‘Has it sold yet?’
Jamie’s arm disappeared from around my shoulders as fast as a python slithering into the undergrowth as my mother entered the lounge. I pressed the refresh button again on my phone’s screen and shook my head sadly.
Mum set down the coffees she’d been carrying on the low table in front of us, and Jamie reached for his. He was now a frequent enough visitor for my parents to know how many sugars he took in his drinks, and yet he still jolted away from me as though I was radioactive whenever they came into a room. Still, I suppose it was early days. ‘You just need to give them time,’ Gran had advised me recently. ‘That’s what I’m doing.’ It was good advice, and it seemed to be slowly working for both myself and my namesake.
‘I still think you’ve priced it too low,’ said Jamie, sitting back carefully on the settee cushions. He held his drink warily, as though carrying nitroglycerine. Admittedly, it would take very little to ruin the light beige fabric, so I couldn’t really blame him for being cautious. Some days it struck me as funny that Jamie still believed his entry into the Preston household was so precarious that even a coffee spill could see him permanently excluded. Other times, it felt too close to the truth to be amusing. One day at a time, as Gran would say.
‘It’s the same with cars,’ Jamie continued, tensing up just a fraction as my father entered the room and settled himself down in his favourite armchair. ‘If they’re too expensive they won’t sell, but if you don’t ask for enough, people automatically think there’s something wrong with them and that they’re being conned.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Gran’s dress. It’s absolutely perfect,’ I defended hotly, frowning as I stared at the tiny box on my eBay screen that told me that with less than two minutes until the auction ended, there was still no one who wanted to buy the gorgeous Fleurs wedding gown. ‘And it’s not about making money. That’s not why we’re selling it. We’re going to give it all to charity anyway.’
I could practically see my father shudder at those words. They must have been like a dagger thrust deep into his accountant’s heart.
‘It’s about the dress going to the right bride.’
‘Like the wand finding the right wizard?’ Jamie teased gently, quoting another of my favourite childhood authors. My youthful reading really had been all about dragons and magic. His hand briefly covered mine where it lay on the no-man’s-land space between us on the settee cushions.
‘Exactly.’
Dad set down his newspaper and reached for something on the table beside him. ‘I think the F1 qualifier is about to start,’ he announced, pointing the device in his hand at the large-screened television in the corner of the room. Dad, whose only interest in cars was whether they successfully conveyed him from A to B, was once again holding out an olive branch to Jamie. Today it took the shape of a TV remote control. It was early days, but anyone could see he was definitely trying, with both Jamie and Josie.
With the sound of roaring car engines filling the room, I turned my attention back to the screen on my phone.
‘What if no one wants to buy it?’ asked Mum, settling herself down on the other settee. ‘What will you and Gran do with it then?’
‘You could always keep it and wear it at your own wedding.’
Was I the only one who’d heard Jamie’s momentary hesitation as he hastily changed what had started like ‘our’ and ended up as ‘your’? I looked across at the armchair where my father was wearing a look not dissimilar to the one rabbits have just as the car headlights are bearing down on them. We’d come a long way in the weeks since Gran’s wedding, but clearly we still had a way to go.
‘I’ll just keep relisting it. The right person will find the dress, or the dress will find the right person.’ I waited to see which of the people I loved most in the world would laugh at such romantic nonsense. None of them did.
‘How long left, babe?’ asked Jamie, his attention torn between the big screen with the speeding Ferraris and the small one, which still hadn’t shown a single bid.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ I said, a small tinge of disappointment lacing my words. ‘Ten, nine, eight…’ I could feel a tension thrumming through me, which was crazy. If the Fleurs gown didn’t sell, all I had to do was list it again.
‘Seven, six…’ The countdown was beginning to feel as tense as a NASA launch.
‘Five, four… three…’
The Formula 1 cars faded away; I could hear nothing except the thudding of my heart as I watched my phone. And then, with only two seconds to go, the screen finally changed. I gave a totally out-of-proportion jubilant cry and looked up with an enormous grin.
‘Sold,’ I declared happily.
*
And so it began, all over again…