Free Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues by Trisha Ashley

irresistible. ‘I’ve been a fool, but I don’t want to lose you, darling, and I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. I’ll ring you when I know what time I’m coming back.’
    ‘Don’t bother!’ I said tersely, then locked myself into the boxroom and cried until I heard him leave the flat. When I went out again, the place seemed even colder and emptier than ever and I felt much the same. I was shivering, though that was probably just with shock.
    I washed my swollen red eyes with cold water, then went round the flat collecting everything that was mine and stowing it all away in whatever bags, boxes and suitcases I could find. Then I brought the Mini round to a handy space near the front door and packed as much as I could into it. I suppose it was lucky I’d always stored most of my stuff up in Lancashire in my old bedroom, as if subconsciously I’d known my stay here was temporary.
    Only my little drawing desk and a couple of large portfolios remained, and I left those in the boxroom, with a note asking him not to let his mother throw them out until I’d got Timmy to come round with his camper van to pick them up for me.
    I took one last look round at the sterile rooms, which resembled a minimalist stage set without all my brightly coloured bits and pieces, and then I was off – straight back north like a homing pigeon.
    I could have stayed the night with Timmy and Joe, though they’re the other side of London, but I didn’t think of that until I was well on the way to Sticklepond, when it suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t just turn up early – it would be a shock to Aunt Nan – so I stopped at a motel chain for the night. I was in no fit state to drive any further that night anyway, really, because I don’t think I’d stopped crying since Justin had left the flat and everything just kept playing over and over in my mind.
    Justin texted me on my mobile several times, presumably after he returned and found me gone, but I deleted his messages unread. There wasn’t anything he could say that could make this better.

Chapter 6: True Lovers Not
     
As well as the bara brith and Welshcakes, Mother taught me how to make Meddyginiaeth Llysieuol, which is Welsh for herbal medicine, though really it’s a sort of honey mead with herbs and very good for you. I still make it and I’ve shared the recipe with Tansy, though I’m not giving it to anyone else. I’ve been asked for it time and again, and that Hebe Winter up at the manor would love to get her hands on it. She fancies herself as a herbalist but even she can’t guess what the special ingredient is that Mother put in! Meddyg, as we call it in the family, cures most things except old age, though I expect a glass or two will help to ease me out of this world and into the next.
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
     
    As I drove back towards Sticklepond I thought I should never, ever have left there in the first place. After all, I could have done my graphic design course somewhere close, like Liverpool.
    Justin had so not been worth the years in London, which I could have spent with Aunt Nan instead … though she’d been the first to urge me to spread my wings and see a bit of the world.
    And if I’d never gone to London I’d probably be happily married to someone local by now, and not even known my wicked stepsisters existed. I meanly wished I could say they were as ugly as the ones in Cinderella, but they weren’t, though Rae had certainly done a mean and ugly thing.
    I hoped I’d never have to see either of them again, even if Marcia, the older one, was living up here since she’d got that regular part in the cast of Cotton Common . But Lars had said her flat was in Middlemoss, a few miles away, so with a bit of luck, our paths were unlikely to cross.
    Lars himself was on my mind because he was bound to find out I’d left Justin at some point and ask me why. I was fond of him, so I couldn’t tell him what Rae had done, or