Linda Hobbs' Blue Dress

Linda's Blue Dress Object Post 5

Linda Hobbs is tall, athletic-looking and no-nonsense. Apart from the small problem that she has no idea who her father is, or was, there's the matter of Jory, born the same day as Linda to her mother's best friend. Now they're adults, but Jory doesn't seem to get the point that he should respect her privacy and personal space. When their school reunion rolls around, Linda's enigmatic landlord, Mr Tripp, suggests she might get a new dress from his contact Skye Bakewell. To her private astonishment, Linda visits Skye, who agrees to make a dress for what seems a ridiculously reasonable sum.
Linda's dress is made in jewel-blue stretch cotton velvet. 

The dress was miraculously ready for fitting when she returned an hour later. Skye made some tiny adjustments and then turned it right-side-in. “Try it again.”

Linda pulled it on. Skye did up three buttons, then turned Linda towards the mirror and stood back. The dress was starkly simple, moulding to Linda’s subtle contours and finishing well above her knees. It had a side slit for ease of walking, with a pleat of silver lace for modesty. The only other adornment was a whisper of the same silver around the neckline, fading out as it dropped to the top of Linda’s breasts.

 Linda hardly recognises herself in this confection, and neither does Jory. 

“Why does she—God, Lindyhop! What are you wearing?”

Linda turned in place to give him the full benefit of the deep blue velvet. “It’s my new dress.”

Jory stared down at her, still holding her old coat. “Bit of a bum-freezer, isn’t it?”

It soon becomes apparent there's something odd about that dress. At the reunion it attracts a lot of attention, and later, Linda discovers it is almost impossible to mess it up. Even white dog hair doesn't cling. The dress, as Skye promised, makes Linda feel beautiful and it, and the reunion has memorable consequences.

                                                           

The picture here gives a bit of an impression, but this one is longer and lacks sleeves. Linda and her dress appear in Pisky Business.

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. She runs  Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. 2017 is now behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of February 18th 2018 I STILL haven't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books to come, and I'll certainly showcase those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, just for a change. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far! Since April 22nd I'm adding in places!