About the Author

Annie Darling lives in London in a tiny flat, which is bursting at the seams with teetering piles of books. Her three greatest passions in life are romance novels, vintage fashion and Mr Mackenzie, her British Shorthair cat.

Also by Annie Darling

The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts

Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews

The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill

ANNIE DARLING

A Change of Heart
at
The Vintage Dress Shop

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Hodder & Stoughton Limited

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Annie Darling 2024

The right of Annie Darling to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover illustration © Joanna Kerr 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ebook ISBN 978 1 399 71535 5

Paperback ISBN 978 1 399 71533 1

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

Dedicated to every woman who knows the transformative power of a really good frock.

‘Life is a party. Dress like it.’

Audrey Hepburn

PART ONE

Chapter One

After an unrelenting winter and a very wet spring, it was now June and most definitely summer.

‘Phew! What a scorcher!’ screamed the newspaper headlines, accompanied by pictures of bikini-clad young women frolicking in the waves on beaches from Skegness to Southend.

It was a world away from Cressida Collins’s workroom high up in the eaves of The Vintage Dress Shop in London’s Primrose Hill.

It was a very well-appointed workroom. One wall was taken up with floor-to-ceiling shelves containing a rainbow of spools of coloured threads. Glass jars and boxes of buttons and beads in every hue and every size. Zips, findings, trims, feathers; not to mention bolts of fabric, even though Cress didn’t make dresses, she just repaired them. It never hurt to have a few metres of muslin or silk voile – in various shades, from alabaster white to a deep, dense oyster – on hand for when she was fitting or altering wedding dresses.

At the bottom of the shelves was a small library of reference books. Cress thought of them as her style bibles – they included titles from The Thirties in Vogue and The Golden Age of Couture to biographies of all the great British fashion designers: Alexander McQueen, Hardy Amies, Zandra Rhodes.

Along the other wall was the workbench where Cress’s sewing machine and overlocker lived. There was a pinboard full of tear-sheets and inspiration from magazines, rough sketches of dresses that had been or were going to be altered, and Post-it notes. A hundred or more Post-it notes, all covered in Cress’s handwriting, which was illegible to everyone but her, even though the workroom was testament to her organisational skills. Cress was a firm believer that there was a place for everything, and everything should be in that place.

She currently sat further along the bench on a high stool, though she’d much rather be sitting in the plush and very comfortable blue velvet armchair where she did most of her hand-sewing. But the armchair was directly under one of two skylights, through which shone the sun’s unrelenting glare. No wonder then that the workroom felt hotter than the surface of Venus, even with two fans going full blast. It meant that Cress had to take regular breaks because her hands would get sweaty – and one didn’t sweat on vintage.

She was doing some fiddly alterations on a tiny and fragile 1950s coral, shot-silk party dress with a 22-inch waist. Alas its new owner, a seventeen-year-old girl who was going to wear the dress to her prom, had a 24-inch waist.

Cress straightened up, with a little groan, from where she’d been bent over carefully unpicking a seam. Over the rattle of the fans, she could hear raised voices. Was her need for a cold drink greater than her need to avoid conflict?

She returned to the unpicking but now all she could think about was an ice-cold Diet Coke from the office fridge downstairs. So cold that beads of condensation would trickle down the can as Cress clasped it in her sweaty hand because, despite the fans, her hands were horribly . . . moist.

With another groan she stood up. Her dress was stuck uncomfortably to the back of her thighs. She pulled herself free of the damp fabric, then ventured into the fitting room to see what she looked like in the full-length mirror. As she had suspected, she looked as hot as she felt. Her dark curly hair was so frizzy that it was practically triangular and though she’d tanned to a pleasing shade of caramel these last few weeks, her face was red and sweaty. She tugged at her sleeveless pale blue smock, which she’d made herself, and which was still clinging damply to her. Cress peered closer at the glass, ran the tip of her finger over the arch of her eyebrows (even her eyebrows were moist) and poked a tongue out at her own reflection.

She’d much rather look at the shop’s most expensive, high-end dresses hanging in the small room next door. Usually the sight of the rails of elegant gowns, by designers who were likes gods to Cress, never failed to lift her spirits, even on days when she felt like a hot sweaty mess.

Cress stepped out into the main salon, its walls lined with wedding dresses – from the palest white through to ivory, cream, champagne, oyster, silver and gold. There was even one black wedding dress, a confection of tulle and silk taffeta, though so far all their brides had shunned it. ‘Married in black, you’ll wish you were back,’ as the mothers of these brides inevitably said.

At one end of the salon, there was a circular raised platform surrounded by mirrors on three sides so that anyone trying on a frock could see how it looked from every angle. There were three cream and gold chintz sofas positioned so that any accompanying entourage had a good view too, and on a side table was a cream and gold decorative box, which was always well stocked with tissues. A lot of tears, both happy and sad, were shed in front of those mirrors.

In the middle of the salon – in pride of place, really – was the shop dog, Coco Chanel, a black French bulldog with an attitude that would make even her famous namesake give pause for thought. She was lying on her back, stumpy legs spread as a fan sent cooling wafts over her lady bits.

‘You have no dignity, CC,’ Cress muttered, though actually she’d quite like to lie naked on the floor with a fan trained on her undercarriage. She really wasn’t a summer person. Cress much preferred autumn or winter, because she liked to be able to wear a cardigan most days. Right now, even the thought of wearing a cardigan made her feel as if she was being boiled alive.

She paused at the top of the spiral staircase that led down to the main shop floor, where she could hear Sophy, her beloved sister-friend, and Phoebe, her slightly less beloved boss friend, having words, as they were sadly wont to do. Very loud words.

‘I’m just saying that when I was in Australia, we offered a rental service at Clive’s Closet,’ Sophy was saying as Cress brushed past her with a weak smile.

‘How I wish you’d stayed in Australia at Clive’s bloody Closet,’ Phoebe hissed back.

To be fair, ever since Sophy, Cress’s stepsister, had returned to The Vintage Dress Shop, after a year and a bit in Australia visiting family and working in a Sydney thrift store, she’d become quite one-note about just how differently they’d done things at Clive’s Closet.

And to be fair to Phoebe, if Cress wasn’t a summer person then Phoebe wasn’t a summer person on steroids. She was always impeccably turned out in a chic black dress, seamed stockings and high heels, a full face of make-up including winged liquid eyeliner and deep red lipstick, and a glossy, poker straight black bob with thick fringe. It was a chic, elegant and also quite an intimidating look. But it also wasn’t a look that held up well when the temperature was in the mid-30s. Phoebe’s fringe kept separating and her eyeliner kept smudging. So, no wonder she wasn’t in the best of tempers.

‘Cress, don’t you think it’s a good idea to rent out the dresses as well as sell them?’ Sophy called after her, but Cress pretended that she hadn’t heard as she took a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge in the little sliver of a kitchen off the back office.

She quickly stepped through the back door onto the tiny patio, which overlooked the Regent’s Canal. On a summer’s day, it was picture-perfect. The sun glinted off the water as gaily coloured canal boats chugged past, framed by the rich, green leaves of the trees that lined the path. Though they were a little wilted, a little less green than they had been, and Cress missed the cooling breeze that often carried off the water. Today was devoid of any breeze, cooling or otherwise.

She held the cold can to her heated face and tugged at the thin cotton of her smock dress, which was still sticking to her.

There was a sound behind her and she looked round to see Sophy stepping through the back door.

‘Phoebe is so annoying!’

Cress held her hand up in protest. ‘I can’t, Soph,’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t take another speech about renting out the dresses . . .’

Sophy paused from opening her own can of Diet Coke. ‘But at Clive’s Closet we—’

‘I’m going to hurl myself into the canal before you can finish that sentence,’ Cress said, punctuating her words with a delicate burp from gulping her fizzy pop too fast.

‘I don’t mean to be annoying.’ Sophy sat down on one of the wrought-iron chairs they kept outside, wincing slightly as the backs of her thighs made contact with hot metal. ‘It’s just frustrating that Phoebe is so closed-minded. It’s like she doesn’t even want to grow the business.’

Cress loved working at The Vintage Dress Shop, especially as her previous place of employment had been at the very obscure Museum of Religious Relics in Chelsea, where she’d worked after graduating from fashion college. She’d spent the next nine poorly paid years repairing ecclesiastical gowns and soft textiles until Sophy had wangled her a job here. Cress was very grateful that she got to handle beautiful dresses all day instead of cardinals’ robes, bishops’ cloaks and a never-ending array of very stained hassocks.

For the last fifteen months, she worked with the dreamiest of fabrics: whisper-soft georgette and chiffon, the fragile paper-thin slipperiness of old silk and satin. Cress especially loved transforming the most stressed woman into the best version of herself with the help of a few strategic darts and tucks, the taking down of hems and the taking in of seams. There was nothing better than helping women onto the dais and watching them take that first nervous glance in the mirror. Then the slow realisation dawning that they were wearing a dress that accentuated everything they loved about themselves. Even the bits of them that they hadn’t thought they did love. A slow smile would blossom, even if the woman was tired and on third-day hair, and she became beautiful because she finally understood that she was beautiful.

One could never underestimate the power of a good dress. A good dress and Cress’s skilled fingers. So when Sophy or Freddy, who looked after the really boring business side of things, started banging on about additional revenue streams and growing their online receipts, Cress tuned out.

‘I need to carve out my own niche,’ Sophy was saying now. ‘Really make my mark, don’t you think?’

‘I thought you were only here until you found something else?’ That was what Sophy had claimed when she returned from Australia a couple of months ago, and it was the only reason that Phoebe had unwillingly given her her old job back. Well, that and the fact that Sophy’s dad, Johnno, owned the business. But he’d gone back to Australia with Sophy and, though he’d lived in London for over thirty years, he was now happily ensconced on the family sheep station and had no immediate plans to come back.

‘Well, let’s just see how things pan out. While I am here, I want to be productive, rather than just filling up space. It might even turn out that renting is so successful that . . .’ Sophy paused and looked around as if she suspected Phoebe of having the patio bugged. ‘Well, it might turn out to be a business in its own right. That would show her!’

‘Please, Soph. I don’t want to hear about your plans for vintage dress world domination. I mean, yay you, but it’s probably best that I don’t know,’ Cress tried to explain in a way that wouldn’t cause Sophy to take offence.

Sophy just grinned. ‘So, Phoebe can’t force the details out of you. I mean, you’ve got all sorts of torture devices upstairs. Pins, pinking shears, that overlocking machine.’

‘Phoebe would never torture me. I’m her favourite,’ Cress pointed out, though really Coco Chanel was Phoebe’s favourite and all Phoebe had to do, all anyone had to do, was fix Cress with a stern glare and she’d tell them anything they wanted to know, even her pin number. ‘Australia has changed you.’

‘That was why I went away. Because I was so fed up with where I was, who I was . . .’ Sophy tailed off. ‘I needed to change. Before I went to Australia, I’d been stuck in the same boring rut for the last ten years.’

It was true that Sophy had come back from the Antipodes with an entrepreneurial spirit that she’d never had before. She even looked different. She still had the same silky-smooth, fiery red hair that Cress has always envied because she herself had a mop of dark, unruly curls that got larger as the weather got hotter. Sophy had pale skin to go with the red hair, but she’d come back from Oz with an actual suntan. ‘It got hot and even with sunblock on all my freckles kind of joined up,’ she’d said by way of an explanation. ‘Turns out I’m a redhead who tans.’

With the suntan and the entrepreneurial spirit had come a new confidence that probably came from bushwalking and sheep-shearing and being treated like some kind of oracle of vintage fashion at Clive’s Closet. The confidence showed in how Sophy carried herself, shoulders back, face tipped up to meet the world head on. She’d even changed her wardrobe, which had previously consisted of many shapeless dresses in a muted colour palette. She’d had to be coaxed into a vintage dress when she’d first come to work at The Vintage Dress Shop but now, right at this minute, she was wearing a vintage playsuit in a cool, crisp blue-and-green floral print on white lawn cotton, with her legs and shoulders bare. The playsuit looked fantastic on her.

It was very disconcerting. Cress knew that she herself was one of life’s plodders. That was OK. The world needed plodders just as much as it needed go-getters and those annoying people who swore that they got by on four hours’ sleep a night, which left them more time to attain their goals.

But it had felt more acceptable to be a plodder when your best friend and stepsister was sort of a plodder too. Now, Sophy was definitely more of a go-getter. Before Sophy had gone to Australia, she’d freed herself from the shackles of the high-street fashion chain where she’d worked for years, and a stagnant long-term relationship. Then she had reconnected with her absent father, Johnno, taken a job at The Vintage Dress Shop and fallen in love with Charles, who dealt in semi-precious gemstones and sourced some of The Vintage Dress Shop’s more high-end frocks. Cress had even wondered if Sophy would ever make it to Australia, because she couldn’t seem to tear herself away from Charles, but she had, and now that she was back, she still hadn’t returned to her formerly ploddy ways.

She’d moved into a cool houseshare in King’s Cross with Anita, who also toiled away at The Vintage Dress Shop, and generally Soph was having lots of adventures. Spontan-eous adventures. The other weekend she’d gone to Paris, just like that. She’d already had Saturday booked off work, and on Friday lunchtime she’d noticed there was a sale on Eurostar seats. By ten o’clock that night, she and Charles were in Paris and staying at his friends’ apartment in Le Marais. Charles was the kind of man who had friends in exotic locations.

So now Cress was plodding along on her own. Still living at home with her parents. Still dating Colin, her school sweetheart. Still saving up for a deposit on their own place. But as Cress trudged back up the stairs she remembered that, in the last eighteen months, she had changed jobs, which was a huge thing. Major.

Plus, Cress had a successful side hustle. She scoured charity shops, bargain bins and eBay listings for damaged vintage dresses, then lovingly restored them to something of their former glory. In some cases, all she had to do was insert a new zip or replace some buttons. Then she sold them in her Etsy shop, along with her hand-embroidered tote bags.

Cress had stuff going on. She lived a fully rounded life. But for what was left of the day she felt restless and irritable, though she couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was all that seam-unpicking. Maybe it was too much Diet Coke.

It was just as well that she was seeing Colin tonight. That was sure to improve her spirits.

Chapter Two

When you’ve been in a relationship with someone for fifteen years, it often felt like you knew everything about that person. That there were no surprises left, nothing to shock you. Which was just how Cress liked it.

She and Colin might have been dating since they were sixteen, but they weren’t joined at the hip. They both had their own passions and interests. While Cress lived for unearthing a pristine-condition 1950s Marks & Spencer dress or a circa 1960s Vogue from an unpromising selection of clothes and magazines in a charity shop, Colin had a similar enthusiasm for music.

In fact, his collection of vinyl records was so vast that it dominated three-quarters of his bedroom and had even colonised his parents’ garage, which had been weather-proofed before the reinforced shelving had been assembled. When he wasn’t cataloguing his vinyl, Colin was at record fairs, or pub pop quizzes, or talking to his fellow vinyl lovers on internet forums.

They had such different interests, but, when Cress and Colin came together, it just made sense. They had a shared history that was so long, so deep, that they knew everything about each other. Colin had loved Cress and Cress had loved Colin through bad haircuts, exam revision, job woes and a week in the Lake District when it had rained solidly for the entire time they were holed up in a self-catering cottage with a leaky roof. There had also been so many good times; celebrating everything from graduations to first jobs and birthdays in their favourite restaurant, a little Italian in East Finchley. They were also adept at combining their individual passions into mutual pastimes – whether it was a film that combined good music and good fashion like Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis or the David Bowie retrospective at the V&A museum. Last year, Cress had even persuaded Colin to go to the ABBA hologram show. He’d totally cried to ‘Chiquitita’ and then sworn her to secrecy.

But mostly they did what they were doing on this Thursday evening. Hanging out.

As Cress unlatched the gate and walked up the garden path of a modest three-bedroom semi-detached house just round the corner from the almost identical house that she called home, she put a hand to her tummy to see if it was fluttering.

Sophy had remarked that whenever she saw Charles – and she saw Charles a lot – she always got a ‘fluttery feeling’ in her stomach. Cress didn’t. Her stomach was gurgling a bit but that could have been the three cans of Diet Coke, plus it had been too hot to eat anything for lunch except a Magnum. After fifteen years, the flutters had gone. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was just how it was. The flutters gave way to familiarity. Which was why she had her own key.

‘It’s only me,’ she called out as she opened the front door.

‘I’m in the kitchen, love!’

Cress walked down the hall to the kitchen, where Mary, Colin’s mum, was red-faced as she peered into her air fryer.

‘Can I do anything to help?’ Cress asked, hooking her tote bag strap to the back of a chair. She looked past Mary to the large window by the sink, where she could see Roy, Colin’s dad, watering his flowerbeds.

‘No, you’re all right. Nothing fancy tonight. Managed to get some salmon on special offer and we’re having that with salad and new potatoes. Too hot for our usual Thursday-night sausage casserole, isn’t it.’

Mary and Roy were creatures of habit. Until the mercury in the thermometer was edging into the high 30s, apparently.

Cress took a glass down from the cupboard and filled it with water from the filter jug in the fridge, making sure that she then refilled the jug before putting it back. Those were the house rules.

‘Shall I take a glass out to Roy? He looks very hot.’

Mary glanced out at her husband. ‘It’s the hosepipe ban. We’re having to save our bathwater and then rig up a hosepipe from the bathroom window down to the garden.’ She lifted her eyes to the heavens. ‘Honestly, Cress, you should have heard him effing and jeffing.’

Cress had heard Roy effing and jeffing countless times. When she’d first started seeing Colin, she’d been terrified of his father. Her own dad, Mike, was one of the mildest men you could ever hope to meet, while her stepdad Aaron was easy-going and laid-back. But she’d soon (well, after a few years) realised that Roy was quick to anger and after shouting a bit it would all be forgiven.

Cress carried a glass of water out to Roy and listened again to the tale of the bathtub hosepipe. When she was finally able to make her excuses and head back to the house, Colin had arrived home from work.

‘Don’t come near me,’ he warned, holding his hands up as Cress approached for their usual hug. ‘The Northern line was like a sweatbox. I smell like ripe cheese. Time for a shower before dinner?’

‘Be quick,’ Mary said, as Cress took cutlery out of the drawer so she could lay the table. ‘We’re eating outside. Though I said to Roy that I’ll probably be eaten alive by midges. That bloody pond of his!’

Ten minutes later, they were seated around the durable green plastic patio table. Colin was freshly washed, his light brown hair wet and pulled back in its customary ponytail. He was wearing an ancient Queen t-shirt and combat shorts, his feet bare, although Roy said it was uncivilised to eat without shoes on. Roy didn’t see the wink that Colin gave Cress, otherwise they’d never have heard the end of it.

Luckily, Colin took after his mother rather than his father when it came to looks and temperament. The two of them could sulk like it was an Olympic sport.

Roy was florid, especially in the heatwave, and, though he didn’t have much hair left on his head, what hair he did have seemed to have migrated to his beetling eyebrows and ears. As a concession to the heat, he was wearing a short-sleeved beige shirt, but not even the heatwave could come between Roy and what he and Mary called slacks and Cress called chinos.

Although Mary was a tiny woman and Colin was just shy of six feet, he had inherited his mother’s finer features and her pale blue eyes. In fifteen years, Cress had never seen her in a pair of trousers, or whatever you wanted to call them. Her honey-blond hair was cut in a practical bob that wouldn’t dare to frizz, and she was never seen without mascara and her nails immaculately painted in a pinky-beige that she’d never deviated from in all the time that Cress had known her.

They were both so traditional and yet, especially when she’d first crushed on him in a crowded school dining hall, Colin was very much his own person. Most of the boys in their year were either wearing jeans slung so low that you could see their pants and pretending that the suburban streets of Finchley were actually the urban jungle, or were emos with long fringes poking out from their hoodies, carrying skateboards everywhere with them but never actually getting on them.

But Colin danced to his own beat. Well, not danced. Colin didn’t dance. But he kept himself to himself, ear-buds always in, head always down. But occasionally Cress would catch him looking at her. No one had ever looked at Cress like that before. As if she was someone worthy of being looked at, rather than a shy girl who didn’t like to stand out from the crowd.

It wasn’t until they’d found themselves forced to sit next to each other, on a school trip to see As You Like It (which they were studying for GCSE English) at the Globe The-atre, that they actually spoke to each other. They both liked the play, though it was very hard to learn anything in their particularly rowdy study set and they both hated Kai Rowlands, main culprit of the rowdiness. From such tiny acorns had grown a relationship that was fifteen years long and still going strong.

Now, the four of them talked about Roy and Mary’s upcoming holiday. They always went to St Ives in Cornwall, where Mary’s sister lived, the second week in July, before the schools broke up. And they wanted to know whether Cress and Colin might come with them, as they’d done in the past.

‘Maybe,’ Cress said. ‘Although the shop is so busy. We’re in the middle of wedding season. I might be able to come down for a weekend.’

‘But then we’d have to get the train,’ Colin pointed out. Neither of them drove. Not when they were saving up and it was so expensive to run a car or even drive in London. ‘Also, a mate of mine has got a spare ticket to Latitude Festival that weekend. Though I don’t think much of the line-up.’

Colin never thought much of the line-ups of any of the music festivals he attended with his friends.

‘Let’s see a bit nearer the time,’ Cress suggested.

‘It’s only three weeks away,’ Mary said. ‘It would be lovely to just have you, Cress, even if our Col can’t make it.’

‘It would,’ Cress agreed, even though she didn’t really enjoy holidays with Colin and his parents. Let alone just Mary and Roy. That would be very . . . trying.

If she went away with friends or with her own mum, the vibe was always a lot more relaxed. It was all right to chill in your pyjamas for half the day, or spend hours on the beach just glorying in the sun on your skin and the gentle lap of the waves. Cress was always mindful that she was saving up for the deposit on their own place, but when you were on holiday it was all right to treat yourself. To maybe have a spa day. Or buy a piece of jewellery that was mostly shells and would be consigned to the back of a drawer once she got home. That was the whole point of a holiday.

Mary and Roy had a very different idea of holidays and treats. They always had a jam-packed itinerary of local places of interest that actually weren’t interesting at all. The North Devon Maritime Museum had been a particular low point. Also, they wouldn’t even stop at a service station for lunch but packed their own sandwiches, which were to be eaten in the car park of the service station after you’d had a wee and stretched your legs.

They packed their own sandwiches for the beach too. For days out. For days in when it was too rainy to go out. Not even fancy holiday sandwiches, with several fillings on exotic bread. No, it was ham or cheese on sliced brown bread and either mustard or mayonnaise. You weren’t allowed to have both.

The rule was only relaxed on the final night, when they’d go out for fish and chips and Roy and Mary would exclaim over how expensive it was. ‘Ten pounds for a tiny piece of fish!’ ‘I can’t believe how stingy they were with the portions.’ It took all the pleasure out of haddock and chips and a side of mushy peas.

So, Cress just smiled vaguely and refused to be drawn in on more definite plans for Cornwall.

After they’d cleared away the dinner plates, they sat in the garden until the midges really did start to bite and Cress couldn’t take any more talk about the hosepipe ban or Roy’s ingrown toenail.

She and Colin retreated to his bedroom. Familiarly, comfortingly, it hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen years. Still the grey walls with the red woodwork, still the same red and grey duvet cover. Still the neatly folded pile of laundry on the bed, because Mary did everything for Colin. She’d even replenished his snack drawer and restocked the drinks in the mini-fridge under his desk. Although, unlike when he and Cress were sixteen, now they didn’t have to keep the door open or have Mary regularly intruding to make sure they weren’t getting up to anything. Which they never had been.

It had taken three months for them to work up to kissing with tongues. Two years before they lost their virginities, in a static caravan in Cromer that belonged to Cress’s step-gran.

They weren’t getting up to anything this evening either. Cress flopped on the bed, limbs akimbo as Colin switched on his fan. Then he sat in his gaming chair and caught up on his Reddit forums. Cress took her laptop out of her bag and updated the stock in her Etsy shop. It was an evening well spent.

It wasn’t until just before ten that they both looked up from their computers.

‘Are you staying the night?’ Colin asked, swivelling round to look at Cress.

‘I could,’ she said. For the last year or so, after Mary had made Colin cull some of his holiest t-shirts, she had had her own drawer. She lay back on the bed. Even with the fan going full blast she could feel a rivulet of sweat trickle down her neck. ‘But I don’t know . . . I think it’s too hot to share a bed.’

‘It is,’ Colin agreed. ‘And I have to get up really early tomorrow. We’ve got a new shipment of motherboards coming in and I said I’d be there to sign for them.’

Colin worked in IT for a private bank in the City of London. That was about as much as Cress knew about his job. She found the intricacies of computer programming and malware attacks about as riveting as Colin would find it if she gave him a detailed breakdown of how to put in an invisible zip.

‘But I’ll see you Sunday,’ Cress reminded him, because they took it in turns to do Sunday lunch at each other’s houses.

‘You will.’ Colin stood up from his chair and stretched. His t-shirt rode up to uncover a sliver of pale belly. Cress averted her eyes, because it always made her feel weird when she saw bits of people that they didn’t realise she was seeing. Only the week before, she’d stood behind a man on the tube who had a huge boil on the back of his neck and she’d been tormented by the idea that he hadn’t known it was there and might accidentally spear it while he was combing his hair.

‘What was that?’ She realised that Colin had asked her something because he was looking expectantly at her.

‘I said, do you want me to walk you home?’ he asked in a very tired voice, like the five-minute stroll would finish him off.

Cress took the hint. ‘No, you’re all right. You said you had to get up early.’

Colin shot her a grateful smile. ‘But message me to let me know you got home safely.’

‘Of course,’ Cress said, as she packed up her bag. Then she hurried downstairs, because Mary and Roy liked to lock up on the dot of ten.

The streets of Finchley were deserted. Cress’s walk home was disturbed only by the occasional dogwalker, and, a little further up the road, a fox, which stared boldly at her until a car came and it disappeared between two hedges.

The lights were still on at her house, and, when she opened the front door, her mum called out, ‘Have you watched Love Island?’

Cress poked her head round the door of the living room, where her mum, Diane, was sitting in a swimsuit with her feet in a washing-up bowl full of cold water. Her stepdad Aaron was working lates that week.

‘I haven’t and I hope you didn’t watch tonight’s episode without me.’ At the beginning of each new season they agreed that they weren’t going to watch Love Island because it was always full of gaslighting and terrible behaviour and it wasn’t fair that the girls had to wear bikinis that showed their bottoms and their side boobs, underboobs and pretty much all their boobs, while the guys got to swan around in long shorts.

Then, every time, they got suckered in and were emotionally over-invested in at least one couple by the end of the first week.

‘Of course, I haven’t. It’s no fun without you.’ At fifty-five, in a good light – and even under the big light in the living room – Diane could easily pass for a woman twenty years younger. She and Cress were often mistaken for sisters, which Diane put down to slathering herself in Palmer’s Cocoa Butter at every opportunity and her twice-weekly Zumba class. Cress could only hope that some of it was down to genetics too, because she’d like to still look youthful in her fifties without having to take up Zumba. Diane piled a handful of black curly hair on top of her head and blew out of her mouth to direct a weak stream of air towards her chin. ‘Be a love and go and get me a Calippo out of the freezer and we’ll watch it now.’

Cress did as she was told, nabbing a pineapple Twister for herself. Then as Diane fast-forwarded the SKY box to the start of the show, she remembered to message Colin.

Home safe and sound. Sweet dreams. See you Sunday. C x

She waited for him to message her back, but he must have already gone to sleep. But it wasn’t until one of the Love Island couples had their first kiss outside of a challenge that Cress realised that neither she nor Colin had even touched each other all evening. Not once.