Page 35 of Someone Else's Shoes
‘What?’
‘I can’t buyanything.Not clothes, not games, not even deodorant. He says I have to put any requests in an email to Charlotte. They pay with his card and have it sent to me.’
Oh, God. Carl had worked it out.
‘Don’t you have anything you can use?’ she says desperately. ‘Your savings card? What happened to your savings account?’
‘Ugh. Frozen too. He’s so mean. I literally have no access to myown moneyjust now. Can you talk to him about it, Mom? He only speaks to me through Charlotte.’
‘I will, darling. I’ll do that. I’m so sorry. I’ll – I’ll speak to you later.’
She ends the call, lets out a low groan and slumps on the bench. Across the room Jasmine is chatting in low tones to Viktor. When Nisha looks up she is staring at her. ‘You okay, Nish?’
‘My – my ex has frozen our bank accounts. It’s … it’s a mess.’
Jasmine raises her eyebrows. ‘Your ex? What is he? A deadbeat dad? Don’t tell me, has he cleared you out?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Ugh!’ she exclaims. ‘Iknewsomething like that was going on. You know what my mum once said to me? “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” My ex, he’s good as gold. Pays his share on the fifteenth regular as. Showsup for Gracie. Always speaks respectfully. Mind you, I do wonder if it’s because he’s still soft on me.’ She shrugs, gestures to her face. ‘I am alotto get over.’ She laughs suddenly, so that Nisha is unsure whether she’s joking. ‘He got a job? Your bloke?’
‘Carl? Kind of.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Um. Import-export. That kind of thing.’
‘Oh, like my friend Sanjay. He runs a warehouse out near Southall. Buys up stuff on the docks that’s fallen out of containers and sells it to the market traders. One minute he’s living high, next he doesn’t have a pot to piss in. What about your folks?’
‘I don’t – I don’t speak to my family.’
‘Oh, mate. You got kids?’
‘One boy. But he’s in New York. He’s – he’s fine.’
‘Well, that’s something, I guess. Though you must miss him. How are you getting by?’
‘Payday today, right?’
Jasmine pulls a face. ‘It is, babe, but you won’t be getting a taxi to Louis Vuitton. You know what I’m saying?’
She’s not wrong. At the end of the day Nisha receives an envelope with a barely comprehensible handwritten payslip and £425 for her week of ten-hour shifts. The undocumented maids get eight pounds fifty an hour. Fifty has been deducted for the use of the uniform. She stares at it, unable to believe this paltry amount is the result of all those hours of work. It takes her a moment to calculate that at that rate she will not be able to afford to stay at the Tower Primavera while she waits to reclaim her life, cheap as it is. In a matter of days she will have nowhere left to go.
Jasmine tells her she wants to be glad they didn’t put her on the books – ‘Because then they’re taking off NationalInsurance and putting you on emergency tax codes and all that crap, and honestly? You might as well just go back on the dole.’
‘Oh.’ Nisha rifles in her pocket, suddenly remembering. ‘Here. Sorry, I forgot.’ She holds out the twenty-pound note.
Jasmine looks at it. Then back at Nisha. She pats Nisha’s hand. ‘You’re all right, babes. Give it back to me when you’re sorted.’
And somehow that makes Nisha feel even worse.
She has just taken extra supplies of hair conditioner and body lotion to the fifth floor when she sees him. She is walking back to the elevator, feeling mulish at the way the over-made-up young girl who opened the bedroom door snatched the little bottles from her, slamming the door in her face without even a thank-you, when a familiar figure comes towards her along the corridor.
Ari.
Her heart stops. She fights the urge to duck into a doorway, but her keys do not give her access to rooms on this floor and there is nowhere to go. He is distracted, talking on a telephone, his black suit immaculate, his eyes fixed on the middle distance in front of him as he strides silently along the plush carpet.
‘No, he doesn’t want to. Bring the car round to the front and wait. I don’t care. Go round the block if you have to. He has to be in – where the hell is it? – Piccadilly, by two fifteen. Charlotte has the address.’
