of plastic webbing, and while Margot napped, or watched television, I would carefully remove all the remaining buttons on each item and sew on a new set, holding them up afterwards for her approval.
‘You sew quite nicely,’ she remarked, peering at my stitches through her spectacles, as we sat in front of Wheel of Fortune. ‘I thought you’d be as dreadful at it as you are at everything else.’
‘At school needlework was pretty much the only thing I was any good at.’ I smoothed out the creases on my lap, and prepared to refold a jacket.
‘I was just the same,’ she said. ‘By thirteen, I was making all my own clothes. My mother showed me how to cut a pattern and that was it. I was away. I became obsessed with fashion.’
‘What was it you did, Margot?’ I put down my stitching.
‘I was fashion editor of the Ladies’ Look. It doesn’t exist now – never made it into the nineties. But we were around for thirty years or more, and I was fashion editor for most of that.’
‘Is that the magazine in the frames? The ones on the wall?’
‘Yes, those were my favourite covers. I was rather sentimental and kept a few.’ Her face softened briefly, and she tilted her head, casting me a confiding look. ‘It was quite the job back then, you know. The magazine company wasn’t terribly keen on having women in senior roles but there was the most dreadful man in charge of the fashion pages and my editor – a wonderful man, Mr Aldridge – argued that having an old fuddy-duddy, who still wore suspenders to hold up his socks, dictating what fashion meant simply wouldn’t work with the younger girls. He thought I had an eye for it, promoted me, and that was that.’
‘So that’s why you have so many beautiful clothes.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t marry rich.’
‘Did you marry at all?’
She looked down and picked at something on her knee. ‘Goodness, you do ask a lot of questions. Yes, I did. A lovely man. Terrence. He worked in publishing. But he died in 1962, three years after we married, and that was it for me.’
‘You never wanted children?’
‘I had a son, dear, but not with my husband. Is that what you wanted to know?’
I flushed. ‘No. I mean, not like that. I – gosh – having children is – I mean I wouldn’t presume to –’
‘Stop flapping, Louisa. I fell in love with someone unsuitable when I was grieving my husband and I became pregnant. I had the baby but it caused a bit of a stir, and in the end it was considered better for everyone if my parents brought him up in Westchester.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Still in Westchester. As far as I know.’
I blinked. ‘You don’t see him?’
‘Oh, I did. I saw him every weekend and vacation for the whole of his childhood. But once he reached adolescence he grew rather angry with me for not being the kind of mother he thought I should be. I had to make a choice, you see. In those days it wasn’t common to work if you married or had children. And I chose work. I honestly felt I would die without it. And Frank – my boss – supported me.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately my son has never really forgiven me.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes. So am I. But what’s done is done and there’s no point dwelling.’ She began to cough so I poured her a glass of water and handed it to her. She motioned towards a bottle of pills that she kept on the sideboard and I waited while she swallowed one. She settled herself again, like a hen that had ruffled her feathers.
‘What is his name?’ I asked, when she had recovered.
‘More questions … Frank Junior.’
‘So his father was –’
‘– my editor at the magazine, yes. Frank Aldridge. He was significantly older than I was and married, and I’m afraid that was my son’s other great resentment. It was rather hard for him at school. People were different about these things, then.’
‘When did you last see him? Your son, I mean.’
‘That would be … 1987. The year he married. I found out about it after the event and wrote him a letter telling him how hurt I was that he hadn’t included me, and he told me in no uncertain terms that I had long since relinquished any right to be included in anything to do with his life.’
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