Julianne felt devastated when she saw Fieldings was closed and boarded up. Despite not having lived in the area for several years, while making a brief return visit, she couldn’t resist looking in on some of her old haunts.
It had once been a thriving business
Now, ‘haunt’ was an appropriate word for it – the once-grand, elegant store looked shabby, dark – and haunted. By the ghosts of her past, of course.
Julianne remembered how, at 17, she’d been teased by her friends for taking a job in what was known as a ‘snooty, old-fashioned ladies shop’, at a time when trendy boutiques selling the latest ‘gear’ to teenagers were considered the employment hot spots.
How, they wanted to know, could she bear the embarrassment of working in a place that sold sweeping ball gowns of the kind Granny would have worn when she went dancing at the Palais? Who bought them? The shop’s clientele must be snobby rich women, the wives of cigar-puffing, Bentley-driving husbands. Complete strangers to the phrase ‘watching the pennies’...
However, Julianne had a bit of a snob, who herself frequented grand social functions, but she was fine as a boss – once she’d told Julianne what she wanted doing, she left her alone for the rest of the day.
