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For years, Mum treated her just like Miss Reid or any of the other seamstresses employed in the workroom. However, gradually over the past two years, Izzie had begun to take over the running of other aspects of the shop. Mum spent more and more of her time holed up in her office, poring over paperwork as the war furrowed everyone’s brows a little deeper, and Izzie began to conduct fittings alone, only bothering her mother when issues arose. Then Izzie found herself sitting across from customers on the shop floor, Mum’s heavy sketchbooks full of the garments the shop offered on her lap as they flipped through to try to find something that would suit each woman’s needs. Once they chose a design, fabric, and color and Izzie had taken measurements, she would fetch her mother for a final look.

It had all been thrilling, this new responsibility, but as the months had stretched on, Izzie had found herself wanting more.

Standing in the fitting room that morning, her fingers itched for her pencil and her sketchbook, but she knew that if Mum came downstairs and found her drawing rather than opening the shop, she’d be swiftly told off for wasting time. No. She would sketch later when Mum was safely behind her closed office door and Miss Reid’s Singer was whirring away.

A knock at the shop door pulled Izzie out of her thoughts. She looked up and drew in a bracing breath at the sight of Miss Reid frowning on the other side of the rain-spattered glass.

Izzie unlocked the door and stepped back to let the seamstress in. “Good morning, Miss Reid.”

“I don’t see what’s so good about it. It’s been pouring since I left Paddington,” Miss Reid said as she shucked off her soaking mac, spraying the shop’s wooden floor with rain. “It will be a wonder if anyone comes in today.”

Izzie stifled a sigh at the likely truth of that as she followed the older woman through to the passageway.

“Where is Mrs. Shelton?” Miss Reid asked over her shoulder as she passed into the workroom.

“I haven’t seen her yet this morning.”

She suspected that Miss Reid, who had an opinion about everything related to Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions—and the world, really—would certainly have an opinion about that, but the older woman simply sniffed.

Irascible as she could be, Miss Reid was a fixture of Mrs. Shelton’s, having the distinction of having been Maggie Shelton’s first employee. Now, almost twenty years later, the seamstress was still firmly ensconced at the sewing machine closest to the back wall of the workroom. Even after the Allies’ retreat from Dunkirk last spring when Miss Bell and Miss Parker had both left to be WAAFs in the Royal Air Force’s women’s auxiliary branch, Miss Reid had continued to sew on. Izzie begrudgingly couldn’t imagine what they would do without her.

“Who is coming in today?” asked Miss Reid as she hung up her coat on a peg stuck in the wall by her machine.

“I’ll have to check the book,” Izzie said.

In the old days, Mum’s appointment book lived in the tiny office off the workroom. Only Mum touched it, because, along with the order book, it was vital to the shop’s running—a bible of sorts. However, as a concession to the fact that Izzie was opening the shop more often these days, Mum had begun to leave the book out on the edge of the huge wood-topped cutting table that sat at a perpendicular angle to the four sewing machines that dominated the room.

Izzie opened the clothbound book, flipped to a page marked with a ribbon, and sighed.

“Is it that bad?” asked Miss Reid as she took a seat at her machine.

“Mrs. Wilson is due in first thing, and then Mrs. Cowles has her second fitting at two o’clock.”

“And after that?” asked Miss Reid.

“Nothing except for a delivery.”

“Really?” asked Miss Reid, incredulous. “That’s all?”

She nodded.

Miss Reid sniffed. “I’d wager a guinea that Mrs. Cowles will leave without settling her account. I thought your mother was going to have to call the bailiff on her last time. An entire summer wardrobe cut, sewn, and finished, and six weeks later Mrs. Shelton still hadn’t seen a single shilling of it. And where is Mrs. Cowles going to wear it anyway? There’s a war on,” tutted Miss Reid.

“Mrs. Cowles did pay in the end,” Izzie said, remembering the number of thin excuses that the woman had fed Mum until finally she’d shown up to settle her account in August. “And she’s already given over her clothing coupons this time.”

“That’s because the government says she has to. Your mother is too soft on that woman,” said Miss Reid.

“Mum believes that everyone deserves a little bit of understanding from time to time,” she said.

“That’s all well and good, but it isn’t as though Mrs. Shelton’s suppliers let her have any cloth on credit,” said Miss Reid.

“Miss Reid!” Izzie cut across the other woman’s complaining. “Shouldn’t you be starting your day?”

“There’s no need to hurry me, young lady,” Miss Reid huffed. But still, the seamstress busied herself peeling the cover off her machine, giving Izzie a blessed moment of peace.

Chapter Two

If this meeting went any longer, there was a distinct possibility that Sylvia Pearsall would scream.