TRISHA ASHLEY
Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues

Copyright

AVON

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First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2012

Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © May 2012 ISBN: 9780007478408

Version: 2016-03-12

Dedication

This one is for my friend Nora Neibergall,

distant only in miles.

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: June 1945

Chapter 1: Christmas Present

Chapter 2: Frosted Knots

Chapter 3: Trashed

Chapter 4: Philtred Out

Chapter 5: Charlie’s Aunt

Chapter 6: True Lovers Not

Chapter 7: Old Valentines

Chapter 8: Amazing Grace

Chapter 9: Barking Mad

Chapter 10: Cat Flap

Chapter 11: Cross Patch

Chapter 12: Summoned by Bells

Chapter 13: Fresh as Paint

Chapter 14: Bell de Jour

Chapter 15: Luscious

Chapter 16: Blessed

Chapter 17: Typecast

Chapter 18: Dead as my Love

Chapter 19: Overtures

Chapter 20: Sister Act

Chapter 21: Fat Rascals

Chapter 22: April Fool

Chapter 23: Well Knotted

Chapter 24: Sweet Music

Chapter 25: Good in Parts

Chapter 26: The Birds and the Bees

Chapter 27: Late Calls

Chapter 28: Mixed Messages

Chapter 29: Describing Circles

Chapter 30: Bananas

Chapter 31: Lovers All Untrue

Chapter 32: Chicken Run

Chapter 33: Mayday!

Chapter 34: Porkers

Chapter 35: Shared

Chapter 36: Wishes

Chapter 37: Wrecked

Chapter 38: Uninvited Guests

Chapter 39: June Bug

Chapter 40: A Delightful Plot

Exclusive Recipes from Trisha Ashley

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue: June 1945

Nancy had to walk quite a way to the red call box near the village green, then stand in an unseasonably cold wind waiting for a large woman in a spotted headscarf tied turban-fashion round her head to stop talking and come out, before she could place the call to her sister.

‘At last! What kept you?’ Violet exclaimed.

‘Never mind that now,’ Nancy said tersely. ‘I’m in the phone box, so call me back. You’re the one with all the brass.’

She dropped the black phone back onto its rest, thinking that brass was something her sister had never been short of. But her latest scheme – well, that really took the biscuit …

The phone rang almost immediately. ‘I was starting to wonder if you’d got my letter,’ Violet said.

‘Oh, I got it all right – and Mother and Father got theirs, too. But what on earth are you thinking of, Violet? This mad plan of yours will never work!’

‘Viola,’ her sister corrected her automatically. ‘And of course it will – why shouldn’t it?’

‘I can think of at least five reasons off the top of my head. And you might have asked me first.’

‘We’re sisters, so why wouldn’t we help each other out of a sticky spot? And I’ve got it all planned. I’m going to rent somewhere quiet, where no one knows us, and in a couple of months you’ll be home again as if nothing had ever happened and can put it right out of your head.’

‘But something will have happened. And if I suddenly vanish like that, then reappear, don’t you think there’ll be talk? You know how rumours get around in the village.’

‘Oh, probably no one will notice,’ Violet said optimistically, ‘and if they do, they won’t know, that’s the main thing.’

‘Vi, I can’t let you do this – and don’t you think your husband might have something to say about it, when he finds out? No, we’ll have to find another way.’

‘Too late, because I’ve already written to Peter explaining everything, though goodness knows when he’ll get the letter,’ Violet said triumphantly. Despite the recent VE Day celebrations, many men were still fighting out in the Far East, Violet’s husband among them.

‘You’ve actually sent it? Without asking me first?’

‘Of course, because it was obviously the only way out of the situation. So you see, we’ll have to go through with it now. Peter will be fine about it when he comes home. I can twist him round my little finger,’ Violet added. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’

‘You shouldn’t speak like that about your husband. You chose to marry a much older man when you were barely in your twenties, Violet, no one forced you!’

Nancy could almost see her sister shrug her thin shoulders. ‘So, when are you coming?’

‘Violet, we can’t possibly do this. You’re quite mad to even think it!’

‘You mean you won’t come, Nancy? You’ll just tell Mother and Father the truth? Mother will probably have another stroke from the shock and shame.’

‘You’ve got Mother upset already, telling her you’d been ill again and were going to convalesce somewhere quiet and wanted me to keep you company. She was all set to come down herself and look after you, but Father wouldn’t entertain the idea for a minute,’ Nancy said. Their mother had suffered a mild stroke the previous year and, though she had made a good recovery, she was still not fully fit.

‘Thank goodness for that! But I didn’t think he’d let her. I take it they’re OK about you coming, though?’

‘Yes, in fact they’re so worried about you they want me to go at once. They think you’re a frail little flower since the pneumonia, though you only got that from gallivanting about in flimsy clothes in the evening with your fast friends, drinking too much.’

‘Honestly, Nan, you sound more like twenty years older than me, than two! But the sooner you come down the better, because it’s lucky no one’s noticed anything yet. There’s nothing to keep you there now, is there? I mean, you’re not still seeing that American pilot?’

‘No, he’s gone home and, anyway, we were just friends, really,’ Nancy said. Her fiancé had been killed in the early days of the war and there hadn’t been anyone serious since then. Not that Violet was likely to believe that.

‘Tell that to the marines!’ she said now, rudely.

‘But I have started seeing someone recently,’ Nancy confessed.

‘This is certainly not the time to get involved with another man!’ Violet said severely. ‘Who is he?’

‘The new curate. He’s been round to tea at our house once or twice and we’ve been for walks. Mother and Father like him and … well, he’s a good, decent man. I know I’ll never love anyone like I did Jacob, but I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life alone, either.’

‘A curate? Good grief!’ Violet exclaimed.

‘He was an army chaplain.’

‘Honestly, what a moment to pick to go out with a curate! Let’s just hope he never gets wind of this, because I don’t suppose he’d be very forgiving.’

‘Amen to that!’ Nancy said devoutly. ‘And I wouldn’t have encouraged him if only I’d known …’

‘Well, you didn’t, and with a bit of luck you’ll be back home before long, and can pick up where you left off.’

‘I don’t think I could – not without telling him the truth.’

‘You can never tell anyone the truth. And it’s not like you can back out of the situation now, Nan, is it? It would finish Mother off if it all came out, and as for Father …’

‘You don’t think that they’ll suspect anything eventually?’

‘They might guess, but that’s not the same as knowing – and everything will be nicely sorted out by then, no scandals. But you must keep it secret …’ Violet paused then asked, ‘You haven’t already told Florrie, have you?’

She knew Florrie was Nancy’s best friend and there were few secrets between them.

‘No, no one knows but you and me.’ Nancy sighed. ‘It suddenly feels as if I’m trapped in a horrible nightmare, but I can’t see anything else I can do, so I’ll be down on Monday afternoon.’

‘I don’t know about nightmare, but it’s all a damned nuisance,’ Violet said. ‘Tell me which train, and I’ll meet it.’

A woman walked up to the phone kiosk and stood shifting her feet restlessly outside. ‘Look, I’ll have to go – there’s someone waiting for the phone,’ Nancy said.

Stepping out of the booth Nancy pulled her warm coat around her against the chilly evening breeze. It was made of good but well-worn pre-war tweed with a little fur collar, and was now getting tight over her waist and tummy – but then, Nancy was a typical Bright, like her father, small and dark, and the womenfolk did tend to put on weight in their late twenties. Her sister, Violet, in contrast, was tall and fair like their mother, and stayed slim no matter what she ate.

Normally, the thought of the carrot cake her mother had made earlier would have hastened Nancy’s steps home, but now the heavy burden of lies, secrets and subterfuge she was shouldering made her feel distinctly queasy.

Chapter 1: Christmas Present

My name is Nancy Myfanwy Bright. My father liked the name Nancy and I was called Myfanwy after my mother. I’m ninety-two years of age and I’ve lived quietly in this cottage behind Bright’s Shoes in Sticklepond all my life, so I don’t really know why you want to record my memories for your archive, because it isn’t going to be very interesting, is it, dear?

Do help yourself to a slice of bara brith – it’s a sort of fruit loaf made to my mother’s recipe. There’s another kind they call funeral cake in the part of Wales Mother’s family came from, because it was always served to the mourners after an interment. I’ve told Tansy – that’s my great-niece – that she should do that when I pop my clogs, too. I’ve taught her all Mother’s old recipes …

Now, where were we?

Middlemoss Living Archive Recordings: Nancy Bright.

As I drove out of London and headed north for Christmas my heart lifted with each passing mile. It always did, because West Lancashire – and, more specifically, the village of Sticklepond – was always going to feel like home to me. You can take the girl out of Lancashire, but you can’t take the Lancashire out of the girl …

I would have moved back there like a flash, if it weren’t that my fiancé, Justin, was an orthopaedic consultant whose work was in London, not to mention his being so firmly tied to his widowed mother’s apron strings that he spent more time with Mummy in Tunbridge Wells than he did with me. And even when he wasn’t with Mummy Dearest, I still came second to his latest passion – golf.

Justin’s mother was only one of the many things weighing on my mind – the sharp, pointy tip of the iceberg, you might say. She’d be staying at the flat in London while I was away and I knew from past experience that by the time I got back she would have thoroughly purged my unwanted presence from it by dumping all my possessions into the boxroom I used as a studio to write and illustrate my popular Slipper Monkey children’s books.

I’d tried so hard to get on with her, but I was never going to be good enough for her beloved little boy. In fact, I once overheard her refer to me as ‘that bit of hippie trash you picked up on the plane back from India’, and though it’s true that Justin and I met after I was unexpectedly upgraded to the seat next to his in Business Class, I’m a couple of decades too young to have been any kind of hippie!

I suppose many people did still go to India to ‘find themselves’, whatever they mean by that. In my case I’d gone to find my father. Now, he was an old hippie, if you like …

Still, at least I’d tried with Justin’s mother, which is more than he did on his one and only visit to Aunt Nan in Sticklepond, when he’d made it abundantly clear that he thought anything north of Watford was a barbaric region to be avoided at all costs, full of howling wolves, black puddings and men in flat caps with whippets.

He did condescendingly describe Aunt Nan’s ancient stone cottage. set in a stone-flagged courtyard just off the High Street, its front room given over to a tiny shoe shop, as ‘quaint’. But then, that was before Aunt Nan made him sleep downstairs on the sofa in the parlour. I told him she disapproved of cohabitation before marriage so strongly that he was lucky she hadn’t taken a room for him at the Green Man next door, but he failed to see the funny side.

Still, you can see why we’d spent our Christmases apart during our long engagement, not to mention many weekends too, what with him in Tunbridge Wells with Mummy (and a convenient golf course) and me heading home at least once a month – and more often than that, as Aunt Nan got frailer …

Aunt Nan was actually my great-aunt, aged ninety-two, and as she kept reminding me, wouldn’t be around for ever. She’d brought me up and I adored her, so obviously I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could, but I also wanted her to see me married and with a family of my own, and so did she. And if I didn’t get a shift on, that last option would be closed to me for ever, another thing weighing on my mind.

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 …’

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 …

But all that was in the first heady year or so after we fell in love. Then the romance slowly tailed off … How was it that I hadn’t noticed when the music stopped playing?

Chapter 2: Frosted Knots

I’ve had my share of sorrows, of course, but I’ve never been one to dwell on them. Mother always said we should strive to be like the words carved around that old sundial in the courtyard, remembering only the happy hours, though I think being so old it actually says ‘hourf’ and not ‘hours’. The courtyard used to belong to a house that was where the Green Man is now, but lots of houses went to rack and ruin after the Great Plague visited the village, because it wiped out whole families. and there’s nothing of it left now bar the sundial. You know about the Lido field turning out to be a plague pit, don’t you, dear? It was quite providential in a way, because it stopped those developers building on it.

Middlemoss Living Archive

Recordings: Nancy Bright.

I had my recurring dream that night – or nightmare, I was never sure which. It was a Cinderella one, featuring Justin as the handsome prince and with Rae and Marcia, my wicked stepsisters from my mother’s second marriage, as the Ugly Sisters, though actually they’re only ugly on the inside.

The dream ran its usual course, with the prince looking up at me just as he was fitting the glass slipper onto my foot, at which point Justin’s leonine good looks would morph disconcertingly into the darker, somewhat other-worldly features of my first, brief love, Ivo Hawksley.

Weird, and strangely unsettling for an hour or two after I woke up …

So I was up early, and when I looked out of the kitchen window, Aunt Nan’s herbal knot garden was prettily frosted with snow and the spiral-cut box tree in the centre looked like an exotic kind of ice lolly.

Knot gardens have low, interwoven hedges forming the pattern or ‘knot’. When I was a little girl Aunt Nan used hyssop and rosemary bushes to make the outline, in the old way, but since this made a rougher effect than box hedging and also had to be renewed from time to time, a few years ago she bought a whole load of little box plants from Seth Greenwood, who is the proprietor of Greenwood’s Knots as well as being head gardener at Winter’s End, and replaced the hedging with that.

That’s when Seth started to take an interest. He helped her to pull out the old hedging and replace it with the new, in a slightly more intricate design, and then afterwards just kept dropping in and doing a bit of garden tidying.

Sometimes he sent one of the three under-gardeners instead, and I expect they were glad of the break, since Seth was so passionate about the garden restoration at Winter’s End he seemed to have become a bit of a slave-driver. Aunt Nan would be trotting out with hot tea and Welshcakes for her helpers every five minutes, too.

Each segment of knot was filled with fragrant herbs: lovage, fennel, dill, thyme, several types of mint, clumps of chives and tree onions, sage and parsley. She used several of them in the Welsh herbal honey drink, made from an old family recipe passed down from her mother, that she brewed as a general cure-all. The recipe calls it Meddyginiaeth Llysieuol, Welsh for ‘herbal medicine’, but we always referred to it just as Meddyg – much less of a mouthful!

The gardens behind this and the adjoining cottage were very long, and divided by a wall topped with trellis, while our other boundary was the high wall of the Green Man’s car park.

The two seventeenth-century cottages formed an L shape fronting onto a little courtyard accessible only by foot from the High Street via the narrow Salubrious Passage. Both had been extended to provide bathrooms and kitchens, and also, in our case, an anachronistic little three-sided shop window pushed out of the cottage front, like a surreal aquarium. I had to park my car right at the further end of the garden, where a lane turned up behind the pub and ended just beyond the cottages.

I finished my coffee, then put on my coat and boots and went out. Aunt Nan had always been a haphazard kind of gardener, mixing fruit, vegetables and flowers together in chaotic abundance, but most of the beds had been turfed over when it all got too much for her, so by then it looked a little too neat and tidy.

I walked to the far end and on through the archway cut into a tall variegated holly hedge, to let out the hens. Cedric the cockerel, who’d been emitting abrupt, strangulated crows for at least the last hour, ceased abruptly when I opened the pop-door. He stuck his head out and gave me one suspicious, beady glance, but then when I rattled the food bucket his six wives jostled him out of the way and came running down the ramp.

Bella had been letting them out and feeding them lately, when she came to open the shop, but since she had to take her little girl to school first, that could be quite late.

I looked for eggs, more out of habit than expectation since the hens generally stopped laying in winter, and found a single white freckly one.

When I went back in, Aunt Nan told me she’d discovered an early Christmas present left outside the front door when she’d gone to get the milk in.

‘Two of them, in fact!’

‘What, on the doorstep?’

‘No, next to it, one either side. This was attached.’ She handed me a card threaded with red ribbon.

‘“A Happy Christmas from Seth, Sophy and all the Family at Winter’s End,”’ I read.

‘They’re still out there – go and have a look, while I put some eggs on for breakfast,’ she urged me.

‘Here’s a fresh one.’ I handed her my booty, then went out to admire two perfect little ball-shaped box trees in wooden tubs on either side of the shop door. Seth must have carried them down Salubrious Passage in the night!

It had been lovely to see Bella again when I came home, but we’d postponed our catching-up until that evening, because it was Christmas Eve the next day, and Aunt Nan was fretting about the state of the house. I needed to embark on the sort of major clean she would have already done herself in times past, until everything sparkled, while Bella minded the shop.

When that was done we decorated the sitting room with paper garlands and put up the ancient and somewhat balding fake tree, made from green bristles on twisted wire branches. I left her hanging glass baubles on it while I went to start off the sherry trifle and bake mince pies and other goodies.

This year’s Meddyg, which Nan made in summer and autumn, was long since bottled and stored away, for it was best at least a year after brewing – pale yellowy-green and aromatic. I made it in London too, fermenting it in the airing cupboard, much to Justin’s disgust, since he couldn’t even stand the smell of it.

It must be an acquired taste. Like Aunt Nan, I always had a glass of it before bedtime … and whenever I felt in need of a pick-me-up, for, as she said, ‘A glass of the Doctor always does you good!’ She also insisted she never drank alcohol, so clearly Meddyg, which packs a powerful punch, didn’t count.

After supper I left Aunt Nan comfortably established in front of the TV in the parlour and popped next door to the Green Man to meet Bella. Her parents were babysitting, which was not exactly an arduous task, since they only had to leave the door to the annexe open to hear if Tia woke up, but she’d rarely had a night out since she’d moved back home.

‘They love Tia, but they don’t like it when they have to alter their plans to look after her,’ Bella said glumly. ‘At least now she’s turned five and at school, working is easier, but if I had to pay a childminder in the holidays it wouldn’t be worth my while working.’

‘I know, it must be really difficult,’ I said sympathetically. ‘How is everything going? You look tired.’ Bella has ash-blond hair and the sort of pale skin that looks blue and bruised under the eyes when she is exhausted.

‘I must need more blusher,’ she said with a wry smile, though having been an air hostess, she made sure her makeup and upswept hairdo were immaculate. Old habits die hard!

‘And I am tired, but at least my office skills evening class has finished for Christmas, and there’s only a few weeks more of it next term,’ she added. ‘I’m going to advertise my secretarial services and see if I can get a bit of extra work to do at home.’

‘It’s been a godsend having you helping in the shop and keeping an eye on Aunt Nan for me now she’s got so frail, but we’d both understand if you took up a better-paid full-time job offer.’

‘I couldn’t fit in a full-time job around Tia, but Nan’s let me close the shop just before school finishes so I can pick her up, which has worked very well. Plus I love working in the shoe shop and I love Nan too. The holidays and Saturdays are a bit of a problem, though, because unless I can arrange a playdate, or Robert’s mother comes over from Formby to take her out for the day, Mum has to mind her again.’ Her face clouded.

‘Not good? How are things going with you and your parents?’ I asked.

‘Oh, Tansy, it’s horrible living in the annexe!’ she burst out. ‘I know I should be grateful we’ve got a roof over our heads and no rent to pay, because goodness knows, Mum and Dad tell me that often enough, but when you’re used to having your own house and suddenly you’re crammed with a small child into a flat the size of a garage, it’s not that easy!’

‘No, I can imagine,’ I said sympathetically. ‘It seemed so unfair that you lost everything.’

Bella’s partner had been an airline pilot, several years older and separated from his wife when they met. Bella was an air hostess on one of his flights and they got to know each other on a stopover in some exotic location. He’d been handsome and charming, and swept her off her feet, but though their life together had seemed idyllic, and he’d adored Tia, it had all gone pear-shaped after he’d died suddenly from a heart attack and she’d discovered his debts.

‘There was very little left to lose. He’d already gambled us deep into debt, though I didn’t know it. And he’d never got round to divorcing his wife like he said he would, so she got whatever was left. I even had to sell my car to cover our moving expenses and a lot of our belongings, because we couldn’t fit them in and I couldn’t afford storage,’ Bella said bitterly.

‘But coming back home was the only thing you could do, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, and although Mum and Dad have been very kind, letting me have the annexe, you know what they’re like, especially Mum. I’m sure she’s getting worse.’

I nodded. Bella’s mother was super-house-proud, to the point where it was becoming an illness. She swept up every microscopic particle of anything that fell in or outside her house with manic fervour, and polished every surface that would take it to a burnished, mirrored sheen.

‘She’s in my flat cleaning all the time too. There’s no privacy! Even Tia’s toys are all clean, disinfected and lined up on shelves by order of size or colour or whatever.’

‘Not an ideal atmosphere to bring up a small child in – it’s surprising you turned out relatively normal,’ I teased.

‘Thanks,’ she said with a wry grin, ‘but then, neither of us had ideal parents, did we? Your mother dumped you with Aunt Nan soon after you were born and you’ve hardly seen her since, and your father was a passing fancy who went off to India and addled his brains with drugs.’

‘He was quite good-natured about having a daughter when I tracked him down, though,’ I said, ‘even if had to keep reminding him who I was every time he saw me, because he forgot. What about your father, Bella? Doesn’t he think your mum’s gone a bit over the top with the house-proud bit?’

‘He likes a neat house and no fuss too, so he wouldn’t understand what I was talking about. They love Tia – don’t get me wrong – but they’ve got even more inflexible in their ways and habits since I was last living at home. But perhaps I can rent somewhere soon, if I get lots of typing work,’ she said optimistically. ‘I wonder if the cottage attached to yours will come up for rent. It’s been empty for months. Still, even if it does, I expect it would be more than I could afford.’

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to it. It might even become a holiday let again. That was what the owner bought it for. She was an actress, and then Aunt Nan heard that she’d been killed in a traffic accident just after being offered a part in Cotton Common,’ I said, mentioning the popular TV soap that was shot locally.

‘Yes, she told me – and your stepsister Marcia’s already got a part in Cotton Common, hasn’t she? She must be living up here too, at least some of the time.’

‘She is. She’s got a flat in the old Butterflake biscuit factory in Middlemoss. Lars said he hoped we’d manage to see a bit of each other, but I would so much rather not get together with either of my wicked stepsisters! I don’t know how such a nice man came to have such horrible daughters.’

Lars was my mother’s second husband – she was now on to number three – and much the nicest of any of them. He’d rung me just before I left London to wish me happy Christmas. There was a large parcel from him awaiting me when I got here, which I knew would be a very lavish present.

‘I thought you were getting on slightly better with Rae?’ Bella said.

‘Not really, it’s just she comes round to the flat occasionally if it’s the nanny’s day off and Charlie isn’t at school, because I don’t think she has any idea what to do with him. He’s a nice little boy, about Tia’s age, and he loves my Slipper Monkey books – his nanny has to read them to him at bedtime every night. I always make him a pipe-cleaner monkey to take home, too. I wish Rae wouldn’t keep dropping in, though, because Justin doesn’t like her. He’s quite rude to her sometimes.’

‘At least there’s one of your boyfriends who doesn’t find your stepsisters irresistible,’ Bella offered.

‘True. It was a huge relief when he met Rae and Marcia and didn’t get on with either of them. In fact, I’m starting to think that’s the main reason I’m staying with him,’ I said gloomily.

‘I thought you loved him?’

‘I do … I did … I … well, we were in love. It’s totally unmistakable, isn’t it? That eyes-meeting-across-the-room thing – or across a plane seat, in our case. It was a real case of opposites attracting, and the first year it was all wonderful: we got engaged, I moved in, we were going to get married and start a family right away … as soon as I lost a couple of stone.’

‘I still can’t believe he was serious about that!’

‘No, I thought he was joking for ages, but he was deadly serious. And I’ve put on another stone since then,’ I said sadly.

‘You’re still only nicely covered. I could do with a bit of that.’

Bella had the opposite problem, for despite eating healthily she stayed almost painfully thin. People thought she had an eating disorder, but it wasn’t that. She always looked very striking and elegant, though, even in jeans and a cardi – a real yummy mummy.

‘The only time I looked really healthy and had boobs was when I was expecting Tia. I liked being pregnant, but Robert thought I looked gross, a total turn-off.’

‘Yes – babies … that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about, but somehow I couldn’t do it on the phone.’

Her face lit up. ‘You’re not, are you?’

‘No, I’m not – it’s the opposite problem, in fact.’ And I told her about my fertility MOT and the iffy result.

‘Basically, my chances of conceiving naturally are limited to a pretty narrow window of opportunity and diminishing rapidly, so I should get a move on.’

She hugged me. ‘Oh, Tansy, I’m so sorry! But surely when you told Justin he must have –’

‘He doesn’t know yet,’ I broke in. ‘I wanted to think things through over Christmas first, because when they gave me the results, it made me look at the last few years with clear eyes and realise how different our relationship has become. Opposites attract, but maybe we’re just too unlike each other, and if it isn’t going to work out then I can’t stay with him just because I’m desperate to have a baby, can I?’

‘I suppose not,’ she agreed. ‘How have things changed between you, then?’

‘Well, all the things about me he used to say were cute or quirky, like my clothes, for instance, now seem to embarrass or annoy him.’

‘Your clothes are often unusual,’ she admitted, ‘but they suit you. I mean, that’s just the way you are.’

I was dressed in wine-coloured corduroy jodhpurs and a Peruvian jumper covered in green, red and blue llamas. I had a matching Peruvian hat with ear flaps and tassels, but of course it was too hot to wear that in the pub. On my feet were blue Birkenstock clogs.

‘In fact, I’m the only one of your friends who wears boring clothes,’ she said.

‘Not boring, understated,’ I corrected. Muted colours and quiet elegance really suited her. ‘Justin says you always look nice.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment, from him,’ she said dubiously. ‘What does he think about Timmy? His clothes are even weirder than yours, not to mention the hats!’

‘Oh, well, being a hat maker, he uses his head as a marketing tool. But Justin’s made it clear he doesn’t like him and he wouldn’t even come with me to Timmy and Joe’s civil partnership ceremony.’

‘That spotted prom dress with the red underskirt you wore to the wedding looked lovely in the pictures.’

‘Timmy made the dress and the hat – he is so clever!’

‘I wished I could have been there,’ Bella said wistfully.

Timmy, Bella and I had been friends since infants’ school, and while Bella had trained to be an air hostess, Timmy and I had headed down to London, to art school – fashion in his case, graphic design in mine.

‘Justin’s become such a skinflint too. He wasn’t like that at first, but suddenly he started saying we had to economise and couldn’t afford to get married, couldn’t afford to move to somewhere out of town, couldn’t afford to have children … I mean, he earns a big salary – he’s a hospital consultant!’

‘And you aren’t doing too badly with the Slipper Monkey books either, are you?’

‘No, I’m doing really well. I tried to aim the mix of words and pictures at early readers in the five-to-eight-ish age range, but they seem popular now even with adults. They may even be a minor cult!’

‘I’m not surprised. The illustrations are lovely,’ Bella said loyally. ‘It’s the way you use spiky ink lines to suggest the wiriness of the little monkeys and bright watercolour wash for the soft fuzziness of the fur. They’re quite magical.’

‘It’s nice when your best friend is your biggest fan!’ I said. ‘My agent says there’s talk of spin-off items, like toys and games now. In fact, I don’t really need to do the foot modelling any more. I could give that up and wear decent shoes.’ Despite the success of the books I still did a little foot modelling for adverts and catalogues. Immy got me into it when I was a student – she said the only beautiful bit of me was my feet – and I signed up with a specialist agency. It was quite lucrative, but I had to take real care of my feet.

‘I’m not sure I can imagine you in anything other than Birkenstock clogs and sandals,’ Bella said honestly. ‘Do you still secretly wear your wedding shoes?’

Apart from Aunt Nan, Bella was the only person who knew that the first thing I’d done when I’d got engaged was splash out hundreds on the ivory satin wedding shoes of my dreams, really girlie ones, with thin crossed straps over the instep, trimmed with lace and crystals … And yet several years later, the wedding was still just a dream.

‘Yes, when Justin’s out – he has no idea! I suppose it’s a family tradition, in a way, what with Aunt Nan always taking afternoon tea on Sundays in her wedding dress, like a latter-day Miss Havisham.’

‘She looks very pretty in it,’ said Bella loyally, long acquainted with the vagaries of the Bright household.

‘My wedding shoes are getting a bit worn,’ I said gloomily, ‘but it’s not looking like they’re going to be carrying me up the aisle any time soon.’

‘So, Justin’s penny-pinching, critical of your clothes, appearance and friends, has gone off the idea of marriage and children …’ summed up Bella.

‘Mummy Dearest doesn’t help, pouring poison into his ear all the time. She seemed to loathe me even more about the same time Justin went all skinflint. And Justin doesn’t even respect my work; he always talks about it as if it’s a hobby, rather than my job.’

My compulsive habit of twisting colourful fuzzy monkeys out of pipe cleaners and leaving them hanging about all over the flat also seemed to be driving him mad.

‘Well, that’s the minus side,’ Bella said brightly. ‘What’s he got going for him?’

‘Apart from being tall, charismatic and handsome? Aunt Nan always said he was like Dr Kildare from some old TV series, and when I looked it up on Google I could see what she meant. Only she also said she’d never trust a man who looked like that!’

‘So he’s tall, handsome and also a well-paid young orthopaedic consultant – which probably means he can delegate evenings and weekends to some lesser doctor, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s not really the sort of thing you get called out in emergencies for. But he’s actually not so young any more, he’s about to hit forty. I do wish he wouldn’t go on as if we’re practically living on the breadline. He was even miffed when I wouldn’t accept an allowance from Lars, though I don’t see why the poor man should pay out for me, when my mother was married to him for only a couple of years.’

‘Nice of him to offer.’

‘Lars keeps trying to persuade me to change my mind, but I won’t. I do accept his lovely presents, though.’

‘So come on, what other good points does Justin have?’

‘Charm – though he doesn’t often direct it at me these days. And he can be very affectionate and persuasive. He says he wants me to lose weight only for my own health, for instance …’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘But then, he loves my baking and sulks if there’s nothing in the cake tin, or I haven’t made a fresh bara brith loaf.’

‘All that baking’s not exactly going to help you with the weight loss, is it?’ Bella pointed out.

‘No, not really,’ I sighed. ‘He does think the foot modelling is a good thing. He’s quite proud of my doing that, oddly enough, and tells everyone I have beautiful feet. He doesn’t even object to my slathering my feet in Vaseline each night and then wearing cotton socks in bed.’

‘Secret foot fetishist?’ she suggested doubtfully.

‘Maybe … but you can’t build a relationship on that! No, I think we’ve been drifting slowly further and further apart and perhaps he doesn’t really love me any more – or not the real me. And I want the Justin I fell in love with, not this version,’ I said sadly.

‘Maybe there’s an “IOU a wedding” voucher in your Christmas present from him?’ she suggested.

‘I doubt it. I know he gets the wife of his best friend to buy my presents because they’re always the caramel-coloured cashmere jumpers she wears herself – the ones I pass on to you, because that’s the last colour that suits me.’

‘I love them, but it would be nicer if you had a present that suited you instead,’ she said. ‘Did you leave Mummy Dearest a present? I take it she’s moving in for Christmas as usual?’

I grinned. ‘Yes, and her present is a plastic cactus plant in a pot. It flashes on and off and plays “La Cucaracha” if you go near it.’

‘Justin used to buy you flowers and chocolates all the time, didn’t he, and book expensive seats for musicals? Robert didn’t do any of that so I was terribly envious!’

‘He’s stopped that, and though he did give me perfume for my birthday, it was the flowery sort I don’t like. I’m strictly a spicy, mellow sort of girl.’

‘Flowery sounds like the sort of thing Mum gives me, too.’

‘I think your parents would get on like a house on fire with Justin. He’d live in a minimalist, clinical white box if he could, though you’d think he’d have had enough of that in the hospital during the day.’

‘His mother sounds almost as bad as mine, the way you told me she clears your things away whenever she comes to stay in your absence. I never feel the flat is really my home when I can never have things the way I want them, and Mum walks in and out tidying things away and rearranging everything.’

‘She should respect your privacy a bit,’ I replied sympathetically. ‘Apart from the intrusion when Mummy Dearest messes about with my belongings, the worst thing is that Justin lets her do it! Every last book, ornament, fuzzy monkey, even my shoes and clothes, will be in the boxroom when I get back after Christmas.’

‘That’s so hurtful!’

‘Yes, but Justin can’t really seem to see it, and when I lose my temper, he’s the one who goes all hurt!’ I then looked at her and said gratefully, ‘Oh, Bella, it’s been so good to talk it all through with you, because I feel I’m sort of coming to a crisis point, wondering if Justin is the right man for me after all, especially when my heart is up here in Sticklepond. Aunt Nan is worrying about the same thing, going by what she said yesterday. She agrees with me, that I need to have it out with Justin when I get back, not let our relationship drift any further. And that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘I think you’re right. And I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t talk things through with you either. I really need to find an escape route so Tia and I aren’t living in Mum and Dad’s granny flat for ever. But meanwhile, let’s try and put our problems out of our heads for the moment and get as much enjoyment out of Christmas as we can,’ she suggested bravely. ‘After all, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow!’

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