It Was Only Ever You Read Online Free PDF Page B

her daughter didn’t smarten herself up she would never find a husband, and without a husband Ava would never be happy.
    ‘Oh no.’ Sybil Connolly swept into the room and stood behind Ava, her dark hair swept back from her face in a high set, her severe eyebrows raised in a look of thoughtful disapproval.
    ‘Oh no – I do not like this dress on you, young lady – at all. This is all wrong.’
    Nessa began to bristle. She was paying a lot of money for the dress and did not appreciate the woman’s tone. It was one thing for Nessa herself to comment inwardly on her daughter’s unremarkable looks, but quite another when somebody else did it.
    ‘We want the finest dress for our daughter,’ she asserted. ‘Money is no object.’
    Sybil smiled at her curtly. ‘I don’t doubt it – but this dress is all wrong on her.’
    ‘But it’s this season,’ Nessa objected, adding sharply, ‘And the most expensive you have.’
    ‘Seasons mean nothing,’ Sybil said. She gave a formidable glare. ‘And price is of little interest to me.’ Nessa blushed, regretting her faux pas.
    Sybil turned her attention back to Ava. ‘What this young lady...What is your name, my dear?’
    ‘Ava.’ She had never met anyone like Sybil before. So outspoken, so... certain. She reminded Ava of some of the stricter nuns in her boarding school but with lipstick and coiffed hair.
    ‘What Ava needs is something to suit her own style. Isn’t that right?’
    Ava was not aware that she had a style.
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘Tell me, my dear, do you like this dress?’ Sybil said as she stood behind her, smoothing down the exquisitely soft pleated skirt.
    ‘Well, it’s beautiful.’
    ‘Of course it is. As your mother tells me,’ and she arched a perfectly painted eyebrow, ‘it’s the most expensive dress money can buy. But do you like yourself in it?’
    Ava wasn’t sure what she meant. She didn’t like how she looked in anything and avoided looking at herself as much as possible. Standing in front of a full-length mirror like this was torture. She thought she should answer truthfully if she wanted to get out of it so she shook her head and said with certainty: ‘No. No, I don’t.’
    ‘Good,’ Sybil said. ‘So we will find something else.’
    The older woman clicked for an assistant to come and undress Ava as she walked across to a clothes rail by the window and instructed another assistant to pull out items for her one by one.
    She flicked past dresses, rejecting them with a ‘No – not that one, wrong colour. Again...’
    Ava felt a curious wave of depression come over her. She had been in this position before. Hours spent in the dressing room of Saks, Fifth Avenue while Nessa and a bevy of shop assistants passed in dress after dress, nothing ever fitting her properly, and nothing ever looking quite right. Hope followed by the humiliation of just not being quite pretty enough, not quite feminine enough to pull anything off. Now this was happening in the rarefied atmosphere of the Plaza and in front of this very important woman.
    ‘STOP!’ Sybil said, and then dramatically added, ‘Now – what have we got for you here, Ava?’
    Her assistant was holding up a tweed suit. It had a straight, slim skirt and a fitted jacket, nipped in tight and flaring into a waved pelmet at the waist, all pulled smartly together by eight mother-of-pearl buttons at the front. But by far the most unusual thing about the suit was its colour: an exquisite shade of pink.
    ‘It’s the colour of a rose,’ Ava said.
    ‘Well yes,’ Sybil said. ‘How charming of you to notice. As a matter of fact this tweed was commissioned by me from the wonderful nuns in Foxford Woollen Mills on the west coast of Ireland. It is a match for the wild roses of Mayo, the most delicate flowers you will ever see.’
    While her assistant held the skirt open for Ava to step into, Sybil herself pulled the jacket over her bare shoulders and buttoned it up the front with confident