The Shoestring Club (2 page)

‘I was massaging my temples. I have a headache.’

She scowls at me. ‘Shouldn’t have drunk so much last night then, should you?’

‘I forgot I was working today, OK?’

‘You always forget, Jules, that’s your problem. You should keep a diary. What happened to that Filofax I gave you last Christmas? The pink leather one.’

I rack my brains and stare at her blankly. I have no idea. To be honest, I was a bit of a mess on Christmas Day. Ed and I had done our usual Christmas Eve thing – Finnegan’s pub in Dalkey to catch up with all our ex-pat friends who were home for Christmas. It was a tradition.

We’d officially broken up in early December, just after I’d returned to Dublin after six months working and travelling in New Zealand, but Ed and I were always breaking up and making up, so I figured that after a bit of Christmas cheer everything would be back to normal.

Over the past five years I’d lived in Paris, Rome, Budapest, Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland, travelling until I ran out of money, then working in bars and shops until I got homesick for Ireland and, pining for Ed, flew back to Dublin. It had become a bit of a pattern – I spent spring working at whatever temporary jobs I could find at home, saving and organizing myself to go away; summer in another country; and autumn, and most especially Christmas, back home again. And then I’d get bored of Ireland and its parochialism, my itchy feet would kick in and the cycle would start all over again.

But last Christmas Eve, something had changed. I’d spent all night willing Ed to make a move, hoping that he’d had time to come to his senses, every molecule of my being begging him to want me again. But when our usual snog under the mistletoe morphed into an awkward hug and cheek kiss, followed by a firm goodbye and I staggered home from the pub alone, I slowly came to the crushing realization that the clock was not going to turn back in a magical
Dr Who
manner, and that Ed Powers no longer loved me.

‘I’m sure it’s around somewhere,’ I mumble. I think I gave it to my niece, Iris, and God knows what she’s done with it.

Thankfully Pandora lets it go. ‘Guess where I’ve just been?’ she asks, her voice uncharacteristically upbeat.

I study her face with interest. Yep, she’s actually smiling. Pandora is the biggest grump in the universe and it takes a lot to animate her, especially on a Sunday afternoon. She hates opening Shoestring on Sundays, but with all the competition from Dundrum Shopping Centre, which is pretty much open 24/7, she feels she has to. The shop’s not exactly setting the fashion world on fire, and even with Pandora working flat-out, and Bird, our sprightley but slightly barking seventy-nine-year-old granny, helping out when she can, the takings are pretty abysmal at the moment.

The only thing that’s keeping the place open is the café, run by two Slovakian sisters, Klaudia and Lenka Ková, and their mum, Draza – who doesn’t have a word of English but is an amazing cook. Klaudia’s built like a navvy and works incredibly hard. Even Bird’s a bit frightened of Klaudia, and that’s saying a lot. Lenka’s completely different: elfin, with white-blonde hair to her bum, and an easy, laid-back manner. She helps out on the shop floor when the café’s quiet.

Pandora’s still standing in front of me, clearly expecting an actual answer. I look at her in surprise. Largely, she pretty much ignores me at work due to:

a.) my general lack of interest in most of the clothes she peddles. I just don’t understand why so many women want to look like identikit Barbies. The rails are bulging with nondescript, overpriced ‘designer’ jeans and boring black tops. Unlike Pandora, I have no real interest in what’s fashionable or ‘in’; for me true style has nothing to do with how much money you’ve dropped on the latest it bag, and all to do with imagination and flair. Which is why many of Shoestring’s customers, who can’t see past the Gucci double Gs, drive me to distraction.

And b.) the fact that I spend most of my time checking out my favourite fashion and art blogs on the shop’s computer, or flicking through back editions of Paris and Italian
Vogue, Pop, Wallpaper
and
i-D
under the desk. I buy them for next to nothing at a secondhand bookshop in Sandycove and I adore their sumptuous fashion spreads, even if I can’t understand a word of some of them. Good design makes me happy – clothes, jewellery, furniture, anything really. Bad design simply irritates me.

I’m Pandora’s occasional Sunday girl, employed purely to allow her to visit some of her well-heeled clients – high-powered career women who work all week, and play golf or sail yachts all day Saturday, and are only available to flog their cast-offs to Pandora on certain Sundays.

I told her I’d only work for the pittance she offered if I could drink coffee at the till and didn’t have to tidy the rails or clear out the changing rooms, which I hate since I always end up walking in on someone in their knickers and bra. The worst offenders are the thong women who try and engage me in conversation whilst bending over to hand me shoes or a top they’ve thrown on the floor – Pandora’s pet hate – she reckons most people must have maids at home to pick up for them. Not normal behaviour, people! I do not want to see anyone’s bum crack on a Sunday, or any other day for that matter, thanks very much.

A lot of our sell-in clients – people who bring us their designer clothes to flog on their behalf – are D4s, named after the postcode of a posh area of Dublin. They’re wives of barristers, CEOs, accountants. The developers’ wives tend to keep a low profile these days and most have sold their Dublin trophy houses and have slunk back into their more modest country piles. They’re all desperately trying to hide their well-honed retail habit from their hubbies. Compared to the rest of the country, they’re well off but still seem to get a kick out of haggling with Pandora to try and increase their cut of the sale, even though the shop’s terms are set in stone. We offer our sell-ins 50 per cent net. So if we sell a dress for a hundred euro, they get fifty. It’s all pretty simple, but the D4s aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer and it takes them a while to take it all in. Plus some of them have no idea how much they paid for particular items and claim their simple Issa wrap dress cost thousands, when Pandora knows every item Issa have ever produced, in every season, including each piece’s list price. Her mind is like an elaborate fashion spreadsheet. For a country in the middle of a recession, there are a lot of expensive frocks out there, all just waiting for Pandora to whisk them away after their solo charity lunch outing, so they don’t linger incriminatingly in already bulging wardrobes.

‘Go on, guess,’ Pandora says again.

‘Not Sissy Arbuckle’s place?’ I ask. Pandora’s been itching to visit her house for weeks on account of our bet. Sissy is one of RTÉ’s
Red Carpet
girls, a telly programme dedicated to the lives of the rich and famous, but for all the glossy front Pandora is convinced she’s living way above her means, her expensive designer frock fetish funded largely by her dentist boyfriend. Nice guy called Ian, small, with strangely wonky teeth for a dentist, who drops clothes into the shop for her sometimes, but I’m still not convinced. Surely telly presenters get paid a fortune? Pandora is so confident that she’s right she has ten euro on Chez Arbuckle being a semi-d in a pretty average estate; I’m banking on it being Bling Castle, mock Georgian, with lots of white pillars and sweeping silk curtains.

Pandora shakes her head. ‘Nope. Try again.’

I’m already tiring of this game but I humour her. Otherwise she might ask me to take the out-of-date stock off the rails and mark it down – yikes! We only keep items for three weeks, after that the pieces get reduced by 25 per cent. If they still don’t sell, we give customers three weeks to collect their items or they get donated to charity. You’d be amazed how lazy some people are – our local Oxfam loves us! Or even worse, Pandora might make me iron fresh stock. A lot of the clothes come in clean but wrinkled and we charge the clients a ‘pressing’ fee. We also have a deal with the local dry cleaners and also Mrs Snips, the local repair and alteration shop, run by a friend of Klaudia and Lenka’s. Both give Shoestring a small commission for any work we pass on to them. Pandora has it all sorted, she’s like a mini Mafia don.

The original shop, Schuster’s Department Store, was set up and run by my grandpa, Derek Schuster. When he died – years ago, I never knew him – Bird took over. During the boom – the ‘Celtic Tiger’ – she leased it out to a beautician as there wasn’t much call for a Ma and Pa shop that sold thermal underwear, net curtains and knitting wool, but last year the beautician’s went bust and Bird couldn’t find another tenant. The shop was just sitting there, empty, so after a few months, with Bird’s encouragement, Pandora packed in her job at Brown Thomas’s, where she’d been running the designer rooms, and set up Shoestring, a designer swap shop. Perfect for the current recessionary times, she said. She cannily took her Brown Thomas address book with her and now many of our clients are her old BT customers. She’s smart that way, Pandora. Has a proper degree in fashion and everything. Unlike me, the college dropout.

I shrug. ‘I don’t know, Jillian Soodman?’ Another of our top clients, a Dalkey lawyer with a passion for snappy Italian suits.

‘Wrong again.’ She leans in towards me conspiratorially. ‘Kathleen Ireland.’

I scrunch up my nose. ‘Hang on why does that name sound familiar?’

Pandora tut-tuts. ‘Don’t you read the papers?’

‘Yeah, the cinema reviews and fashion pages, not the boring stuff.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘She’s the American Ambassador, Jules. Had a fashion show in her residence last month showcasing up-and-coming Irish and American designers, followed by a fashion ball to rival anything in London or New York. It was in all the papers. And as for her own dress. Ooh, la, la. She looked stunning, like Princess Grace.’ Pandora sighs dreamily. She’s clothes obsessed, always has been. When she was tiny she used to shuffle around the house in Mum’s high heels. There’s a photo of her standing on a kitchen chair wearing Mum’s wedding dress at the age of six, the fitted silk bodice swimming on her tiny frame, head flung back proudly like a Russian ballet dancer.

When Mum died, she left Pandora most of her wardrobe, apart from two things I’d always loved – her fake leopard-skin box jacket, and her favourite ‘coat’, a pink tweed 70s cape with a hood attached that I used to use as a tepee when I was little, buttoning it up and sitting inside it like a wee squaw.

I wore the leopard-skin jacket so much the lining ripped around the armpits and the ends of the sleeves frayed. The year before last, Pandora dropped it into Mrs Snips and they did a stellar job, making the sleeves three-quarter length and carefully sewing in new scarlet lining. Of course, then I went and ripped the side seam climbing over a fence at a music festival and bundled it into the back of my wardrobe before Pandora had the chance to have a go at me. It’s been sitting there ever since.

The cape is also hidden at the back of the wardrobe in a thick plastic bag. Sometimes I take it out, press it against my face and breathe in Mum’s smell – warm and musky. I close my eyes and imagine she’s holding me tight against her chest. Then I fold it up, put it back in the bag and seal it up carefully again with thick elastic bands. I try not to take it out too often these days. After fifteen years Mum’s scent is faint, so slight I wonder if I’m imagining it, as if there’s some part of my brain that now associates pink tweed with musk. Maybe the mere sight of the cape triggers a scent memory. Tears and musk, for ever mingled.

‘And guess what’s in here,’ she says tantalizingly, stroking the dress carrier.

‘Are you actually going to unzip that thing, Pandora?’ I ask. ‘I could really use a coffee break.’

‘You poor doll. Run off your feet all morning from the look of things.’ Pandora sweeps her hand around the completely empty shop. ‘Eager bargain hunters throwing themselves at you, begging to be shown our secret stashes of Chanel and Versace. Mayhem was it?’

I’m not in the mood. ‘Just get on with it. Show me the dress and then let me grab some caffeine. And please tell me it’s not another Coast number. We’re up to our eyes in safe mother-of-the-bride-dresses already.’

‘It’s not Coast, I can promise you that. And is it caffeine you need, or a handful of painkillers?’ Pandora raises one carefully filled-in eyebrow. She over-plucked during her teens and is still suffering. ‘You shouldn’t drink so much, Jules, it can’t be good for you. And if it puts you in such a bad mood the next day I really do think—’

‘Jesus, sis, stop with the lecture. I don’t need this, not today. In fact, you know something? You can stuff your stupid job. I’m not that broke.’ Total lie, I really am Stony Broke McBroke. I yank open the drawer under the computer, pull out my bag and sling it over my shoulder huffily. ‘I’m going home.’

Pandora is strangely unmoved by my outburst. ‘Calm down, Jules, don’t be so tetchy. I’ll show you the dress and then you can take an extra long break, say twenty minutes, OK?’

Then she quickly zips open the carrier and pulls out the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a lush dark pink, with layers of silk chiffon floating towards the floor.

‘Holy moly,’ I murmur, immediately transfixed. I chuck my bag back in the drawer and put my hand out to touch the delicate material. ‘You’re right, it’s extraordinary. Almost too perfect. It needs . . . something.’

I stare at the dress for a second, then tilt my head, thinking. ‘You know those Joe Faircrux pieces?’ I say. ‘They’d look amazing with it. Wait there.’

I fetch a jewelled belt and necklace from one of the glass covered display tables and lay them down carefully on the cash desk. Both have large, irregularly cut semi-precious stones in muted shades of pink, red and purple, set in gold plate. They’re real statement pieces, and so OTT we’ve had trouble shifting them, even to Sissy who loves a bit of bling.