Ornate gem and lace design

The Palais has taken on a new girl at the cloakroom, so Mr Harrold finally let me have the back room for fitting. You'll not believe what Mrs Quayle brought in on Tuesday: a bodice cut from net so fine you could read the Gazette through it, every inch worked over in scrolls and little rings like frost on a window. She wants a paste stone the size of a hen's egg set dead centre, and she wants the lace to fall away from it on either side, as if the stone were holding the whole thing up.

I did the setting myself. Pinned the stone with a dab of gum, ran the pattern out in chalk, then tacked the seed pearls along the lines you can only see when the lamp is at your elbow. Mrs Quayle stood at the mirror with her arms out like a scarecrow and said it looked like a chandelier that had been let down gently. I didn't tell her the stone is glass and the lace is bought by the yard from a man in Pendleton who owes me a favour.

Saturday she came back for the final fitting. Her husband had sent a note saying he would be at the bar and would not be dancing, which, as far as I can see, is how most husbands arrange things. She turned around to let me check the back, and I saw the little drops of pearl I had strung beneath the scrolls, trailing down toward the hem like a line of dotted stitches leading somewhere. She asked if they would show when she danced. I said they would show if she stopped moving.

She danced all night, Win. I stood by the pillar and watched that glass catch the light every time she turned, and I thought, well, somebody is going to remember the dress.

Yours, Ada