“That’s the look,” says Danny, a little too late. “It’s a… a deconstructive approach to design…”
Christina is shaking her head and putting the T-shirt back. “Young man. You certainly have flair. You may even have talent. Unfortunately these are not enough. Until you can finish off your work properly, you’re not going to get very far.”
“My designs are usually immaculately finished!” says Danny at once. “Perhaps this particular collection was a little hurried…”
“I suggest you go back to the beginning, make a few pieces, very carefully…”
“Are you saying I’m careless?”
“I’m saying you need to learn how to follow a project through to the end.” Christina smiles kindly at him. “Then we’ll see.”
“I can follow a project through!” says Danny indignantly. “It’s one of my strengths! It’s one of my— Would I be making Becky’s wedding dress otherwise?” He grabs me, as though we’re about to sing a duet. “The most important outfit of her whole life? She believes in me, even if nobody else does. When Becky Bloomwood walks down the aisle at the Plaza Hotel in a Danny Kovitz creation, you won’t be calling me careless then. And when the phones start ringing off their hooks—”
“What?” I say stupidly. “Danny—”
“You’re making Becky’s wedding dress?” Christina turns to me. “I thought you were wearing Richard Tyler.”
“Richard Tyler?” echoes Danny blankly.
“I thought you were wearing Vera Wang,” says Erin, who wandered over to the little scene two minutes ago and has been staring agog ever since.
“I heard you were wearing your mother’s dress,” chips in Lisa.
“I’m making your dress!” says Danny, his eyes wide with shock. “Aren’t I? You promised me, Becky! We had an agreement!”
“The Vera Wang sounds perfect,” says Erin. “You have to have that.”
“I’d go for Richard Tyler,” says Tracy.
“What about the dress your mother was married in, though?” says Lisa. “Wouldn’t that be so romantic?”
“The Vera Wang would be divine,” says Erin determinedly.
“But how can you pass up your own mother’s wedding dress?” demands Lisa. “How can you set aside a whole family tradition like that? Becky, don’t you agree?”
“The point is to look good!” says Erin.
“The point is to be romantic!” retorts Lisa.
“But what about my dress?” comes Danny’s plaintive voice. “What about loyalty to your best friend? What about that, Becky?”
Their voices seem to be drilling into my head, and they’re all staring at me avidly, waiting for an answer… and with no warning I feel myself snap.
“I don’t know, OK?” I cry desperately. “I just… don’t know what I’m going to do!”
Suddenly I feel almost tearful — which is completely ridiculous. I mean, it’s not like I won’t have a dress.
“Becky, I think we need to have a little chat,” says Christina, giving me a shrewd look. “Erin, clear all this up, please, and apologize to Carla, would you? Becky, come with me.”
We go into Christina’s smart beige suede office and she closes the door. She turns round — and for an awful moment I think she’s going to yell at me. But instead she gestures for me to sit down and gives me a long, penetrating look through her tortoiseshell glasses.
“How are you, Becky?”
“I’m fine!”
“You’re fine. I see.” Christina gives a skeptical nod. “What’s going on in your life at the moment?”
“Nothing much,” I say brightly. “You know! Same old same old…”
“Wedding plans going all right?”
“Yes!” I say at once. “Yes! Absolutely no problems there.”
“I see.” Christina is silent for a moment, tapping her teeth with a pen. “You visited a friend in the hospital recently. Who was that?”
“Oh, yes. That was… a friend of Luke’s, actually. Michael. He had a heart attack.”
“That must have been a shock for you.”
For a moment I’m silent.
“Well… yes, I suppose it was,” I say at last, running a finger along the arm of my chair. “Especially for Luke. The two of them have always been really close, but they’d had a falling out, and Luke was already feeling really guilty. Then we got the call about Michael — I mean, if he’d died, Luke never would have been able to…” I break off and rub my face, feeling emotion rising. “And then of course, there’s all this tension between Luke and his mother at the moment, which doesn’t help. She completely used him. In fact, she more than used him, she abused him. He feels utterly betrayed by her. But he won’t talk to me about it.” My voice starts to tremble. “He won’t talk to me about anything at the moment. Not the wedding, not the honeymoon… Not even where we’re going to live! We’re being chucked out of our apartment, and we haven’t found anywhere else to go yet, and I don’t know when we’re even going to start looking…”
To my astonishment a tear starts trickling down the side of my nose. Where did that come from?
“But you’re fine, apart from that,” says Christina.
“Oh, yes!” I brush at my face. “Apart from that, everything’s great!”