The automatic catch is broken – somewhat to my regret,’ she added with elegant understatement. ‘Anyway, thank you so much for coming, Miss Swift …’
    ‘Please, call me Phoebe.’
    As I stepped over the threshold Mrs Bell extended a thin hand, the skin on which was translucent with age,