Just a little piece of flash, created when I selected a sixpence, shell and champagne cork from prompt items used for an exercise at a NIBS session.
They'd insisted she put a sixpence in her shoe.
For luck, they said.
She'd need it...She'd done everything else.
Old was the dress from two-years-ago season. A little frayed at the cuffs, but still sharp at the collar. New, her shoes. Sturdy and stout, for the miles she needed to walk. Borrowed? Her sister's fur coat: mangy fox and smelling of mothballs. Blue: her fingers, thanks to the thick snow. Snow, in May. Who'd have thought?
It was as unlikely as this match.
The tiny chapel, barely big enough for the two of them and the priest, coated with seashells and stones from the coast. A labour of love...and she wished, from the bottom of her heart, to feel something of that for the man standing beside her.
When it was done, his ring hanging loose upon a finger shrunk with cold, they toasted their new future with champagne, the cork exploding like a bullet from the bottle, lost in the gooseberry bushes.
Married. At sixteen, to a man ten years older than her father.
As she eased the sixpence out of her shoe, moist with sweat, a perfect circle imprinted on the sole of her foot, she hoped - wished - yearned for it to be true.
For it to bring her luck.
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