Frances M Thompson
SHY FEET Part One Thirty-seven years ago, I was born into debt. I arrived two weeks early, surprising both my mother and the woman whose hair she was cutting. Before I’d even entered the world, I owed my mother the price of her customer’s leather loafers. Thirty years ago, a teacher told my mother to keep an eye on me. I was “frighteningly astute" and “abnormally self-aware” for my age. In other words, I was going places. Twenty-eight years ago, I paid my mother back for those leather loafers with money I made from selling jars of jam to our neighbours. Every Sunday evening I would stand on a stool in front of our gas stove and stir a viscose pink liquid around a giant saucepan. Behind me, my mother would hold her breath as I poured the hot mixture into jars, never spilling a drop. Twenty-six years ago, I began secondary school. Within weeks I learnt that with very little effort I could get top marks in most subjects. I rarely studied more than I had to and I blitzed through my homework on the school bus home. While Mum finished work in the front room, I cooked dinner for us both, listening to her scissors snip through her comfortable conversations with clients. I spent the rest of my evenings with one of the seven books the library let me borrow each week. The day they increased my weekly allowance to ten books was a day I’ll never forget. Twenty-two years ago, I helped Mum expand her hairdressing business. I put adverts up in the local newsagents and my mother began training up a team of local girls, helping them to get clients for a percentage. I managed their diaries and their accounts for a small fee. Within four months she had enough money to buy the colour television she’d always wanted. Twenty-one years ago, Mum and I went abroad for the first time. We took the ferry to France and watched England disappear from the windy top deck. I spoke French to find our bus stop, the hotel and a cosy restaurant for our first night in St Malo. We ate moules-frites and Mum
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