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Chapter One
‘Sophie? Earth to Sophie?’
Flora dragged a gargantuan cardboard wardrobe across the floor of the design studio towards Sophie’s desk, with several bangles of brown tape around her wrist and a takeaway coffee balanced precariously in her hand.
‘Sorry?’
‘Are we ready to pack this glitzy creation of silk and pearls into its protective shell? The courier will be here any minute and you know what they’re like – won’t be kept waiting for anything. You don’t want to miss the deadline, do you? Can I help?’
‘No!’ Sophie raised her head from where she had been snoozing at her desk, wrinkling her nose at the unpleasant waft of stale pizza that assaulted her nostrils. She brushed away a crumpled yellow post-it that had attached itself to her cheek and held up her palm to Flora’s face. ‘Step away from the dress! I mean it, Flora. If you even come one step closer with that skinny latte, I’ll be forced to shoot you with my staple gun. What’s possessed you to bring coffee in here, anyway?’
Sophie cringed when she heard the tone of her voice; she sounded like the snap of an irate dragon, a mother protecting its young. But that was exactly how she felt. The gestation of the Sophie-Louise entry into the wedding gown competition of the decade had been a full nine months in the making and was now, save for a few final tweaks, ready for its delivery into the outsideworld – well, to the Audley Suite at The Dorchester where the judging would take place the next day.
‘Sorry, Flora, don’t take any notice of me. I’m just exhausted. Thanks, though. Only these last few seed pearls to sew on and I’m done. But you could do me a huge favour by asking Scarlet to come down here?’
‘Sure.’
Flora meandered from the room, humming softly to herself. She was not the sharpest pair of scissors in a tailor’s armoury, but her sweet temperament and her willingness to skip down the street for their regular infusions of espresso, latte, and cappuccino made her a popular and essential member of the Sophie-Louise Bridal Couture team.
Sophie rethreaded her needle, knelt down at the hem of the gown and, with her bottom pointing to the ceiling, resumed the intricate task of squinting at the exquisite ivory silk that had formed the backdrop to her dreams for the last six months.
The nationwide competition to design the wedding dress that the celebrity actress Lilac Verbois would wear for her forthcoming marriage to Finn Marchant at Gloucester Cathedral at the end of July had gripped the country. She hadn’t been able to believe it when she’d been informed on the first of January that her design had been shortlisted from over two hundred and fifty entries to be made up as a sample garment.
These gowns were to be presented to Lilac, who would make a final decision on the choice of her wedding dress with the assistance of her mother, her PA, Nikki Coates, and her wedding planner, Tish Marshall, at her hotel suite at The Dorchester on the last day of March when she had a break in her filming schedule. There wasn’t an academically trained fashion advisor in sight so it was anyone’s guess who would win.
Sophie experienced a flash of excitement. The wedding was being billed as the celebrity event of the year. TV crews and the paparazzi would be out in force at the ceremony. The reception, to be held in a majestic stately home in the Cotswolds, would be attended by every A-lister who could wangle an invitation. The whole wedding had morphed from being just one more movie star marrying a musician into a fairy-tale romance. Lilac and Finn, whether by generosity or insanity, had opened up the celebration of their union to the whole country by creating the competition to design Lilac’s wedding gown.
Sophie-Louise Bridal Couture was her creation, a project she had worked ferociously and diligently on ever since leaving university. She understood what an honour it was whenever one of her designs was chosen to become the star attraction at the most important occasion in a girl’s life. She had designed wedding gowns for several actresses, even a minor royal, but Lilac and Finn’s wedding would be the highlight of her career. She did not intend to let anything scupper the opportunity of a lifetime to showcase her talents to a nationwide, if not international, audience. She intended to seize it with both hands, even if this had meant the exclusion of all life’s other demands.
Over the last three months her world had become a frenzy of late nights, cold pizza, and too much coffee. She had existed on snatched catnaps at her worktable. Mannequins heard her complaints, dressmakers’ dummies her confessions, but there was nothing new there.
Sophie checked her watch. Her initial excitement and anticipation tipped over into nausea and tendrils of fear looped around her chest. Time was running out. She had less than an hour left to apply the final embellishments by hand, and shecould not depend on Scarlet or Flora to do it to her exacting standards.
Once she had attached the final pearls, the gown had to be sealed into the custom-created cardboard wardrobe that had been provided by Lilac’s wedding planner and ready for the specially appointed courier to collect at seven o’clock that evening before completing its fateful journey from conception in their tiny studio in South West London to its debut into the glitzy world of The Dorchester the following morning.
What if something happened to the dress en route?
What if it didn’t arrive?
What if the courier had an accident, or stopped for a beer and overindulged, or had to deliver twins in a roadside café?
She pushed her neurotic vacillations into the crevices of her exhausted mind. Marco Gallieri – the milliner who owned the hat shop round the corner from Sophie-Louise Bridal and who created exquisite wedding hats, fascinators and tiaras for her clients – labelled her work ethic as obsessive. It was true, and things had got worse since the competition had been announced. She’d even succumbed to regular nightmares involving James Bondesque espionage by her fellow competitors.
Lilac’s team would not be announcing the winning designer to the general public until her wedding day – if Sophie heard nothing, it meant the Sophie-Louise design hadn’t been selected. And who could blame Lilac for that? The media would have been camped outside the chosen studio for the next four months hoping for a sneak preview they could splash across their pages, and what bride wanted to take that risk?
Sophie trusted no one, especially in an industry where integrity fought ignorance and ambition on a daily basis. She had sworn the whole team to absolute secrecy. If even a whiff ofthe design were made public, her entry would be disqualified. All her hopes and dreams were pinned on winning this competition, which would catapult Sophie-Louise Bridal Couture into the upper echelons of bridal fashion design, the pinnacle of her lifelong ambition and the fulfilment of a promise she had made to her parents when she’d used her inheritance to start her business.
‘Take a break, will you, Sophie? Flora tells me she found you snoring at your desk!’
Scarlet, as slender as a shop mannequin, lounged against the cutting table. She gazed intently at the deft weaving of the needle as Sophie completed the final essential touches whilst she nibbled at the tips of her fingernails, painted the colour her name demanded.
‘You know, I still can’t grasp the reasoning behind Lilac’s crazy scheme. Why splash open your marriage to one of the hunkiest men alive in a nationwide competition to design your wedding gown? I mean, she’s one of the most sought-after actresses of her genre – especially since she won that award for best supporting actress last year. And Finn, well, what I wouldn’t do to trade places and get my mitts on those buttocks of steel!’
‘Scarlet, I don’t think—’
‘Andthey could get hitched anywhere in the world; a yacht moored off the Cote d’Azur, a white-powdered beach in Hawaii; I’m even certain that St Paul’s Cathedral would have overlooked the residence requirements. But oh, no, Lilac Verbois wanted to get married in the Cotswolds. Nothing wrong with the Cotswolds per se, and Gloucester Cathedral is a picturesque venue for the ceremony. But, well, you know… Gloucestershire?’ Scarlet wrinkled her pert, freckled nose as she twisted a glossy lock of her amber hair around her ring finger. ‘Why didn’t she gofor The Plaza in New York or a palazzo in Venice? There’s no competition, in my humble opinion.’
‘Hey, quit dissing the Cotswolds! You know it’s where I grew up,’ smiled Sophie, exaggerating her accent. ‘The Verbois/Marchant wedding is going to be the glitziest, most glamorous wedding no matter where it’s held. And it’s what Lilac wants, Scarlet. Don’t you think a brideshouldbe able to choose where she ties the knot?’
