Chapter Twenty-Eight
Since Christmas Day Lucy has avoided being at home as much as she can whenever Russell’s there, which isn’t easy given it’s school holidays and he’s usually not working full days at the shop.
She’s still working her hours and staying later to sew, but other than that she’s been at the library or the beach.
Poppy is at her parents’ beach house in Umina, and Angelica has gone to Europe.
Lucy feels like she’s floating through her life, not really anchored anywhere, not sure how she will manage her final year at school if this continues.
The charity shop is the other place she’s spending more time.
It feels like a calm haven where she can be sure no one will yell at her or try to oust her from her own life.
Daphne accepts her as she is: Lucy who loves clothes and making things.
At home, at her parents’ business, she is Lucy with so many other labels attached, most of which she doesn’t want.
This evening she’s at the dry-cleaning shop, altering a couple of items she bought at the charity shop.
One of them is a wedding dress that looks like it was never worn.
Daphne gave it to her – wouldn’t let her pay for it, which she couldn’t believe.
Daphne said no bride would buy it because it might be seen as bad luck to wear someone else’s dress.
As Lucy isn’t a bride, though, Daphne thought she might make use of it, and Lucy has some ideas.
The other item is a men’s business shirt with pink and white stripes. It’s far too big for her to wear as a shirt, which is fine, because she wants to make it into a dress.
She’s also working on two new patterns: one for a simple shift dress and one for a blouse. The thrill of feeling, watching, a piece of fabric become a piece of clothing in her hands grows greater each time. If only she’d discovered this earlier!
That’s what she told Daphne the other day. It was Daphne who gave her the new patterns, encouraging her to try different things.
‘Now you’ve made that lovely dress,’ she said, ‘the sky’s the limit!’
It probably isn’t – Lucy knows she has a lot to learn – but she loves the encouragement.
For the blouse she’s chosen a baby-blue nylon that she bought at an offcuts place in Camperdown.
She had to take a bus, then a train, then another bus to get there, and she didn’t tell her mother where she was going – she just took off.
When she got back, Connie didn’t ask her where she’d been.
It was impossible for Lucy to tell if her mother was scared to ask or just didn’t care.
The sewing machine at the shop is better than the one at home, so that’s something, and Lucy likes having the place to herself even though it’s a little spooky being there on her own. She tries to leave the shop before sunset, which gives her a couple of hours of sewing time.
Her mum doesn’t wait dinner for her on these nights, just leaves her something in the fridge.
It makes Lucy feel like she’s shifting between parallel lives: one as the schoolgirl, one as the sewer who has big dreams. Perhaps one day she’ll get lost in between them and won’t know where or who she is.
Would anyone miss her? Would anyone come looking?
Lucy’s pinning the sides of the striped business shirt, and thinking about what she should do with the hem, when the back door of the shop crashes open so loudly that she jumps.
Her first thought is that someone’s come to rob the place. Her parents put the cash in the safe each evening, and Lucy doesn’t know the combination so she’ll be useless for a robber. She doesn’t want to be attacked. Will she be attacked?
She casts around for something she can use to defend herself while her chest feels like it’s being squeezed by an outside force and her breathing becomes rapid. All she has are pins and scissors, and the scissors could be used against her.
Should she hide? Maybe amongst some of the clothes? If she’s really still, whoever it is may not notice her legs.
Think think think quick quick quick.
‘Lucy,’ booms a voice.
She feels relief flood her legs at the thought that this is someone she knows, then tenses as she realises it’s Russell.
What’s he doing here? She and Russell are never alone together at the shop – which is something Lucy’s only just realised, because it feels so strange that he’s here without her parents, or at least their father, being here too.
‘Lucy!’ he thunders.
‘Yes,’ she replies meekly, not sure if he’s heard her.
But then he appears in the doorway that leads to the back room, almost filling it. He’s over six feet tall and has never seemed as enormous as he is now, slightly swaying, his face ruddy.
Lucy’s seen him look like this before, when he drinks at home. But usually he drinks himself to sleep, so she hasn’t seen him upright and drunk.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he says, lurching down the one step that separates the main shop from the back room.
‘I’m sewing,’ Lucy says, then clears her throat. She needs to sound stronger. She can’t be weak around him.
‘Why the fuck are you doing it here?’
She stares at him. Is he really asking her the question or being sarcastic? Either way, it’ll do her no good to answer. She’s lived on tenterhooks for too long to not understand that. Except if she doesn’t answer, he’ll probably keep asking. Or worse.
‘Because I like it here.’ It’s not a lie. She does like it here when it’s quiet and no one’s bothering her.
He puts his hands down on one of the workbenches and leans forward. It’s almost an intimate gesture – like he wants to get closer to her – but Lucy knows that really he wants to pounce.
‘House isn’t good enough for ya?’ he slurs.
She frowns. ‘What?’
‘Think you’re too good to fucken make your stupid little clothes at home.’ He leans even closer. ‘Don’t ya?’
Again, she wonders if he’s really asking her the question. He must know why she’s not at home – that he’s the reason, with his complaints about the noise she hardly makes with the old sewing machine and its pedal.
‘I like it here,’ she repeats, swallowing.
There’s something pinging deep inside her brain, some warning signal telling her to get out of there. Except the front door is locked, and he’s standing between her and the back door. And this is her brother. He’s mean to her, but she’s never felt truly afraid of him until now.
He sneers. ‘You would. All these fucken stupid clothes. Suit ya right down to the ground. That’s all you care about, isn’t it?’
There’s nothing she can say that’s going to make this situation turn in her favour.
She knows this because last year three boys bailed her up against the toilets one lunchtime and told her that she thought she was too good for them.
After realising she could hardly say, yes, she did think she was too good for them, she said she didn’t.
So they spat on her and told her that made her a slut.
That thinking she wasn’t too good meant she wasn’t any good at all.
If they’d done it even a few months before, Lucy would have believed them.
But by then she’d started going to the charity shop at lunchtime and talking to Daphne.
She’d started to see that there was a life beyond the school that was so much better, and if Daphne liked talking to her she must be all right.
How would Daphne advise her to handle this now? She’s lived a long time. She knows things.
Lucy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, wondering if she can will herself into another dimension, or planet, or universe, so she doesn’t have to deal with this.
Instead, she opens her eyes and says calmly, ‘You’re right, Russell. That’s all I care about.’
She stares at him. Now that she’s agreed with him, he can hardly rage at her. She’s being compliant. Like the good girl she is.
He stares back, then his eyelids droop ever so slightly.
Maybe she can get away from him.
Then a key turns in the front door of the shop and her mother is standing there, eyes wide.
‘Lucy,’ she says.
‘Hi.’ Lucy feels so relieved she wants to melt.
‘It’s gone dark. I was …’ Connie’s eyes flit to Russell. ‘Worried.’
‘Just packing up,’ Lucy says lightly.
‘Russell?’ Connie says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my business too,’ he says churlishly.
‘You’re normally not here at night.’
‘If it’s good enough for her …’ He points at Lucy.
Lucy exchanges glances with her mother. They’ve never been conspirators before, but maybe they are now.
‘Fine,’ Connie says. ‘We’ll leave you to it. Lock up when you leave. Lucy?’
Lucy hurriedly packs away her sewing and almost runs to her mother’s outstretched hand.
‘Wait,’ Russell calls after them as Connie shuts and locks the front door.
‘I’m not waiting,’ she mutters, then leads Lucy to the car.
Her mother must have been worried, Lucy thinks, to bring the car. They all normally walk between the house and the shop.
‘Sorry about that,’ Connie says. ‘He went to the pub. He seems to have had a few too many.’
Lucy simply nods.
Then, as the relief of her mother’s arrival fades, it occurs to her: she was driven out of home with her sewing; now she’s been driven out of the shop. There’s nowhere left for her to go.
Her breath catches, and she turns away from her mother to hide how upset she must look.
Because, despite the rescue tonight, Lucy knows her mother will keep letting Russell get away with everything, the way she always has.
And Lucy will keep feeling like there’s no place in this world that’s her own.