Kaisha ran her fingers lightly across the yarn. ‘Is it expensive?’
‘Hugely! I bought it in because sometimes we have customers with a generous budget, particularly around Christmas time.’
‘How much are we talking?’
‘This small box was almost a couple of thousand dollars.’
Kaisha’s mouth fell open. ‘Jeez… no wonder you wanted me to have clean hands. Why is it so expensive? I mean, I know my yarns but I’ve never had the luxury of using anything like this before.’
‘Have you heard of vicuña?’
‘The word sounds familiar.’ She leaned forward and touched the yarn again, although this time more tentatively as though knowing the value of it had made her wary.
‘The vicuña is an animal that only sheds a few ounces of fibre and can only be shorn every two or three years—I can’t remember which—so its rarity is what makes it so expensive.’ Cleo reached out and touched the yarn again herself. ‘But oh… it’s so beautiful.’ When she looked round, Kaisha had her iPhone out. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m googling to find out all about it.’
Cleo took the yarn from the box and arranged the hanks on a shelf near the counter where customers could browse but where Cleo could also keep her eye on the merchandise. It was too expensive to have it stolen.
‘It says here vicuña is the softest, lightest and warmest of yarns, even more rare than cashmere.’ Kaisha swiped her finger upwards on her iPhone screen and kept reading. ‘This person has blogged about it. Jesus! It says here there was a pair of socks that went on sale in London for five hundred British pounds!’
Cleo put the last of the hanks on the shelf and attached the readymade sign with the label vicuña above it so customers who knew their yarns would see it the second they came through the door. To any knitter, the tactile nature of the hobby would draw them straight here and Cleo hoped they’d purchase. It had been expensive to buy, but with the Christmas season fast approaching, she hoped at least some fashion designer assistants would be inspired by the season and come to the store to do some sampling, to put together swatches to impress their bosses and inspire one of those gorgeous creations you saw in Bloomingdales every winter.
‘What are you doing now?’ Cleo watched Kaisha stand on the footstool and smell the yarn.
‘It says in this blog that the yarn has a particular smell.’ She inhaled. ‘And it does… kind of like a mountain meadow.’
Cleo smiled. ‘I like that description. Beautiful words for a beautiful yarn.’
‘You wouldn’t want to shrink it in the wash, that’s for sure.’
Cleo laughed, and when her phone rang she asked Kaisha to mind the store but keep one eye on the vicuña.
She went out back and sat on the wooden stool in the kitchen area. ‘How are you, Dad?’
‘I’m good. Happy Thanksgiving for yesterday.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ Already she was trying to block out the memory of turning up at Dylan’s home unannounced and the family scene she’d witnessed. ‘Did you celebrate this year?’ When she was little, her mum had loved to follow the American traditions she’d grown up with herself and they’d never once missed a Thanksgiving dinner. And even after Diana died, the Thanksgiving tradition had stuck, something both Cleo and Grandpa Joe were pleased about. It had kept her connected to her maternal heritage, told her more about her roots.
‘We acknowledged it.’ Which meant Teresa had shoved a chicken in the oven – not turkey, as it was too dry, she’d once heard her stepmother say – and threw on a couple of veg aside a bowl of lumpy mashed potatoes. Teresa had never seemed keen to embrace their family tradition and it had been another thing Cleo resented.
‘How’s Teresa? Excited about her trip?’ She asked the questions to absolve herself in some way from all the negative thinking, but wasn’t sure whether it was working as she switched off at her dad talking about the upcoming trip. Teresa was out getting things waxed, which at least meant Cleo was safe from having the phone passed over to her stepmother.
‘So how does that sound?’ her dad asked now.
Oh God, she’d been daydreaming, wondering why on earth she’d told Dylan to go back to his wife and family when he was the first man she’d felt a connection with in a very long time.
‘I’m sorry, Dad. The store’s busy, I didn’t hear you,’ she lied. Peeking out from behind the curtain in the back room, she saw a customer browsing the haberdashery section, the hanks of vicuña were intact, and Kaisha was going through a pattern with another customer, talking yarn weight, needles, and colours.
‘I was asking whether Teresa could stop by the store to see you. She’d love that.’
‘Of course.’ She had been expecting this. ‘That’d be lovely.’ It’d be a mini version of hell but she’d do it, for her dad.
‘I forgot to mention it. I saw Aaron a few days ago.’ He had his daughter’s attention now. ‘We had a good talk. He asked about you.’
‘Why? He’s happy, Dad, with the woman he left me for.’
‘Not the impression I got, love. From the way he spoke about you, I’d say he’s regretting what he did.’
