IN BED THAT NIGHT, RACHEL COULDN’T STOP thinking about Nicola and Alex. Had she misjudged them both? Two years ago, when she had discovered that her previous boyfriend had been unfaithful most of the time they were together, it had seriously dented her faith in her ability to judge character. Now that insecurity came surging back. Were they making a fool of her?
She and Nicola had shared a lot since they’d met at one of her exhibitions. Rachel had bought a pencil drawing of some seashells, which still hung in her bedroom in a pretty driftwood frame. They’d gone for a drink and liked each other enough to build a friendship that rapidly became close. Nicola knew that Rachel had been badly hurt by her errant boyfriend because she’d consoled her during many cocktail-fuelled evenings. She wouldn’t be so cruel as to put her through the same thing again, would she?
Rachel realised that she and Nicola hadn’t gone out for a drink together in a long while. Their relationship had been strained since the break-in, but even before that it had become a little awkward once Nicola started working in the shop. It could never be the same when Rachel wrote her pay cheque at the end of the month, when she had to ask her to be more careful about keeping all sales noted in a ledger, when she had criticised her as tactfully as she could for not looking smart enough. All of that altered the dynamic from a friendship of equals to one of employer and employee in a way that slightly poisoned the relationship. Rachel had thought she was doing her a favour because Nicola needed the money, but perhaps she resented it on some level.
A thought flashed through her mind: could Nicola even have staged the burglary and made off with the cash? She rejected that straight away. It would be totally out of character, and would have required more capacity for deceit than Nicola possessed. She could not have faked her shocked sobbing as she spoke to the police that morning.
Rachel mulled it over and decided the affair theory didn’t make sense either. Nicola and Alex had been friends for over a decade and people didn’t suddenly start having an affair after all that time. She was being paranoid. Alex had asked her to marry him, and his nerves the night he proposed had demonstrated how much he wanted it to happen. She knew she should have more confidence in herself, but the nagging doubts clamoured in her head, stopping her getting to sleep.
The following morning when Rachel booted up her computer, she found a reply from Richard in her inbox.
I looked up that Mainbocher and found the photo you mentioned of Wallis wearing it. Does your supplier have any connection with her that would explain the provenance? Send me the measurements and I’ll ask at Mainbocher head office. They keep a note of all their clients’ measurements right back to the 1930s, and usually still have the dummies the clothes were fitted on (you could only expect celebrity clients to come for one or two fittings, so they had tailors’ dummies made to their body shapes; still happens now).
She went to measure the Mainbocher dress: bust 32 inches, waist 23, hips 33 – almost the measurements of a boy. No wonder she hadn’t been able to fasten it over her own hips. She emailed them to Richard, with a note that read: Didn’t Wallis say ‘You can never be too rich or too thin’? It seems she was a woman of her word.
The post arrived just before she left for the shop, bringing a letter that informed her the application for a credit card had been approved. She clutched the letter to her chest and closed her eyes in gratitude. November’s rent would be paid. She had another month’s grace.