The shoes cost a bomb. Jill had organized their online purchase for her; her clothes too were bought online by Jill these days. She’d known Jill since she was a little girl who would enter her shop on a dare from her friends. That was how she still saw her when she looked at her, a little girl, freckles across her nose and two plaits framing her face as she looked around Constance’s shop. Her eyes would be wide with wonder as they scanned the various potion laden shelves, trying to memorize their names to relay them back to her giggling friends outside—thus reinforcing their certainty that Constance was a real-live witch.
It was somewhat surreal, Constance thought that she’d lived long enough for that little girl now to be a woman in the latter stages of middle–age, and her nurse no less. It was strange too, to find herself on the outside looking in on a world she’d never have imagined. A world where one could purchase things from a computer! As for these ruddy shoes, though, they still pinched despite their weighty price tag, and when had her ankles gotten so fat and puffy? She gazed at the flesh that seemed to spill over either side of the shoes. She’d always prided herself on her slim ankles. They’d been the only reliably slender part of her body, given her sweet tooth, for the best part of her adult life and now look at them, like pork sausages squeezed inside a sinuous skin.
That was another thing she could add to her list of annoying things about reaching the grand age of eighty-nine, the cost of her shoes had gone through the roof to accommodate her traitorous ankles. And they were boring. Boring, boring, boring! So too were her cardigan, skirt and blouse ensemble. It was the price you paid for so-called comfort, and an orthopedic sole, she thought, her eyes grazing over her outfit and her soft black leather Mary Janes with distaste. She’d been a peacock in her day but now was reduced to being a plain old pea hen.
Constance had once owned the most fabulous pair of pink satin shoes, bought by her parents for a special birthday. She’d looked at those shoes her mother had picked out for her and felt she was finally closing the door on the past. It wasn’t just that the war was over, it was that she’d felt as if she were a butterfly unfurling its crumpled wings wearing those shoes. She’d felt trapped, entombed in a chrysalis of sadness after all that had transpired for so long and as she slipped her foot inside that pretty pink satin, she’d caught glimpses of a brighter future.
Constance learned as the years trundled by, though, that one never really escaped the past not even when dancing in pink satin shoes. It could be swept into the background with a swish of vibrant fabrics, but it was still there nipping at one’s heels, be they clad in leather, satin, pigskin or suede.
While others might lose themselves in the abuse of substances to escape their unhappiness for Constance, her vice had been shoes, and she’d used the rich colours of her wardrobe as her coat of armour. Those satin party shoes of her eighteenth birthday had triggered a love affair. Stiletto, kitten, wedge, flat so long as they were bright and beautiful, she had to have them. The Islanders had referred to her fondly in later years as the Imelda Marcos of Wight, and then there was Lizzy Harris who worked in the tearooms on Union Street. She used to pop her head into Constance’s emporium of curealls each morning on her way to work. Her sole purpose for doing so to see which shoes she’d chosen to wear that day, and to admire the brightness of her outfit after so many years shrouded in the sepia tones of war.
The pink of those satin shoes was the same shade as the petals of the roses dotted across the eiderdown draped over the bed she was perched upon now. It was in the stripes of the custom–made curtains that framed the large Georgian window too, and it had been picked out in the plumped cushion resting on the back of the armchair where she sat most days to admire the view. If she had to live anywhere other than Pier View House, then there’d been no choice but here. Sea Vistas echoed with ties to her past. Her room was pretty and plush, and it was that shade of pink that had drawn her to it, that and the view out to the sea, of course. She couldn’t imagine not being able to see the sea each day. It would be akin to a farmer upping sticks from acreage to an urban outlook of chimney pots.
Sea Vistas Health Care sat at the furthermost end of the Esplanade, past the working buildings of the Pier, standing sentry as it had for as long as Constance could remember, on a lonely patch of the greenbelt. It had lived many different lives since its story began with Sir Albert Whitely building a magnificent baroque-style house known as Whitely Manor. That had been back in the late 1800s. Constance knew this because she’d looked up the house’s story at the Museum of Island History in Newport once.
It had stayed in the Whitely Family until the 1920s when it was sold on to pay their debts.
