The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3337 by Angharad Copyright© 2021 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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On the Sunday of the bank holiday, it rained - all day. We had everything we needed so apart from Simon taking the dog for a walk and getting the Observer, no one else ventured out. I was still sore from his enthusiasm to show me how much he loved me but at least I wasn't getting silly comments from Trish, for the moment at least.

David was doing a leg of lamb for dinner and I invited Julie and Phoebe to come over to help eat it if they were free. It seemed they were and Julie asked if we could do some sewing, she had mending to do for the salon. I also invited Stephanie and her little girl and Danielle asked if she could ask Cindy, especially if we were sewing.

So we had a real table full for dinner which we had at six o'clock. I mentioned to Stephanie that we doing a sewing bee and she nervously asked if she could bring something for me to look at for an opinion. That intrigued me because usually, it's her giving me opinions. I naturally told her to bring whatever it was but as I was no expert I didn't promise to do more than look at whatever it was she had. Besides she's not exactly poor, so she could consult a professional seamstress not an amateur like myself.

I was so glad my mother had shown me how to do a number of things in sewing that she must have known I would never use for boy's things. For instance, when do you see darts in a male garment, unless he walked in front of a darts match? She taught me how to do them, how to insert zips and make buttonholes, with a bit of cutting out and tacking together, there isn't that much more to do on a simple dress or skirt pattern.

I actually made a skirt while I was in my bedsit, in the days before Stella and I met at thirty miles an hour or whatever speed she was doing. It can't have been very fast because I survived it, much more speed and the energy of the collision would have been disastrous and I'd have been badly hurt or killed.

That made me think of Billie's accident and I felt sad for a while, I took myself to my study and managed to extricate the crossword from Simon's grasp but I couldn't concentrate until I almost felt Billie with me and imagined her saying not to be sad because she was okay and that I should worry about the living. I wanted to ask her who she meant, was she trying to warn me? I shook myself out of my lethargic sadness and set to with the crossie and finished it in forty minutes.

I took the section of the paper it was in back to Simon and he was disgusted that I'd got the crossword first. Tough, it's dog eat dog world out there and any unsuspecting crossword was likely to get its issues solved, sort of permanently. It sounded good to me but he rewarded my humour by looking rather blank before he picked up the financial section and ignored me.

Julie rang me back and said she'd come a bit early with her scissors in case anyone needed a trim. I knew I did, so appointed myself at the head of the queue. She'd be singing for her supper, but we'd have a good chat while she was here. She assumed we weren't using masks anymore, because she said they insisted on them while she was doing someone's hair, but I told her she'd only have to wear one while she was actually eating. It took her a moment to get the joke.

Everyone arrived at least an hour early, Cindy being the exception, she'd come after lunch and she and Danni were up in Danni's room playing music and probably messing about with makeup and clothes like teen girls do. A little while ago, I'd had a chat with Cindy who'd understood while I was being a bit of a prude before although she assured me she hadn't had any sort of sensation down below except when she wanted to wee and that she saw Daniele as another girl and she wasn't into girls, despite her having been accused of being a lesbian at the convent, she insisted she wasn't. She said she didn't think she was anything because although she sometimes half fancied boys, she was too scared to do anything. I didn't offer her advice as my own experience was so limited but I did tell her things can change as we get older and as I had found, quite unexpectedly and suddenly.

Julie started cutting my hair and the queue started to form, with Danni next, Cindy got included as nearly family, then Trish, Livvie, Hannah, Meems and the little ones, Cate and Lizzie. Stella did Pudding's and Desi's but she came for a chat with Phoebe and Julie and, Phoebe had a little cuddle with Lizzie, her niece.

The salon was doing really well and they offered Cindy a Saturday job if she wanted it, she jumped at the chance to earn £20 for the day, cash in hand. Phoebe then went off to talk with Sammi. She was having a bit of trouble with her laptop and had asked Sammi to take a look. We didn't see either until dinner was served, and then I had to call them twice.

Stephanie arrived with a large carrier, in which, I presumed, was the mystery item requiring my opinion. Emily went off with Meems and Lizzie and I took Stephanie into my study. "So, what's in the bag?" I asked after we both sat down with cups of tea, dinner was still an hour away.

"It's like this, I bought a dress to go out on a date a couple of months ago and at the time I thought it looked okay and fitted me. Since then I've been running most mornings for half an hour and I appear to have lost some weight and the dress no longer fits. Can you do anything? I've seen some of the stuff you've done and you did help me that time before."

We'd finished our teas so I told her to put it on while I disposed of the dirty cups. When I came back she was struggling with the zip. I helped zip it up and assessed the fit. It was a cotton material and thankfully there was no lycra or other stretchy material involved, if there had been she might have got away with it as it was. It needed to lose about an inch on each side from the underarm down the seams. I thought if I could just do a tuck, if she gained weight again, we could let it out and it would fit once more.

She didn't share my view of frugality and teased me, "Cathy, you're married to one of the richest men in England, why worry about saving money? I'm not, the dress was only about ninety or a hundred quid, so don't worry, cut the bits off if you want."

"If I cut the material off it will alter more than the fit and I'd possibly have to over-sew the edges to stop them fraying making it a much bigger job which may not work and the dress could be ruined."

"I don't care, look do what you can, I won't hold you responsible if it doesn't work, I was going to give it to a charity shop if you couldn't do anything,"

"Why didn't you try an alteration tailor's?"

" I phoned one up and they weren't interested."

I shook my head and shrugged. I asked her to take off the dress and she sat in her lingerie wrapped in a spare robe of mine which I had brought back with me from the laundry room.

I measured and pinned it, and then as we still had about half an hour before dinner, I quickly tacked it for her. It meant the seam was obviously thicker but it didn't seem to show and when she tried it on she was surprised.

"How come you can do that and I can't? I'm the one who went to a girls' school."

"You didn't have my mother who felt any of her offspring should have some sewing skills."

"What like sewing on a button?"

"It started like that but it soon expanded to shortening trousers - I did a pair for my dad, with his full knowledge on the understanding, that if Mum was ill or absent, I could look after my dad, so I was taught to cook, clean, launder and iron clothes, do minor alterations and so on. It was all girly stuff, or I took it that way and after feigning reluctance, which she called me out on, I did all she asked and more."

"She taught you to be a housewife for your dad in her absence? How weird is that given his history of homophobic and transphobic abuse?"

"Ah, but he had a vested interest, he liked to appear smart and well turned out for his work, which I agreed gave him a more professional air and he couldn't do much more than make a cup of tea or coffee. He couldn't cook much at all, except something on toast and I don't know if he knew where the on switch was for the washing machine, and certainly not which programme he'd need for certain clothing."

"So as long as he was getting something from it, it was okay?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"That is so double standards, he'd let you act like his housekeeper but wouldn't let you dress the part?"

I shrugged. "It's all water under the bridge now, Steph and I like to think we came to a compromise before he died."

"This feels okay, she said looking at her dress in the wall mirror in my study. What d'you think?"

"It needs a bit more than just tacking to hold it together and you'll have to be careful ironing it, make sure it all lies flat, but it looks okay. I'll sew it on the machine after dinner."

"Thank you so much," she said taking the dress off and redressing in her jeans and top.

"Given the generosity you've shown us over the years with the girls, I see it as a totally inadequate payback."

"I've probably eaten my own weight in dinners here, both David and you are better cooks than me and if I didn't have Em, I'd probably buy ready meals, buy-in or eat out."

"Goodness, that is so expensive and you can never be sure what you're getting once it's cooked."

"You and your penny pinching, Mrs married to a bank."

"Until my dad got his qualifications at night school, we were relatively poor. I was only a baby then but I know my mum got into the habit of saving money when she could and I suppose when I was doing my master's and living in the bedsit, I lived on about a fiver a week."

"How could you do that, I spend that much on milk?"

"I made lots of stews with cheap cuts of meat or ate beans or other legumes or eggs. I certainly lost some weight with that and the hormones."

The dinner gong sounded, we all went to the dining room for dinner, to which David stayed and he and Julie teased each other mercilessly, at times worrying me but it all seemed to end amicably. When we finished, he told her he'd missed their banter, she promised to come and tease him more often.

After dinner, when all I really wanted to do was snooze in the chair, we went back to my study and did our sewing. I had to help Cindy once or twice and Danni got stuck on a hem she was doing for a skirt she'd made for school. She hadn't pinned it correctly so I let it all down and showed her how to do it and the second time she did it properly. I'd finished Stephanie's dress in about twenty minutes and she simply sat chatting with all of us astonished at our skills.

"It's all Auntie Cathy, she's taught us better 'an the teachers at the convent," was Cindy's opinion. It seemed they didn't make much progress on her conversational English either. But that aside, she was developing into a really nice kid and a good friend to Danni. It sometimes worried me that because we have such a large family, there's little pressure to make friends outside and of course the complication of secrets of some of our life histories.

Sarah, who'd been doing some study after dinner came along for the last hour of my sewing class and sewed a button back on her cardi. Stephanie had a quick word with her on the QT, and they both came back in smiling, so it seemed everything was well.

Monday, everything was still wet from the rain before and we had the odd shower as well, so we did things in the house accompanied with grumbles about the weather and being unable to go out. I told them to wear waterproofs but they didn't want to solve things, simply to whinge about them. That was my bank holiday and Tuesday I had to go back to work for the morning for meetings. I hate meetings.