The Wedding Dress Repair Shop by Trisha Ashley

Author:Trisha Ashley [Ashley, Trisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473591363
Published: 2023-06-21T18:30:00+00:00

25

Away with the Fairies

The Pink Elephant was determined to live up to its name: the curtains were printed with processions of the creatures, a frieze of them ran round the top of the cream-painted walls and the menu holders were also pink and elephantine.

From five till seven, when they shut, they had a light supper menu of Welsh rarebit, and eggs, scrambled or poached, on toast.

We all opted for the Welsh rarebit.

‘The bread’s good and you get doorstops, so it’s really filling,’ Simon said enthusiastically.

‘I find it a bit too filling and can never eat the second slice,’ said Pearl, who had joined us.

‘I’m always happy to eat it for you,’ said Simon.

He did, too, then ordered a rum baba, something I had never come across, and which looked about a million calories a mouthful. It was just as well that Simon, like Pearl, seemed to have the kind of tall, rangy figure that never put on an ounce.

While we were having coffee afterwards – or Earl Grey tea, in Pearl’s case – I had another email from Will, though I would have thought at this time of day he’d be revving himself up, ready for tonight’s performance. I was quite right to, as I discovered when I quickly scrolled down it:

Just a quick one from my dressing room, darling, before I put on the slap and don the bells and motley.

Marco just came in and asked me if I was in touch with you and had your new address! He recognized your writing on the envelope of that note you sent here to the theatre with the taxi fare in it, so clearly suspected we might still be in touch.

He said he was so distracted with worry about you, because you weren’t answering his calls or messages, that he’d gone out to your flat in Ealing and found you’d gone.

I told him you’d said in that note that you’d already accepted a new job out of town and were leaving almost immediately, but I had no idea where. Which is, of course, quite true, Garland darling, though I do think you could trust me with it.

All this concern for you has come a bit late in the day, don’t you think? But I suspect he has an ulterior motive in wanting to find you – he has realized you were his muse. He said the management would only take his new play – which sounds like an arty mix of Swan Lake crossed with Metamorphosis – if he rewrote it in the style of A Midsummer Night’s Madness, which was exactly the advice you had given him and it had been your idea to turn to writing supernatural thrillers in the first place.

So I said you were quite right and if the management thought so, too, that clinched it. Then he looked gloomy and went away – and I must don my wings and flit away with the fairies, too.

Oberon xx

That last bit made me smile, though in fact

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