Chapter 8: The Back Room

Hazel went home at nine.

She made me promise three times to lock the front door.

She also made me promise to call her if anyone so much as sneezed outside.

I didn't go home.

I stayed in the back room with the lamp on the cutting table and the radio turned low.

I kept sewing the green silk.

The wine stain had come out of the bodice after two washes and a lot of cold water.

But the lining had a rust-colored ghost on the left side that wouldn't leave.

So I unpicked the lining.

I cut a new panel from the scrap of the same silk, the one thing in the shop I had kept for myself.

I like the work.

I like the hush of it, and the steady pull of thread through the seam.

At half past eleven the front door buzzed.

I didn't get up.

I heard the bolt scrape, then a man's shoes on the old floorboards.

Then he was standing in the doorway of the back room.

Silvio Ranieri had changed out of the grey suit.

He wore a black sweater with the sleeves pushed to the elbow.

He looked at the lamp, the silk over my knees, and the pins in my hair.

"You're still open," he said.

"I'm never open. I just don't know how to leave."

"Hazel said you'd be here."

"Hazel says a lot of things."

He leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms.

He didn't come in.

"I wanted to see if you're all right," he said.

"I'm sewing a bodice."

"That isn't what I asked."

I set the needle down and pressed my palms flat on the silk.