by Mark B. Newhouse
A quiver of excitement coursed through Susan's body as she stepped out of the small fancy dress hire shop into the bright sunshine, blinking as she did so, allowing her eyes to adjust after the shady interior. She was clutching a package under her arm as she walked back to her car, and felt her excitement intensify as she visualised Nick wearing the outfit at the party later that evening.
Four weeks earlier...
"Yes, we'll be there... I think it's a fantastic idea! Sounds like great fun... Okay, see you soon... Yes, you too. Take care. Bye."
Susan hung up the phone and looked at her husband sitting in the armchair opposite, watching television. She went over to him, sat on his lap and wrapped her arms around him in a hug then drew back slightly to look into his eyes.
"That one is from Alison," she said, smiling. "And this one is from me."
She kissed him on his forehead then hugged again, tighter this time, snuggling against him and resting her head on his shoulder. She felt his arms encircle her waist as he returned the hug. They sat for a moment or two, enjoying the feel and the warmth of each other's body before Nick spoke.
"Okay, so what mischief have you two been cooking up?"
"Mischief? Me? Us?" She sat up, looking at him with exaggerated innocence.
"You. The pair of you were planning something on the phone, so let's hear it."
"Well, you know we've been invited to Alison's birthday party next month and I told her we'd definitely be there?"
"Yes," he said slowly, his tone suggesting he sensed a trap was about to spring.
"So, she's just told be about this really great idea she's had."
"Uh huh..."
"Well," Susan continued, grinning happily, barely able to contain herself, "because it's her thirtieth birthday, she wants to do something a bit different. You know, make the party a bit more special. So she's decided it's going to be a fancy dress party! Isn't that brilliant?"
"What?!"
"Oh, come on. It'll be great fun!"
"But... but... is that not just a wee bit immature?" he said, his native Scottish accent becoming a bit more pronounced. "I mean, aren't we all getting just a bit too old to be getting dressed up like bairns for a party?"
"Too old my arse!" said Susan, laughing. "You just don't want to come out of that shell of yours and do something a bit different."
She was right. Nick, originally from a small village on the west coast of Scotland, was not the most outgoing of men and she'd expected some resistance.
"Aye, but dressing up like children, Susan. Come on!"
"Don't be such an old stick in the mud! It'll be really good fun. You'll enjoy it once you get there. Anyway, you've been working way too hard recently and you could do with relaxing a bit."
"As if I'm going to be relaxed, dressed up like a right clown! Couldn't we just go in our normal clothes? Tell her we couldn't find anything suitable?"
"No. We are going in fancy dress and joining in with the spirit of things. You know, I could almost see you in a clown's outfit." She smiled and kissed the tip of his nose, then got up from his lap and headed for the door. "I'm going to fetch the laptop and we're going to look up some costume hire shops."
"But Susan..." he began, lamely searching for a good excuse to avoid having to wear any kind of costume.
"No buts!" she said, turning to face him. "It's my best friend's thirtieth birthday and she wants to have a fancy dress party. We're going, and we will be wearing costumes. That's final. Besides, as I said before, you've been working too much lately and you need to chill out. Have a few beers and a bit of a laugh."
"Oh, alright," he said, capitulating. "But nothing too outlandish, mind. I'm not sitting in a taxi listening to the driver sniggering all the way there!"
"You'll be fine," she said, still smiling. "I'll be back in a minute or two with the laptop and we'll see what we can find that you'll be persuaded to wear."
She left the room and headed upstairs to the spare room which had been set up as a study where Nick sometimes worked from home. She'd thought he would have put up a lot more resistance than he did, knowing that, in some ways, he could be a bit of a dinosaur. At the end of the day, though, he was her dinosaur and she loved him for all his quirks.
She entered the study, unplugged the laptop and tucked it under her arm, silently wishing he had some other old fashioned notions as she did so. Particularly when it came to dealing with a cheeky wife! A wistful smile ghosted across her face at this thought. She left the room and went back downstairs, stopping by the kitchen first to fetch a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses before returning to the living room. She set everything down on the coffee table, pulled it across in front of the couch and sat down.
"Come on," she said, patting the cushion beside her. "Pour us both a glass of wine while I turn this on."
With a heavy sigh, Nick got up, opened the wine and poured some into both glasses before sitting beside her.
"Okay. Let's get this over with," he said and took a sip from his glass.
Susan took a drink from her own glass as she waited for the computer to boot up, then clicked on the search engine icon and typed 'Fancy Dress Hire' into the search field. Moments later, she was pleasantly surprised to find two fancy dress hire shops, both in Easterham, the small market town in South East England where they lived. Both had an online catalogue showing the available outfits with pictures and a price list.
"Right," she said, clicking on the link to one of the shops, "let's look at this one first."
There was a huge range of costumes available including period outfits from Victorian times through every decade to the 1960's, outlandish rock and pop star costumes, film and television characters, nurses, doctors, police, vicars, the list seemed endless. She felt sure they would find something he'd be prepared to wear out of such a large selection of outfits.
There was no end of costumes that she would be happy to wear, but it soon became apparent that finding something that Nick didn't find outlandish or too flamboyant was not going to be so easy. Cops and robbers costumes were too much like children's play suits and the same applied to cowboy and Indian outfits, spacemen and knights in armour.
"What about a rock star then?" asked Susan, indicating some of the outfits on the screen. "You could go as the lead singer from one of those bands from the seventies or eighties that you like and I could go as a Spice Girl."
"No way! Have you seen the amount of make up those guys wore? Not to mention the over the top clothes! I'm not going out with my face caked in paint!"
They continued browsing with a few suggestions shortlisted, but mainly rejected for a variety of reasons.
"How about this one for you?" suggested Nick, pointing at a fairly standard wicked witch costume. The girl in the picture wore a black cape over a long ragged dress, broadly striped stockings and black shoes with large buckles. Perched on her head was a crooked pointy hat and her face, painted green, had a fake nose covered in warts.
"I don't think so. In the first place, it's May, not Halloween and secondly, I'm not going to turn up at my best friend's birthday bash looking like a warty faced old hag! Anyway, I thought we'd try to choose something that would have us matched as a pair, you know, Bonnie and Clyde or something like that."
"Hmm..." he responded non-committally, continuing to browse the outfits on offer.
"Look," said Susan. "Cinderella and Prince Charming, and it's on a special offer. Hire one, get the other for half price!"
"Not happening," he retorted. "There is no way in this lifetime that I'm going to leave this house and travel in public dressed in an outfit with knee-high stockings and more frills than a chorus girl's petticoat! And as for the wig..."
"Okay, okay, I get the message!" she laughed, and so they went on, browsing, suggesting and rejecting.
They were looking through the options on the second website when, on opening one of the last few pages, Susan's heart skipped a beat and she felt butterflies in her stomach as excitement ran through her. Glancing sidelong at Nick to see if he had noticed what she had been sure was an audible gasp, she looked back at the page before her.
Her face flushed a little as she stared at the image of a man, similar in age and build to Nick, dressed in a fairly ordinary suit, shirt and tie but with a black schoolmasters gown and a mortarboard perched on his head. He had a mock stern look on his face as he flexed a thin, crook handled cane between his hands. Next to him stood a girl in her mid-twenties looking as if she'd just stepped off the set of a St. Trinian's movie, with her short black pinafore, white blouse and sheer black stockings. Looking provocatively at the camera, she had a hockey stick held carelessly over her shoulder in one hand, whilst the other rested on her hip.
Plucking up her courage, she glanced at Nick who appeared to be gazing blankly at the screen as if lost in thought. She tried to control her breathing in preparation for the next suggestion. Clearing her throat, she said, "Umm, what about that one?"
"Eh?" asked Nick, coming out of his reverie. "That one? Isn't that a bit, well, you know, erm, risqué? Anyway, it isn't on a 'two for' offer."
"I know, but we'd only need to hire the headmaster's kit for you. I've got a black skirt that would look the part, you know, the pleated one. That, along with a short-sleeved white blouse and your old blue and white striped tie you never wear, is all I'd need to look like a naughty sixth former. What do you think?"
"Well, I don't know. It's all a bit-"
"Oh, come on!" she interrupted. "Besides, it's only a bit of fun and we still haven't seen anything else that you'd be prepared to wear out in public. With that, you could have the gown and hat in a bag and just travel in your suit. All I need to do is wear my best coat which would hide my costume and we'd look just like any other well-dressed couple going out for the evening."
Nick offered some further half-hearted resistance, but Susan turned every argument back on him until finally, with a sigh, he gave in to her.
"Okay, if that's what you want. I suppose it's a bit less off the wall than some of your other suggestions. I'll leave you to organise things. Now let's turn this thing off and get to bed. It's getting late and I've got an early start in the morning."
"Okay. You sort out the computer and I'll put these glasses in the dishwasher and get that started. I'll be upstairs in a few minutes." With that, she headed into the kitchen, barely able to conceal the smile beaming across her face. While she loaded the dishwasher, she heard Nick turn off the laptop and head upstairs.
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