But then, her artisan chocolates were heavenly! My spirits rose slightly as my mind took a new tack.
‘Actually, I wanted to ask her if she might make a special line of chocolate shoes for me to sell in the shop when it goes totally bridal.’
‘I’m sure she’d be delighted. And I’m glad you’ve started thinking about the new shop, because your aunt was really keen that you should get on with it, she told me so.’
‘Yes, she made me promise I’d carry on, so I must … and a Chocolate Wishes shoe would be the perfect wedding favour, wouldn’t it?’
‘It certainly would. I’ll tell her to pop round.’
As he shrugged himself into a very un-vicar-like long black leather coat he asked, ‘Any sign of your new neighbour yet?’
‘No, so perhaps he’s changed his mind, or his health took another turn for the worse, or something,’ I said. ‘Nan said he was an elderly actor.’
When Chloe came she brought her baby, Grace, with her, who has the same amazingly greeny-blue eyes and dark hair as her father. Chloe’s even smaller than I am and very pretty, with a slightly elfin face, a bit like Kate Bush. I didn’t say so, though, because she was probably just as fed up with people saying that as I was with being likened to Helena Bonham Carter, just because we both liked to dress a little differently from everyone else.
Chloe’d brought me a chocolate angel and a geranium in a pot. ‘It’s scented and has red flowers. Red geraniums are for protection,’ she told me.
‘Against what?’
‘Sadness, bad vibes,’ she shrugged. ‘I just felt it was what you needed.’
‘Thank you – and I love scented geraniums.’
‘Do you? I’ve got lots of different kinds. I’ll take some cuttings for you.’ She sat down, holding Grace, and the baby started trying to push herself upright, as though her mother’s knees were a springboard.
‘Raffy told me about your plans for Cinderella’s Slippers,’ she said, taking a firm grip on her lively offspring, ‘and that you’d thought of selling chocolate shoes?’
‘Yes, I want to stock all kinds of shoe-related things and they would make lovely wedding favours, wouldn’t they?’
‘I’m sure you’re right, but I’d have to have special shoe-shaped chocolate moulds made – though that would be a one-off cost, of course,’ she explained. ‘Then I hand-make my Wishes from the best criollo chocolate, so they’d be quite expensive.’
‘People seem prepared to pay for the best, when it comes to a wedding, and they’ll be very exclusive. Could they have a special Wedding Wish inside each one?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
We discussed the design – a high-heeled shoe – and then the packaging, with each to be in its own little transparent box. I wrote it all down; Chloe needed both hands for the baby.
Before she went I thanked her for the chocolate angel.
‘There’s a Wish in it, but I don’t know what it is, because I fold them and pick one out of the jar,’ she said. ‘But I’m positive this one will have come directly from Nan, because she’s your guardian angel now – we all have one.’
She seemed dead serious, and I remembered Aunt Nan saying she had talked about guardian angels with Chloe. It was a very comforting thought …
‘It does feel as if she’s still here,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, I keep talking to her, forgetting she isn’t!’
‘That’s because she
is
in spirit,’ Chloe said.
I didn’t tell her that I was sure I’d actually heard Aunt Nan’s voice that very morning, telling me to stop moping around like a wet weekend. Grief plays strange tricks on your mind.
Later, I ate the chocolate angel, which was also very comforting. Chocolate so often is, and Chloe’s was the most delicious I’d ever tasted. In the village rumour had it that her grandfather has put some sort of spell on it.
The message inside urged me to make good a promise, which I supposed was Nan’s way of telling me to get on with Cinderella’s Slippers, and also, possibly, my next book, which would be well overdue if I didn’t get a shift on.
My sister Violet was a clever girl and went to the Grammar, but I left school early, as you often did then, and went to work for the village dressmaker, Jessie Sykes. I loved sewing and I was a sort of apprentice, you might say. I learned a lot from Jessie, and I made my own wedding dress – I’ll show you later, I still have it. Jessie gave me the silk-satin for the dress itself and then Mrs Winter – Hebe’s mother – gave me an old white lace evening gown and I managed to make a lace and silk coat with a fluted train out of it, like I’d seen in a magazine.
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
Bella reopened the shop and we started getting ready for the closing-down sale, set for 6 March, when everything except Aunt Nan’s stock of satin wedding shoes, which were the sort of mid-heel classic court shoes that some brides still preferred, would be sold off at knock-down prices. We advertised in the local paper, and once word got out we didn’t have a lot of customers, since everyone was thriftily waiting for the sale.
Bella and I, having already made a start on the stocktaking before Aunt Nan’s final illness, now got on with it in earnest, making long lists and marking down the prices. I had to leave a lot of it to Bella, though, since there were a hundred and one things to be organised or sourced before Cinderella’s Slippers could open, and as fast as I ticked oneoff the list, another three took its place.
I drafted adverts, commissioned cards and flyers, and contacted everyone I could think of for publicity – newspapers, Lancashire magazines, wedding magazines, local radio stations – you name it, I tried it. Bella set up a Cinderella’s Slippers website, learning how to do it as she went along, and I set about trying to persuade Ruby, of RubyTrueShuze, to let me stock her shoes.
Then there were things like choosing paint colours (I needed several long phone calls to Timmy for that one), finding display stands, talking to Aunt Nan’s accountant and organising the book-keeping.
Suddenly it dawned on me that we had left a bare two weeks between the sale and the reopening in which to transform the shop and I realised that I’d need a magic wand to get everything ready in time!
Still, once the die was cast, the panic and adrenaline
really
kicked in, and anyway, keeping frantically busy was one way of coping with my grief …
I missed Aunt Nan at every turn and I was looking forward to hearing the archive recordings of her memories when Cheryl Noakes, the archivist, gave me a copy. She’d been at the funeral and said she’d come round and see me soon.
One evening, feeling particularly lonely, I fetched down Aunt Nan’s box of treasures, looking for comfort. She’d never been a great hoarder, so everything fitted inside the tin trunk she kept under her Victorian brass bedstead. When I lifted the lid a familiar scent of lavender filled the air and there were all my school reports and photographs, an album of faded family snaps and a ribbon-tied bundle of letters from her fiancé.
I didn’t read the letters, but it did make me aware that I was about to become a spinster of the parish too, turning my back on marriage and children, with my life revolving around the shop. Of course, unlike me, Aunt Nan’s decision was forced on her by the death of her fiancé in the war, while mine was forced on me by the death of my love.
Well, OK, perhaps it wasn’t quite dead, but it had certainly shrivelled away to a poor little creature whimpering in the naughty corner.
At least Aunt Nan had been truly loved by Jacob, whereas I didn’t think Justin could have truly loved me, or he wouldn’t have wanted me to change. He still seemed to think he had – and still did – since, despite receiving little encouragement, he kept sending me sympathetic emails asking me how I was and telling me how much he missed me, and even all my bright touches about the flat and little fuzzy monkeys!
However, reading between the lines, I could tell that Mummy Dearest had practically moved into the flat with him and he was overdosing on smother-love, but it was his own fault for letting her.
His emails unsettled me and made me even sadder, especially when he begged me to let him come up. I was sure he was convinced that once I’d set eyes on him I’d fall into his arms, weeping glad tears, and he seemed incapable of grasping the fact that he’d done the unforgivable and that because of his actions I’d missed my chance of marriage and children. There could be no going back unless I was suddenly struck by selective amnesia.
Aunt Nan’s solicitor called to say he’d had an enquiry as to whether I would consider selling the shoe shop and cottage.
‘Your aunt turned down one offer from the people who bought the next-door cottage, and I know you have your own plans, but of course I had to inform you of the new enquiry.’
‘Of course, but
I’m
not selling either,’ I told him. ‘We thought the man who’d bought the cottage next door was finally going to move in, but he hasn’t, so perhaps he’s changed his mind and you could suggest that they might be able to buy that one instead? Unless they particularly
wanted
a shop, of course. They wouldn’t get planning permission next door, because the whole building is listed now.’
‘I’ll pass that to the solicitor who contacted me. You still intend to carry on the business, presumably? You did mention after the funeral that you had plans for it.’
‘Yes, only I’m going to specialise solely in wedding shoes.’
‘Solely,’ he said. ‘Ha, ha – good one!’ and put the phone down.
Trust Aunt Nan to choose a mad solicitor.
I hadn’t felt in the least like working on the next
Slipper Monkey
book, but I forced myself because of the looming deadline and, once I’d started, I found it very soothing to slip into a fuzzier, brighter world for a bit.
I was very into Japanese woodcut prints when I was at art college, which I think influenced my illustrations, and I still used a combination of spiky, fine black ink lines to suggest the underlying structure, and bright washes of watercolour.
I’d taken over one end of the big pine kitchen table, but I thought eventually I’d move into Aunt Nan’s front bedroom and turn my old room, looking over the garden, into a studio. My little white-painted bed should just squeeze into the boxroom, in case I had unexpected visitors.
But for the moment, sorting out the shop took all my time and propping a drawing board against the edge of the table was fine.
Two days before what we hoped would be the Great Clearance we were almost ready for it, with ‘Sale Saturday!’ posters in the window and pasted over the Bright’s Shoes sign fixed to the wall of the High Street end of Salubrious Passage.
Bella had marked rock-bottom prices on everything, and we’d put out boxes of purses, laces, polish, suede brushes and tartan sponge inner soles.
Festoons of handbags swung from the hooks over the old wooden counter, which stood in front of the sliding door dividing the shop from the kitchen, and a line of umbrellas was hooked along the dado rail. All we needed now was a horde of customers hungry for a bargain!
I opened the shop that Thursday morning (we were still getting the odd customer for shoe polish, laces and things like that), because Bella was going to be late. Tia’s hamster had developed a bald patch and so she was taking it to the vet first.
She was much later than I expected. I’d just come back into the shop with a mid-morning cup of coffee and was sitting behind the counter with paint charts and fabric samples spread out, trying to visualise the shop transformed into Cinderella’s Slippers, when she finally turned up – and not alone. She had a large, unkempt and wild-eyed Border collie with her, tied to a bit of rope, which she more or less dragged over the threshold. The dog sat quivering on the welcome mat and refused to come any further.
‘What on earth …?’
Bella looked hot, flushed, harassed and unusually dishevelled, with wispy strands of ash-blond hair hanging around her face. ‘Sorry I’m so late
and
about the dog, but I simply didn’t know what to do with it!’
‘Whose is it?’ I asked, trying to coax it to stop shivering and come to me. The dirty-white tip of its black tail thumped tentatively on the mat, but it ducked away from my hand as if I was about to smack it on the head.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ she said distractedly. ‘I was at the vet’s with the hamster and a man came out of the surgery dragging this poor dog with him. He was really angry and yelling at the vet: “You told me to bring him down here if I was going to destroy him, you didn’t say you were going to charge me an arm and a leg to do it for me! I could do it easy enough myself, for the price of a bullet.”’
‘How horrible!’
‘Yes, it was. He was very aggressive. The vet followed him out and told him that just because the dog was useless at herding sheep, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t be rehomed as a pet and suggested he take him to the RSPCA kennels. But the man said he’d wasted enough time on him.’
‘He might at least have given the poor dog a chance!’
‘That’s what
I
chipped in and said, and that he couldn’t possibly shoot the poor thing, because it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t herd sheep and someone would give him a good home.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Me and my big mouth! He said if I felt like that, then the dog was mine. He tossed the end of the rope at me and left.’
‘So – are you going to keep him?’
‘How can I? There’s no room in the annexe to swing a cat, and Mum was bad enough about the hamster – she’d go berserk at the sight of a dog hair or muddy paw marks. Dad would go into meltdown if he messed up his immaculate garden, too. It was a huge concession letting Tia have a sandpit in the corner behind the compost bin.’
‘I see what you mean,’ I said, and we contemplated the dog, who shivered even more and held one paw up in a very pathetic way. ‘So,
are
you going to take him to the RSPCA kennels?’