Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (22 page)

Ruby (of RubyTrueShuze) rang me to ask how the opening had gone, which was really kind of her, and I told her how much interest her shoes had aroused.

‘I sold one pair of the Roaring Forties in cream leather, and two other brides tried shoes on and said they’d come back. I hope they do.’

‘In my experience, brides like to visit every possible shop for the dress, shoes and veil before they make up their mind,’ Ruby said.

‘That’s understandable: they want their day to be extra special – and
I
want them to be wearing extra-special shoes!’

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Bella agreed, when I related this conversation to her over mid-morning coffee, while the shop was empty. ‘Her shoes not only look wonderful, they’re so well made that they feel comfortable too, so they’ll still look and feel good when the bride has danced the night away at her reception. That’s more than you can say for some
much
more expensive designer shoes!’

‘You keep telling that to the customers,’ I urged her.

‘I have sold one of those expensive purses printed with high-heeled boots, two boxes of confetti and a silver shoe handbag dangle,’ she said. ‘That’s not a bad start.’

‘No, but we need more brides-to-be before we really get into full wedding season.’

‘They’ll come,’ she assured me. ‘How are the illustrations going?’

‘It was a bit hard to concentrate with the doorbell ringing as if crowds were rushing in when it’s people trying out the bell. I think we need some sort of buzzer thing on the shop counter connected to the studio, so you can alert me when you’re really busy.’

‘Good idea. I should be able to manage on my own most of the mornings – except possibly Saturdays, because I think then we’ll be much busier, don’t you?’

‘It seems likely. Do you think Neil might be able to install the buzzer thing for us, or should I ask an electrician?’

‘Oh, I think Neil can do it.’

‘Perhaps you could ring him and ask?’ I suggested, then grinned. ‘Notice the careful way I haven’t asked how your date went yesterday!’

She blushed slightly. ‘It wasn’t really a date: after we took Tia to Martin Mere, we went on to the Botanic Gardens at Churchtown to have tea in the café there.’

‘That sounds fun to me.’

‘Yes, it was. Neil’s a very nice man …’

‘A very nice
unmarried
man, I hope?’

‘He said he’d never been married, and he broke up with a long-term girlfriend last year, because she met someone else. An Australian someone else, so she’s emigrated, which was a bit final. Not that it matters, really, because I explained about Robert and that I wasn’t ready for any kind of relationship with him or anyone else. And probably never would be.’

‘And how did he take that?’

‘He was very understanding and said he’d just settle for being friends. Tia likes him,’ she added.

I thought Bella had also liked him a lot more than she would let herself admit, but I understood why she didn’t want to rush into a new relationship: she was putting Tia first and working hard to be able to provide a home of their own as soon as she could.

While I didn’t think there was any hope of me finding
my
Prince Charming in Sticklepond (or anywhere else, really), that didn’t mean I wouldn’t like my best friend to find love and happiness with the right man.

I left her to ring Neil and went back to work until lunchtime, and she promised to shout if she actually needed me. Then I took over just before three, while she went to pick Tia up from school.

On her way, she had to collect Ivo’s manuscript for the first time: another new beginning. She was going to type into her laptop all the chapters he’d done so far, print them out, put them in a folder and push it back through his letterbox in the morning on her way to Cinderella’s Slippers, so she had a long night’s work ahead of her.

I couldn’t see Ivo’s door from the shop, even if I went out onto the step, because of the roses hedging his front garden, but she was back through the gate so quickly, clutching a large manila envelope, that she can’t have got even one foot over the threshold.

She turned, guessing I would be watching, gave me a wave, and then vanished up Salubrious Passage.

I closed at four, and since practically no one had come into the shop during the last hour, I’d already given the place a quick clean and tidy by then, and managed to cash up and print out the till roll solo for the first time. (Bella had helpfully written out little tip cards this morning, for cashing up and till jamming, in terms a four-year-old could understand. It said ‘Don’t Panic!’ in large letters across the top of each.)

Flash refused to go upstairs, so had spent the morning lying at the bottom of them while I was working. He’d had a little bark or two whenever I’d let him out into the garden, presumably at Toby the cat, but each time he’d stopped quite quickly and I hoped eventually they’d just ignore each other … unless Toby came right into the garden when Flash was there, of course, when I would expect all hell to break loose again.

I let him out again when the shop was shut and could hear Ivo (I assumed it was Ivo) in his garden, chopping down the jungle.

He must have been still at it ages later when I went to shut up the hens because he nearly gave me a heart attack by suddenly looming up on the other side of the trellis and intoning sepulchrally, ‘
“
You come most carefully upon your hour.”’

‘I have to: dusk is the worst time for foxes and you get them even in the middle of the village these days,’ I explained, getting my voice back. ‘You startled me!’

‘Did I? Sorry,’ he apologised, then told me that the new fencing was being installed on Wednesday morning.

‘I’ve decided it’s still going to be trellis, but higher and that heavier stuff, securely fixed,’ he said, which was a surprise, because I’d expected him to go for a nine-foot solid wooden stockade with lookout posts and armed sentries. ‘Otherwise, it would make this side of your garden pretty dark for half the day.’

‘Yes, that’s true – thank you!’ I said, surprised at his thoughtfulness and wondering if the Meddyg had already begun to work its magic on him.

But if so, it hadn’t
entirely
done the trick, because he added, before he turned to go, ‘By the way, that doorbell of yours is still
way
too loud,’ then walked off before I could reply. He must have ears like a bat if he can still hear it!

While the workmen were installing the fencing on Wednesday morning the gate between the two gardens was open and Ivo, to my surprise, came in and made friends with Flash.

I was out there because I’d just struck a deal with one of his workmen to come back in his own time (and on the cheap), to fence off my herbal knot garden and fruit and vegetable beds before Flash peed them to death, so I expect I looked a little guilty.

‘I thought you didn’t like dogs,’ I said as Ivo made a fuss of Flash who, after a nervous few moments, suddenly lay down and rolled over to have his rather fat tummy tickled.

‘I do – in fact, I’m more of a dog man than a cat one, really. Toby was my wife’s cat.’

Again that shuttered look at the mention of his wife: he must truly have adored her.

‘I’m sorry I lost my temper when he chased Toby.’

‘They seem to be mostly ignoring each other these days,’ I said. ‘Flash has a token bark when he sees Toby, then he pretends he isn’t there.’

‘I can see now that Toby’s purposely winding him up,’ Ivo admitted.

‘Yes, he gives him the evil eye from on top of the post. Why did you call him Toby? I always think it’s a benign sort of name and it certainly doesn’t suit him!’

‘He was a stray kitten who wandered into our kitchen one night and we couldn’t decide whether to keep him or not – it was a case of “to be – or not to be.”’

I groaned and he gave me the faintest ghost of a smile.

Flash was now leaning against Ivo’s legs, gazing adoringly up at him, which made me feel slightly jealous. He’d also left a generous covering of white hairs on Ivo’s black moleskin trousers, I noticed.

Although I was very conscious of Ivo living next door, just the other side of the wall (especially when the faint strains of melancholy music drift through), he was still leading a semi-hermit existence. I certainly hadn’t seen him out in the village during the day and nor was he letting anyone in his front door that I’d noticed, apart from the vicar … and Bella, of course, in the afternoons when she collected the manuscript, though she didn’t actually go in. Even Hebe Winter hadn’t gained admittance and she was highly indignant about that!

I suppose he was working off his excess energy hacking back his jungle of a garden in the afternoons and then going out for his solitary walk at dusk like a lonely vampire.

‘He seems in good condition, if a bit plump,’ he said, stroking Flash’s well-padded ribcage.

‘I think I may have been overcompensating for his bad past with food – killing him with love,’ I confessed. ‘He could do with a lot more exercise than he’s been getting lately, too.’

‘I’ve seen you taking him out for a walk in the evening,’ he said, and it was a bit disconcerting thinking of him standing at his upstairs window, noting my comings and goings. That’s the only place he could have spotted me from.

‘We only get as far as the green, usually,’ I admitted.

Then Ivo
really
surprised me by offering to walk Flash in the evenings himself. ‘I might as well, since I go for a long walk anyway.’

‘He’s not easy,’ I said doubtfully. ‘The least noise startles him and makes him want to bolt for home, so you have to reassure him. And if he panics, he clamps the lead to his chest with one paw, so you can’t pull it.’

‘Really? That’s very clever!’ Ivo said admiringly. ‘But I expect I could cope. I grew up with dogs.’

He seemed genuinely keen to walk Flash, so it was agreed that from tonight he would collect him at the kitchen door each evening, which would do the dog a lot more good than a quick drag round the green – and I resolved to repay Ivo with small gifts of home-baked morsels, because if ever a man had forgotten how to eat properly, he was staring me in the face.

If Ivo was surprised when he returned Flash after his first dog walk, and I silently handed him a plastic box of fruit fairy cakes, he didn’t say anything, just vanished with it back into the darkness of the garden.

I suspected he’d been roaming the lanes in a Byronic gloom but Flash seemed cheerful enough and had obviously been in a stream at some point, if not the small duck pond by the Spar.

The following morning I gave him his short early trot up the lane with less of a bad conscience, then got on with my latest illustration once Bella had arrived to open the shop.
Slipper Monkeys’ Safari
had got as far as the shag-pile rug, where the lions took up residence, and I’d almost finishing putting the finishing touches to it when Neil called up the stairs to ask where I wanted him to install my end of the buzzer.

‘Bella’s got a button to press just under the counter by the till,’ he explained.

‘I’d like it up here in my studio, because if I’m in the kitchen I’ll hear her call anyway.’

When he’d finished, I followed him back into the shop to see how Bella was doing, and while I was there, Neil asked her if she would like to go to the Green Man for lunch with him.

‘I can’t, we don’t shut for lunch,’ she said firmly.

‘But it’s Thursday, our half-day, so we shut at twelve,’ I reminded her, and she gave me a look as if to say, ‘You traitor!’

‘Well then, if you aren’t doing anything else …?’ Neil suggested diffidently.

‘Oh, I suppose I
could
,’ Bella said ungraciously. ‘I’ll just have to pop next door and pick some papers up first, though.’

‘And Tansy’s welcome to come too, of course,’ he said politely.

‘Oh, not me, thanks. I’m going to have a quick lunch and then go and have my tea leaves read. Zillah Smith at the Witchcraft Museum invited me,’ I said quickly.

I wasn’t actually due there until two; I just didn’t want to play gooseberry!

A delivery had arrived mid-morning, including some lovely white umbrellas printed with pastel-coloured shoes, which Bella had unpacked, and I price-tagged those after they’d gone.

Gregory Lyon was in the kitchen when I went round to his house, which was attached to one end of the museum. He told me that the forces in my courtyard were very strong and with my permission he’d like to walk about in it at dawn.

I said that was fine with me, and it only occurred to me later to wonder if he would do it with or without his clothes on … and also to wonder what Ivo might think if he looked out in the early hours and saw an elderly and imposing eccentric communing with invisible powers outside.

I’d taken a pile of flyers for the shop with me and suggested they display them in the museum. In return, I’d take some of theirs back to the shop, which they agreed was a good idea.

Then Gregory Lyon wandered out of the room, carrying a cup of tea with two Garibaldi biscuits balanced in the saucer and Zillah urged me to drink mine (which was very strong) so she could read my leaves.

She was wearing big hooped gold earrings engraved with an intricate pattern, layers of bright pink cardigans and a lime-green skirt, shot through with spangly bits. In comparison, my own favourite red tartan dress over green net underskirt and matching tights looked positively bland.

‘Interesting,’ she declared, after staring down into the cup for quite some time. ‘Your life seems to be about to come full circle. There are forces at work, both good and ill.’

‘I don’t know about full circle, but I do seem to be running round in rings,’ I said. ‘Does it say whether the shop will be a success?’

‘Not specifically: there will be great challenges in your life, but you’ll overcome them and, in the end, get what you long for. Your love life is … complicated,’ she added.

‘My love life is non-existent and likely to stay that way! Prince Charming had feet of clay so we never even got as far as the glass slipper.’