A fitting BEQUEST

The dress was bad, but no way was bridesmaid Annie wearing the shoes her sister had chosen

Annie Bailey was never one for superstitions. Tarot and crossing your palm with silver and all that voodoo-hoodoo malarkey? She didn’t believe in any of it. You made your own luck in this life, good or bad.

She turned 20 in 1962 and she knew she was dazzling. Strolling up Carnaby Street in her second-hand purple minidress, her leaky white PVC boots showing off her seemingly endless legs, window-shopping in Quant and Biba and Chelsea Girl, she was always aware of attention coming her way. She was tall, slender, with a long bouffant of chocolate-brown hair and a face that could easily launch a fleet of ships. She had eyes as dark green as tourmalines, a wide mouth and an attitude that said ‘don’t you dare mess with me’.

Annie was tough. She hadn’t ever thought that she would have her heart broken. But there it was. Big shock. She was cut from a completely different cloth to her older sister Ruthie, who’d been standing behind the door when looks like Annie’s had been handed out. Ruthie was a pale pastel imitation of Annie, but even Annie would have to admit that Ruthie was nicer. Ruthie was plain, but sweet. She was kind to everyone, even those who least deserved it – for instance, their mother, Connie.

Connie was a drunk. You couldn’t put it nicely, really. She was just an out-andout disgrace, but Ruthie – being Ruthie – made excuses for her, and of course Connie loved that, she soaked it up. Connie’s husband had jumped on a ship years ago and left her; wise move, Annie thought. In the rare moments when Connie wasn’t completely off her face on the gin, Ruthie was the favoured one, the indulged one. When there was spare cash – and there rarely was – it was always Ruthie who was taken out on shopping trips, Ruthie who was praised, Ruthie who was the good one, while Annie – who looked dangerously like her handsome waster of a father – got the rough end of the stick every time.

Still, so what? Annie shrugged it all off, every barb, every slight. Knowing herself despised by her own mother had made Annie, over the years, hard as iron. She wouldn’t cry, she never complained. She just turned her back and walked away.

‘Mum doesn’t mean it,’ Ruthie always told Annie, hugging her.

‘Yes,’ Annie replied, every time.

‘She does.’

‘It’s the drink talking.’

‘No,’ said Annie. ‘It isn’t.’

But now Ruthie was going to be married! Annie tried to feel happy for her, of course she did. But her heart was cracked wide open. Added to that, she had a low-paid job in the local corner ship, which paid peanuts so she couldn’t afford to move out, much as she wanted to, and without Ruthie at home, her life was going to be total misery.

Still, she tried to be pleased for Ruthie. Well, right up until the moment when she

found out who Ruthie was marrying.

Max Carter, no less. Yeah – big shock.

‘You’re going to be chief bridesmaid,’ Ruthie told her, brimming over with excitement.

Along with cousin Kath, Annie was fitted for a long peach dress. The colour did nothing for Kath and even less for Annie, but it was Ruthie’s day, so what the hell. However, Annie refused to wear the cheap open-toed cream sandals Ruthie wanted for her bridesmaids.

‘Kath can, I’m not,’ said Annie.

‘What do you want to wear, then?’ asked Ruthie.

Annie was thinking of their Auntie Lil, mad as a wet hen, but very stylish. Auntie Lil took a size five shoe, just like Annie. Lil was a keen collector of all things vintage, from bugle-beaded dresses to fox furs and exotic leathers. Annie had spied out a pair of exquisite cream court shoes when she’d last visited.

Two days before the wedding, she visited again. The door was unlocked so she walked straight in and found Auntie Lil in her parlour with her crystal ball, her elaborate draperies, all the spiritual stuff she so enjoyed.

‘I’ve got a reading at three,’ said Lil, shuffling the cards. ‘Can’t spare you long.’

When Annie explained why she was here, Auntie Lil went out into the scullery and returned with a plain white shoebox. She opened it, and there they were, on a bed of yellow tissue: the beautiful cream leather shoes. Auntie Lil took them out. Annie reached for them, had them in her grasp – but Lil snatched them back.

‘They pinch, though – if you’re bad,’ she said.

‘Oh really?’ Annie said, not believing it for an instant.

‘Yes. They do. They’re magic. So you have to be good, Annie. Will you be good?’

‘Yes,’ said Annie. Two days to the wedding! The tension was mounting. Ruthie was climbing the walls. Connie was smoking the house out with her Woodbines. All was chaos.

Finally, the big day arrived. Annie was at the hairdressers by nine with Kath and Ruthie, as arranged, despite being out late the night before. By noon, they were all coiffed, made-up and dressed in their wedding finery. And the shoes were pinching. Annie couldn’t believe it. Maybe the toes were just a bit too narrow for Annie’s feet, but because she was a size five like Auntie Lil, they should fit her, shouldn’t they?

By the time she and Kath got to the church, the heels of the shoes were rubbing so badly that she was sure her skin was blistered. As Ruthie arrived in the Rolls-Royce that her fiancé Max Carter had paid for, into Annie’s mind drifted Auntie Lil’s face, her shrewd, laughing eyes.

They pinch, though – if you’re bad. Will you be good, Annie?

As she followed her sister up the aisle she saw Max waiting up the front of the church with his brother Jonjo as best man. Annie was almost hobbling now, so great was the pain of the shoes. She walked slowly up the aisle behind her sister and was sure she could feel blood running, squelching, between her toes.

Nobody – not Ruthie, not Connie, nobody – had asked where she got to last night. And when she thought of it, being in bed with him, with Max Carter, her sister’s bridegroom, she knew she hadn’t been good at all. He was a wealthy man, dark and handsome as a pirate, owner of three nightclubs – the Palermo, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar – and he’d chosen to marry Ruthie because she was perfect wife material. But… he’d been in bed with Annie on the night before his wedding to her sister. He was bad. But maybe not as bad as Annie because she loved Ruthie, adored her, and she had done this awful thing to her sister, who had never been anything but kind to her.

Her feet were bleeding.

As the ceremony wound on, Annie stood there and listened, wincing while her lover exchanged vows with her sister.

Last night, Max had said what they were doing was a mistake and a one-off.

She didn’t believe that, though. She believed that the lust they’d shared was powerful and wouldn’t let either one of them go free.

At the reception, they all took their places at the dining tables trimmed with peach roses. Annie’s feet were hot with agony. At last she was able to sit down and kick Auntie Lil’s shoes off. She was frightened to look at what they’d done to her feet; they felt mangled. She peered under the damask tablecloth, holding her breath – but her feet were fine. No blisters. No blood. Nothing. Suddenly, with a shiver, she believed everything

Lil had said. She was bad and that was why the shoes had pinched her.

She looked across at Ruthie and Max. Max’s eyes caught hers, held them.

This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

‘Where’s Auntie Lil?’ she asked her mother later in the evening, when the tables had been pushed back for the dancing to start.

Connie drew in close to whisper.

‘Don’t tell Ruthie. It would spoil her day. Poor old Lil died three days ago. They found her sitting in her parlour, dead as a dodo.’

✢ Diamond by Jessie Keane (£14.99,

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‘The shoes pinch, though – if you’re bad. Will you be good?’