Trisha Ashley - Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues

I knew it could be more difficult to get pregnant after thirty-five, so without telling Justin I’d booked myself into a clinic for a fertility MOT and the result had been a real wake-up call. The indication was that I had some eggs left, but probably not that many, so I needed to reach out and snatch the opportunity to have children before it vanished … if it hadn’t already.

When Justin and I had first got engaged we were full of plans to marry and start a family, yet there we were, almost six years down the line, and he seemed to have lost interest in doing either. In fact, I could see that he was totally different from the man I fell in love with, though the change had happened so slowly I just hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it’s like that with all relationships and it takes a sudden shock to make you step back and take a good clear look at what’s been happening.

I mainly blamed Mummy Dearest for poisoning Justin’s mind against me, dripping poisonous criticisms into his ear the whole time, though she hadn’t been so bad the first year – or maybe I’d been so in love I simply hadn’t registered it.

Justin and I were such opposites, yet until the golf mania took hold, we used to love exploring the London parks together, and before he became such a skinflint, we used to go to a lot of musical theatre productions, too. When I first found out about Justin’s secret passion (we must have seen We Will Rock You five or six times!) I found it very endearing …

As the radio cheered me on my way north with a succession of Christmas pop songs, I knew that when I got back to London we would need to do some serious talking.

Aunt Nan’s mind seemed to have been running along the same lines as mine, because she decided it was time for us to have a little heart-to-heart chat the very day after I arrived.

My best friend, Bella, was looking after the shop and Aunt Nan had spent the first part of the morning shut away in the parlour with Cheryl Noakes, the archivist who was recording her memoirs for the Middlemoss Living Archive scheme. This seemed to perk up my aunt no end, despite awaking bittersweet memories, like the loss of her fiancé during the war.

I’d shown Cheryl out and returned to collect the tray of coffee cups and any stray crumbs from the iced fairy cakes that she might have overlooked, when Aunt Nan said suddenly, ‘What will you do with the shop when I’m gone, lovey?’

She was still sitting in her comfortable shabby armchair, a gaily coloured Afghan rug over her knees (she believed overheated houses were unhealthy, so the central heating, which I’d insisted she had put in, was always turned down really low), crocheting another doily for my already full-to-bursting bottom drawer.

With a pang I realised how little room her once-plump frame took up in the chair now. When had she suddenly become so small and pale? And her curls, which had been as dark as her eyes, just like mine, were now purest silver …

‘Shouldn’t you leave it to Immy, Aunt Nan?’

‘No,’ she said uncompromisingly. ‘Your mother hates the place and she’s got more money than sense already, the flibbertigibbet! Anyway, she seems to be sticking with this last husband and making her home in America now.’

‘That’s true! Marrying a Californian plastic surgeon seems to have fulfilled all her wildest dreams.’

Aunt Nan snorted. ‘She’s probably more plastic by now than a Barbie doll!’

‘Her face was starting to look a bit strange in that last picture she emailed me,’ I admitted. ‘All pulled up at the corners of her eyes, so they slanted like a cat’s. I hope she doesn’t overdo it. I didn’t realise you could have your knees lifted, did you? But she says you can and your knees show your age.’

‘She shouldn’t be showing her knees to anyone at her age. But there, that’s Imogen all over, shallow as a puddle from being a child. Except that she’s the spitting image of her mother, you’d think there wasn’t a scrap of Bright blood in her …’

She paused, as if at some painful recollection, and then said firmly, ‘No, I’m passing on the shop and cottage to you, because you’re a true Bright and you come back every chance you get, like a homing pigeon.’

‘I do love the place, but I come back because I love you, too,’ I said, a few tears welling, ‘and I can’t bear to think of you gone.’

‘You great daft ha’porth,’ she said fondly. ‘You need to be practical about these things, because I’m ninety-two and I’ll be ready to go soon, like it or not!’

‘But do we have to talk about it now?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded her head in a very decided manner, her silver curls bobbing. ‘I’m not flaming immortal, you know! I’ll soon be shuffling off this mortal coil, as I told the vicar last time he called.’

‘Oh, Raffy Sinclair’s gorgeous !’ I sighed, distracted by this mention of our new ex-rock star vicar.

‘He’s also very much married to Chloe Lyon that has the Chocolate Wishes shop, and they’ve got a baby now,’ Aunt Nan told me severely.

‘I know, and even if he wasn’t married, he’d still be way out of my league!’

‘No one is out of your league, Tansy,’ she said. ‘The vicar’s a decent, kind man, for all his looks, and often pops in for a chat. And that Seth Greenwood from up at Winter’s End, he’s another who’s been good to me this last couple of years: I haven’t had to lift a hand in the garden other than to pick the herbs from my knot garden, and he or one of the gardeners from the hall keeps that trim and tidy, and looking a treat.’

‘Seth’s another big, attractive man, like the vicar: you’re a magnet for them!’ I teased.

‘I was at school with his father, Rufus, and I’ve known Hebe Winter for ever – has a hand in everything that goes on in Sticklepond, she does, despite her niece inheriting the hall.’

‘And marrying Seth. In fact, marrying the head gardener seems to be becoming a Winter tradition, doesn’t it?’

‘He and Sophy have got a baby too. There’s so many little ’uns around now, I’m starting to think they’re putting something in the water.’

I felt a sudden, sharp, anguished pang, because when you’re desperate to have a baby, practically everyone else seems to have one, or be expecting one.

But Nan had switched back to her original track. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to keep the shop open. Goodness knows, it’s been more of a hobby to me than a business the last few years, and I’d have had to close if Providence hadn’t sent Bella back to the village, looking for a job. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.’

‘He certainly does,’ I agreed, though I wasn’t sure that losing both her partner and her home in one fell swoop, and then being forced to move into the cramped annexe of her parents’ house with her five-year-old daughter, Tia, was something Bella saw in the light of Providence. But it had been a huge relief to me when she started working in the shop, because she could keep an eye on Aunt Nan for me too.

‘There’s been a Bright’s Shoes here since the first Bright set up as a cobbler and clog-maker way back, so I feel a bit sad that it’ll end with me. But there it is,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘Perhaps you and Justin could use the cottage as a holiday home – assuming you ever get round to marrying, that is, because I wouldn’t like to think of any immoral goings-on under this roof!’

‘Having the cottage as my very own bolthole in the north would be wonderful ,’ I agreed, ‘but I really don’t want to see Bright’s Shoes close down! Do you remember when you used to take me with you to the shoe warehouses in Manchester in the school holidays? You’d be searching for special shoes for some customer, or taking bridesmaids’ satin slippers to be dyed to match their dresses …’