The Shoe Princess's Guide to the Galaxy (13 page)

       
The table is unanimous on one topic, though – my sister’s choice of footwear. Ghastly! Unfortunately, Fi messed up on the video of Millie and managed to get Kate’s feet in
every
frame. I’m so embarrassed. They look uncannily like King Kong’s – and she’s not even wearing fur-trimmed Ugg boots.

       
After my slightly shaky start, I’ve become entirely engrossed in the work at hand, and am surprised to see that it’s 2 p.m. when Marco lets us out for a short break. (But not before chatting to each of us and inspecting our workstations to make sure we’ve made sufficient progress.) Much to Fi’s disappointment, Marco declines to join us at the local café – instead holding a meeting with some clients. He’s been in and out of the class all morning, talking to various people both in the studio and upstairs in the shop. Needless to say, Rachel and Fi have made great use of Ben in Marco’s absence, for all manner of queries. Rachel, for her part, is so outrageously transparent.

The afternoon session, Marco informs us, is the hardest part of all – joining the upper to the insole plate. We should get one complete today, and the other tomorrow. The trick is in getting the insole plate correctly positioned on the last (aha, so that’s what it’s for) and then shaping and tacking the upper to it. Followed by gluing it all into place.

       
I now know why the shoemaker left all the work for the elves – it is
so
labour-intensive. My fingertips are burning from all the nailing and tacking, and I’m finding it hard to manoeuvre everything perfectly into place.

       
Marco, sensing my frustration, offers to help me. He positions himself directly behind me – with one leg placed either side of me and both arms around me – leaning forward in order to reach the last.

       
Ohhh-K. Not
quite
what I had expected. The skin on my neck rapidly turns into a blotchy mulberry Turkish rug that creeps to the tips of my burning ears. My stomach does a complete flip. I guess it’s not every day a six-foot-plus Italian hunk engulfs me!

       
Marco then proceeds to finger the leather – kneading and cajoling it onto the last with the dexterous skill of a masseur crossed with a concert violinist. I’m trying to take careful note of how he’s doing it, but am finding it a smidge difficult to concentrate. Not helped in the least by the fact that he reeks of the most sublime aftershave – a light, citrusy mix with a woody vanilla undertone. I’m completely haunted by the smell. And then it occurs to me that it’s very like one I used to buy Tim when we first met – it brings back wild, delicious memories. A far cry from today, ironically, when we’re hardly in the same room (or country!) long enough for me to smell his aftershave. Sadly, I can’t even remember if he wears one these days.

       
I’m snapped from my daydream by the touch of Marco’s hand on my shoulder.

       
‘That should give you a good start. See how you go.’

       
‘Great. Thanks.’ I can barely meet him in the eye.
Oh, get a grip, Jane
. I’m a happily married woman. And a mother. Not a giddy fourteen-year-old schoolgirl. This is most peculiar. Not to mention completely mortifying – given that he’s also my best friend’s much longed-for boyfriend.

       
Liz has obviously witnessed the whole thing, and is standing open-mouthed and a little scarlet-faced next to me.

       
That’s it – from now on, when I need any help, I’ll be fighting Rachel for Ben.

The Marco incident has rattled me, and I’m anxious to leave on the dot of 6 p.m. to get home.

       
Rachel is clearly hoping for the elves to come in overnight and finish off her shoe, as she’s been seated at Marco’s desk for the past hour getting an emergency nail repair from Ben. He did a French polish course for his fiancée’s Christmas present and happened to have all the gear in his backpack. Why can’t Kate find a guy like him?

       
Fi nuzzles up to Marco.

       
‘Any exciting plans for tonight?’ she asks us.

       
‘My fiancée’s on night shift – from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. – so it’s pizza and a video for me,’ Ben says glumly.

       
Liz and I look at each other in alarm. And then at Rachel. Unfortunately, we know
exactly
what she’s thinking.

www.ShoePrincess.com
 
Shoe Are You?
 
You can run, princesses, but you can’t hide  ...
 
Common Garden Variety SP
 
This princess is genuinely interested in looking smart and stylish, and has a knack for buying mid-range shoes that can instantly update last season’s outfits. She is more likely to be spotted in a kitten heel than a 3-inch designer stiletto, and has serious shoe-credibility issues when it comes to spurning fake plastic imports – think Pied-à-Terre rather than Payless Shoes. She has years of shoe-buying experience behind her. And as she hits her mid-30s she’s finding it harder to get shoes that are wide enough (especially post-childbirth) or have sufficient padding under the balls of her feet. She bemoans always having to apply a non-slip rubber sole to her new shoes, and don’t even get her started on the total uselessness of plastic heel tips. She wishes that designers would bring out her favourite shoe styles, updated ever so slightly each season. She will always be able to justify blowing her shoe budget for a very special occasion!
 
Persecuted SP
 
Princesses with particularly small or large feet, who often find it impossible to get smart, fashionable, well-fitting shoes in their size. When they do come across either a supplier or a style of shoe that fits them, they will buy several pairs of the same shoe, often in different colours. These princesses always need container ships to store their shoe collections in. The Persecuted SP with large feet is quite adept at arm-wrestling transvestites for shoe bargains in the upmarket shoe sales.
 
Petite SP
 
Very high heels are a way of life for this vertically challenged princess. She would rather die than be seen in anything with less than a 3-inch heel. Her calf muscles are so shortened that even her slippers have heels. Her partner has never seen her barefoot, and she could easily run a marathon in stilettos. Her mantra is: ‘Why go to the gym when you can wear stilettos?’ Role models are Posh Spice and Carrie from Sex and the City.

12. Twinkle-Toes

In a rather cheery fashion, Mum’s always told Kate and me to expect the unexpected. As if by greeting the unfamiliar as the familiar we’ll deny it the full force of its intended blow.

       
The only thing is, I keep forgetting to do it.

       
It’s Sunday morning, and Millie is covered head-to-toe in spots. Actually, not spots, but a pulsing river of angry red pustules that the on-call doctor at the hospital last night assured us was a textbook case of chickenpox. Yes, her first major childhood illness. Coinciding with my first solo escape from domestic servitude.

       
What else should I have expected, right?

       
And now Tim, whose only form of daily exercise ever since I’ve known him has been walking to and from the tube and lifting a pint of lager, is lying face down in bed doing something he assures me is ‘the cobra’. A yoga asana that involves gently pushing up on straightened arms and arching his back and head, while breathing heavily. He’s eulogising the same mind–body–soul sound bites as Fi. I’m dumbfounded.

       
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. If last night between the sheets (before our sprint to the hospital) was anything to go by, I’m all for these asanas, or whatever they are. Scrummy.

       
He told me that the yoga’s one of the perks of the staff wellness programme in Bangalore. That was just before he dropped the bombshell that he’ll be working a rota of one week in London and three weeks in Bangalore for the foreseeable future.

       
Why not?

       
Honestly, his career has gone into overdrive since Millie was born – what with the overseas travel, longer hours and corporate dinners. Never mind the ‘bonding board’ – I should think he’ll need to make Millie a life-sized bloody papier mâché dummy now.

       
My offer of applying for single-parent benefit was greeted with a major sense-of-humour-failure. As if my pathetic housewife brain couldn’t understand the demands of the big bad corporate world any more.

       
The trouble is, I understand them only too well.

I blearily step over Tim’s half-opened suitcase and start pulling myself together for today’s shoe school. Where to begin? I can barely think straight after numerous bumping-into-walls sprints to Millie’s room in the dead of night. I don’t exactly know how I do it, but I’m vertical and halfway down the hall within a hair’s breadth of her first muffled cries. And last night, there were many.

       
When I did manage to get back into bed and knit a few worried power naps into a continuous blanket of sleep, I was woken by Dad squirrelling up and down the hall between the spare room and the kitchen – tracking the course of tropical cyclone Dennis live on an Internet weather channel on his laptop as it hurtled into some remote Coral Sea island. The man’s positively mad. He has the
option
of uninterrupted sleep, and he
chooses
to wake every two hours. Ever since he and Mum joined the Silver Surfers Internet Club, they seem to be permanently wired to their computers.

       
Mum volleys my suggestion of not going to the final day of the shoe school today straight back. Reminding me that she has two very healthy adult daughters to her credit, before jettisoning me out of the front door.

       
I force myself to focus on the clip-cloppy rhythm of my feet as I march mechanically to the end of the street. Desperately trying to ignore Millie’s wailing that blasts through the still morning air like an Exocet missile into my ears – completely scrambling my brain.

       
A few minutes into the bus journey, I hurriedly release my white-knuckled clutch of my mobile phone to read the text message:
All gd. Hv a gr8 day
. T J

       
Phew. I did not enjoy that one little bit.

       
As I stare out of the bus window, my mind wanders to Alison and how she does this every day. With three kids. And then turns up to work. Only to be sniggered at behind her back for being neurotic.

       
You see, Alison
always
seemed to be fretting over some drama, whether it was Joseph’s temperature and recurring middle-ear infection (‘The nursery will notify me if he comes out in a rash, won’t they?’ ‘How can I get him to the doctor after work to see if he needs another round of antibiotics?’), Lucy’s nits (‘It’s a national plague, didn’t you know?’), Tom’s diarrhoea (‘Could he have a food allergy? Or maybe a reaction to the MMR?’ ‘I hope the childminder’s giving him enough fluids’), or some other deadly infection they had contracted.

       
Sue, in front reception, was the only person mildly receptive to her obsessing. Due largely to the fact that she was a mother herself, and completely understood the need to offload such concerns.