Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues Read Free

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 oughtto 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