Chapter 13: Fittings in a Truck Yard

Hannah had not owned a good dress since Frank's funeral.

She told us so the next morning, in the truck yard, standing very straight beside the diesel pump.

"I'll wear the navy one," she said.

"The navy one has a gravy stain," the firefighter said.

"It's a small gravy stain."

"Ma, you promised a room full of cameras a letter," the surgeon said.

"You are not reading it in gravy."

Dean looked at the five of us, and at his mother, and at the yard full of drivers pretending not to listen.

Then he picked up the dispatch radio.

"Everybody who has a wife, a sister or a sewing machine," he said, "dispatch office, ten minutes."

Forty drivers came.

I have never seen it.

They filed into the old barn in work boots and hi-vis vests.

They carried garment bags, boxes of pins and one electric sewing machine in a milk crate.

A woman with grey braids and a tape measure around her neck stood on a loading pallet and pointed at Hannah.

"You, in the green. Arms up."

Hannah put her arms up and went pink to the ears.

"I haven't been measured since I was married."

"Then it's long overdue," said the woman.

The surgeon measured me himself, because he said he knew exactly where everything was.

The boxer held pins in his mouth and glared at anyone who looked at the hem.

The youngest had a laptop open on a spool of cable and was reading aloud a list of how many people the gala would seat.

"Two hundred and twelve," he said.

"Ninety on the sponsors' side, and every one of them is going to be looking at your shoes."

"Then I need good shoes," I said.

"Done," said the firefighter, and went out and came back with a box that said a very famous name on the lid.

I stared at it.

"It's your birthday present," he said.

"Late. We missed the party."

I sat down on a tire and held the shoes against my chest.

Hannah came across the barn in a half-pinned dress the color of a lake in October.

She stopped in front of me and held out her hand.

In her palm lay a small silver pin shaped like a crescent moon.

"Frank's mother wore this," she said.

"It's yours on Saturday."

She fastened it at my collarbone with fingers that were not quite steady.

For a minute nobody in that barn made a sound.

Then my phone buzzed with a text from Tiernan.

Come to the hotel. Wear nothing you mind losing.

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