The red print looked completely different after Beth cut it.
On the roll, it had been beautiful and a little aggressive: white flowers with open mouths, red so rich Claire kept wanting to touch it. Now two pieces hung from a dressmaker's form, with a seam down the middle that made the flowers collide.
Vivian stood with both hands on her hips.
“No.”
Beth looked up from the chalk in her hand. “That's where the seam goes.”
“Not through that.”
“If I move it over, I lose another panel.”
“Then lose it.”
“With whose money?”
Claire was standing by the window with the ordinary camera. She had come to photograph samples for Beth's studio page and found them arguing about a flower that wasn't a flower.
“They aren't supposed to line up,” Vivian said.
“You just said they have to.”
“No, they have to move together. Look.”
She took the pinned fabric off the form, and Beth made a startled sound.
“You could have asked.”
Vivian stopped with the cloth in her hands. “Sorry.”
“It took twenty minutes to get that drape.”
“I know. I can put it back.”
“You can't. I can.”
For a moment the argument seemed about to become the other argument, the one waiting beneath every conversation since Monday. Vivian lowered the fabric onto the table. Beth looked at her hands, then came round to her side.
“Show me.”
Vivian laid out the two panels and shifted one a hand's width. The large white shape now crossed the imagined body at an angle instead of breaking apart at the center. Claire saw it immediately. The dress had acquired movement. She could picture a woman turning inside it.
Beth saw it too. Her mouth tightened in reluctant admiration.
“That's another half meter at least.”
“Yes.”
“On every one.”
“Not if you cut two together.”
Beth fetched the larger pattern piece. They worked side by side for a few minutes, moving paper across cloth, checking what could be saved. Vivian's hand stayed clear of the pins Beth had placed. Claire watched the difference in their movements: Vivian searching for the whole effect, Beth accounting for every edge that had to be sewn.
It was enjoyable to see them know things.
Maris came down with a mug and paused near the table. The missing mirror had left a patch of wall darker than the rest. She had declared she preferred it bare for now.
“Lovely,” she said of the dress pieces. “Can anyone sit down in it?”
Beth pointed to a section of the pattern. “There's room.”
“Good. Clothes spend too much of their time standing in imagination.”
Vivian laughed and held a piece up against her own waist. “I'd make it shorter for myself.”
“You'd make it a belt,” Beth said.
“A very good belt.”
They turned toward Claire, unexpectedly conspiratorial. She took the photograph. Vivian looked at the camera and then down at the body in Claire's hands.
“The familiar one?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The word was quiet but not casual. Claire lowered the camera.
Beth began pinning again, this time on the new line. Vivian held the cloth without pulling it. As the dress took shape, the room seemed to get brighter. Nothing about the light had changed. Claire knew that and still felt it.
“You could photograph it outside,” she said. “By the river wall. There's a place the red would look—”
“It's a sample,” Beth said.
“I know. For the preview page.”
“I haven't got a model.”
“Vivian could wear it.”
Vivian smiled. “I would.”
“And we could do your printed coat there too. Two strong pictures, then some of the fitting work. I could make the page look consistent.”
Beth stood back from the form. She had pins between two fingers and a chalk mark on her cheek.
“Whose page?” she asked.
“Yours.”
“It was sounding like yours.”
Claire felt her enthusiasm stop in the air between them. She looked at Vivian, whose smile had gone uncertain.
“You asked for pictures.” Claire lifted the camera an inch.
“Of this. Here.” Beth tapped the table with the chalk.
“People need something to catch their eye.”
Beth picked a pin off her sleeve. “Ruth caught people's eyes.”
“That was lovely. It's different from launching—”
“I'm opening a workshop. Not launching a perfume.”
Maris drank her tea without intervening. Vivian looked at the red fabric, then at Claire.
“The wall would be beautiful,” she said. “Maybe for my things.”
Beth didn't object. Claire looked at the red fabric.
“For Vivian's things,” Claire said.
“If she wants them,” Beth added.
“I do,” Vivian said. “When I know what they are.”
They went back to work. Claire photographed the fitting table, the sample shelf, Beth pinning the red panel. She asked before moving a chair, which made Beth grin at her for the first time that morning.
Later they ate soup from bowls that did not match. Maris had brought it from upstairs and described it as vegetable, without specifying which vegetables had survived the process. Beth said it tasted of yesterday. Maris said yesterday had been expensive and deserved to be used twice.
Vivian laughed and then went quiet. Her phone was face down beside the bowl. It had vibrated three times during the morning. She hadn't answered it.
“Is he asking you to come back?” Claire said.
“He's asking me what I want.”
“You told him.”
“He's asking until I say something he can do.”
Beth looked at her.
“Some of the calls aren't him,” Vivian added. “The supplier wants to know whether we're going ahead. I can't just stop everything.”
“You can tell them you need time.”
“Time doesn't keep the order.”
Beth glanced at the phone beside Vivian's bowl. “And the police?”
“Lewis called me again,” Vivian said. “Asked me to come in without Graham. Evan's told her I went back on Sunday.”
Beth waited.
“I said I'd arrange it. Not that I didn't go.”
“Arrange it,” Beth said.
Vivian pushed the spoon through the soup. “It was meant to be a small collection. People keep saying funded as if I'd married a bank. I married someone I liked, and for once I could pay for the things I knew how to make.”
Claire thought of the coat drawing and the white kitchen. “You can make them smaller.”
“I know. Everyone's very good at telling you how little you need.”
She put down the spoon. Beth looked hurt, though Vivian hadn't been speaking only to her.
“I want to do this with you,” Vivian said to Beth. “I mean it.”
“Then we have to be able to afford it.”
“I could still use the money set aside for—”
“Whose money?”
Vivian looked at the phone.
Beth took the bowl from in front of her and put it in the small sink. “I can't build a business on him letting you.”
“It's not just his.”
“Then tell him what you're taking and why.”
Vivian looked away. The red dress hung on the form, beautiful and incomplete. Claire wanted to take a photograph that would let Vivian believe she could still have it, the collection, the business, the person she had been at the terrace doors. She could not make that true by choosing the right angle.
Her phone lit up. Evan had sent a message saying he'd be at the yard until six.
Beth saw Claire's face change before she hid the screen.
“Something good?”
“A cupboard.”
Beth stared, then laughed. “You're getting stranger.”
Claire put the phone away, smiling. “Apparently.”
She spent another hour making the pictures Beth had asked for. When she packed the camera, Vivian was sketching a cheaper fabric layout on the back of a supplier's envelope. Beth leaned over it and moved one line with her finger. This time Vivian left the line where she had put it.
Claire asked if they needed anything before she went. Beth said milk, if she was passing the shop. She wrote it down, because milk was the one form of help she seemed certain to get wrong.