“It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like.”
Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business.
The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
She smiled warmly. “That’s fantastic. I’m so pleased. Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?”
The woman shook her head. “No, no, I have to get going. It’s just after what I said earlier . . .”
“About what?”
“About you not liking the summer festival. I think I was wrong. I think you have to go.”
Nina shook her head. “No, I really need a good night’s sleep! I find it hard when it’s so light all the time.”
Lesley looked at her sternly. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s once a year. You’re a young single girl. All the single people have to go, it’s the rule.”
“Is it?” said Nina. “Honestly?”
She still felt so bruised after the Marek episode, she certainly didn’t feel ready to be out and about and interacting with people again. “I’m not sure I’m up to it.”
Lesley frowned. “You know,” she said, “I wasted my youth on that man. We were married at twenty-one, together since school. All the way till I was fifty. I never even thought about another man. Oh, Bob was a pig, but I just assumed everyone was like that. I didn’t even think about it, I just thought that was the way things were. And guess what: he left anyway. And it was too late for me.”
“It’s not too late for you!” protested Nina.
Lesley rolled her eyes. “I have wrinkles from the crown of my head to my hairy old toes, and I work all the hours God sends,” she said. “It was almost the cruelest thing he did, not to leave me when I still had the chance of meeting someone else, when I still had a bit of juice left in me. Me and the woman who wrote that book—we both know we’re better than that. But even I don’t think I’m going to be crowned queen of midsummer in a silly dress. You, on the other hand . . .”
She brought out a plastic-covered clothes bag from behind her.
“Here,” she said. “It should fit you. I was a scrawny little thing, too.”
“I’m not scrawny!” protested Nina.
“Lennox said if you were one of his lambs, he’d leave you on the hillside,” said Lesley.
“He said WHAT?” said Nina, outraged, but Lesley was still shoving the bag in her direction and not listening.
Nina looked at the crinkled plastic.
“Honestly, I don’t think . . . I don’t think I can.”
Lesley frowned. “Now,” she said. “You’ve come to this town. It’s worked out better than I thought it would, I’ll admit that. But you’re not just here for us to give you money for books. You’re in the Highlands now. We have to pull together. It’s what we do. You can’t just take, you have to give back. There’s a lot of people who’ve worked incredibly hard to make tonight a success, and you owe it to them to go and support them.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” said Nina truthfully. Lesley waggled the bag at her one more time.
“Take it. It’s going to be the most wonderful evening. Enjoy every second of it. Show everyone that you belong here.”
“I can’t believe I’m being blackmailed into a party,” grumbled Nina, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly excited nonetheless.
After Lesley had left, Nina carefully slipped off the plastic clothes bag, and caught her breath.
The dress was white, but it didn’t look like a wedding dress. It was a very plain chiffon, high-necked, tight-waisted, with a full skirt falling to knee length. To pin to it at the shoulder and the hip was a fine tartan sash in pale greens. What really gave Nina pause, though, was the corset in deep green velvet, which laced up the front and was clearly meant to go over the top of the dress.
It was actually rather beautiful; Nina couldn’t think what it reminded her of, until she remembered the illustrations of Snow White and Rose Red in her old-fashioned children’s books. She smiled and spread the dress on the bed.
She wished like anything that Surinder was there. She’d have found it unutterably hilarious. She looked at her watch. It was 7 P.M. The party started at eight. She bit her lip. Well, if she was going to have to go—and she could tell right away that now that Lesley had given her the dress, she, and probably her business, would be in huge trouble if she didn’t—she was going to have to think about getting ready.
Lesley, it turned out, had been absolutely right about the size. Nina had a quick shower and washed her hair, letting it fall rather than tying it back as she normally did. It was going to be quite big and bushy, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. Then she slipped the white dress over her head. It settled on her hips as though it had been made for her; it was lighter and stretchier than she’d expected. Obviously made for dancing. Then she wriggled into the corset. It covered her waist and her rib cage; her breasts, however, spilled over the top.
She looked at herself in the mirror in some astonishment. She normally preferred shapeless clothes that meant she could be comfortable. This dress, teamed with her flat ballet slippers, was incredibly comfortable. But it was also extremely provocative compared to what she wore every day.
She had a sudden panic that nobody else would be dressed like this, that it was some cruel prank to embarrass the new girl. Then she remembered Dr. MacFarlane talking about all the lovely girls, and decided it couldn’t possibly be that. Could it?
Her face flushed pink as she admired herself in the mirror. The corset pulled her waist in to nothing, and her bosom, normally small and unimpressive, swelled up and over in a pleasing fashion. No wonder they used to always wear them like that in the old days, thought Nina. She tried an experimental twirl and was smiling at herself when suddenly she became aware of someone standing in the doorway.