Shall We Dance? By Maggie Alderson

Shall We Dance? By Maggie Alderson

Extract

18

Loulou

I didn't take Marc's hand when he held it out to me. I had that much self-control left, even though I couldn't help noticing how nice his nails were. I glanced down. Even his toenails were beauti­ful. Holy Mary Mother of God.

But standing up again felt good. Being back on my own two crazy towering shoes grounded me somehow and I led the way into the shop, as its proud proprietor, not some tragic peri-menopausal matron having one final hormonal surge in the company of an impossibly virile young man. Or at least I hoped it wasn't obvious.

'So, this is my shop . . .' I said, stepping back from him as far as I could without disappearing into a rail of clothes, and clinging on to Chard's bouquet like some kind of shield. 'Of course you've been before, but I was doing the display that night so you didn't see it at its best.'

He looked round appreciatively. Thinking I'd better keep busy, I grabbed the nearest dress and held it up.

'This is the kind of thing I'm known for,' I said. 'It's an early 1970s Pucci caftan. Beautiful fabric, in perfect condition and as wearable now as when it was made. I only put this out this morning, but it won't last until the end of the week in this weather. In fact, if I check my website it might even have sold overnight.'

I glanced at the price tag, as though I didn't already know how much it was.

'I'll get £800 for this little slip of silk jersey, can you believe it? But it's what people want and, as I said, it's in unusually good condi­tion. Probably never worn.'

He was doing a good job of looking interested.

'Where do you get something like that?' he asked.

I laughed. The classic question from someone who knew noth­ing about the vintage business.

'Now that is a state secret,' I said. 'I get my stuff from all over the world, which is a lot easier now I have discovered Skype. I have loyal scouts in New York, Paris, LA, all the key places. I've worked with some of them for thirty years.'

Those last two words seemed to hang in the air after I said them. A small detail of my business that reminded us both that my shop had been open longer than he'd been alive. For a moment our eyes locked and the tension I'd felt on the terrace filled the space between us again. The stark reminder of our age difference should have cooled things down, I thought, but it seemed to have the oppo­site effect. That was weird.

'Anyway, you've come to see the menswear,' I said, as briskly as I could muster, determined to get control of the situation again.

Marc was an essential ally for me in my campaign to get Theo leading a more normal life for a girl of her age, so I just had to get over this silly business - which I might have been imagining any­way - without being unkind to him. Or making a fool of myself.

'And I really need to put these in water, so come through to the back here,' I said, leading the way and realising, as I took the first step, that taking Marc into the smaller space of the back room was not actually the greatest idea. Especially as he seemed all too keen to follow me in there.

'This whole rail is menswear,' I said, trying to assume my pro­fessional lady boutique owner persona again, but when I glanced over my shoulder at him, Marc really did seem set on distracting me.

He was leaning against the wall, his arms folded, biceps popping out prettily, his mouth curled in a smile that should have had an X rating.

'So, what do you think would look good on me, Loulou?' he asked, faux-innocently.

What was I supposed to say? I wondered. Everything, but pref­erably nothing. Just take all your clothes off right now you gorgeous young stud. That's what I wanted to say. Or better still, let me take them off for you, nice and slowly . . .

But I didn't say that. Instead I mustered all my self-control, sending up a prayer to every shriveled up old nun who had ever taught me, to help me to be good. Hail Mary, full of grace, I said in my head, grabbing a white linen suit - 1970s Saint Laurent - off the rail and thrusting it at him.

'Here,' I said. 'The trousers might be too long, but they can always be shortened. Try it on anyway.'

Marc's smile just broadened, letting me know he wasn't taken in for a moment by my Are You Being Served? pantomime.

'Here?' he asked, raising one eyebrow.

'Follow me, Marc,' I said, shaking my head and smiling, in some kind of acknowledgement of what he was doing, which I hoped might defuse it a bit.

I thrust the suit into his arms, making sure my hands touched him nowhere more intimate than his elbows and that the flowers were in between us too. But even that was enough to send forks of electricity shooting up my arms and down to where they had no business going. Then the shop bell tinkled. A customer! A precious wonder­ful customer at the perfect moment, to stop me doing something I would deeply regret.

'In there,' I said firmly to Marc, pointing at the smaller changing room. 'I better go and see who's come in.'

And when I got into the main part of the shop, not one, but three young and attractive young women were standing there. The perfect antidote. Saved.

'Hello,' I said with sincere enthusiasm and they all grinned excit­edly back at me. 'Let me know if you need any help with anything, or just browse as much as you want. Try on anything you fancy. Feel free.'

They nodded and giggled; clearly a trip to my shop was a big deal for them. They would never know how pleased I was they were there.

'Actually,' I said. 'Would you like some iced tea? It's so hot out there and I've got some in the fridge . . .'

And it might keep you here a bit longer, I thought. They were clearly thrilled to be asked and I was delighted for a reason to go out to the kitchen where I could recover myself and finally do some­thing with Chard's beautiful flowers. Except, I didn't only do the flowers and get the tea, did I? No. I also checked my hair and re-did my lipstick in the mirror back there.

What are you doing, Elizabeth Mary Theresa Landers? I asked myself as I looked at my reflection. A well-preserved but definitely middle-aged face gazed back at me. Just making myself look nice for the girls, I tried to kid myself. Giving them the best possible Loulou Land experience, so they would keep coming back and would tell all their friends how lovely I was. Yeah, right. And as I spritzed some Mitsouko down my cleavage, I had to acknowledge that perhaps there was a little more to it than that.

I put my head in my hands and physically tried to shake some sense into it, then picked up the tray and headed back into the shop.

The tallest of the girls, a very slim brunette, was twirling in front of my big mirror in a floor-length backless 1930s evening dress in beautiful eau-de-nil silk. She had just the right kind of body for it, long and lean, with a completely flat stomach and practically no breasts. It looked great on her.

Meanwhile, her pretty blonde friend had taken off her trousers and was trying on a pair of gold 1950s beauty queen stilettos with her T-shirt barely covering her knickers. She had good legs. All round I was delighted with the scenario which would greet Marc when he eventually emerged. It would definitely stop him flirting with an old trout like me.

'How are you all doing?' I asked cheerily, feeling confident things would now be more normal.

They turned and smiled at me, but as I smiled back their expres­sions changed. The brunette's eyes opened wide and the blonde had gone bright red. I looked over my shoulder to see Marc standing in the doorway wearing the white linen suit - and nothing else.

'What do you think, Loulou?' he asked, stretching out his arms, so the front of the jacket opened wider, revealing a muscled chest and stomach with a line of dark hair heading south from his navel. 'Do you think the trousers are too long?'

The girls were now fully giggling, the blonde pulling down her T-shirt in a way guaranteed to attract attention to her legs, the bru­nette turning sideways to Marc so he could get the full effect of her slender figure - and perky nipples - in the dress. He waved cheerily at them.

'Looking great, girls,' he said. 'How do you like this suit on me?' 'You look amazing,' said the brunette, now recovered enough to pout. She turned her slim brown bare back to Marc and smouldered at him in the mirror. 'What do you think of this dress?'

'It looks great - and I love those shoes on you,' he said to the blonde, who promptly let go of the bottom of her T-shirt. 'Nice legs,' he added, as she was clearly expecting.

Far from diluting the sexual tension in my shop, the girls' arrival had just sent it through the roof. Marc's eyes were flashing with amusement as he turned his attention back to me.

'Really, Loulou,' he said. 'Is this the suit for me? Because I do actually really want a suit. I thought it would be fun to wear one to the Big Chill. Everyone goes really crazy with their clothes - men in dresses, that kind of thing - so I thought I'd like to look super­smooth. What do you reckon?'

Another reminder of that forthcoming event - and his presence at it - threw me into even more confusion. Every time I managed to forget about that damn festival something would bring it all back again. I could only take comfort from the fact that there would be thirty thousand people there apart from us, so I might be able to avoid him in the crowd.

But then I started to wonder whether Theo would be one of them now. Maybe she wouldn't come with us after all that had happened. I desperately hoped she would and realised that it gave me a deadline to sort things out with her. I worked it out in my head. Two weeks! That was all there was until that craziness kicked off. With all that swirling through my mind, I strained to snap it back to attention.

'It looks really great on you, Marc,' I said, because it did. 'It's actually a perfect fit. I don't think it needs any alterations, but try some others on anyway to be sure. Just go and help yourself, you know where they are. Now, let me pour the tea for these gorgeous young things.'

Emphasis on 'young'. Hoping I'd put him in his place for a bit, I busied around with the tea glasses and took the drinks to the girls who were now all in the big changing room together, clothes every­where, in a state of advanced hysteria.

'Who is he?' asked the blonde, as I passed the tea in to them.

'He's absolutely gorgeous.'

'He's a friend of my daughter's,' I said. 'His sister is her best friend, you know how it is . . .'

'Is he single?' asked the brunette, who was manoeuvring herself into a skintight red satin 1950s fishtail frock, which I couldn't help noticing did nothing for her flat chest.

I didn't answer immediately. I knew he was, but I couldn't bring myself to say it to this rather pushy girl.

'You better ask him,' I said and left them to it.

They scurried in and out a lot, giggling and shrieking in vari­ous stages of undress, but Marc didn't make another appearance. I thought I heard the curtain of his changing room swish a few times, but left him to it, keeping myself busy checking website activity on the laptop behind the counter.

He finally emerged at a moment when all three girls were back in the changing room. He put the white suit on the counter.

'Did you have fun in there?' I asked him.

'Yeah,' he said. 'It was great. I tried on loads of things, but I didn't want to come out and bother you when you had real customers.'

'Would you like this suit, Marc?' I asked, putting my hand on the jacket. 'As a present. I meant what I said at the party. I would love to give you something as a thank you for being so nice to Theo and if you wore that suit to the Big Chill and told everyone where you got it, it would be a great promotion for the shop.'

'I'd love the suit, Loulou,' he said. 'But I couldn't possibly let you give it to me. Either I buy it, or I don't take it.'

I was disappointed to be losing my potential advantage. If he'd taken the suit as a present it would have put him in a subservient position to me and we both knew it. It was irritating, but I couldn't help respecting him for understanding that.

'How about if I give you thirty per cent off?' I said. 'That's what I give Tattie. It's my official friends and family discount.'

He considered it for a moment, then nodded and I started fold­ing the suit up in tissue paper. Just as I was handing him the carrier bag, the girls came out of the changing room back in their own clothes.

'Oh, are you leaving too?' said the brunette, walking over and leaning on the counter next to Marc, very close to him. She put the eau de nil dress down and glanced briefly at me. 'I'm going to take that,' she said, then turned her attention fully back to Marc.

'We were wondering if you'd like to come and have a drink with us,' she said, with a toss of her hair. 'We thought we'd go round to The Engineer and then on to - who knows where?'

Brazen little tart, I thought, as I busied myself with her credit card and folding the dress. For a moment I was tempted just to stuff it into a carrier bag - a Tesco carrier bag - but business sense won out and I packed it into a box, the works. It was £300, which was a lot for a first-time customer, especially such a young one.

'Oh, that's really nice of you,' said Marc. 'But I've just started seeing someone and I'm not sure what she'd think if she knew I was going out carousing with three beautiful women.'

I was glad I was bent over, tying a bow on the box, at the moment he spoke, because I wasn't sure I could have hidden my surprise. He was seeing someone? Not that it was any of my busi­ness, but he'd told me at the party that he was single. That had happened quickly. I stood up and slid the girl's boxed-up dress into a carrier bag.

'Oh, that's a shame,' I heard one of the other girls saying in a simpering giggly voice I found particularly irritating. 'I mean for us - not for her. Is she someone special?'

'Very special,' said Marc and as I glanced at him, he held my gaze as he spoke again. 'Very special indeed.'

I was so freaked out, I dropped the carrier bag, which gave me a welcome reason to duck down behind the counter again and recover myself. What was he up to? Was he playing with me like a cat with a mouse, just for the fun of it, or was I imagining the whole thing? I really didn't know - and I couldn't decide which was worse - but either way, it was doing my head in.

Fortunately for me, just as the girls were leaving the shop - with a bit more last-minute simpering and pouting at Marc - another customer came in, a particularly demanding regular, who always expected a lot of personal attention from me.

While I was trying to look after her, the phone kept ringing and I was too genuinely busy to give him any more attention. So without me having to be rude, he got the message it was time to go. But not without one more parting shot.

'Thanks for the suit, Loulou,' he said, coming over to where I was kneeling on the floor, frantically trying to find a chunky gold 1970s pendant I had stored in the bottom drawer of an old draper's cupboard, which I knew would be the clinching piece to persuade the customer to buy the Pucci caftan. It would anchor it down on her voluminous breasts.

I was so preoccupied with finding the necklace before she got bored and went off the idea, I didn't notice what was going on and the next thing I knew, Marc had squatted down next to me.

I turned to look at him in surprise, and he put one finger gently under my chin and tilted it towards him, so I was looking up into those beautiful dark-rimmed eyes. In the tight skirt and particu­larly ridiculous platform shoes I was wearing, I couldn't move easily without falling over and I felt captive in his gaze. And it wasn't an unpleasant sensation, which made it worse.

But just as I was about to say something to break the dangerous spell, he leaned forwards and planted his lips firmly on mine, keep­ing them there just long enough for a fireball of lust to tear through my body.

I was so surprised, I felt quite dizzy and put my hand out to the edge of the drawer to steady myself, which was a good thing because it separated us before anything more disastrous could hap­pen. Then the customer started calling out to me from the changing room that she really wasn't sure about the caftan and the spell was mercifully broken.

'See you at the Big Chill,' he said, getting to his feet, the custom­ary mischievous expression back in his eyes. 'I'll be the one in the white suit.'

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