At six-forty on Friday, Iris discovered that fifty chairs looked like a great many chairs when she was expected to stand in front of them.
People were beginning to arrive through the side entrance. Priya checked names against the booking list, Hugh showed them to their seats, and Mrs. Hallet stood beside a rack with her red coat over one arm, apparently enjoying herself more than anyone else in the building.
Iris wore the green dress. The straps stayed where they belonged. Her shoes were sensible, her lipstick was fresh, and she had written three sentences on a card that had already become damp in her hand.
Winnie took it from her.
“You’ll dissolve the ink.”
“I need it.”
“You know three sentences.”
“I know thousands. The difficulty is choosing them in order.”
Winnie handed it back. “Then keep it dry.”
Daniel came from the office carrying the evening’s running order. He had put on a jacket, though he still wore no tie. When he saw Iris, he stopped with the paper at his side.
She had wanted that look without admitting how much. Now it arrived and made the room’s noise fade around her.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
“You look—”
“I know,” Winnie said. “She does. Now find the man with the microphone and tell him to stop tapping it.”
Daniel laughed and went to rescue the equipment from Hugh.
Joan arrived at seven, carrying a small framed picture of her parents. She had come without Martin, who was traveling, and seemed relieved that nobody expected her to make his apologies in detail.
“I’ve brought this,” she told Iris. “If there’s somewhere.”
There was. They put it beside the enlarged opening-day photograph, where Leonard appeared young enough to believe nothing in the building would ever wear out.
Joan touched the edge of the frame.
“He hated this photograph.”
“Why?”
“Said his hair looked terrible.”
Iris laughed softly. In the picture, he had considerably more hair than she had ever known him to possess.
“It never occurs to you,” Joan said, “that your parents were self-conscious about stupid things before they became your parents.”
“Not until you find the photographs.”
Joan smiled at her. The distance between employer’s daughter and employee altered, not much, enough.
At seven-ten, the seats were full. They had turned away six late requests rather than crowd the aisle, a decision Iris had defended three times and now appreciated when Hugh needed to guide a woman with a walking frame to the end of a row.
The store looked different after hours. Less like a place to buy things, more like the set of people’s familiar movements. The counter had been polished. The sale signs remained because pretending the building wasn’t closing would have spoiled the truth of the evening. Behind the chairs, reduced lamps lit a row of mismatched shades. At the end of the aisle, the old photograph stood against the plain cloth. Without the mirrors, people had to turn toward one another to see who was smiling. Iris watched them do it and stopped wishing the islands back.
Joan spoke first.
She kept to two minutes. Her father had loved the store, she said, sometimes more comfortably than he had loved any person who could answer back. The audience laughed gently. Iris looked at Joan, surprised by her honesty.
“He was proud when somebody came in for a first suit,” Joan said. “Or a coat for a new job. He was also very proud when someone bought a refrigerator. He could be quite commercial about a good refrigerator.”
Hugh laughed aloud.
“We can’t keep the building open as it was,” Joan continued. “But I hope tonight lets us see what has already gone out of the doors with all of you.”
She looked toward Iris and stopped. Iris applauded with the others and felt the evening settle into its proper shape.
Mrs. Hallet went first.
She walked down the aisle in the red coat, slowly enough this time, and stopped where Priya had marked the floor. She had chosen the red shoes. Her beige jacket stayed on the chair.
“I bought this three weeks ago,” she said into the microphone. “So I haven’t got much history.”
A few people laughed.
“I used to have a red car. Then I needed a sensible one. I have no objection to sensible cars, but I’ve decided they don’t need to choose my clothes.”
There was applause, warm and immediate. Mrs. Hallet looked delighted, turned once so the coat swung, then came back up the aisle with the pleased, slightly astonished expression Iris remembered from the fitting room.
Hugh followed with his photograph. His daughter’s wedding. A younger version of himself, shoulders back, smiling too broadly to look dignified.
“I can’t get into the suit now,” he said. “My daughter says that’s because I keep things longer than is reasonable.”
“Not the daughter,” Winnie called, quietly enough for the first row to hear.
Hugh glared at her without conviction.
“But I remember buying it. Leonard told me the navy would be more useful than the gray. I said I was only planning to give her away once. He said weddings weren’t the only occasions a man might want to look respectable.”
He paused, looking at the photograph.
“I wore it when my grandson was christened. So he was right.”
His voice caught slightly. He cleared his throat and returned to his seat before anybody could make the moment larger than he wanted.
Priya showed a coat from the current sale, walking with considerably more confidence than the garment required. Then a customer held up a photograph of herself wearing a Hargreaves dress on a ship in 1978 and cheerfully refused to say what had happened to the man beside her. A former employee brought a tie he’d bought for his first day and admitted he’d spent his entire first wage before lunch.
The stories varied. Funny, ordinary, unfinished. They did not all turn into proof that the store had been wonderful. One woman recalled returning three kettles before finding one that worked. Another remembered the year every size label in a batch of skirts was wrong and she had gone home feeling entirely unlike the number on the tag.
Winnie listened from her chair, waiting her turn, the yellow silk across her knees.
When she stood, she took the dress by its hanger and carried it down the aisle like a friend.
“I wore this to a dance in 1971,” she said. “I was nineteen and thought I looked remarkable. Looking back, I believe I was correct.”
The room laughed.
“A young man asked me to marry him that evening. I said no, partly because he asked me during my favorite song and I considered that bad judgment.”
Iris looked toward Daniel at the sound desk. He was smiling at her. The look carried a private joke across the room, and she felt it in her chest.
Winnie finished without mentioning the house. She said she’d kept the dress because it reminded her that being young had not required her to know what came next. Then she handed the microphone back and sat down, pleased to have said what she meant.
Iris’s turn came last.
She had expected the walk to feel long. It didn’t. She knew this aisle. She had crossed it carrying parcels, upset children, a kettle leaking over its own box. Tonight she crossed it wearing something she had chosen for no purpose except liking it.
She stood on the mark.
“I bought this dress eighteen months ago,” she said.
The microphone made her voice seem farther away than she felt.
“The straps needed shortening. About half an inch. It was a small job. I’m quite good at small jobs.”
Winnie nodded firmly from the front row.
“But the dinner I bought it for didn’t happen, and afterward I kept finding reasons to leave it until another day. I put it in a box upstairs. For a while I even forgot where.”
She looked at the faces. Priya, holding the order. Hugh. Mrs. Morrow near the back, attentive and smiling.
“So this is the dress I nearly didn’t wear,” Iris said. “The straps took twenty minutes.”
A little laugh moved through the room.
She put the card down. It was no longer useful.
“After Hargreaves closes, I’ll be doing alterations on Mason Street. A much smaller room. Appointments rather than three floors of people shouting for me.”
Another laugh, louder.
“I don’t know everything it will become. But I know where my sewing machine will go. That’s a start.”
She thanked them and stepped off the mark before she could explain the feeling to death.
Applause followed her back. Not enormous. Not life-changing. Enough that she had to look down for a moment before she could face Winnie.
Daniel met her at the edge of the aisle.
“You did it,” he said.
“I said the words.”
“They were good words.”
She wanted to put her face against his chest. Instead she accepted the glass of water he offered and drank half of it in one go.
The rest of the evening was disorderly in the best possible way. People talked across chairs, compared old photographs, tried on current stock. Priya sold three dresses. Hugh found himself explaining the difference between two lamps to a woman who had come only to listen. Joan spoke with former staff, sometimes laughing, sometimes not.
Two people asked Iris for cards. One wanted a hem, one wanted a sleeve repair, neither particularly interested in her private transformation. She gave them the details and liked them for it.
At nine, the guests began to leave. Nobody lingered beyond the point of kindness. They carried photographs, garments, shopping bags. Mrs. Morrow stopped beside Iris and touched the green silk lightly at the sleeve.
“Lovely color.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m glad you wore it.”
“So am I.”
Iris watched her leave, grateful that neither had needed to mention Colin.
By ten, the chairs were stacked and the hired equipment secure. Staff went home tired and pleased. Joan stayed long enough to thank Iris privately, then took the framed photograph from the display.
“I think I’ll keep this one,” she said.
“Please do.”
Daniel locked the side door while Iris checked the office. When she came out, he stood in the cleared aisle, looking at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Come here.”
She went.
He put his arms around her. She leaned into him, allowing the long day to leave her shoulders all at once. For a while they stood without speaking, the store quiet around them.
Then he drew back enough to see her face.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
The words were soft and not quite steady. She saw the risk in his expression and loved him more for not disguising it.
“I know the feeling,” she said.
He laughed once, breathless, and kissed her. She held him, her hand at the back of his neck, and let the happiness arrive without first asking what might go wrong.
At home he stayed. They ate the last of the pizza from the freezer at the kitchen table because neither had remembered dinner. The tulips in the jug had opened, their yellow petals almost translucent beneath the light.
Iris looked at Daniel across the table. He looked tired, hungry and very dear to her.
“More?” she asked, holding up the last slice.
“Yes,” he said.
She gave him half.