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I hadn’t given it a thought in years. Seventeen years to be precise. If it ever crossed my mind at all, I had always assumed it had been disposed of a long time ago. The letter had been on quite a journey before it reached me. I’d stared down at the envelope with its scribbled out addresses and‘not known at this location’messages scrawled on it. Its original destination had been an address so far back in my past that for a moment I struggled to remember that it had once been mine. I had all but moved out of my one-bedroom flat in the weeks leading up to my wedding. But that was the address the shop still held on their files, that and a mobile phone number that presumably had long since been reallocated to someone else.
From my old flat the letter had journeyed to Ryan’s former apartment, the place where we had intended to start our married life together. Of course, Ryan and our baby daughter had moved out of that building many years ago, at a time when my own residence continued to be a hospital bed on a high dependency unit.
The letter had finally been redirected to the large, detached property where Ryan and Chloe now lived. ‘Bizarrely, this arrived at our house,’ Chloe had said, passing me the envelope. ‘It’s addressed to you.’
I had taken the envelope and stared at it curiously. For some reason, my heart skipped a beat and then began to race. I slipped a forefinger beneath the flap and was rewarded with a particularly vicious paper cut. It was almost as if the letter was determined to wound me, one way or the other.
My confused frown deepened as I scanned the letterhead, embossed with the name of a shop I hadn’t thought of in a really long time. By the time I’d reached the flamboyant signature, my hand was shaking so much the letter had become a moving target, impossible to read.
‘What is it?’ Chloe had asked, presumably noticing that my already pale complexion had lost a little more colour. I passed her the letter. ‘Oh,’ she said slowly, lowering herself onto a kitchen chair as she re-read the letter as though it was written in another language. ‘They’ve found your wedding dress… after all these years.’
‘So it would appear,’ I said with a shaky laugh.
‘And they want to know if you’d like to collect it,’ Chloe continued, in an accurate precis of the letter fromFleurs, the bridal shop I’d last visited on the day of the accident.
I nodded as a silence descended between us. This was one of those awkward moments when the past became a tornado that picked us up and dropped us straight into a pool of quicksand.
‘Do youwantto get it?’ Chloe’s question was reasonable and straightforward and yet it completely floored me.
‘No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’ Another silence. I had no idea what Chloe was thinking, but my head was filled with the memory of a champagne coloured silk gown that I’d never imagined I’d see again. ‘I need to think about it.’
‘I know you must be worried that it’ll stir up old emotions, but I actually think youneedto collect the dress… even if you end up giving it away,’ Chloe had reasoned.
I’d stared at her blankly for a moment.Of courseI would be giving it away. What did she think I was going to do, wear it? Besides, that dress wasn’t mine; it had belonged to an entirely different Maddie.
‘If Idodecide to get it, perhaps Hope might like to have it,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘As a kind of heirloom.’ Chloe’s smile had looked a little strained, and too late I wondered if her own wedding dress was packed away somewhere, waiting for our daughter to claim it.
In the end I’d slid the letter into a kitchen drawer, as though hoping it would get lost among the accumulation of takeaway menus and fliers from local tradesmen. But I could feel its presence every single time I entered the kitchen.
*
It had never been my intention to ask Chloe to accompany me. Once I had made the decision to collect the dress, I had planned to go alone. But Chloe had been so insistent, and perhaps I hadn’t fought her quite as hard as I should have done. ‘This isn’t like picking up some long-forgotten piece of dry-cleaning,’ she had declared. ‘This is your wedding dress.’
‘No,’ I corrected. ‘It was going to be, but then everything changed.’
Perhaps buried deep beneath the foundations of our friendship there was still a lingering sense of guilt, because she had been the reason Ryan hadn’t been a free man when I’d finally woken up. Or, more likely, Chloe really was the nicest person I had ever met. Either way, it was agreed that she would go with me to collect the dress.
*
A bell tinkled above our heads as the shop door swung open and we entered a world of pure white and ivory. Except for a dove grey carpet, which a smartly dressed woman was currently crossing to greet us.
‘Good morning,’ she trilled. ‘Can I help you?’
She was young, in her early twenties, and had probably still been in primary school the last time I had been here as a customer.
‘Yes, please. We’re here to collect a wedding dress.’
The assistant’s eyes sparkled. She was a woman who clearly loved her job. ‘And which of you lovely ladies is the bride?’ she asked with a smile. From our expressions she must have instantly realised she had said the wrong thing, and I felt quite sorry for her as she mentally backtracked, trying to work out what it had been.
‘Thank you, Jacqueline,’ came a cool and imperious voice that I instantly recognised, even after all these years.
Gwendoline Flowers, the owner ofFleurs Wedding Gowns, emerged from the back of the shop. Dressed in black from head to toe she cut a striking contrast against the wall-to-wall white dresses. ‘I’ll attend to these customers.’
The still-flustered Jacqueline was dispatched on what I suspected was a fabricated errand, and when the shop bell tinkled to mark her exit Gwendoline turned to face us. I braced myself for what was sure to be an awkward introduction, but the shop’s inimitable owner extended a slim-fingered hand towards me.
‘Madeline Chambers, it is a pleasure to see you again.’ Notoriety is a bittersweet pill, and sometimes I forgot the level of public interest in my accident, coma, and Miracle Girl status for having come back not just once, but twice.
‘Firstly, allow me to reiterate my sincerest apologies.’ Gwendoline was gripping my hand in a formidable handshake that could probably have given Mitch a run for his money. ‘Your dress should have been returned to you long before this.’ She motioned us to follow her through the shop and for an awful moment I thought we were heading towards one of the changing rooms. Surely she wasn’t expecting that I’d want to try the dress on? I could almost feel my composure hot-footing it out of the door after Jacqueline.
