Waitrose fall means I cannot walk daughter down the aisle

A lawyer who slipped on “a squashed fig or strawberry” in Waitrose, damaging her ankle and foot, said today she will be forced to forgo walking her daughter down the aisle after the store refused to pay for her operation.

Henrietta Marriage needs major reconstructive surgery, including two tendon transplants, after falling at the store in Russell Square, Bloomsbury.

After initially claiming it was not to blame, John Lewis, which owns Waitrose, accepted liability three months later. But it has refused to pay for a private operation, even though it means Ms Marriage will be unable to walk her eldest daughter Scarlett down the aisle in December.

She said: “I brought her up as a single parent and I cannot think about not being there without crying. I just feel Waitrose have been terribly cruel.

I don’t understand how they can accept responsibility and not pay to put it right.”

Ms Marriage, 51, was “sent flying” as she walked through the store in March, eight days before her own wedding. She went ahead with the ceremony after having steroid injections in her foot but her first dance, a honeymoon and wearing her wedding shoes were all impossible. The mother-of-five, once head of the legal unit at Mind, the mental health charity, said: “I didn’t see what exactly was on the floor. It could have been a strawberry or a fig.

“I flew upside down and hit myself against the wall. I was in terrific amounts of pain. They called an ambulance and took me to hospital.”

Ms Marriage, who lives near Waterloo, faces a £10,000 bill for reconstructive surgery to transplant two tendons and alter the length of a bone in her foot. Christine Watts, communications director for Waitrose, said: “The situation is being dealt with by our lawyers, so there is nothing I can say. Clearly there has been a lot of discussion.”