The Shoe Princess's Guide to the Galaxy (2 page)

       
Hence the parade of wedding-shoe rejects and my final choice:

Honeymoon

Rather a disappointment. Thanks to the hiking boots from hell – my wedding gift from Tim. I was so sure that he was going to whisk me away to a sophisticated pamper-palace in the Seychelles, I had taken it upon myself to buy a full suitcase of coordinated resort wear and shoes. (The last-big-splurge-as-a-single-girl thing again.) Goodness knows, I had left enough brochures of
Six Star Resorts of the World
around the flat for him – with dog-eared pages and little yellow sticky notes with flight numbers and sample itineraries on them. Instead, we went hiking. In Scotland. NO ONE goes to Scotland for their honeymoon. Not even the Scots. It rained for ten days straight. I buried the boots in a muddy grave at the end. And didn’t speak to him for days.

Pink Period

Current count: fifty-five pairs of pink shoes – but this
does
also include multiply coloured shoes and some rather gorgeous jewelly slippers.

Pregnancy and Childbirth

How could I forget Clotilde! She was in my antenatal class, and defiantly wore clicky, swingy, sexy high-heeled shoes throughout her
entire
pregnancy. Not to mention effortlessly chic black Lycra tube dresses and G-string knickers (when we were all in granny maxi-supports) – to the jubilation of the dads each week. You really have to give it to the French – they know how to tie a scarf and not let little things like a gravity-defying watermelon stuck to your stomach get in the way of appearances. An inspiration to us all.

       
On the flip side, I discovered the hitherto unknown benefits of flat mules – at Tim’s insistence. He was so worried I’d take a tumble and squish ‘our’ baby in my usual spikes that he dragged me into town to trade them in. I’ll for ever remember the miles I walked in my red-and-white polka-dot flats during the early hours of Millie’s labour. Not to mention the succession of nameless bad-arse midwives in appallingly dire shoes (white cloggy things with impatient little snub toes).

Motherhood

By rights, I should today be sitting in the front room of my five-storey Primrose Hill town house. Kicking off my sassy yet sensible work pumps and unwinding from a hard day at the London offices of the United Nations, where I head a team of lawyers unravelling the intricacies of international human rights in war zones. The peaceful karma of the house interrupted only by the rhythmical drone of the breast pump, and the contented gurgling of Millie and her adoringly attentive nanny in the nearby nursery. While the housekeeper cooks a scrumptious meal (and a snack for the night nanny) for me to share with Tim when he returns home from a day’s hectic auctioneering at Sotheby’s.

       
That’s what we
Cosmo
career-girls do, don’t we – have it all?

       
Funny how things pan out, isn’t it?

       
In the REAL world.

2. Head over Heels

‘I’m sorry we’re a little late, love. I got caught up with Betty Malthouse at our sewing class,’ says Mum as she trots down the hall to put the kettle on. Dad strategically slips into the front room and settles himself on the sofa with the remote control, until I sit beside him to breast-feed Millie and he hastily skulks behind the first opaque object he can lay his hands on – a
Hello!
magazine (my ever-faithful font of anti-knowledge).

       
Dad’s valiantly clinging to his old-school-out-of-sight breast-feeding model and, like the rest of us, is rather shaken by my earth-mother transformation. I’m ashamed to admit that pre-Millie I had been known to tut rather loudly at the sight of mammary flesh daring to suckle a baby outside a darkened room.

       
Quite bizarrely, it feels like aeons – and not the mere ten weeks it has been – since Millie’s birth and this seismic changing of my sensibilities.

       
I truly shudder to think what I would have done without Mum’s help during those very early days (and nights) of elation, exhaustion and unmitigated cluelessness. Though I am fairly certain that Heathrow Airport had fewer security screens and disinfectant sprays than our tiny Kilburn (sort of like Primrose Hill, but without the Hill, or Jude Law) garden flat under her careful watch.

       
Mum comes in to join us, with a cup of tea in each hand. She gives Dad his Earl Grey and settles herself on the edge of a chair opposite me – tinkering with her teaspoon and not so subtly eyeballing Millie and me, and the general state of the flat. To see how we’re holding up, no doubt – which I have to say is middling to OK at best. For in true lioness fashion, she pulled right back on the day-to-day help some time ago – handing the mantle of motherhood firmly over to me.

       
Tim lollops into the room, gently reminding me that we’re late, while trying to tuck in his shirt and do up the buttons on his cuffs at the same time.

       
‘Ah, my favourite son-in-law,’ Mum beams. (This is metaphorical, of course – Kate’s so fussy about men she’s on roller skates to spinsterhood.) Tim’s immediately engulfed by her cardigan-clad arms.

       
Mum and Tim have always had this mutual-love-fest thing: the-son-she-never-had meets the-mum-he-never-had. Not that Tim’s mum is awful or anything. He just doesn’t know her particularly well – the old conceived-in-between-cocktails-and-boarding-school-at-seven scenario. As a result, he is perversely besotted by my family’s domesticated heart; and they in turn with him.

       
And yet tonight, it’s hard to know who’s more nervous about leaving Millie with Mum and Dad – Tim or me. You see, it’s our maiden solo outing since having her. We’re off to a dinner party at my best friend Fi’s – a beacon of light I’ve been looking forward to, especially after watching Tim skip out of the front door to work each morning or coming home from one of his many work dos.

       
I burp Millie, who gets chubbier by the day, and hand her over for Tim to place on the play mat for a kick. As I walk to the bathroom, under Mum’s strict instructions to put on a little bit of
colour
(code for ‘Go and brush your hair, and make an effort to put on a nice bright lipstick. And a dash of blusher wouldn’t go astray, either’), I can hear the ting of the overhanging bunnies as Millie hits them with her hands – a first today.

       
I can also hear Tim giving Mum the low-down on my newly stockpiled supply of expressed milk; and a demonstration of his (patented!) middle-of-the-night-broken-down-washing-machine-crossed-with-a-mating-blue-whale drone, which has to be coupled with gently pressing down on Millie’s mattress and
always
gets her back off to sleep. And now he’s telling her not to forget his ‘bonding board’ – an A3-sized black-and-white photo of his grinning face that we have to show Millie at
all
awake times. (Something to do with implanting his image on her visual cortex when he’s at work, I think he said.)

       
Millie doesn’t last long on the mat, and is scooped up by Mum for a cuddle. As we make our way to the front door, I give Tim’s mobile number to her in giant print, while explaining how to use the digital thermometer, where the paracetamol is kept and what the symptoms of meningitis are. And last but not least, I kiss Millie. She already smells like Mum’s perfume and gives me a heart-melting smile.

       
‘You go and enjoy yourselves,’ says Mum as she snuggles Millie in a blanket and follows us out.

       
A last-minute rush of panic envelops me.

       
‘But what if she doesn’t take the bottle? Although, really, it’s just for back-up – she should settle down for a good sleep now. We didn’t have time for a proper practice run – it’ll only take a few minutes  ...’

       
‘We’ll be
fine
.’ Mum lightly places her palm in the arch of my back and shuffles us out of the gate.

We’re about three blocks from home when my feeble spaghetti brain realises that something bad is afoot. Literally.

       
‘Stop the car!’ I shriek.

       
Tim’s relief that smoke isn’t billowing from the engine soon transforms into an, ‘Oh, for Pete’s bloody sake, Jane,’ Mars-Venus moment. ‘You cannot
seriously
expect me to turn around so that you can change your
shoes
. We’re late enough as it is.’

       
‘They’re
slippers
.’ I ungraciously haul one mammoth-sized sparkly pink Moroccan slipper up on to the dashboard. He cannot do this to me. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to wearing my
special
shoes. This is my
special
night. Remember?’ Fi and the girls have organised it in honour of my coming out. ‘Life after birth and all that.’

       
The mere mention of the birth gives me the get-out-of-jail-free card that I need. It’s still, thankfully, recent enough for Tim to remember my near-death experience (OK, I only fainted, but it felt like a near-death experience at the time), the blood transfusion and the refashioning operation (and I’m not talking Galliano) that I went through in order to produce our precious princess.