The Dressmakers of London

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

Sylvia eased her soft cream cardigan from off her shoulders and slipped her arms into it, wrapping the two fronts tight across her stomach. Despite the fact that it was the nineteenth of May, three days of soaking rain had left her unable to shake the deep chill of damp air that settled into her bones.

She glanced out of the door of the shop’s office and across the empty workroom. It would be warmer in the flat, she knew, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to mount the flight of stairs yet. Not until her eyes burned from the effort of staying open. Only then would she go upstairs and try to sleep.

When she’d left Nottingham Court the previous week, she hadn’t had a plan. She’d thought she might avoid the night porter, but he had been in the lobby when she’d appeared with her cases under her arms, so she’d asked him to hail her a cab. A middle-aged woman, who’d no doubt taken up driving to free up a man to fight, had pulled up the building’s sweeping drive and rolled down the window of the cab.

“Where would you like to go, dear?” the cabbie had asked.

Without even thinking, Sylvia had said, “Number four Glengall Road in Maida Vale, please.”

Because, really, where else could she go?

Yet when the cabbie had pulled up to the flat’s door, she’d hesitated in the back seat. She had never imagined she would be back here again. The shop had been one thing, but the flat?

She’d met Hugo and that was supposed to be it. He was her husband. He was her life.

Until she realized that he’d never really felt that way about her.

With a sigh, she’d hauled her suitcases out of the cab and up the flat’s stairs, and collapsed into a deep sleep on the bed in the room she’d once shared with Izzie.

Over the past few days, she’d pulled up the drawbridge on her life, ignoring everything happening outside of the shop. She’d written to Lady Nolan, making her excuses for missing the committee meeting. She’d put off a dinner she’d been invited to by the wife of a literary critic she’d met at the London Library. When Miss Reid raised a brow after spotting her coming through the door joining the flat’s staircase and the shop, she’d simply put her head down and carried on with her day.

However, despite plunging herself into her work, Sylvia couldn’t resist the compulsion to replay every aspect of her marriage, looking for where it had gone wrong. She’d thought of all the nights she’d gone out with Hugo and his friends, but instead of the happy memories she’d once had she remembered the little barbs of criticism he’d laid on her that she’d brushed off as her own sensitivity. She remembered how he’d pushed her to outfit herself with a new wardrobe after their marriage and how he’d come with her to nod or shake his head at her selections. She thought of his objections to signing the annual Christmas card she sent to her mother and sister. But mostly she remembered every smile he’d bestowed upon other women, now suspicious of what might have been behind them.

She blamed him for his affair and all of the horrible ways he’d treated her, but she also wondered what portion of blame belonged to her.

She had said yes to the wrong man. Perhaps he had been right at some point, when she had been the young, wide-eyed girl eager to please, but she hadn’t stayed naive. She’d become a woman—a complicated person with ambitions all her own. And he hadn’t wanted that.

She could see all of the facts laid out so plainly before her now, but that didn’t make it any easier to admit that the life she’d built for herself had turned into a disappointment.

She told no one about her slow realization that the inevitable had happened. Not Miss Reid. Not Izzie. Not Claire or Lady Nolan or any of the other ladies on the committee. Neither had she spoken to Hugo since she left. He hadn’t telephoned the shop or come around. She didn’t even know if he was aware that she was no longer living at the flat, although she supposed that Mrs. Atkinson had likely raised the alarm. She’d seen the housekeeper once two afternoons ago when she’d returned to retrieve a few more things and pick up her post. Mrs. Atkinson, teary-eyed, hadn’t asked any questions but instead had left a cup of tea for her on her writing desk in the sitting room. It was, Sylvia supposed, a tacit sign of understanding.

She sighed. Hugo and their marriage were a mess that she would have to confront at some point, but for now she had the lifeline that was the shop.

I hope that, as it has for me, the shop will take care of them when they need it most.

She had to admit, her mother’s words had certainly come true.

A knock on the front door set her heart leaping in her throat. She glanced at her watch. It was past eight o’clock. Who could be—?

William.

She hurried through the shop to open the front door and let him in.

“Hello,” he said, rain dripping off the brim of his hat as he lifted it off his head.

“Hello. No sandwiches tonight?”

He played with the brim, scooting the felt between his index fingers and thumbs. “I know it probably isn’t exactly what you’re used to, but I don’t suppose you would fancy a drink at the pub, would you?”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a pub. It had to be before she’d met Hugo, probably with some long-forgotten local boy who had taken her after going to the cinema, because her husband didn’t frequent them himself. His world was private clubs, restaurants, and dining rooms in the homes of friends and acquaintances large enough to have a table that seated at least eight.

“Do you know what? I think a drink sounds like just the thing,” she said.

William’s expression brightened instantly. “Really? I mean, I’m glad to hear it.”

The delight in his voice warmed her, the first bright spot in a long day. “I’ll just fetch my things.”

When they arrived, the pub’s lounge was only half-full. William found them a cozy corner where Sylvia sat while he went to the hatch in the wall to order their drinks from the publican on the other side. She watched him carefully carry back a pint of bitter for him and a gin for her before settling down across the table from her. To her left, a table of young women with their hair rolled away from their faces watched William pass by before breaking into giggles.

Sylvia dipped her chin to hide her smile at their open interest.

“Is something funny?” he asked, peering around.

“It’s nothing. To your health,” she said, raising her glass.

He tapped it lightly on the rim and took a sip of his beer, a little mustache of foam clinging to his upper lip before he licked it off.

He looked so much like the boy she’d known years ago, but she could see why the girls at the next table had looked him over with such complimentary gazes. His face had hollowed out to sharpen his cheekbones, and the way he wore his hair in a deep part gave him a dashing look she was certain he hadn’t realized.

“How are things at the shop?” he asked.

She smiled. “Better. Izzie finally wrote to me.”

“Did she?” he asked.

She nodded. “I don’t know whether it really helped or not, but I’m trying to be more honest with her and explain some of the decisions I made. Why I left the way I did.”

“Why did you leave?”

There was something about the sharpness of his tone that made her look up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately backtracking. “It’s not my place.”

“No, you clearly have something to say, William. I would appreciate it if you would say it,” she pushed.

He toyed with his beer, spinning the glass so that it jittered against the rough wood of the pub’s table. Finally, he said, “One day you were there and the next it was as though you had never lived on Glengall Road at all.”

“I married. I moved away.”

“Yes, but people who marry go home to see their friends and family, Sylvia. Everyone on the road wondered about you. Before my mother died, she used to ask me about you from time to time. And I know that Mr. and Mrs. Meed from the tea shop always asked your mother what you were up to. Even Mrs. Reynolds wanted news.”

She remembered the grocer telling her about taking tea with Mrs. Meed and her mother. Asking after her.

“Did you know that when you became engaged, Mrs. Weatherstone who lived at number ten took out a subscription to one of the society magazines so she could scour the columns to see if there was any mention of you? She showed my mother your wedding announcement in The Times , she was so proud,” he continued.

“William…” She wanted him to stop. She didn’t want to think about all of these people she’d once known thinking about her like that, wishing her well when she hadn’t had a single thought for them.

“And then there’s your mother,” he said. “When she came to have me write her will, I asked her why she wanted to leave the shop to both of you. I never question clients’ decisions, but I had to know, because as far as I knew, you hadn’t been back in years. Do you know what she told me?”

“No,” she whispered.

“She said that one day you might need it. That was why she put that line in. To explain a little.”

She wrapped her hands around her drink, holding on to it as though it were a talisman.

“William,” she said slowly, “I need your advice.”

He shot her a look over the top of his pint. “As a solicitor or as a friend?”

“Both? I’m not certain.”

He put his drink down. “Tell me.”

“Last Tuesday, I left my husband. Or at least I left the flat. I’m not entirely certain yet.”

His jaw dropped, but then he seemed to remember himself and schooled his expression into one of calm neutrality.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. Would you like to talk about it?” he asked.

She bit her lip and nodded.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Just before my mother died, I found out Hugo has been having an affair. I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but I do know that he is still… involved with this woman.”

He let out a heavy exhale. “I’m sorry, Sylvia.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I confronted him about it the night I left.”

“What did he say?” he asked.

“He told me that I was being dramatic, and that a gentleman never speaks of matters of the heart. He implied that if I had come from his world, I would understand,” she said with a hollow laugh.

“Bastard,” William cursed. “Excuse my language.”

She gave a surprised laugh. “He is a bastard.”

William shook his head. “As though being born into certain circles makes it acceptable to be unfaithful to one’s wife.”

“But that’s just it, William. Hugo seems to think that nothing is the matter at all. It’s simply what is done discreetly among his set.” It was what was done in the set she’d once belonged to.

“Are you telling me that having affairs is just par for the course?” he asked skeptically.

“It sounds silly when you say it like that,” she admitted.

“You deserve more than that, Sylvia.”

“Well, yes. It’s taken me longer to come to that conclusion than I would like to admit, but that’s why I packed my bags. I simply couldn’t believe that after all those years of marriage my husband hardly flinched when I told him I’d found the letters.”

William looked up sharply. “There are letters?”

“Yes. At least half a dozen of them.”

“Do they describe the love affair in any detail? Are there declarations?” he asked.

She shifted in her seat. “They aren’t signed, but she tells him she loves him. She writes about some of the… things they have done together.”

“Sylvia, if you wish to, you could sue Hugo for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Those letters you found would be evidence used in court to help your case,” he said.

“Divorce?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d left the flat with no plan except to retreat to the shop and lick her wounds. Divorce… well, that would be an admission that everything she’d built with Hugo was now ash. The flat, her friends, her life. All of it would be gone.

She didn’t know any divorcées socially, not only because there were so few of them in Hugo’s circle but because those who did leave their husbands—or were left—were pushed out to the edges of polite society. Did she really want to join the ranks of those unfortunate women?

“Do you really think I would have a case for divorce?” she asked.

“With those letters, yes. It wouldn’t be immediate. These things take time, but I’ve handled several divorce cases. I would gladly help guide you,” he said.

She opened her mouth but then closed it again. A part of her yearned to say yes, but it was impossible to override more than a decade of careful choices so quickly.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said, her voice cracking a little.

He reached out a hand, but he stopped just short of touching her.

“Sylvia,” he said quietly, “don’t you deserve to be happy?”

She stared at their hands. To be a divorced woman… It wouldn’t just mean the end of her married life. It would mean being alone, and that frightened her more than she could say.

“I can’t become my mother,” she whispered.

“You wouldn’t be—”

She shook her head emphatically. “William, you didn’t know my mother before coming to Glengall Road. She was a sweet, loving woman, quick to laugh and easy with a joke. Then my father died and everything changed. She was alone in the world with two children and no money. The shop saved her, but it killed her too.”

“You don’t know that,” he said softly.

“I do,” she said firmly. “How could it have not? Every night she would drag herself up the stairs from the workroom to the flat, overworked and defeated. She always had some complaint or another—an aching back, tired eyes, fingers that had been pricked over and over again by pins. Even when the business began to do well enough, there was never enough money to save her from the fear that one day it would all disappear again.

“She used to try to hide it from Izzie, but she was honest with me about how much she resented needing to work again. She blamed the Sheltons, who refused to help her. She blamed my father. She blamed me.”

“Why would she blame you? You were just a child when your father died.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “Because I’m the reason Papa died.”

“Sylvia, you can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“But your father died in a traffic accident,” he said. “How could that be your fault?”

“He was only on that road that evening because of me,” she said, the truth she’d kept locked away in her heart for so many years pouring out of her. “It was my birthday and he was buying me flowers. Sunflowers. They were always my favorite, and he would bring them home for my birthday every year even though they were out of season. I insisted on it even though it meant that he had to go to an entirely different neighborhood to a florist that sold hothouse flowers.

“If it hadn’t been for me, he never would have been taking that route home. The lorry driver never would have hit him.”

“Sylvia, you weren’t to know. No one could have known.”

The tenderness in his voice sliced into her. She didn’t deserve his pity.

“Oh, I knew that if I demanded something, Papa would go and fetch it for me. He used to call me his little princess, which my mother hated. She told him he should stop spoiling me.

“Have you ever noticed that I call him Papa and Izzie calls him Dad?” she asked.

“I don’t suppose I ever really thought about it, but now that you mention it,” said William.

“That was my mother’s doing. She thought ‘Papa’ sounded like I was putting on airs, but that was how he referred to himself so she let it go. However, Izzie was so young when he died that, when my mother began to call him ‘Dad,’ Izzie followed suit. I think it was her way of proving I thought I was above her way of doing things. She was always a bit spiky about the fact that she’d married up.

“After Papa’s death, my mother was furious at me. She told me it was all my fault. It only became worse after she found out about Papa’s debts. The house was mortgaged and mortgaged again, and it seems that he hadn’t been making the payments. Papa’s family turned their backs on her, and she was left scrambling. All because of me.”

“You were only eleven,” said William, still trying to soothe her. She didn’t want his kind words. She didn’t deserve them.

“When we moved into the flat, I threw a tantrum because I didn’t want to share a bedroom with my sister. I’d never had to before, and I didn’t understand why I should start at eleven. My mother grabbed me by the shoulders and slapped me. She told me that this was all my fault and that if I hadn’t been so demanding my father would still be alive and we’d still be living in our old house with our old life.”

William pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she sniffed, dabbing at her tears. “It’s silly crying really. It was so many years ago.”

“I had no idea,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t. No one knows about that part. Not even Izzie.” She’d only dared go so far in her letter because she didn’t want to taint her sister’s memories of their mother. Not like that.

“After that, the guilt set in and I tried my hardest to show my mother how sorry I was. I kept the shop neat and tidy. I delivered orders. I managed the paperwork and did all the accounting. I kept thinking that one day she might notice how hard I was working and she’d forgive me at least a little bit.

“Instead, she poured all of her love into Izzie. How could she not? Izzie was so like her. Izzie could sew, and she seemed to know inherently how clothes should fit. When I was living at home, they never argued because Izzie never pushed back. She was so good.

“By the time Hugo came along, I felt like a stranger in my own family. For the first time since my father died, there was someone telling me I was worth loving.” She smiled sadly. “When he asked me to marry him, the choice seemed obvious. I could stay at the shop and know that every day I reminded my mother of everything she’d lost, or I could become Hugo’s wife and live my own life.”

“And so you said yes,” said William.

She nodded. “I suppose I should have expected it, but when I told my mother about the engagement, all she said to me was ‘I suppose you’ll be happy to see the backs of us.’ I said I would never think that, but then at the wedding everything went wrong. I remember looking up at the wedding breakfast and watching them walk out early. That made me angry. I thought that if they couldn’t even stay for the entirety of my wedding, I didn’t need them anymore. They could telephone or write to me when they decided they wanted me around. Then, before I knew it, months had gone by and I didn’t know how to even begin to repair things.”

She twisted her empty glass in her hands, wishing that it was full again. Wishing that she hadn’t said any of that to William, yet it had broken her heart a little to think that he or any of the other people who had watched her grow up thought she hadn’t cared.

“Have you told your sister any of this?” he asked.

“Not really. I told her a little bit about the Sheltons.”

“You should tell her about your mother and what it was like living under the same roof with her,” he said.

“I can’t do that to her. Izzie idolized our mother,” she said.

He sat back and studied her. “Do you know, I think that neither you nor Mrs. Shelton had any idea just how strong a person your sister is. Whether your mother gave her credit or not, Izzie had been all but running that shop day to day before being conscripted. Now she’s off serving—something neither you nor I are doing.”

“You’re right,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to be a sister to her anymore. She doesn’t trust me.”

“You have to earn her trust, Sylvia. There’s no quick way about it, but it will happen over time,” he said.

She opened her mouth to protest that it was no use, but then she thought of the letter that remained unanswered on the bedside table in the room she used to share with her sister. Izzie had sent her a sketch, and wasn’t that a start?

“There are so many things I need to say, but I’m afraid she won’t want to hear them,” she said.

This time, when William reached for her, he closed the gap and touched her. She sucked in a breath as his fingers wrapped lightly around her hand, enveloping her in comfort even as she felt as though she was dancing on a knife point.

“Start with what happened after your father died,” he said.

“I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do that,” she admitted.

“The Sylvia Shelton I once knew was fearless.”

“Too much has changed. I’m not that girl any longer,” she said.

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “You’re something more. I’ve always thought that.”

There was another meaning behind his words—a meaning she couldn’t begin to examine. Not while she was desperately trying to grasp at the unwinding threads of her life.

“I think that what I want right now is a friend,” she said softly.

He nodded, gave her hand a light squeeze, and then let go.

“I’ve always been your friend, Sylvia. Nothing will ever change that.”

That night, after William had gone, Sylvia lay on her sister’s bed staring at the ceiling. She supposed that she should be grateful that, sometime after she’d left, Izzie had changed from the single bed that had once matched her own to a double. Still, her mind was fixed on her conversation with William.

She hadn’t meant to tell him about Papa. It had just slipped out, the confessional mood of the evening loosening her tongue. She’d regretted it as they walked back to the shop—perhaps she should regret it now—but after the initial shock of sharing something she had kept bottled up for so long had worn off, she’d found herself glad. She trusted William, and it wasn’t just because her mother and Izzie trusted him. It was because he was solid, steady, dependable.

Only that wasn’t all he was.

She flexed her fingers, remembering the way he’d touched her hand. It hadn’t made her feel the way a childhood friend or a trusted confidant should.

Sylvia sat up abruptly, throwing off the covers in the darkened room. If she was going to lie awake, thinking ridiculous things, at least she could do something useful.

She swung her feet to the ground and quickly crossed the room to the chair where she’d left the day’s clothes neatly folded. She dressed swiftly and pulled on her coat, hat, and gloves. Then she retrieved her handbag from the side table by the flat’s front door and let herself out.

It was fortunate that there was only a quarter moon that night, reducing the chance that the Germans might decide that that evening was the right time to come back and bomb London to bits once again. Still, she hurried to the bus stop, grateful when one of the last buses of the evening came quickly.

She sat, staring out the window at the unlit streets of London, until they neared her stop. She pulled the cord and the bus slowed to a stop.

Sylvia stepped off onto the pavement and looked up. Overhead she could see the faint outline of a distant barrage balloon. She wondered where Izzie was at that moment, and the low ache for her sister’s company rose up in her. She wanted to pull Izzie into a big hug like she used to do when they were children. She wanted her sister to tell her that everything would be all right. That what she was about to do was the right thing.

She dipped her head and forced herself to walk in the direction of her building.

The lobby, she was grateful to see, was empty, and the lift opened immediately when she pressed the button.

She let herself into the flat, pausing on the threshold to listen out for any signs that Hugo was home. The lights were all off and the air still. She flipped the switch by the door, flooding the entryway with light, and closed the door behind her.

Without stopping to remove her coat or hat, she walked straight down the corridor to Hugo’s study, pushed open the door, and made for his desk. The love letters were in the top right drawer, neatly stacked as they had been the first time she saw them.

“He put them back,” she scoffed, amazed at the arrogance of the man.

With renewed determination, Sylvia picked up the first letter and set it aside. She scooped up the others and tucked them into her handbag. Then she opened the drawer on the left side of Hugo’s desk and pulled out a stack of envelopes and some writing paper. Working methodically, she folded each sheet of paper and slid it into an envelope. When she’d stuffed enough envelopes to satisfy herself, she stacked them neatly where the love letters had been and placed the one she’d set aside on top. Then she closed the drawer, shut the study door, turned off the lights, and left the flat to write a letter of her own.