AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Scarlet! We haven’t won yet.’
‘We will.’
Chapter Eight
Tossing back the embroidered cotton sheet and ancient woollen blankets her aunt had favoured, Sophie flicked the sides of her ebony bob behind each ear and dragged her sluggish bones to the bathroom to jump-start her senses. She felt as though she had been flayed by a dominatrix’s whip.
Her heart leaden, she was aware that today held her fate in its grasp. But misery had enveloped any trace of excitement at the pending announcement, sorrow extinguishing any hopefulness. Every crevice of the tiny flat above Gingerberry Yarns where she was staying resonated with her aunt’s presence, her laughter, her jovial personality, her cheerful chatter. The whole day stretched into the distance as she waited for her future path to be sealed.
Nerves tingled their insistence at her empty stomach. The only sustenance she had managed to provide it with the previous evening after her decision to stay on in Somersby had been a mug of Earl Grey tea; anything more solid and it would have screamed its objection. As she sagged over the kitchen table staring out of the steam-covered window, she wondered when the director of her destiny would grant her asylum from grief.
After taking a few deep breaths, she grabbed her courage and ran her eyes over that morning’s media frenzy on all the social media platform she was on. Even though the final choice would not be made public until Lilac Verbois walked down the aisle, it hadn’t stopped the rampant speculation on the identityof the designer that would win the coveted assignment to create the wedding gown of the decade. Many posters had displayed a selection of photographs from each of the finalists’ previous work, keen to give their followers their daily fix of the celebrity wedding fiasco that was sweeping the nation, and hoping to be the one who correctly predicted the outcome.
It seemed to Sophie that everyone and their granny was talking about it.
Astute in their understanding that their special day would inevitably be a media circus whether they liked it or not, Lilac and Finn had ingeniously decided to embrace this fact by inviting the public’s engagement rather than railing against the offensive intrusion of their privacy. They had made themselves available for interviews, photoshoots, and had even run a competition for fifty of Finn’s lucky fans to win tickets to his concert in Paris a month after the wedding.
On that crisp, clear morning, Sophie did spare a thought for the other designers and their supporting teams. Today someone’s life would change for ever, if not that of their whole entourage. Of course, she hoped it would be her team, but she empathised with the fact that, whoever won, it would mean others who had slogged their hearts out just as she had would be left reeling with disappointment.
By four o’clock she could bear it no longer. She grabbed her phone and, with her hand trembling, called Scarlet.
‘Any news?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, God, that means we haven’t won.’
‘There’s still another couple of hours…’
Sophie’s stomach felt like it had contracted around a pineapple. Tears, always so ready to breach the surface, pressedup from the back of her throat to her eyelids, but she managed to gulp them down.
‘We worked so hard, Scarlet – all of us: you, Flora, Lizzie. But you know what? I can honestly say that Lilac’s dress was the best wedding gown design of my career so far. I couldn’t have produced anything better. So, if we didn’t win, then so be it. It’s back to the drawing board and I intend to work even harder to reach the pinnacle of bridal couture.’ She silently cursed the audible wobble that had crept into her voice. ‘I’m watching the TV as we speak and they’ve just shown Lilac’s PA, Nikki Coates, and her wedding planner, Tish Marshall, climbing into a limousine outside her house in South Kensington. Don’t you think they would have called the winner before they left?’
‘Maybe you’re right, Sophie. Oh, God, I’m absolutely devastated. I really thought we were going to win.’
***
‘Nikki, you’re going to have to break it to Lilac that she needs to choose another dress.’
‘No way – that’s your job. You’re the wedding planner, Tish.’
‘But you’ve been her PA for years. She’s going to take the bad news better from you.’
‘Are you absolutely sure there was no documentation with the gown she selected? Nothing at all?’
‘Certain.’
‘What kind of high-end bridal designer goes to the trouble of painstakingly creating such an exquisite sculpture of silk and pearls only to submit their masterpiece without their contact details?’
‘And what kind of actress just has to pick their dream dress from one of the gowns their wedding planner can’t supply?’
‘What do you mean “one of the gowns”? There was more than one?’
‘Two of the twenty that were submitted had no paperwork and the documents of one were illegible.’
Nikki watched from her desk as Tish, kneeling in front of the coffee table, shoved the scattered papers into a box file and cringed at the girl’s lack of orderliness. Whilst her haphazard attention to detail was unlikely to have been the cause of their current predicament, she still despaired of the wedding arrangements being perfect. Tish’s chaotic approach to life also extended to her appearance, yet Nikki had to admit she suited the tousled, just-got-out-of-bed blonde curls and not-quite-perfectly-applied vivid-blue eyeliner.
‘What about asking Lilac to go with her second choice?’
