Chapter Twelve
‘Because Lucy has to work in her parents’ business after school, her visits to the charity shop take place at lunch. She’s not meant to leave the school grounds, but the teachers and prefects pretend not to notice a whole lot of stuff at this school.
A lot of the kids in the suburb go to private schools in North Sydney and Darlinghurst and Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill – places that require parents to drive them, or take a long time to get to on public transport – leaving the public high school for the kids whose parents can’t afford the private-school fees.
Like Lucy’s parents, who aren’t poor but aren’t rich enough for that.
That’s part of what’s changed the place, Lucy’s mum says – the attitude that some people are better than others. ‘And they’re not,’ she says firmly. ‘Everyone deserves to be treated with respect.’
Lucy agrees with that, but she also sees that her brother gets treated with more respect than she does.
Why else would Russell be allowed to behave the way he does?
He can talk rudely to her, shove her, scare her, and her father says she has to make allowances for him, while her mother just mutters that Russell’s ‘not right in the head’ and does nothing.
That’s one of the reasons Lucy likes going to the charity shop: Daphne treats her with respect.
Daphne talks to her about her plans and her dreams, and asks what she’s making.
She even knows Lucy’s skipped out of school without permission and doesn’t tell her off.
Lucy suspects Daphne might be the coolest person she’s ever met, but she wouldn’t say anything like that because she doesn’t know Daphne well enough.
The first time Lucy went to the shop – which is almost directly across the road from the school – it was because she’d seen a dress come through for dry-cleaning and she wanted to find one like it.
It was sky blue and high-necked, and had slightly puffy sleeves and a ruffle at the wrist – almost like a Victorian dress.
Because Lucy has a long neck and likes to wear her straw-coloured hair up, she thought this style would suit her.
And she has an old-fashioned face, so her mother says – ‘like a porcelain doll,’ she tells her. So maybe old fashions will suit her.
That was last year, and Lucy didn’t find a similar dress at the shop but she got talking to Daphne – as she later found out her name was – and discovered that Daphne knows so much about clothes.
Over time, Daphne’s told her all about the shop and how it’s changed over the decades, and it’s by talking to her that Lucy realised that she’s really interested in clothes.
She thought maybe she was just a normal amount of interested for someone who has a part-time job at a dry-cleaning business, but one day Daphne said, ‘You retain a lot of detail about clothes, don’t you?’
Lucy shrugged and said, ‘Maybe.’
‘No maybe. You do.’ Daphne looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps you should pursue that.’
Lucy had thought about it later as she stood behind the counter at her parents’ shop and looked at all the clothes coming through.
There are usually a few quiet moments between an item being dropped off and it going into the cleaning process, so she started looking at seams and shapes and cuts, and holding up dresses to figure out how they’re constructed.
It’s especially great when there are designer items. There’s one customer who seems to wear only Carla Zampatti and JAG and Anthea Crawford, and Lucy loves looking at those pieces of clothing.
She’s learnt a lot since that day Daphne made her suggestion, and she wants to learn more.
It’s another reason why she goes to the charity shop – to talk to Daphne.
‘Hello, Lucy-Lu,’ Daphne says as she enters the shop today.
‘Hi, Daphne,’ Lucy says, trailing her hand over the dresses on the rack next to her. She likes feeling fabric. It’s almost comforting.
There’s another woman standing next to Daphne at the counter – tall, with short hair, around Daphne’s age, she guesses. Lucy saw her last time she was in.
‘You remember my friend Adelaide,’ Daphne says.
The tall woman bobs her head and half-smiles. Like she isn’t that keen to talk to Lucy. Oh well, Lucy’s not that keen to talk to her either. She likes having Daphne all to herself.
But she wasn’t brought up to be rude, so she smiles and says, ‘Hi, Adelaide.’
‘Adelaide is a world-famous cellist,’ Daphne says with pride and Adelaide looks annoyed.
‘Daphne,’ she mutters.
‘It’s true!’
‘Not any more.’
‘Cello? That’s cool,’ Lucy says, not sure if it really is but not wanting Daphne to get in trouble.
‘That’s not a word I hear used too often in relation to the cello,’ Adelaide says, and Lucy decides that the woman is either mean or in a bad mood.
Some customers at her parents’ shop are the same.
Her friend Angelica, who works in a bakery at the junction, says she learnt a while ago that you can’t please everyone.
‘That one bloke wants his pain au chocolat, right, but it doesn’t have enough chocolate so he whinges and wants an almond croissant instead, then he says it has too many almonds, but a plain croissant is too plain …
you get what I mean,’ was how she explained it one day.
‘So, what are you looking for?’ Daphne asks, and Lucy is glad for the change of subject.
‘Um … just seeing what’s new,’ she replies.
‘We got this pantsuit in,’ Daphne says, pulling something moss green from a rack. ‘The stitching is a little off in places and there’s no label, so I think it’s handmade, but it would be right for your height.’
Lucy is fairly tall, a fact she has often loathed, mainly when she’s teased about it – by girls more than boys.
Her mother sometimes asks her why she doesn’t have many friends.
Angelica and Poppy are her only friends, really – and it’s not as though Lucy needs more, but her mother seems to think she does.
But it’s because girls can be really mean.
They’ve been mean to her since she was in primary school, and high school hasn’t changed anything – to the point that Lucy thinks she must have some kind of invisible sign attached to her that makes her a target.
The favourite gibe is for a girl to say, ‘Your parents clean my clothes,’ or the equivalent; as if that makes Lucy’s parents lower-class or something.
Daphne holds the pantsuit up against Lucy and purses her lips. ‘Hm.’
Lucy glances down at it. The colour is lovely – not one she sees often.
‘It’s the right length and fit for you,’ Daphne says, ‘but possibly a little old. You need an office job for this.’
Lucy makes a face. ‘I don’t ever want one of those.’
‘I understand,’ Daphne says with a wink. ‘Let’s see what else we have.’
She moves over to another rack and spends the next few minutes pulling out clothes.
‘Actually,’ Lucy says.
‘Yes?’
Lucy glances over to the counter, where Adelaide is flipping through a magazine.
‘I wanted to ask you …’ Lucy thinks about how to phrase it.
‘Yes?’ Daphne prompts.
‘I can do alterations and stuff.’
Daphne nods encouragingly.
‘But I want to make something from scratch. From a pattern.’
Now Daphne’s face is alight. ‘A pattern! Well, we certainly have those. Someone donated a Butterick trove the other day.’
Lucy was worried that Daphne would ask her if she’s really up for making something from a pattern – because she hasn’t before – so she’s relieved that Daphne seems so keen.
‘Anything specific?’ Daphne asks.
‘I’d like a nice dress for Christmas.’
Which isn’t that far away, but Lucy wants to challenge herself to complete it in time.
Daphne walks to a basket in the back left corner of the shop, which Lucy can see now contains patterns. How has she never noticed it before? Probably because she wasn’t looking, she guesses. It’s funny what you don’t notice when you’re not looking.
‘Let’s see,’ Daphne murmurs as she starts going through the patterns, then she pulls one out with a smug smile.
‘This one’s a good shape for you,’ she says, pointing at the illustration on the front.
‘A little puff sleeve, that high collar, coming in at the waist, the flare in the skirt. Mm.’ She nods, as if giving some serious advice.
‘For your first dress, Lucy-Lu, I think it’s fine.
I’ll give you the name of a fabric shop in town – tell them I sent you and say you need a Christmassy fabric. ’
Lucy takes the pattern. It looks like it’s written in a foreign language but she’s determined to give it a try. Plus she can probably ask Daphne for help if she needs it.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘How much does it cost?’
Daphne waves a hand. ‘On me. Consider it a contribution to your brilliant career.’
Lucy blushes. She’s not sure how brilliant she’s going to be but she’s touched that Daphne thinks she might be.
Then she checks her watch and sees it’s seven minutes until the end of lunch and she hasn’t eaten her sandwich yet. She can’t eat in class because that will get her a detention, which would mean missing work, and that would set up a whole chain of consequences that she doesn’t want to contemplate.
‘I have to go,’ she says.
Daphne pats her shoulder. ‘Off you run, love.’
‘See you soon!’ Lucy calls as she scoots out of the shop.
She crosses Military Road against the lights, pulls her sandwich from her bag and stuffs half of it in her mouth as she runs in the school gates.
She’ll go into the city on Saturday and find her fabric. Maybe Poppy will come with her – she always likes going into town. And then Lucy can start making her very first dress.
Maybe her last too, if it’s a disaster. But she can’t wait. A dress. Her own dress. She’s going to make something for the very first time.