Lost (Arielle Lockley Series Book 2) (19 page)

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s ten to nine,’ Piers calls to me, as I frantically get dressed.

There’s no way we’ll make it on time. There’s also no way that I’ll look as sleek and sophisticated as I did yesterday. I quickly tie up my hair in a big messy bun, then blend my Chanel foundation expertly into my face. I’ll make up the rest of my face later, once the pop-up is restocked and we’re all set for our midday opening. Sod my vanity.

After making our way out of Tabi’s nearly two hours after Piers arrived last night with more than a few raised eyebrows from her staff, and a smirk from Ryan, we decided to make the most of an empty house whilst we were in the mood for reconciling. Needless to say, we nearly got caught out by my parents when they returned from the theatre. If it wasn’t for hearing them stop to coo over Atlas, all of us would have been in for a bit of a shock when they walked into the kitchen.
That
doesn’t bear thinking about. I shudder, in a very different way, at the thought of it.

‘Can you feed Atlas?’ Piers calls to me as I walk into the reception room and see Piers and Mum about to head out of the door, laden down with garments.

‘I’ll do it, love,’ Dad says. ‘Here, you finish getting ready.’

‘Are you sure?’ I say.

‘Go on.’ He smiles at me, which is my cue to go.

‘Thank you!’ I call back at Dad, as I run back into the bedroom and put the rest of my face on.

I want to film me altering the clothes today, which didn’t happen last night... Neither did blogging or replying to all the wonderful tweets I received yesterday, which I must do before we open up. Luckily Piers is going to help me today, so that’s going to free up some time. He is a saint, especially as he’s on an early flight to the States in the morning. But, I can guess why he’s in a generous mood and what he might want to re-enact once we’ve finished for the day!

I’m excited that I can spend some of my time blogging, filming and socialising with the people who come and see us today. I felt bad that I didn’t enjoy the pop-up yesterday due to a mixture of how busy it was, and my worries about Felicity. I’m determined, however, to enjoy today. Felicity will never forgive me if I go and see her with false tales of pop-up joy: she deserves the real deal.

Mum and Dad are going to head off once we’ve restocked, and they are going to visit Felicity in the hospital so they can figure out what’s going on ahead of me going to see her tomorrow. They tried to speak to Etta via her agent yesterday, but now that she’s gone big she seems to have no time for the “little people” as she never got back to them. I bet her agent would have made time if they had told him they were selling her out to the tabloids for snorting cocaine, and who knows what else, whilst her godmother was scared and alone in the hospital.
Bitch
.

Twenty minutes later, we all pile into the car. Thankfully there’s no traffic as we zoom to Tabi’s, and we pull up outside ten minutes later.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say to Ryan as soon as he opens the door to us with a wry smile. ‘Really,
really
, sorry.’

‘No worries,’ he says easily. ‘I’ve been catching up with this one in your absence.’

I follow him into Tabi’s, clutching as much stock as I can carry. Mum, Piers and Dad follow me in. A familiar red-head is sat at the bar, and when she turns around I’m met with the sight of a smiling Tabitha.

‘There you are, darling!’ she coos.

Ryan takes the clothes from me and follows the others upstairs as I rush across to hug her.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask. ‘How come you’re back? Are the press leaving you alone now?’

She laughs, but her eyes look tired and her face looks fed up. She looks like she’s not laughed for a while.

‘Let’s talk about that later, OK?’ She stands up, and stretches. She looks like she’s lost some weight, too. ‘I think you have a pop-up to run today,’ she teases. ‘I hear it was a roaring success.’

‘It was,’ I admit, as we walk over to the stairs. ‘Though I’ve done nothing on the social media side.’

‘Well, it’s a good job I’m here to help you then!’

That’s music to my ears. We head upstairs, where everyone is busy unloading the stock, and we dive straight in and help. Mum is much warmer towards Tabitha this time, and Dad looks secretly smitten, the old goat, when Tabitha starts telling us about the money she’s been raising for charity whilst she’s been away.

One hour later and we’re all back downstairs, tucking in quickly to a much-deserved full English breakfast, but then Piers, Tabitha and I are straight on to the social media side of things whilst Mum and Dad head off to see Felicity. Tabitha has taken over my Twitter account and is replying to all my tweets, whilst Piers sets up our camera to shoot some footage of me customising the light blue flared jeans. To say I feel nervous is an under-statement, even though we’ll be putting the footage up later and can always edit it.

‘So, errr, I have these jeans.’ I hold up the jeans, covering my face.

‘Cut!’ That’s Piers. ‘Start again, Pony, pretend you’re talking to Lydia or Tabitha.’

I roll my eyes at the L-word. I’ve not heard from her at all: she’s not even sent me a message to wish me luck this weekend.

‘And how about you don’t cover that beautiful face of yours,’ he continues, with a smile. He’s loving this, though I’m worried he might get ideas about what else we could film in the privacy of our own home. ‘Just talk to the camera like you’re talking to a friend, and don’t look directly into it all the time. Look at me, OK?’

‘Won’t that look odd?’

‘They made me do media training at work,’ he explains. ‘And, trust me, this is what they recommend. It makes it looks more honest and natural. Think of how Nigella works the camera. Little coy glances every now and then.’ He winks at me. Piers has a massive crush on Nigella.

‘I hardly think my market is Nigella’s market,’ I protest. I wriggle around in my position behind Ramone’s sewing machine. Maybe this isn’t the best place to be. ‘Should I move?’ I ask.

‘Move where?’

‘I don’t know, I could sit on the floor.’

‘The floor, huh?’ Piers grins, and I go bright red remembering last night. ‘Now
that
I’d like to film.’

I throw the jeans at him, but he deftly catches them. ‘Shush!’ I hiss. ‘Stop that.’

He walks towards me, jeans in hand, and starts planting kisses all over my face.

‘Piers!’

‘Come on, we could get started now. Leave the tripod up, hit record, and let’s just see what happens.’

‘Piers Bramley! Stop that, we’re here to work.’

‘Slave driver, huh? I like that.’ He winks at me.

‘OK, calm down please.’ I kiss him on the lips, then take the jeans from him. ‘Let’s try again.’

Twenty minutes later and we have our video, and I have a pair of jeans that will hopefully sell today. I’ve not done much to them, not really, but they have been transformed.

I’ve made several two-inch rips on the left thigh, and cut out a massive hole in the right knee. Using the flowery tee that didn’t sell yesterday, I’ve sewn that under the right knee as a patch, and then used the rest of the tee to transform the back right pocket. I quickly unpicked the pocket, cut out a pocket-shape from the tee material, and then sewed that on where the original pocket was.

I hold up the jeans to the camera. ‘These will be on the rails, ready for some lucky customer to buy and wear with style,’ I finish off, smiling into the camera.

‘Perfect!’ Tabitha calls out, once Piers had nodded to show he’s stopped filming. I didn’t even realise she had come back upstairs. ‘You’re a natural, you know.’

‘Ha, thanks,’ I say, blushing at the compliment. ‘But I hardly think I’m TV presenter material.’

‘Maybe not, but you’ve got something.’ She studies me for a few seconds. ‘Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know that you’ve got twenty minutes until you open, and you’ve already got thirty-two people queued up outside.’

‘Thirty-two? That’s more than we had queued up yesterday!’

‘And,’ Tabitha continues with a grin, ‘I’ve answered all of your tweets, except for one. You were supposed to tweet a girl a picture of a Radley and Dime dress?’

‘Ooh, yes!’ I quickly grab the dress from the rails, and Tabitha snaps a photo of it on her iPhone.

‘Perfect, I’ll tweet this to her now...’ Tabitha’s thumbs are flying over the screen, and in less than thirty seconds she has a response. ‘OK, she’ll have it. Can you put it to one side?’

‘Social media, huh,’ Piers wryly remarks. ‘That was quicker than some of the stock trades I’ve had to do in the past, and we work in nanoseconds. I’m impressed!’

‘Fashion waits for no one,’ I quip. ‘Right, let’s do this!’

Six hours later and we’re done. That’s it. My first, and last, ever pop-up is complete. Finished. Over. I am
exhausted
.

I know I used to work all day in the shop, but this is something else. The atmosphere has been incredible, but also very draining. We probably had more people through the door than we did yesterday, though we were open for fewer hours. We do, however, have more stock left, though I did manage to shift my customised flares and a few of the other things I worked on when Piers took over the till. He went down a treat with all the females in the room, and I’ve seen a fair few tweets mentioning “the hottie” at the pop-up.

‘How much did you take today?’ Piers asks, as he closes the door behind Olive and Paige.

‘Give me a chance to count it!’

‘Or,’ he says, walking over to the camera, and flicking off the lens cap. ‘We could leave that until later and do a little re-enacting. What do you say?’

‘Piers!’

I am still bright red when Tabitha walks in two seconds later.
Thank goodness.
We may be getting married, but I do not want a sex tape of me. I can’t think of anything worse.

‘Am I interrupting something?’ Tabitha raises one of her perfectly arched eyebrows, taking in my face and Piers’ position behind the camera.

‘Arielle was just about to film a thank you message for her blog,’ Piers smoothly lies.

‘Except I look like I’ve been running around on my feet all day,’ I say, continuing the fib. ‘And we have too much to do.’

‘Like counting the cash! How much have you made today?’ Tabitha asks.

‘I was just about to start counting it up, before this one ambushed me with his video camera. Give me ten minutes.’

I count, whilst Piers and Tabitha start putting the leftover stock into boxes and dismantling the clothes rails. It will all have to go back to ours until Felicity is well enough to decide what’s going to happen to what’s left.

We managed to shift about two-thirds of today’s stock, I reckon, which is quite something considering this is a few seasons out of fashion, and/or super boring.

Mum and Dad have been to see Felicity but had little to share as Etta showed up fifteen minutes after they did. All they could report is that she’s feeling better within herself, although she is very clearly in the middle, broaching on the late-stage of Alzheimer’s. Etta was a lot politer to them than she would have been if she’d found me in the private hospital room with Felicity, but she still asked Mum and Dad to leave. I hope she’s not there tomorrow when I visit.

‘I’ll start loading this stuff into the car.’ Piers interrupts my counting, nodding at the boxes they’ve packed up so far. That was quick!

‘Cool, but if you give me twenty more seconds, I can give you the total!’

I quickly count up the last pile of coins and look up to see both Tabitha and Piers watching me expectantly.

‘So,’ I announce. ‘Today we made... £7,891.93!’

‘Amazing!’ Piers cries, as Tabitha gleefully claps her hands together. ‘So, that’s how much altogether? About £24,000?’

‘How much?’ Tabitha squeals. ‘You’ve made nearly twenty-five grand in two days? I’m in the wrong business!’

‘Near enough,’ I say. ‘I need to figure out from Felicity’s paperwork how much this stock cost to see how much profit we’ve made, but I’m just glad that I’ve got rid of all this stuff for her.’

‘What do you mean? You
have
to do this again,’ Tabitha insists. ‘You were trending on Twitter at one point – people loved your pop-up! Strike whilst the iron is hot. Felicity’s mad if she doesn’t want to do this again.’

Ouch. Bad choice of words there from Tabitha, but she has missed out on all of the Felicity drama. Quickly I bring her up to speed as Piers loads the car.

‘So,’ I say, tugging off the arms and legs from the mannequins so I can peel the pop-art print from them. ‘I have no idea what will happen tomorrow when I see her, but it’s clear now, thinking back, that she’s had this ever since I’ve known her. I thought it was just Felicity being eccentric with her forgetful ways because I’ve never known her to be any other way, but it was always this. I should have forced myself to go to appointments with her, whether she wanted me there or not.’

I feel so guilty.

‘Hey, Arielle.’ Tabitha pulls me into a big hug. ‘Look, you’re not a doctor. Hindsight is a cruel bastard, but you’ve been a true friend to Felicity, and you could never control what she told you, even if you had your suspicions. If she didn’t want you to know, she didn’t want you to know. It’s awful, and it’s heart-breaking, but don’t feel guilty about any of this, OK?’

I break away from Tabitha’s hug and nod.

‘The last thing she would want is for you to treat her like glass,’ Tabitha continues. ‘She’s still Felicity, even if she is a little woolly with you. Go tomorrow and don’t sell the pop-up short. Be proud of what you’ve achieved, and sell in your next one with her. You need to do this again. Just look at your tweets!’ She pulls out her phone and laughs. ‘Honestly, this has been amazing. Don’t let it be for nothing.’

I nod, and make all the right noises, but I don’t mean it. Felicity doesn’t need the hassle and I, in all honesty, don’t want to continue without her. It wouldn’t feel right if I did.