Gypsy Wedding Dreams: Ten dresses. Ten Dreams. All the secrets revealed.. Thelma Madine

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СКАЧАТЬ worried that you’re not leaving us with enough time for dressmaking while you’ve been busying yourself with these chats. How can we get on with making this dress if you keep on at us like this?’

      ‘I just like talking to you, it’s so nice keeping in touch,’ she said.

      ‘It’s great, but we need to get back to the job in hand …’

      ‘Oh sorry, Thelma, love,’ she replied. ‘It’s just that I get my free minutes at the weekend so I like to call round whoever I can and you’re on the list.’

      When I put the phone down and told the girls why she’d been ringing so much, they couldn’t believe it. We nearly died laughing when we realised we’d been being so polite all because this girl had some free minutes on her mobile contract!

      The calls calmed down after that, bless her heart, but she was a very different kettle of fish to Ashleigh.

      Ashleigh was her parents’ eldest, and it was beyond me how she managed to secure this much power over her mother. What we didn’t know, until the day she came to collect the dress, was that she had even more power over her dad.

      I was pleasantly surprised by how pretty Ashleigh was when she eventually turned up at the factory. She had very dark hair and fine features. When she came in – on time – she had a real sparkle and I thought that finally, everything was going to be OK.

      She walked into the room where her dress stood on a mannequin and gasped. There was tension throughout the factory as we all looked at each other, waiting for her reaction. Her hands flew to her mouth and she took a deep breath.

      ‘I love it!’ she screeched.

      We all smiled and let out a heavy sigh of relief.

      ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before – oh my God!’

      She really was thrilled, and so was I. We left her to it so that she could start getting out of her clothes to try it on, and waited next door. Then, all of a sudden, almighty screams were coming from the room. I ran in, completely panicked by what could have gone wrong.

      ‘What’s happened?’

      ‘There should be 29 flowers on here!’ she shrieked.

      ‘Yes, love, we had this conversation – a few times. They would have ripped this fairy wing fabric,’ I explained, stroking the petals to show what I meant.

      She was crying so much that she couldn’t actually get any words out. She literally wasn’t making sense. I had heard this down the telephone before, but I had never witnessed it in the flesh.

      ‘Ashleigh, love,’ I said. ‘Look at the dress – go through it from top to bottom – then you tell us specifically what is not right and we can fix it. Start at the top and we’ll work down. Make a list. Right? Every point of the dress! Standing there crying is not going to do you any good. Stand there, take this pen, and work your way down.’

      But she was still crying and her mum was just standing there, consoling her. ‘Ashleigh, Ashleigh,’ she kept repeating. Her dad had his head in his hands.

      ‘Do you want a cup of coffee, love?’ I asked the mum, just looking at her.

      ‘Yes please, Thelma,’ she replied in the world-weary voice that I’d heard so many times before.

      So I went into the kitchen, made her a coffee, put it on the table in front of her and closed the door for her.

      ‘I love the dress so much, Thelma,’ she said, sadly. ‘I’m really pleased. And I know Ash is too – she’s always like this, though.’

      We could still hear her sobs in the kitchen. It was as if she had no way of expressing any extreme of emotion other than this. Crying was the only way she knew to get what she wanted. She’d worked herself up into such a state.

      The thing is, you have to remember, this was the day Ashleigh had been dreaming of for years. It’s the same for all my young traveller brides, so while it’s hard to deal with at the time, you have to bear in mind what a big day it is. The trying-on day is when all their dreams are realised – it is their princess moment. But poor Ashleigh was out of control.

      Pauline was in the other room trying to deal with it, trying to persuade her to at least try the dress on and see what it looked like on her. She got out the book with the sketch in it and showed Ashleigh that we had done exactly as we were asked. We were at a loss as to how or where we had gone wrong.

      ‘I know, I know! But it hasn’t got this on, or these flowers!’ she belted out. Her hands were flailing about, pointing at vague areas where she knew that we had not really made any mistakes.

      ‘But your mum’s only got a certain amount of money, love,’ I heard Pauline say, trying to placate her. I felt that I must step in at this point: ‘Apart from it looking ridiculous if we’d added all the extras you wanted, your mum only has a certain amount that she can pay for,’ I told her.

      ‘I won’t wear it like that, I won’t wear it like that!’ she kept saying.

      ‘You’ve already got nine flowers on there for nothing, love – we just did it to try and keep you happy.’

      This was true. Despite my instincts, I had actually given her a huge amount of free work and detail, just to try and make everyone’s lives easier. I left her with her pen and paper, trying to make the list of specific problems. Her mum was at the kitchen table, staring down at her mug.

      ‘I could do with you on the day of the wedding,’ she told me, ‘just to calm her down.’

      A little while later Ash came to the door of the kitchen and her face was completely streaked in black from her make-up running, where she’d been crying. Pauline had failed to persuade her to try the dress on so she could see how great it was. So we tried to get her to wipe her face and go and enjoy her moment but we were met with more tears.

      ‘You know me! You know me …’

      And then the crying began in earnest. Ashleigh got up and ran out into the street, where her dad was waiting in the car.

      Five minutes later, Marta – one of the girls from the factory – came in from having a cigarette.

      ‘That girl is still crying out there,’ she told us. ‘She’s just pacing up and down the road.’

      Marta was right, but I don’t know whose attention she hoped to get out there because it’s a quiet road by some industrial buildings. It’s not a fancy area, so I was glad that Pauline’s mission to get her into those skirts had failed or she would have been at risk of mucking up her skirts.

      She kept going, though. It was like a physical release, like she had to get something out of herself: she was wailing and grabbing at her hair as if she was a mad person in ancient Greece. Even the seagulls were going mad at the noise! It was the kind of crying that always, always gives you a headache when you’re the one doing it. How she hadn’t worn herself out yet …

      I watched her for a bit. In the end it was all of us on the street in silence, just watching her run up and down, pulling at her hair. We must have looked as if we were at Wimbledon: heads СКАЧАТЬ