The story that never wins anything....

I love this story but it's never been successful for me (I'd say it's too sentimental - my old fault) and I now regretfully have to consign it to the rubbish bin. But I thought I'd give it a last little chance of life - so over to you dear reader.

In These Shoes

            She sat for a while. Looked. Listened. It was thirty years since she had been to the city and it had changed - utterly. So many people. Busy, confident, attractive looking people.

 It did not look like Dublin anymore.

 She manoeuvred her wheelchair into the heaving shopping centre and with the instinct of a bassett hound trundled towards the shoe shop she wanted. As the shop window came into focus her heart started doing the Siege Of Ennis. She stopped, gasped in admiration.

A single suspended shoe was on display. A floating shoe. Shiny patent ruby red with a winklepicker toe and a treacherously spiked heel.

Shoes to do damage in.

Sexy shoes.

Racy shoes.

In these shoes she thought she might once again dance a tango. She could close her eyes and a straight-backed young man in a pristine white shirt and well pressed black trousers would hold her, lead her tease her; glide her across a highly polished wooden floor in time to music that filled her completely.

She watched her reflection in the plate glass window and superimposed on the elderly overweight solitary figure fumbling beneath the chair for her purse she saw a pretty girl. A pretty girl with laughing eyes and wavy dark hair. She sighed for the 4711 smell of the spirited girl; thought of her wavy dark hair,  that tight-bodiced full-skirted rose printed dress and longed for just one more day on those shapely legs in the sheerest of nylon stockings. Her arthritic knuckles found the much handled ad from a magazine. Unfolding it she laughed aloud. Yes! These shoes, the one in the window, the ones in the magazine.

Jimmy Choo shoes.

Soon to be her shoes.

Her heart was pounding - harder than it should, and she fleetingly wondered was she having a heart attack.

No matter. If she were to die they’d know – they’d all know - to bury her with her shoes on.