"If you stop moving, I'll stop stabbing you with the pins. This is a two-way scenario, Rosie and I'm going to need some co-operation, or you'll become my personal pin cushion," James said as he stabbed with the pin for the nineteenth time.

"I'm already your personal pin cushion. If I knew the fitting would involve being stabbed with a pin more times, I wouldn't have agreed to the blasted thing."

"Just keep still, we'll get this done a lot sooner that way."

I huffed loudly and stood with my arms outstretched so James could continue to pin (and stab) me into the dress. With Christmas approaching faster than any of us would have liked, James felt determined to finish my dress for the party, even it meant I got stabbed repeatedly. He had forced me to put the dress on the moment we had walked through the front door and I'd been wearing it ever since.

Every time he said he was finished, he wasn't, and I ended up being stabbed again when I went to step off the podium. Kitty had resorted to dealing with the other customers who came through the door and even she seemed sick of James and his desire to have the alterations pinned and ready for re-stitching. James often tended to lose his mind over the smallest of things, and this happened to be one of them.

The dress he had been making started as a bolt of emerald green fabric he picked up in a market on one of his adventures. Since acquiring it, James had used most of it to create the dress, decorating it with gold embodiment along the skirt, bodice and sleeves. It all felt rather extravagant seeing as I had been used to the same drab grey dress for seven years, but James wouldn't hear of it. He had added the embellishments despite my asking for him not to and it only appeared to get worse as time went on.

"Are we almost done?" I asked. My arms had started to hurt, and my knee didn't appear to like being stood on for a prolonged period of time.

"Almost."

I sighed and looked straight ahead at the door in front of me. Anyone walking past who happened to peer in through the window would have been a little surprised to see me standing there being poked and prodded with a pin. From the outside looking in it must have been a strange situation to witness, it felt even stranger to be the one on the receiving end of James and his repeated need to stab me.

Through the glass, I watched people walk past the shop. Some were in a hurry, clutching scarves or coats close against their skin to fight the bitter chill that still failed to bring any snow. Most people walked past the shop without paying it any mind, most likely in a hurry to get home and out of the cold. I watched them go about their day and none of them were any the wiser to my presence, that is until the bell above the door opened and the Ealing's once again graced us with their arrival.

"Ouch!" I exclaimed when James stabbed with a pin, again. He had been startled by the door, but I didn't think that to be a decent excuse for stabbing me.

"Sorry, that was an accident," James said.

"And the other times weren't?"

"I'm saying nothing." He grinned. "You're done. Go and take that off, knock any of the pins and you'll have to go through the whole thing all over again."

"I'll help, the last thing I want is for the two of you to be at each other's throats over whether or not the pin stabbing is deliberate," Kitty said.

She gestured her hand to James' office, and I jumped off the pedestal and walked into the office to change out of the dress and into my other one. Kitty followed and closed the door behind her. We could hear the low hum of conversations between James and the Ealing's as Kitty helped to remove the dress without disturbing any of the pins James had put in place. Once the dress was off, Kitty hung it on a clothing hanger whilst I changed back into my other dress, glad to be in something a little less extravagant.

Once the dress had been hung up on a wrack in the office, Kitty and I stepped back into the main room where James was in the process of measuring the Ealing's for their Christmas garments. He stood with a tape measure in hand and held it down the length of Doctor Ealing's arm, Doctor Ealing didn't look all that comfortable but there was nothing to be done about it. The rest of the Ealing's hung about aimlessly, not really knowing what to do whilst Doctor Ealing had his arm measured.

Robert and Matilda hung near the door as though wanting to make a quick exit when the opportunity arose. Mrs Ealing had made herself comfortable on the sofa and fanned through one of the magazines James kept around to keep people busy. She looked far more comfortable in the shop then she had the last time she had visited, but she still gave me a rather sinister look when I remerged from the office. I suppose the dinner had done nothing to change how she felt about me, not that I minded all that much since I didn't intend to speak to her for the duration of James' work.

Instead, I shuffled myself over to the wall of fabric and started to rearrange the bolts that had been moved or twisted by a customer. Most of the time I didn't bother but it gave me something to do and I would have rather been busy then be forced to have any form of communication with the Ealing's. The dinner had deflated some of the tension, but I didn't feel ready to have those conversations with any of them. Not yet anyway.

"Are they going to start the clean-up from the factory yet or are they waiting for a little while?" Doctor Ealing asked as James measured his arm.

"They're waiting. According to Matthew, they want to open an enquiry into just what caused the explosion and the people who died. They were sending people in to look at the rubble before they can clean it. Matthew said they want to rebuild the factory," James said.

"Can't imagine why. An explosion could just as easily take place at the new factory if it's not being watched properly."

"Hopefully that's what the enquiry will prove, whether it was the foreman's fault."

"I doubt it will do anything," I mumbled

"Pardon, Rosie?"

"I doubt an enquiry will solve anything. If money is involved, all then enquiry will say was that it's an accident and the factory will be re-built as if nothing ever happened."

No one said anything. It wasn't as if my comment could be seen as controversial, at least not to me but perhaps they thought differently. The way I saw it seemed simple enough but to those who didn't see if the way I did, those who had no experience in seeing the world from the inside of a factory. I knew better than anyone that no one cared if someone were poor or worked in a factory or workhouse. Being poor meant someone could be thrown away without a care, die on the streets and have no one look their way.

If someone had money, they mattered. If not, no one cared. No one had cared for us for all those years in the factory, whether they knew it existed or not. We didn't matter to anyone except each other and even after the factory had been exposed people still thought we were worthless. We had gone from being invisible to being seen in the worst possible light and even seven months later people still weren't accepting of us or where we had come from.

Money mattered to people, we did not.

"I think we should drop this particular topic of conversation, for the time being, don't you?" James said. He raised an eyebrow at me and shot me a piercing look to tell me not to mention it again, not that I had any intention to.

"How long will these garments take to construct?" Mrs Ealing asked as James moved on to measure Doctor Ealing's legs.

"About a week. Once they're done, we can do another fitting for any adjustments and with any luck, the beads will be here as well so I can do the beading. Then one final fitting before completion.

"So, two weeks?"

"Give or take."

"Will you have the time? You must be busy considering the time of year."

"I always make time. Besides, I have my little helper this year, so it'll make the whole thing far smoother." He looked at me and I pulled a face, I didn't like being called a helper.

Since I had started going to the shop with James, he had been paying me a normal hourly wage as a form of pocket money. I tried to tell him not to, but he insisted upon paying me for the work I did around the shop even though he had never been a fan of me reorganising his shop. All of the money he gave me had been squirrelled away and I only spent it on art supplies if I needed to replace any of them. Thanks to the money I had saved from my work at the Ealing's, I had a fair amount tucked away for future use.

James continued to measure Doctor Ealing before eventually declaring him done and moving onto Mrs Ealing, although he handed the measuring tape to Kitty. From his pocket, he produced a second measuring tape and motioned for Robert to join him off to the side of the room. Why he didn't just give Kitty a measuring tape to get the work done twice as fast remind a mystery to me, but James had never been all that smart. Especially when it came to time limits.

The two of them set about creating the next form of measurements, writing them down as they went whilst I lingered off to the side without really knowing what to do. Matilda appeared to feel the same way I did and stood near the door so she could escape if it happened to be warranted. She refused to even look my way and I know that if she did, she wouldn't be able to contain her anger. One of the things she had made me promise when my position with the Ealing's had been solidified was that I wouldn't hurt Robert, yet I did.

I distracted myself by going along the rows of fabric bolts, although I had already straightened them. It gave me something to do, but I must have looked as though my mind had been addled because I did the same thing I had done just minutes before. Still, it worked as a distraction until the bell above the door sounded. With both Kitty and James distracted with the measuring, I finally had something other than straightening bolts of fabric to do.

"Hello, Rosie!" Mr Johnson said.

"Hello, Mr Johnson. Hello Winnie!"

"I have something for you," Winnie said.

Winnie reached into the basket her father held onto and produced a small box with a dark blue ribbon wrapped around it. She crossed the room and handed me the box, grinning as I tugged on the ribbon and undid the bow that had obviously been tied by her father. I removed the ribbon from the box and took off the lid, inside was another ribbon but it matched the colour of the dress James had been making for me.

"It matches your dress and you can wear it to the party!"

"It does. Thank you, Winnie."

"You're welcome!" She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a hug which I returned with my free arm.

"Why don't you have a dig around in one of the drawers and see if you can find a ribbon you like."

Winnie grinned at me again before running to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room and rooting around inside the drawer full of ribbons. Usually, we used the ribbons for dresses, but Winnie liked to wear them in her hair, and we weren't going to argue with her. James usually kept as much ribbon as he needed, but since Winnie started to buy them to put in her hair, he had ordered far more than usual. She usually stopped by once a week and left with a handful of them. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't see so many.

When she had found the ribbon she wanted, a pale blue one, she handed over the money and skipped from the room with a rather enthusiastic wave. I had never met anyone as content with life as Winnie, nothing ever got her down and she walked through life with a smile on her face. From the first time I met her, I wondered how she managed it, but she never revealed her secret. She just walked through life with a smile regardless of what she faced, and she had faced a lot.

"Was that girl a simpleton? She certainly didn't appear right in the head," Mrs Ealing said. I resisted the temptation to slap her across the face.

"Elizabeth, please." Doctor Ealing groaned.

"Winnie is fine. Mr Johnson said she'll never really develop mentally past a five-year-old but she's not a harm to anyone. His wife died last year, Consumption, and Winnie has helped him a lot. Being a little different isn't necessarily a bad thing, she's like a beam of sunlight whenever she enters a room," James said, seeing the reaction on my face.

"Hm. Most would lock her away without a second thought."

"Most people are wrong," I muttered.

Mrs Ealing glared at me, but she didn't say anything. I wished she would, I wanted her to say something rather than look at me. To be honest, I wanted Robert or Matilda to say something other than stare at me across the room, but they didn't. The constant staring was beginning to feel a little intimidating but there was nothing I could do about it since they were the ones determined to make a mountain out of a molehill when it came to the smallest of things.

The topic of Winnie was dropped almost immediately after it had started but I could tell Mrs Ealing wanted to say something about the issue but bit her tongue. She had always felt odd towards Samuel because of the colour of his skin and I expect she felt that way towards Winnie just because she was a little different to the ordinary. I didn't think it fair to put people down because they were different then what was to be expected. People often looked down at me because of the burn on my arm, I would hate to be in the same position as Samuel and Winnie.

Regardless, I admired people who could put up with indifference and intolerance and yet remain happy with their lives and the way they had turned out. If I could live my life like Winnie, smiling through the bad and seeing joy in even the smallest of things, it would make me all the better as a person.

I tucked the green ribbon back into the box and tied the other one around it to keep it safe. I tucked the box into my pocket and crossed the room to the office if Mrs Ealing was determined to spend the rest of her visit staring at me out of the corner of her eye, I didn't plan on giving her the satisfaction on doing so. The office was quiet, even with the low hum of conversation from the other room.

James' desk had once again returned to its usual chaotic state with papers stacked up in hap-hazard ways which I didn't plan on sorting out, he would kill me if I touched them. Instead, I grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil, sat down on the chair and started to draw whatever came to mind. I could still hear them talking in the other room, but I had no idea what they were talking about and I was glad of that. One more off comment from Mrs Ealing and I most likely wouldn't be able to hold my anger back.

"What is it with you and hiding away?" Kitty asked, pushing the door open and stepping inside. I thought she would be measuring Matilda for her garments, but perhaps they finished quicker than anticipated.

"It's an easy way to avoid any form of confrontation and I doubt I'll be able to hold my tongue if she says anything else," I said.

"A rational argument. At least you removed yourself from the situation, James would never do such a thing."

"James thrives on confrontation. I always thought that to be Christopher, but things appeared to have changed over the past seven years."

"He's just protective, a little too much on occasion, but he's trying. It's been a long time since he had to be an older brother and he might be taking the task a little too seriously."

"Would it be wrong to slap some sense into him?"

"I've wanted to, believe me." Kitty laughed. "They'll be leaving soon if you want to re-emerge from your cave and interact with normal people."

"You think James is normal?"

"Fair point."

Kitty smiled, shook her head slightly and disappeared back through the door. I remained in the office until I heard the ring of the bell above the door signalling that they were leaving. Once the bell had sounded for a second time, I re-emerged from the office to annoy James as much as possible without having any of the Ealing's glaring at me from across the room. That plan, however, failed as Matilda had stayed behind and she looked none too happy to see me. 

~~~

A/N - We are back! I'm working my way through Chapter Sixteen as we speak so we have a fair few chapters coming up and a lot of drama! I hope you are all buckled in for what may or may not be a wild ride. 

I hope you are all keeping safe in these trying times and protecting yourself by washing your hands and social-distancing! 

Questions! Do you think Mrs Ealing was too harsh on Winnie? (This isn't the last time we'll see her). What do you think Matilda wants to talk to Rosie about? Predictions on what will happen?

Comment below!

A/N - This chapter is dedicated to nothenoo who binge read their way through TFG recently! Your support means a lot :)

First Published - April 7th, 2020