The boutique on Callum Street was the kind of place that smelled like money.
Fresh fabric, imported perfume, the particular hush of a shop where everyone spoke in low voices because the prices demanded a certain reverence. Crystal fixtures on the walls. Velvet chairs for waiting. A woman at the counter whose job was to make every client feel like the most important person in the room.
Evelina sat in one of the velvet chairs and did not feel like the most important person in the room.
She felt like someone waiting. And she wasn't the kind of person that liked waiting l.
She had been waiting for twenty minutes while the seamstress finished the final adjustments on the hem. She didn't mind waiting usually. She was good at it. She had spent most of her life waiting for things — for her mother to come back, for her brothers to notice her, for Noel to look at her the way she needed him to look at her.
