London
The enigma arrived in the afternoon post, sealed, smudged, and devastating.
Osla Kendall stood, twenty-six years old, dark-haired, dimpled, and scowling, in the middle of a tiny Knightsbridge flat that looked as if it had been bombed by Junkers, wearing nothing but a French lace slip and a bad mood as she looked over the piles of silk and satin exploding over every surface.
Twelve Days Until The Wedding of the Century! this morning’s Tatler had gushed. Osla worked for the Tatler; she’d had to write the whole ghastly column.
What are YOU going to wear?
Osla picked up a rose satin gown with whorls of crystal beading.
“What about you?” she asked it. “Do you say `I look simply smashing and I couldn’t care less that he’s marrying someone else’?” What on earth did you wear to a wedding when you wanted your appearance to say `I can’t outshine the beastly bride but I’d really, really like to’?
Etiquette lessons at finishing school never touched that one. Whatever the outfit, everyone in the congregation would know that before the bride came along, Osla and the bridegroom were— A knock sounded. Osla flung on a robe to answer it. Her flat was tiny, all she could afford on her Tatler salary if she wanted to live alone and be close to the center of things.
“Darling, no maid? No doorman?” Her mother had been appalled. “Move in with me until you find a husband. You don’t need a job.” But after sharing bedrooms with billet mates all through the war, Osla would have lived in a boot cupboard as long as she could call it her own.
“Post’s come, Miss Kendall.” The landlady’s spotty daughter greeted her at the door, eyes going at once to the rose gown slung over Osla’s arm. “Oooh, are you wearing that to the royal wedding? You look scrummy in pink!”
It’s not enough to look scrummy, Osla thought, taking her bundle of letters. I want to outshine a princess, an actual born-to-the-tiara princess, and the fact is, I can’t…
Leave a Reply