Trisha Ashley - Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues

I could still recall the heady smell of leather in the warehouses and then the treat of tea in one of the big stores before we came back on the train. Not many shopkeepers nowadays would go all that way just to find the exact shoes one customer wanted, but then again, nowadays anyone but my aunt Nan would be tracking them down on the internet. That, together with vintage clothes fairs, was how I was amassing an ever-expanding collection of wedding shoes – or vintage shoes so pretty they ought to be wedding shoes. I was collecting them just for fun, but I only wished I had somewhere to display them all.

‘When you were a little girl you wanted to run the shop when you grew up and find the right Cinderella shoes, as you called them, for every bride.’

‘I remember that, and though I’m still not so interested in the wellies, school plimsolls and sensible-shoe side, I do love the way you’ve expanded the wedding shoe selection. I’ve wondered about the possibility of having a shop that specialises in bridal shoes.’

‘Would there be enough custom? It’s only been a sideline,’ Aunt Nan said doubtfully. ‘You don’t get much passing trade here either, being tucked away down Salubrious Passage, as we are.’

‘Oh, yes, because people will travel to a specialist shop once they know you’re there. I could advertise on the internet, and my shop would stock some genuine vintage bridal shoes as well as vintage-styled ones, so that would be a fairly unusual selling point,’ I enthused.

‘That would be different,’ Aunt Nan agreed. ‘But wouldn’t you have the bread-and-butter lines still, like purses and polish and shoelaces?’

‘No, not unless I could find shoe-shaped purses! In fact, I could sell all kinds of shoe-shaped things – jewellery, stationery, wedding favours, whatever I could find,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘because I’d be mad not to tap into the tourist trade too, wouldn’t I? I mean, the village has become a hotspot between Easter and autumn, since the discovery of that Shakespeare manuscript up at Winter’s End. The gardens are a draw too, now Seth has finished restoring the knot gardens on the terraces, and then you get the arty lot who want to see Ottie Winter’s sculpture in the garden and maybe even a glimpse of the great artist herself!’

Aunt Nan nodded. ‘Yes, that’s very true. And when they’ve been to Winter’s End, they usually come into the village, what with the Witchcraft Museum and then the craft galleries and teashops and the pubs. The Green Man still does most of the catering for lunches and dinners, but Florrie’s installed a coffee machine in the snug at the Falling Star and puts out a sign, and she says they get quite a bit of passing trade. You’d be amazed what people are prepared to pay for a cup of coffee with a bit of froth on it.’

Florrie Snowball was Aunt Nan’s greatest friend and, although the same age, showed no signs of flagging. Aunt Nan said this was because she’d sold her soul to the devil, involved as she was in some kind of occult group run by the proprietor of the Witchcraft Museum, Gregory Lyon, but it doesn’t seem to have affected their friendship.

‘I’m sure I could make a go of it!’ I said, starting to feel excited. Until all these plans had suddenly come pouring out, I hadn’t realised just how much I’d been thinking about it.

Aunt Nan brought me back to earth with a bump. ‘But, Tansy, if you marry Justin, then you’ll make your home in London, won’t you?’

‘He could get a job up here,’ I suggested, though I sounded unconvincing even to myself. Justin could be transferred to a Lancashire hospital, but I was sure he wouldn’t want to. And even if he did want that, Mummy Dearest would have something to say about it!

‘I can’t see Justin doing that,’ Aunt Nan said.

‘Even if he won’t, Bella could manage the shop for me and I could divide my time between London and Sticklepond,’ I suggested, though suddenly I really, really wanted to do it myself! ‘Anyway, we needn’t think about that now, because you’re not going to leave me for years yet, and until then, Bella can run things just the way they’ve always been.’

‘I keep telling you I’m on the way out, and you’re not listening, you daft lump,’ my aunt said crossly. ‘After that rheumatic fever I had at eleven they said I wouldn’t make old bones, but they were wrong about that! But now I’m wearing out. One day soon, my cogs will stop turning altogether and I’ll be ready to meet my Maker. I’d hoped to see you married and with a family by then, though.’

‘Yes, me too, and it’s what Justin seemed to want when we got engaged … yet we haven’t even tied the knot yet!’

‘That’s what comes of living with a man before the ring’s on your finger,’ Aunt Nan said severely. ‘They’ve no reason to wed you, then.’

‘Things have changed, Aunt Nan – and I do have a ring on my finger.’ I twiddled my solitaire diamond.

‘Things haven’t changed for the better, and if he wants a family he should realise that time’s passing and you’re thirty-six – starting to cut it close.’

‘I know, though time has slipped by so quickly that I’ve only just woken up to the fact.’

‘I don’t know why you didn’t marry long since.’

‘Neither do I, though Justin does seem to have a thing about my weight. I thought he was joking when he said he’d set the wedding date when I was a size eight, but no, he was entirely serious! Only my diets always seem to fail, and then I put a few more pounds on after each attempt.’

‘He should leave well alone, then,’ she said tartly. ‘You’re a small, dark Bright, like me, and we plumpen as we get older. And, a woman’s meant to have a bit of padding, not be a rack of ribs.’

‘It’s not just my weight, but everything about me that seems to irritate him now. I think his mother keeps stirring him up and making him so critical. For instance, he used to say the way I dressed was eccentric and cute, but now he seems to want me to look like all his friends’ wives and girlfriends.’

‘There’s nowt wrong with the way you look,’ Aunt Nan said loyally, though even my close friends are prone to comment occasionally on the eccentricity of my style. ‘He can’t remodel you like an old coat to suit himself, he needs to love you for what you are.’

‘If he does still love me! He says he does, but is that the real me, or some kind of Stepford Wife vision he wants me to turn into?’ I sighed. ‘No, I’ve been drifting with the tide for too long and after Christmas I’m going to find out one way or the other!’

‘You do that,’ Aunt Nan agreed, ‘because there are lots of other fish in the sea if you want to throw him back.’

I wasn’t too sure about that. I’d only ever loved two men in my life (if you count my first brief encounter as one of them) so the stock of my particular kind of fish was obviously already dangerously depleted.

‘If I want to have children, I’ve left it a bit late to start again with someone else,’ I said sadly, ‘and although Justin’s earning a good salary he’s turned into a total skinflint and says we can’t afford to have children yet – they’re way too expensive – but then, I expect he thinks our children would have a nanny and go to a private school, like he did, and of course I wouldn’t want that.’

‘He doesn’t seem much of a man to me at all,’ Aunt Nan said disparagingly. ‘But I’m not the one in love with him.’

‘He has his moments,’ I said, thinking of past surprises, like tickets to see a favourite musical, romantic weekends in Paris, or the trip to Venice he booked on the Orient Express, which gave me full rein to raid the dressing-up box …