Evie zipped off and then scooted back over with a small brown bowl with a fluted top and a little leaf engraved around the top. 'There you go. The basket is on the way. What are you up to?'
Tilly smiled. 'Actually, I've been in a few of the boutiques on Darling Street. I've realised I've not got much that suits being back home. I've either got my big coat, a puffer jacket or swimsuits and sundresses.'
'Ahh, yes, and it can get nippy when the fog rolls in. Looking for anything special?'
Very, very special.However, there was no way Tilly was going to let on about Otto and the oysters. 'No, no, just having a look, you know?'
'Have you been around to the parade on the far side of the bay?'
Tilly shook her head. 'Nope, I haven't.'
'There's a nice little boutique there. It’s not too pricey, and if you like a good charity shop scour, you might find something because there are a few over that side. Old school ones, you know, where people just drop stuff off, not all curated.'
'Oh, okay, thanks.'
A few minutes later, a small white basket arrived on the table. Underneath a knotted napkin, Tilly smiled at what greeted her. A good old-fashioned, still warm from the oven rock cake. Taking a bite, she shuddered in pleasure. The coffee alone was amazing, but so far, the contents of the baskets were out of this world. Who even made their own rock cakes and nailed them? It appeared that Darlings did.
The shops on the parade were right up Tilly's street. The little line of local shops was precisely what she'd sorely missed when she’d been marooned on a tropical island cleaning other people's toilets. As she looked along the parade, Tilly thought that she could happily lose an entire afternoon pottering along from shop to shop and peering down at the bay. One particular shop sat back behind a low wall on the quiet side of the bay, a little bow-fronted building with a hand-lettered sign and a window done up so beautifully you'd never in a month of Sundays think it was a charity shop at all. In fact, the window dresser had skill by the bucketful; a little display showed a gorgeous straw hat and a matching leather-edged beach bag, a stack of paperbacks, a gorgeous summer dress and a few pairs of tortoiseshell sunglasses placed just so. All topped with strings of bunting, an enormous jug of dried flowers and a wicker lamp Tilly had already earmarked for taking home.
Pushing open the door, Tilly waited for the musty old charity shop smell to land. It didn't come; instead, the shop smelled of books, eucalyptus and a bunch of floppy-headed roses on the counter. Inside, it was just as lovely as the window. Rails of clothing squashed in cheek by jowl, shelves of crockery and glassware, a basket of tangled silk scarves, a whole wall of bric-a-brac that her dad would have rummaged through for an hour minimum. Tilly, in her element after years of missing English shops, got stuck in.
The reason she’d gone shopping in the first place was forgotten as she pottered through the bric-a-brac. What she was going to wear to the not-a-date date sailed off out the window as all sorts of lovely homey bits and bobs took her fancy. Lots of lovely things would, with luck, be going home with her.
She'd been flicking along the dress rail for a few minutes, not finding much beyond a fair amount of going-nowhere dresses not in her size, when a young girl appeared at her elbow. Sixteenor seventeen, perhaps, with a name badge that said, Maisie. Slightly over-eager and clearly new to volunteering, keen was her middle name.
'Are you looking for anything in particular?' Maisie asked. 'Only we've had loads of new stuff this week. There's a whole load just come in from a house clearance up by the lighthouse, some really nice bits. Posh couple.' She shook her head in little flicks that made her earrings shudder. 'They never got on here. My nan said it right from the word go that they wouldn't last long on Darling. Didn't get the basket thing right from the outset. Nan said that's always a way to tell. You know?'
Tilly smiled and said that she was looking for a dress or nice top. Maisie took this as the green light and went off like a whippet, pulling things out and holding them up against Tilly with her head on one side. A green wrap dress was held up in front of Tilly. It was nice, but the green whipped her colour away. Next came a linen pinafore that made her look as if she were at St Trinian’s, then a silky blouse the colour of clotted cream that had clearly cost an arm and a leg but was far too big. Tilly nodded and hmm'd and held a couple of options against herself in the mirror and was just about to admit defeat and go back to the white jeans plan when Maisie made a small noise of triumph from somewhere down the far end of the rail.
'Oh, hang on. Hang on. Yep, this is fabulous. In fact, there's a blue one and a pink one. Duh, I should have remembered them straight away.' She came back holding something out at arm's length as though it might get away from her, and Tilly's heart did a small and immediate flip. 'This literally just came in this morning. I was about to steam it. What do you reckon?'
The dress had Tilly's name all over it. If it fitted, it would be perfect. She touched the sleeve and nodded. A deep, rich blue cotton, soft and washed-feeling, block-printed all over with little cream botanical sprigs, the kind of thing found in a posh Chelseaboutique with bay trees either side of the door worn by women who lunched in little cafés by the Thames. Long full sleeves gathered at the cuff, a tie at the neck finished with two little tassels, a wide ornate border worked round the hem in cream and faded gold. No two ways about it, the dress was gorgeous, no glorious. 'Oh, that's lovely.'
'Isn't it?' Maisie turned it round to show the back, thoroughly pleased with herself. 'And here's the thing, I know this brand. My sister's obsessed with them; she follows them on Instagram and everything. They're that online brand, you know the one, does all the limited edition prints an' all that? This is, like, two hundred quid new. Easily. Honestly, easily. My sister drops loads on one of these dresses. Good quality, though. She says it's an investment, so her husband swallows it. Ha! Investment my left foot.' She lowered her voice as if imparting a state secret. 'It's twelve pounds.'
Tilly looked at the dress. Then at the price tag, which did indeed, in biro, say £12. 'You're not serious?'
'Dead serious. Want to try it?'
Tilly did want to try it. Taking it into a cramped little curtained corner that passed for a changing room, she pulled it over her head, and turned to the mirror, and well, what do you think occurred? A miracle had just happened. There it was. The blue did something rather marvellous to her; the cut skimmed over the extra pounds the five-star staff canteens had so generously gifted her, and the swish, oh, the swish was perfect. Plus, it was sort of casual, but sort of not. Like she'd dressed up but hadn't. Thinking about the oyster night, the Catherine wheel gave a fizz, as she thought that she actually looked lovely.
Maisie's voice through the curtain. 'Well? How is it? How's the colour on you? Is it the one?'
Tilly looked at herself in the spotty glass of a charity shop on the quiet side of Darling Bay, in a two-hundred-pound dresswith a price tag of twelve, and couldn't quite stop the smile spreading across her face. 'It is very much the one.'
She drew back the curtain and stepped out, and Maisie, who had been hovering on the other side rearranging a basket of belts, looked up and clapped a hand to her chest like a woman in a film. 'Oh my days! No, I mean, yes, you have to have it. You can't not. Look at you. It's like it was made for you.'
Tilly went over to a bigger mirror by the counter and had a proper look at herself. And there she was. No longer the woman in a brown housekeeping tabard with a hibiscus clip jammed in her hair, nor the woman who'd sat on her own at hotel bars across the planet waiting for a man not worth her time. Neither of the above; this Tilly looked a million dollars. Turning slowly from side to side, she watched the hem swish out and around. This was no cheap dress made with not quite enough fabric, nope. The swish on that baby was the real thing. Giving a little experimental turn, the whole skirt lifted and fell in a soft, heavy arc. Feeling an inner nine-year-old who had been buried for a long time, Tilly chuckled. 'I love it.'
Maisie actually squealed, and her hands flew to her mouth. 'See, that's what I mean about the quality of this brand. It's the weight of the fabric, my sister says. The cheap ones go all limp and sad. This one's got, like, body. It moves properly.' She tipped her head. 'It really suits you. Honest. You have to have it. I mean, at twelve quid if you don't, I will.'
Tilly, who had spent a good portion of her adult life being told by Andy exactly what she was allowed to wear, swallowed an urge to wail. 'Thank you, yes, actually, it does suit me. Not being big-headed or anything. Like it was made for me.'
Neither of them was wrong. The tassels at the neck swung gently, the cream botanical sprigs were just right and the deep washed blue pulled out all the right colours. Tilly shook her head. On the quiet side of Darling Bay had landed in her life.Funny how things turned up when you weren't really looking for them. Her dad would have had a field day with the dress, her and the shop.Best finds are the ones you're not after, Tils.'Right, I'll take it. Definitely.'
Maisie did a small, victorious bounce. 'Oh, I'm dead pleased. I love it when something finds its person. That's why I wanted to volunteer here. Brenda, who runs Tuesdays, says things wait for the right person to come in.' Taking another dress from the same rack next to a steamer, Maisie raised her eyebrows. 'You have to try this one, too. In a way, I think the pink is even nicer. I can see you in it on a Darling day when the sun is shining.'
Tilly, totally caught up in the moment, took the pink dress into the changing room. A minute later, she was staring at herself again, wondering how another dress had worked magic.
