a table discussing things rationally and here I am, standing like a lemon in the middle. That is just, like, totally … pants!
She took a step forward and held up her hands. ‘Excuse me!’ How she longed for a bit more gravitas, some higher heels, a deeper voice, a pair of cymbals, anything! But somehow it worked – sort of. Gradually the row simmered down, and the dark-haired receptionist turned to face her.
‘OK. I am Marta.’
Hurrah! At last, she was getting somewhere, although could they have been any more difficult?
I may regret tempting fate with that thought – these two are dynamite …
Iwona, the blonde, cut in, ‘You want to know about shoes? eBay shoes?’ She stormed over to the side of the reception area where a row of lockers sat beneath an array of heavily laden coat hooks. Pulling a set of keys from her belt, she stabbed one of them into the lock as though trying to kill it, pulled open the door and yanked out a pair of shoes. ‘These shoes?’
Amy caught her breath.
There, being slapped onto the reception desk like a pair of wet fish, were her black patent Ferragamo court shoes, the ones with the three-inch pale wooden heels, tiny heart-shaped peep-toe and wide, grosgrain ribbon ankle tie; the ones she’d bartered as though her life depended on it from the man on the stall in Spitalfields two years ago: the ones that meant the world to her.
Just looking at them, Amy was assailed by a raft of nostalgic memories. Now she realised that her shoe quest wasn’t only worthwhile, it was essential. But seeing them was one thing, getting them back from this pair was going to be entirely another.
‘Thank you for nothing,’ Marta snapped, grabbing the shoes. Iwona growled something earthy in Polish, as her sister made a face.
‘Hey!’ Amy cried.
‘You been making friends here?’ To Amy’s relief, Debbie had finally returned from the ladies.
‘You tell her,’ Marta mumbled, jabbing the heel of one of the shoes at her sister and turning her back.
‘You know,’ Debbie growled in Amy’s ear fifteen minutes later, ‘there’s a version of Cinderella that has one of the Ugly Sisters chopping her big toe off so that she can fit into the glass slipper.’
‘You what?’ Amy was only half listening, transfixed in horrified fascination by the sisters who sat before them, trying, as though their lives depended on it, to fit into her precious shoes.
‘Straight up,’ Debbie went on. ‘She saws her big toe off, then crams the shoe onto what’s left of her foot, and then the quite frankly not-all-there Prince sweeps her away on the back of his horse. It’s only when he spots the blood flowing from the shoe as they gallop off into the sunset that he realises he’s been suckered.’
‘Cinderella never was like that!’ Amy cried, elbowing her in the ribs.
‘Was where I come from! We like our fairy tales hardcore up north.’
‘Sicko. Oh, careful!’ Amy made to lunge forward as one of her shoes flew to the ground, hurled by an increasingly desperate Iwona. Meanwhile Marta was sitting with her back to them, dusting her feet with talcum powder in readiness for another attempt to get the other one onto her wide, resistant foot.
‘It’s no use!’ she snarled. ‘It will not fit!’
‘Hacksaw, anyone?’ Debbie chirped.
Earlier, interspersed with gesticulations and corrections from Marta, Iwona had explained why the sisters were at war over the shoes. They had spotted them on eBay when they were surfing the Net together, couldn’t agree who would bid for them, so agreed to share if their upper price limit of thirty-five pounds was accepted.
But Marta had upped her bid to forty at the last moment, thus securing the shoes for herself. This infuriated Iwona who, on seeing the parcel containing the shoes arrive at the gym, stashed it in her locker before Marta could get her hands on it, and had been holding the shoes hostage since.
Now, as Amy and Debbie looked nervously on, they were trying the shoes on for the first time, peeling off their trainers to reveal feet as wide as planks.
‘Didn’t they check the size before bidding?’ Debbie hissed with a frown.
‘They’ll need a fairy godmother with a wand to stand a hope in hell of getting ’em on, surely?’
‘It is because of the sweat,’ Marta wheezed.
‘What?’ Amy cried.
‘The feet in the trainers all day, they sweat, they get bigger.’
‘No way!’ Iwona retorted. ‘Your feet have always been half a size bigger than mine.’
‘Wait … one moment … oh!’ Marta, with one final tug, slid off the bench and clattered onto the floor, panting and defeated, as the shoe rolled to one side. Amy stifled an urge to yell, ‘Come to Mama!’ and launch herself towards it.
‘Ten out of ten for effort, over there,’ Debbie whispered. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her.’
‘Shh!’
Now it was just Iwona. Surreptitiously kneading at the patent leather to try to soften it, she bent down for a final, valiant attempt to get the shoe on her foot. But it was clearly useless. Even from where Amy stood a few feet away, she could see that no more than her toes and the bridge of her foot had made it into the shoe.
Iwona sat up, folding her arms on her lap. Then, exhaling deeply, she cast a longing look in the direction of the poster advertising the Polish Ball.
Amy made a lightning-fast deduction.
She must be hoping to wear them to the ball – with that big beefy bloke!
‘To be honest,’ she began, tentatively, ‘the shoes are murder to dance in.’
Iwona’s gaze dropped to the shoe in front of her. Then she held it aloft, examining the heel and sole.
‘I only wore them the once,’ Amy went on, ‘and they nearly killed me. Those wooden heels are very unforgiving. I was limping for days afterwards.’
‘So why you want them back?’ Iwona shot back.
Good point, Sherlock. What on earth do I say now? Well, I guess when all else fails, how about the truth?
‘Because they have very special memories for me. I love them.’
‘She really does,’ Debbie put in. ‘She’s a funny one, is our Amy.’
A silence followed, the first since Amy had pushed open the door of the gym, approximately three lifetimes ago.
‘So,’ Marta said eventually,
