The Shoe Princess's Guide to the Galaxy (3 page)

       
I sneakily omit that the dinner’s also to check out Fi’s new love target and boyfriend-in-waiting, Marco.

       
Tim turns the car around grudgingly.

Finally, changed into my black Chanel T-bar stilettos (one of my better shoe-sale purchases) and feeling more than a little relieved and excited, we cruise around the rabbit’s warren of Maida Vale streets trying to find a parking space near Fi’s mansion flat. A nigh on impossible task on a Friday night.

       
My eye is immediately drawn to a mum trudging down the street with six grocery bags tied to the handles of a rickety pushchair, a baby rugged up inside it, and a little girl skipping next to her in Barbie-pink Mary Janes with multicoloured tights. (I just adore how little girls bypass the whole walking malarkey.)

       
I wonder if I’d even have noticed them, pre-Millie?

       
‘Don’t you feel the world has changed?’ I say. ‘Like everything you knew before Millie doesn’t count any more? You might as well throw it all out of the window and start again.’

       
I really have to pinch myself sometimes when I think about the Millie-effect – how she’s turned our world head over heels. I can feel the tears well. Damn these hormones.

       
‘Mmm,’ Tim ponders, while expertly reversing the car into a space that appears ten times too small. ‘Everything seems to make sense now – in a weird sort of way,’ he finally responds after a long silence.

       
‘Yes, it
does
, doesn’t it?’ I say affectionately, and lean across and snatch a kiss from him before he gets out of the car.

       
Rain suddenly sweeps across the windscreen, and I find myself paralysed from the ankles down. What to do? Click my heels three times and magically fly to Fi’s flat?

       
As I sit and dither, regretting my choice of non-wet-weather shoes, I’m snapped back to reality by Tim tapping on my window. He opens the door wide, and grinning, motions me on to his back, while holding his enormous golf umbrella.

       
‘Well, we can’t be getting those
special
shoes wet, can we?’

       
A tidal-wave smile washes across my face (I always knew he was my knight in shining armour!) and I gratefully jump on board. A black cab whizzing past gives us a couple of cheeky beeps. I break out in a fit of the giggles as I struggle to hold on tight. Which sets Tim off too.

       
I really can’t recall the last time we laughed so much. In a spontaneous, infectious, belly-laugh kind of way. Well, not since Millie was born.

       
It feels lovely.

3. Fancy Feet

A full rain-sodden block later, and finally at Fi’s, we follow the waft of vanilla-scented candles up the two flights of stairs to her flat – the last to arrive. Tim fabricates an excuse about working late, which is waved away by Fi, who welcomes us warmly.

       
We both have a soft spot for Fi – having witnessed many kitchen-table-tea-and-tears sessions over the years. Due mostly to the fact that, gorgeous as she is, she has NO idea when it comes to men.

       
She leads us straight into the large open living area, which is bursting with dozens of pale-pink helium balloons tied with organza ribbons that hover just above head-height, and giant white lilies in sleek glass vases.

       
This is a
special
dinner for another reason too: pre-Millie, we girls – Fi, Liz, Rachel and I – would normally meet for lunch or drinks after work. This is one of the rare times that we’ve brought our partners. And apart from Liz and I, I use the word partner loosely. Very loosely indeed. For vastly different reasons, it’s a full-time job keeping up with Fi and Rachel’s love lives.

       
We make our way over to Liz and her husband Harry while Fi sorts out the wet umbrella.

       
‘Wow, man. Congratulations!’ Harry earnestly shakes Tim’s hand while placing his other on Tim’s shoulder. Liz and I embrace.

       
I can’t help but feel unworthy when face to face with Harry and Liz – in their his ’n’ hers Tod’s loafers. It’s common knowledge that they’re desperate to have a baby, and have already tried two rounds of IVF without success.

       
You see, babies were not exactly high on our to-do list a year ago – filed neatly away under ‘on-hold’. Falling pregnant as I did (despite the birth control) was a real shock. Such unsolicited relegation from the fashionably childless to the mating masses was not supposed to happen in our iPhone-controlled world.

       
‘How’s it been?’ Harry asks, as Liz goes to fetch us a drink. The enthusiasm in his eyes is entirely genuine and drives a pang of guilt through me.

       
‘Amazing,’ Tim replies without hesitation. My heart swells to bursting point as I notice his heaving chest – testament to his recent conversion to besotted superdaddy. ‘The most amazing experience,’ he beams.

       
Amazing, wondrous and joyous, I can’t deny. But as I stand here, the lone female between two alpha males, I also find it hard not to begrudge the positively primeval angle to this whole having-a-baby lark too. (I certainly remember wanting to genuflect in front of every mother I passed in the hospital hallway after Millie was born.)

       
When Liz returns and hands me my drink, I
so
want to tell her that giving birth was more like running the London Marathon while chained to a medieval torture rack, only to be run over by a double-decker bus upon crossing the finishing line. And that I’m barely out of the coma and able to walk in a straight line again.

       
In fact, if men had to give birth, I’m certain that multinational companies would have poured trillions of pounds into growing babies in plant pots decades ago. Well before nuclear fission, intercontinental ballistic missiles or plasma TV screens, that’s for sure.

       
But when I summon the nerve to meet Liz eye to eye, all I can see is Millie. At once, I break out in a broad smile. And say absolutely nothing – the myth of motherhood remaining firmly and rightfully intact.

       
As I take Liz by the arm and wander over to the fireplace, where Rachel is holding court, I can’t help but feel strangely empowered by childbirth too. Not in a smug, self-congratulatory kind of way. More in a humbling holy-hell-if-I-survived-
that
-I-can-do-
anything
sort of way. And by the look of Rachel’s handbag for the evening, I’m going to need to draw upon all the inner strength I can muster.

       
‘Daaarling, congraaatulations,’ Rachel schmoozes. It’s air kisses all round.

       
Unlike Fi, who has an invisible tattoo on her forehead saying, ‘Doormat: commitment-phobes, love-rats and emotional-vacuums welcome,’ Rachel is the man-eater of our group. She took out three student loans at uni and discovered the power of posh clothes and hairdressers over wealthy boys-about-town. Basically, she gets laid a lot. She picks her men with the same strategic zeal as her accessories. A different one for every occasion. Of high quality. Always to complement her. And to attract compliments.

       
‘Hi. I’m Dan.’ A preened hulk of a guy in
white
snakeskin loafers removes his arm from Rachel and confidently offers his hand. (What
was
she thinking?) He then takes a drag of his cigarette – exhaling over his right shoulder, and almost straight into the face of the guy next to him (who must be Fi’s man, Marco). All the while keeping one eye on his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.

       
Within three minutes we know that Dan’s just got his helicopter pilot’s licence, is a semi-professional snowboarder, a black belt in karate and last but not least a podiatrist. Or rather, as he took great pains to point out, a ‘podiatric biomechanist’. (Like we’d know the difference anyway.) In private practice, of course – ‘Can’t fly like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys.’ And that if anyone hears a car alarm to be sure to tell him, as it’s probably his brand new Porsche whatsamathingy parked outside.

       
I
really
hope the sex is worth it.

       
Rachel now has a high-profile job in advertising that affords her a serious shoe habit, and tonight doesn’t disappoint. She’s in bronze Prada platform spikes with ankle straps – ‘the shoes of the season’. Impressive. Come to think of it, the only monogamous relationship Rachel’s ever admitted to is with her ‘daaarling Enzo’ – a shoe-repairer off Marylebone High Street. It’s the best kind of relationship as far as she’s concerned, with no chance of catching her in the net of neediness and nappies.

       
I’ve barely warmed up Marco for my interrogation when Fi snatches him from under my nose and gathers us around the dining table. I make sure to keep close to him though, and jostle for prime position, while Tim chats with Harry and helps to organise drinks.

       
‘Ooh, look at the cloth,’ I coo, while stroking the tassels and silky velour. It’s stunning and looks like something straight out of
Homes and Gardens
. Fi has placed a crystal bowl overflowing with roses atop an antique mirror as the table’s centrepiece. And scattered tea candles in tiny little crystal-encrusted holders around the edge. All the crockery and cutlery is mismatched – so perfectly ‘shabby chic’ it’s almost too good to have come from a charity shop. (Only Fi could pull that off so successfully.) And she has tied a delicate strand of different-coloured antique-glass beads around the stem of each wine glass – so that we know which is ours. ‘The love is in the detail,’ she always says.

Unfortunately, Fi’s gastronomic skills are no match for her interior-design prowess. Especially when nerves and copious glasses of red wine get the better of her. The dinner has gone up in smoke. It’s 10 p.m. and Liz, Rachel and I are in the kitchen trying to scrabble together a meal
à la Ready Steady Cook
. While Fi is at the table drinking with the boys. Except for Marco, who doesn’t drink because he says it ‘dulls the senses’.

       
‘So, what do you think?’ Rachel completely ignores Liz’s frantic instructions and cuts straight to the chase about Marco.

       
‘I think he’s sweet – in an old-fashioned kind of way.’

       
Liz also thought our simian geography teacher in chocolate-brown desert boots was sweet.

       
‘I Googled him before coming tonight. Not a thing. His surname didn’t even register – makes me think he’s an ex-crim with a false name,’ says Rachel.

       
The voice of experience?

       
‘At least he didn’t come up as a minor-league porn star, like that boyfriend from Merthyr Tydfil with the exceptionally large, err ... shoes!’ I remind everyone with a cackle.

       
‘Oh, you girls,’ tuts Liz. ‘He’s well dressed, polite  –’

       
‘And has a hot body!’ Rachel can always be relied upon for the essential information. ‘Did you see his hands –
yum
.’ She rolls the stem of her wine glass wistfully between her fingertips. ‘And what about the accent? You can’t deny it’s bloody horny.’