The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 253

The Girls in Hannah’s Designs 

HANNAH’S POV: 

Three ininutes late, which was actually close to a miracle given everything, and I did not even register the three minutes because I was standing just off the runway listening and the moment she stepped out I stopped thinking about time. 

The courtyard went quiet. 

I mean that literally sudden specific quiet that drops over a room when something appears in it that was not expected to be that beautiful and the room collectively needs a moment to adjust. 

Look one was the suit. The one Theo had woken up at four in the morning to fix. Clean strong lines, structured shoulders, it was the sort of tailoring that requires absolute confidence to wear and which, on the right body and in the right light, said everything it needed to say without a single word. The model who wore it had understood it. She walked like she meant it and the suit moved with her like it had been waiting for exactly this body at exactly this moment. 

I gripped the doorframe of the preparation room entrance. 

Look two came out. Look three came out also. Each one different, each one part of the same story. The everyday pieces, the ones that were about ordinary dignity and ordinary beauty and the quiet power of a woman moving through her regular life in something that genuinely belonged to her. Look four was the dark blue piece I had been thinking about since the very first morning in Frerus when I had bought fabric with money I technically could not afford and walked home carrying it like it was the most important thing I had ever owned. Look five was the dusty rose gown, the exact shade Adele had described to me in such careful detail, the colour my mother had loved. I had mixed it by hand and stood over the dyeing process myself and it had come out in the end as close to what I had imagined as fabric could get. 

I remember look seventeen, the draped back piece, Priya’s piece, the one Sandra had looked at on day one and said that is the one that is going to stop people. It stopped people. The model wore it and the room held its breath and when she reached the end of the runway and turned there was a sound from the audience that I had never heard at a show before, everyone was gasping. 

And then I was walking. 

Someone touched my arm gently and said it was time and I stepped out of the preparation room and into the light and the courtyard and I did not think about anything. I did not think about the fire or Voros or the archive or the legal case that was building or any of it. I just walked. The runway was smooth under my feet and the lights were warm and the room on both sides of me was full of people and the sound that came from them when they saw me was not something I had a good word for. 

I walked to the end.