‘Right, miss. We’re
going to buy you some new shoes for school,’ Mrs Shirley Jameson
told her daughter, Matilda, standing outside a shoe shop.
Matilda moaned, ‘Do we have to?’
‘Yes, we do.’
Matilda trudged behind her mum into the shop.
She disapproved of every shoe her mum showed her until she saw them:
a pair of slightly heeled, red shiny shoes.
Perfect, Matilda thought, my class will be jealous.
‘I want these,’ she told her mum.
‘They don’t look suitable for school. You could scuff
them easily.’
‘I want them,’ Matilda demanded.
‘OK. If they’re what you want, then I’ll find
someone to help you try them on.’
‘There’s no one here,’ she stated.
‘They’re probably out the back, so let’s wait,’
her mum suggested.
After five minutes a bored Matilda said, ‘I can’t see
anyone, so I’ll try these on myself,’ and went to sit
down.
As she bent to sit, a voice from behind asked, ‘May I help
you, young lady?’
Startled, Matilda turned round to come face to face with a tall,
stern looking lady with grey hair bunched on top of her head.
‘Er... yes, my daughter would like to try on these shoes,
please,’ Shirley told her.
‘Yes, madam. I see she’s already taken a seat. I’ll
help her put them on.’
Matilda suspiciously watched the lady bend down in front of her,
take off her old shoes and place her feet in the new ones.
Matilda got up and stood in front of the mirror to admire herself
in them.
‘Are you sure you want these?’ the lady asked her. ‘We
do have others in stock that are more suitable for children.’
‘I want these,’ Matilda told her. ‘Put them in
a box.’
Intent on showing off her new shoes as she walked into the classroom
on the Monday morning and chirpily greeted, ‘Hi,’ Matilda
didn’t see the raised eyebrows of the other children.
Matilda sat next to Sharon and whilst the teacher had her back to
them, she pinched Sharon’s arm whispering, ‘You like
my new shoes, don’t you?’
When no reply came, Matilda pinched Sharon again insisting, ‘You
like them, don’t you?’
‘Yes, they’re great,’ Sharon relented.
‘Thanks. I like your pen,’ Matilda said, and went to
grab it from Sharon. But as she touched it, Matilda felt a tingling
in her feet.
She wiggled her feet under the table to get rid of the feeling.
Her mum had told her that being new they’d probably hurt when
she first wore them, so she took no notice of the pain.
During the rest of the lesson, Matilda didn’t feel any more
pain and put it out of her mind.
It was now lunch time.
Matilda had already eaten her lunch, but was still hungry.
She spotted Sharon sitting on a bench, eating her packed lunch,
and grinning, strolled over to her.
‘What have you got today, Sharon?’
‘Cheese and pickle,’ Sharon replied.
‘My favourite. Let’s try some,’ and snatched half
of Sharon’s sandwiches out of her lunch box.
‘Yummy. You must thank your mum for making these for you,’
and took another bite from the sandwich, licking her lips in front
of Sharon, who was on the verge of tears.
She had eaten one triangle and was about to take a bite out of another,
when she felt a tingle in her feet.
Intent on getting pleasure out of bullying Sharon, Matilda ignored
the feeling, but with each bite, the tingling got worse and worse
until Matilda felt really uncomfortable.
When she finished eating, she said, ‘right, what else have
you got? Chocolate digestives. I love those,’ and grabbed
them before Sharon could save them.
As Matilda bit into the biscuits, the tingling in her feet became
sharp as though someone was sticking knives into her, and the shoes
were starting to feel tighter by the second.
She was about to start the second digestive, when the pain got so
bad that Matilda dropped the biscuit on to the ground.
She screwed up her face and hopped from one foot to the other.
‘Ouch, ouch, ouch! They’re hurting me,’ Matilda
cried out.
Her cries were attracting attention and soon a crowd was looking
her way. Some kids were smiling, others were pointing towards her
and giggling.
Matilda wasn’t seeing any of this through the pain.
All she wanted was the pain to go away, so she dashed to the toilets,
locked herself in and took her shoes off.
Ah, that felt better, and she wiggled her toes to free the agony.
Deciding it was just her imagination, Matilda returned to the class.
She again sat next to Sharon, and behind the teacher’s back,
stole Sharon’s pens and rubbers, and dropped them into her
bag.
‘Miss, Matilda’s just stolen my pens,’ Sharon
said.
‘Give Sharon her things back, Matilda,’ the teacher
told Matilda.
‘But, Miss. I haven’t got...’ Matilda was about
to deny but couldn’t finish her sentence as a pain shot through
her right foot.
‘Ow, that hurt. Why’d you kick me?’ she asked
Sharon.
‘I didn’t,’ Sharon said.
Bending down under the table to rub the pain, she saw the pen sticking
out of her bag which she was sure she’d put at the bottom.
Grabbing it, Matilda slammed it on to the table in front of Sharon
saying: ‘Here’s your stupid pen.’
‘Now Matilda, apologise to Sharon,’ the teacher told
her.
Matilda mumbled an apology but whispered, ‘I’ll get
you back for this,’ to Sharon.
And during break time, she found Sharon and demanded: ‘Right,
I want to see what food you have in your bag. Tip it all out.’
Sharon hugged her bag close to her but Matilda pulled it out of
her arms and tipped it upside down so everything fell on to the
ground.
On seeing a bag of crisps among Sharon’s things, Matilda swooped
on it and picking it up said: ‘Thought so. These are mine
for kicking me in class.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Sharon said.
Matilda didn’t hear Sharon through her crunching away on the
crisps.
But after eating just two crisps, Matilda felt a familiar pain in
her feet.
With half the packet eaten, the pricking became so painful that
Matilda hopped about in agony, and this time she heard the laughter.
She saw everyone watching her and sniggering.
No, this wasn’t happening. How could they be laughing at her?
She had to get out of there, and ran through the crowd of girls
and towards the toilets, where she locked herself in.
How could she face everyone now, being a laughing stock? What had
caused her to make a fool of herself by jumping up and down in front
of everyone?
She looked down at her feet. These shoes. They were the sole cause
of her humiliation. They’d have to go.
She then heard the school bell ringing and groaned. She’d
have to face her class now, knowing that they’d seen her act
the fool.
She entered the classroom as quiet as a church mouse and didn’t
speak until spoken to for the rest of the day.
On the way home with her mum, Matilda got the tingling feeling in
her feet again and wondered why.
She thought back to when it all started. And as she did, it slowly
dawned on her what the shoes had been telling her.
She knew what she had to do then and said to her mum: ‘Could
we go and see Sharon Watson, please?’
Thankfully it was Sharon who opened the door.
Matilda said: ‘Sharon, I’m sorry about bullying you
and taking all your food. It won’t happen again. Could we
start afresh and be friends?’
Sharon looked at her uncertainly but gave her the benefit of the
doubt and said, ‘OK, I’ll give you one chance and that’s
it.’
‘Thank you.’
When she got home, Matilda wrenched the shoes off her feet and chucking
them into the cupboard said to her mum: ‘I’m not wearing
those again. Could you take them back to the shop, please Mum.’
‘OK. We’ll go at the weekend.’
Only when they got there, there was an Indian restaurant instead,
which was closed.
‘We’ll have to keep the shoes now,’ Shirley told
Matilda.
‘No, I don’t want them.’
Shirley walked into the next shop and asked the young lad behind
the counter about the shoe shop.
He said: ‘There hasn’t been a shoe shop there for twenty
years. Not since my great-great-grandmother died, who owned it.’
Matilda went white when she heard this and croaked: ‘Was she
tall and stern looking with bunched hair, your great-great-granny?’
‘Yes, that sounds like her. Why?’
Matilda felt sick and had a horrible lump in her throat. Surely
she hadn’t bought those shoes from a ghost?
She wasn’t keeping them, that was definite. They were going
in the bin.
But when they got home, the shoes were nowhere to be found and Matilda
thought she heard laughter in the distance.
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