The Dressmakers of London

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Late Monday morning, Izzie stepped out into the road but then jumped back again when a dispatch rider roared around the corner, narrowly missing her. She cried out, clapping a hand to her chest to slow her heart. She was already late. The last thing she needed was to be flattened by a motorcycle on the way to Willie’s office.

The days since Mum’s funeral had been some of the hardest of her life. She’d kept the shop closed, unable to bring herself to face the pity of Mrs. Shelton’s customers. Instead, she’d pulled the quilt off the sofa and wrapped herself up in the large yellow armchair Mum used to sit in to mend at the end of the night. She hardly ate, she hardly drank. Instead, she grieved and slept.

She was an orphan now, all alone in the world. All she had was the shop.

The shop.

That was what had forced her out of the chair that morning. It was what compelled her to bathe and fix her hair. To dot on a precious bit of her last bottle of scent. To pull on one of her last pairs of nylons and her best shoes, don her coat and hat and gloves, and walk to Willie’s office.

Izzie shook her head, double-checked the road in either direction, and hurried across to the door of his building. When she opened it, she found Sylvia sitting primly on the edge of a chair in the entryway. Slowly, she closed the door, examining her estranged sister, whom circumstances had forced her in front of twice in less than a week after so many years apart.

She remembered a time when she’d been proud of Sylvia’s beauty. People always commented on how well the Shelton girls dressed—a proper advertisement for the shop, Mum would say with a satisfied smile—but Sylvia always managed to make whatever she wore look somehow more elegant than it did on the dressmaker’s form. Now, Sylvia might be beautifully turned out, in her burgundy skirt and jacket with a fur coat on her shoulders and the black hat and veil she’d worn to the funeral perched on fashionably curled hair, but Izzie couldn’t muster the pride she’d once had in her older sister.

“Hello,” said Sylvia.

“You’re early,” said Izzie, unable to keep the accusation from her tone.

Sylvia sighed. “How could you possibly disapprove of me being early?”

Izzie lifted her chin. “You were nearly late to Mum’s funeral, but you’re early to her will reading?”

Sylvia rose to her feet, both hands braced on the handle of her handbag. “What are you implying?”

Izzie knew she wasn’t really being fair, but she couldn’t help herself. There were too many years of anger and frustration built up inside of her, and while she could keep it from erupting when she didn’t have to see her sister, with Sylvia standing in front of her now—

Willie’s office door opened, and he stepped into the entryway to greet them. “Good morning, Mrs. Pearsall, Miss Shelton.”

Hearing her oldest friend call her “Miss Shelton” immediately sobered her. She squeezed her eyes shut, recalling all too clearly why they were at Willie’s office. Mum was dead, and they were there to hear the reading of her will.

“Miss Shelton?” asked Willie.

She opened her eyes and found Willie and her sister staring at her.

“Are you all right?” asked Sylvia.

“Perfectly,” she said. And in a way she was, because no matter Sylvia’s diamonds and furs or her Marylebone telephone exchange, Izzie had something more valuable: years of memories with Mum.

“If you would both like to join me,” said Willie, gesturing to the room that served as his office. It obviously had once been the front sitting room of a house, and it still had a plain but solid fireplace surround framing the coal fire that had just begun to glow with heat.

“I apologize that there was no one to greet you both this morning. Miss Hubert, my secretary, decided to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service and received her orders two weeks ago and I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement. Not that anyone ever could replace Miss Hubert,” he said. “She is the soul of discretion and has a mind like a steel trap.”

“Did she wait long for her call-up? I know that the WRNS is one of the more desirable auxiliary services,” said Sylvia, in a way Izzie was certain was meant to show of her superior knowledge of the women’s auxiliary services, even though everyone knew that posh girls went into the WRNS, in part because their uniforms were designed by Edward Molyneux and were far more attractive than the other women’s auxiliaries’ uniforms.

“Not at all,” Willie said. “There are rumors going around that there aren’t nearly enough female recruits to free up the men needed for the front.”

“Well, every little bit helps,” said Sylvia.

Before she could think better of it, Izzie gave a faint snort. When she looked up, she found Willie and Sylvia both staring at her.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“No, I’d actually be curious to hear how you can possibly find fault with such a simple statement,” said Sylvia.

“Perhaps we should move on to—”

“?‘Every little bit helps’?” she cut across Willie. “What are you doing for the war effort from your mansion flat in Marylebone, then?”

Sylvia held her gaze for a long moment before turning back to Willie. “Perhaps we should move on.”

He cleared his throat and began to shuffle the papers on his desk. When he was ready, he said, “As I mentioned on Friday, your mother was very clear in some of the instructions she left me, although I regret to say that she offered little insight into why she expressed her wishes in the way she did. That remains a mystery.”

“What do you mean ‘a mystery’?” asked Izzie.

She thought she saw a flash of sympathy in his eyes, but he looked down again before she could be certain.

“Why don’t I begin to read the will and things will become clearer?” he asked. The paper crinkled in his hands as he lifted the edge of the page. “?‘I hereby declare that this is the last will and testament of Margaret Mary Shelton…’?”

A long string of anachronistic legal sentences followed attesting to the fact that Mum had been of sound mind when she made the will. Then Mum named Willie as her executor.

Izzie let the words wash over her, worry creeping in. She wished that Mum had trusted her with more of the business side of things at Mrs. Shelton’s. She didn’t know the first thing about the accounts or where to find anything in Mum’s messy office.

No. She might not know the ins and outs of the business when it came to money, but she knew the order and appointment books, and that was a start. She could learn how the suppliers were paid and how to do the accounting and—

“?‘I leave my estate, including my business, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions; the building at number four Glengall Road; the flat; and the building’s contents to my daughters, Mrs. Hugo Pearsall and Miss Isabelle Shelton.’?”

“What?” Izzie blurted out.

Sylvia leaned forward, grasping the arms of her chair. “That cannot be right.”

“You’ve read that wrong, Willie. Read it again,” Izzie demanded.

“I have only read what your mother wrote here. Her last wishes,” said Willie, his tone sharper than it usually was.

This could not be happening. Mum wouldn’t have done this to her.

“There must be a misunderstanding,” said Sylvia. “Our mother wouldn’t have left the shop to me. Surely it must be Izzie’s.”

“There is more, if you will permit me,” said Willie, clearing his throat.

“Please do go on, William,” said Sylvia, like she was the lady of the manor.

“Mrs. Shelton continues, ‘I hope that, as it has for me, the shop will take care of them when they need it most.’?” Willie looked up. “That is all.”

“What could Sylvia possibly need the shop for?” Izzie demanded.

Willie looked up at her, the sympathy so clear in his eyes that it made her miserable all over again. “I’m very sorry, Miss Shelton.”

“But it’s not fair .” She’d been the one to work for years at Mrs. Shelton’s, not Sylvia. She’d steeled herself to harangue delivery drivers and cope with Miss Reid’s moods. She’d sewn until her eyes had felt like sand to make sure orders were delivered on time. She’d swept and cleaned and done everything to keep the doors open every day. And what had Sylvia done except hitch herself to Horrible Hugo’s tailored coattails as soon as she’d seen a chance to escape.

“That’s an old will,” she said. “It must be. Mum would have changed it after Sylvia left home.”

“It’s the most recent will,” Willie said.

“But that can’t be right. Maybe Mum left Sylvia an interest in the building because of the flat, but she never would have left her the business,” she insisted.

It was supposed to be hers and hers alone.

“I’m very sorry, Miss Shelton,” said Willie, retreating behind his professionalism. “I know that this is the most recently witnessed and executed will because I was the one who drew it up for her. Miss Hubert was one of the witnesses.”

“And you never said?” she snapped.

“I had an obligation to my client,” he said. “These are your mother’s last wishes.”

“When was the will made out?” Sylvia asked.

“Your mother spoke to me after she purchased the building in January of 1939. She wanted to be sure that everything was legally sound in case something were to happen to her,” Willie said.

But—1939? That meant that for years Izzie had been working every day at Mrs. Shelton’s assuming she was helping Mum build the business that she would one day take over and none of it was true. Mum had lied to her.

She slumped back in her chair, the rosy tint dissipating from her memories. It had taken her ages to convince Mum that she was capable of accepting inventory or managing the appointment book, and it wasn’t until Mum had become overwhelmed by the bookkeeping that she had even allowed Izzie to properly see customers on her own.

How often had Izzie suggested taking out an advertisement in one of the better society magazines in order to attract a new type of clientele with deeper pockets and a need for a more varied wardrobe than their normal customers? How many times had Mum dismissed her sketches as too modern or not practical for the women they served, even taking away her sketchbook from time to time with the excuse that it was distracting her from her real work?

Mum hadn’t believed that Izzie could do this on her own. Not one bit. All Izzie had ever been was a helper—not a businesswoman or the designer she so desperately wanted to be—and now she’d lost the very thing that mattered to her most to the one woman in London she couldn’t stand.

Her sister.