Lucy Hepburn - Clicking Her Heels

‘What?’ Phyllis queried. ‘But I haven’t bought them yet. Maybe I told you they were cream, not putty? Well, more a biscuity beige, veering into a kind of taupe?’

‘Ri-ight?’

‘I’ve hidden them!’

‘You haven’t!’ Amy grimaced and rubbed her forehead. No, please – not another attempt to beat the retail system. Only last week Phyllis had scored a replacement sweater in Marks & Spencer after accidentally snipping a hole in the original one when she was cutting the label off, then distressing the hole so that it looked like it had unravelled of its own accord. ‘Phyllis, you’ll get caught one of these days!’

‘I have! They’ve only got one size twelve left, so I’ve stashed it behind the eighteens! Smaller ladies never rake that far back in those long rails, trust me.’

‘Too right they don’t,’ Amy agreed, recalling the times shop assistants had pointed her towards the petites in disdain when she dared to touch some gorgeous item of clothing in the grown-up section. ‘But why didn’t you just, well, buy them?’ she queried. Phyllis was, after all, comfortably off, having run her own bookkeeping business for over twenty years before she retired.

‘Because they’ll be in the sale next week, of course. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten? I thought the two of us could go and have a look on the first day when the shop opens at seven? Mmm? Before work? They’ll be half price!’ Then, in a lower, conspiratorial tone: ‘You can borrow them for work sometimes, if you like – oh, but then I don’t suppose we’re the same size. Hmm, well, if you wear a belt and heels, maybe?’

Amy played with the end of her dressing gown cord and murmured, ‘That’s a lovely idea, thank you.’

Phyllis’s world hadn’t always been small. It caught Amy in a deep, melancholy way that now it consisted mainly of searching for bargains, searching for her wayward cat with its prodigious vagabonding habit, and searching for reasons to ring up her only son, four floors above. And Amy, with precious few links to anyone else of Phyllis’s generation, didn’t really mind.

Justin, in the sitting room, was at last wrapping up his call. A wave of ‘yup … great … yup …’ assailed Amy’s subconscious as Phyllis talked on.

These days Phyllis wore sensible shoes. Comfortable shoes. Footgloves, nubuck loafers, Clarks easy-fit sandals, and flat pumps for her fortnightly trips to play bridge in a decaying hotel in Greenwich. Once, Amy mused, Phyllis might have worn scandalous shoes. Dancing shoes. But not now. Today, Phyllis’s shoes took her round the shops, and home again. Amy’s passion for mapping people’s lives according to their shoes had a habit of being spookily accurate.

‘Phyllis, you’re a star,’ she said. ‘I’d love to come to the Next sale with you next week. Seven o’clock it is. Uh-oh, we’ll need to be up before six.’ Amy realised that she didn’t even know which branch of Next Phyllis was talking about and, flushing with guilt, resolved to spend more time with her in future. ‘Those trousers have obviously got your name on them, and we’ll make sure you get them.’

More than anything, Amy silently wished that she were talking about shopping trips with her own mother right now, rather than dear, lonely Phyllis, as lovely as she was. But there wasn’t time to get all emotional.

‘Tell you what,’ Amy chirped, after a longish interval, ‘I’ll borrow those trousers for work if you wear my turquoise Christian Louboutin wedges on Christmas Day. OK? Deal or no deal?’

Phyllis chuckled on the other end of the line, just as Justin emerged into the hall, pocketing his mobile. He sought Amy out, sliding his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzling his face into her collarbone.

‘I’ve never known such a girl for shoes!’ Phyllis laughed down the line. ‘High heels? Do you want to send me to my grave?’

Both women felt the full force of the dreadful pause that followed. Unwelcome tears pricked Amy’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Amy,’ Phyllis said after a few moments. ‘How clumsy of me.’

‘It’s fine, really,’ Amy gulped as Justin, listening in, hugged her tight.

‘Anyway, you have a lovely night, all right?’ Phyllis went on.

‘I will,’ Amy whispered. ‘Thanks.’

‘And tell that son of mine he must be working far too hard if he’s leaving you to go out on your own rather than taking you somewhere nice.’

‘I hear you, Ma,’ Justin mumbled, from deep in the hollow above Amy’s collarbone.

‘Bye, Phyllis,’ Amy said, not trusting herself to say more.

‘Goodbye, dear.’

Replacing the receiver, Amy wriggled out of Justin’s embrace and turned to face him. She clasped his shoulders, took a deep breath, and eased him into an upright position, fixing him with the sternest glower she could muster. Justin couldn’t help giving a little snort of laughter, which he unsuccessfully tried to disguise as a coughing fit. He smelled nice, though. Luckily for him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered after a few moments, ‘but you are even cuter when you’re cross.’

Amy drew back further, narrowed her eyes and raised a single eyebrow. An old trick, to be sure, but an absolute killer when it came to all things Justin.

‘I appear to be in the doghouse,’ he ventured. ‘Don’t tell me the colour’s run on the Marc Jacobs?’

Amy nodded.

‘Sheez, I hope it hasn’t faded out too much …’ He stopped when Amy whacked him. ‘Ooyah! OK, I apologise. I’m sorry I turned your shirt pink. I shall never go near the washing machine again.’

‘That’s not the solution I had in mind,’ Amy replied primly, stroking the fabric of her newly salmoned blouse. His flippancy was beginning to grate. ‘This blouse is ruined and I wanted to wear it this evening. Not to mention my knickers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Justin smirked. ‘I was just about to mention those.’

‘Could you please at least pretend you’re concentrating on my crisis?’ Amy complained, capturing Justin’s wrists just as his hands began to travel down her body.

‘Spoilsport. OK, well, the blouse, let me think. Maybe I could dunk it in some bleach?’

It was impossible to tell if he was serious or not. ‘I’m sorry?’ Amy exclaimed. ‘Justin Campbell, did you just say the word “dunk” within twenty yards of my beautiful clothes? Would you ever dunk your precious threads in a bucket of Domestos?’

Bingo. An arrow to the heart. She may as well have asked: ‘Would you please jump off the balcony onto the concrete thirty feet below?’

Finally, he looked abashed. He freed his hands from her grip and laid them on her shoulders. ‘Come on, gorgeous, let me help you find something else to wear tonight. Tell you what, you can put on a fashion show, and I’ll be Simon Cowell …’

Amy awarded him a filthy look.

‘OK then, I’ll be Simon Cowell without the rude comments and dodgy strides.’ He led her through to the rumpled tranquillity of their bedroom, and flung open Amy’s double wardrobe doors.

It concealed an impressive collection. Not that much of it was particularly flash – Amy’s salary was definitely more High Street than Bond Street – but she’d made some impressive finds in Camden Market and Portobello Road over the past few years, and was secretly very proud of her bargain-hunting prowess. Justin, on the other hand, who could afford designer clothes a little more regularly than Amy’s once-in-a-blue-moon splurges, owned an immaculate capsule collection of casual work wear, which, for a straight bloke, was scarily tasteful.

‘Where is it you’re off to tonight again?’ he asked, stroking his stubble.

Amy turned and made a show of riffling through the rail. ‘Erm, just to the pub. With Jes. Shouldn’t be too late back.’ Slowly, guiltily, she risked a glance round. Thank goodness he wasn’t scrutinising her face; wasn’t aware of her lie.