In which Helen is embarrassed by lingerie
Helen’s reticence to discuss the bras, bodies and panties arrayed attractively on hangers all around them is not lost on Carla. She herself finds the display overwhelming, though for rather different reasons: they can see and breathe nothing but white, cream, black and fawn underwear, with the occasional red set thrown in for good measure. No yellow, green or purple ones to relieve the monotony. It’s almost claustrophobic.
And yet, while she herself is merely spoiled for choice, she can sense Helen’s discomfort with the rows of empty breasts, big and small, padded and supported, revealing and controlled, all-encompassing and barely there. The panties look less realistic in their emptiness.
She laughs to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Dire, isn’t it? All I want is one lacy set to turn Addison on.’
Helen’s response is guarded. ‘I hate these places. They either want to help you choose, and then look you up and down critically as they fit you, or they take no notice of you, like now, and you have to keep going in and out with your allotted three to try them on.’
‘Well you can stay dressed and just hold Dinah while I slip in and out of an exotic selection.’
‘I’m not coming into the cubicle.’ Helen sounds shocked. Her knuckles grip the pram handle proprietorially.
Carla is amused to catch Helen at her reluctant worst. ‘You’ll have to,’ she says. ‘I can’t come out here to show you each one. Friends help each other, remember?’
***
Helen finds the next hour difficult.
The fact of being in the cubicle has registered finally as the better option. She keeps remembering Steve’s warning to stay clear of Carla. Though he’s hardly likely to be in a lingerie department, she feels less flagrantly in defiance if they are all out of sight. It is possible to reconstrue the exercise as looking after Carla.
Looking at her is more of a problem. The more she sees Carla’s breasts clad in sheer or lace or loose items, the more she finds herself perturbed that this is all being done for Addison. She feels that she is helping Carla sell herself to someone else. As though she were dressing a child at her best to give her away for someone else to bring up. A tiny spark of jealously flicks at her innards, a desire that manifests itself as a need to take Carla in her arms, not to hide her nakedness but to feel it. She does not understand her emotions. She has barely realised she had any before she met Carla. And a portion of her brain is reminding her that this girl was a prostitute once and must be doing again what she surely did before, adorning herself in an alluring way. Why the sudden desire to please Addison? It doesn’t seem very like his kind of values. He may even misunderstand her.
Stuck in the corner, head jammed against the clothes hooks, holding a squirming Dinah, and trying to avoid gazing at Carla’s semi nakedness, Helen is not happy. And that reminds her she has not spoken to Addison yet about the diary entries.
‘It’s hot in here,’ she says.
Carla tries on something that Helen has never really seen close-up before: a stretchy, lace all-in-one with a front panel drawing the eyes very strongly to the crotch. It is black and clingy. Carla is taken with it, decides to buy it. Helen tries to imagine how it would feel if she wore it.
‘Do you want to try it on while we’re here?’
Carla’s words bring a flush to Helen’s face. ‘Course not. I’m older than you,’ she says.
‘You never know, Malcolm might like it,’ Carla teases, but the look Helen sees in her eyes softens the words and in small measure relieves her embarrassment.
They gather up the unwanted items, elbowing each other in the confines of the cubicle, and Helen seizes the opportunity to carry Dinah back out to her pram, parked by the changing room doors, and settle her. She avoids the querying glance of the sales assistant which she can see from the corner of her eye. Carla can deal with it.
