Page 94 of Someone Else's Shoes
Mr Singh clasps his hands together. The ruby ring glints in the sun that streams suddenly through the slatted blinds. ‘I very much hope so.’
‘Do I … do I have to do anything?’
‘For now, no. Your treatment has ended. We will monitor you, as I said. And you may want to think about the reconstructive surgery. But for now I would focus on building up your strength and returning to as normal a life as you can.’
Nobody speaks. Then Andrea turns to Sam and suddenly her face is stripped raw, shock and relief etched in deep furrows upon it. Tears are running down her cheeks. The two women stand, almost without knowing what they’re doing, and then Sam is holding Andrea to her, gripping her tightly, as if it is only now she has allowed herself to grasp the full horror of what she thought she might face.Oh, my God, they are saying over each other,oh, my God, oh, thank God thank God thank God.
‘I was so afraid of losing you,’ she sobs into Andrea’s bony shoulder. ‘I didn’t know how I’d get through everything without you. I don’t even know who I’d be without you. And I know that’s stupid and selfish for me to be thinking like that because it’s you who’s been in the shit.’
‘You’d be up Shit Creek, no paddle, without me.’ Andrea is laughing and crying, clasping Sam to her. Sam can feel Andrea’s hot tears on her skin. ‘Absolutely useless.’
‘I would. I want you to know you’re a cow for doing this to me,’ she says. ‘An absolute cow.’
Andrea is laughing. Her eyes are shining and she wipes at them with a pale hand. ‘So selfish. I put you through so much.’
‘Honestly. I don’t know why we’re even friends.’
They hug each other again, laughing and crying, then pull back and look at Mr Singh, who is sitting a few feet away. He’s still smiling but with the slightly wary, tremulous expression of someone who is not entirely sure what’s going on.
‘Iloveyou, Mr Singh!’ Andrea exclaims, and then they’re both hugging him, thanking him, laughing at his muffled protestations when they refuse to let him go.
Sam is so deep in her thoughts when she drives back that she does not see the lights change. She and Andrea had treated themselves to a coffee at a local café, sitting at a rickety table outside where, for the first time in a year, Sam had gazed at her friend and not felt a vague, underlying panic at the possibility that Andrea would catch a chill, that her lack of appetite suggested some sinister development, that she would inhale some random bacterium floating by and be felled by it in her fragile, neutropenic state. They sat and ate a sticky bun in happy silence, enjoying the unseasonal sun on their faces.
They had decided by tacit agreement to put off all the difficult discussions, about Sam’s marriage, Andrea’s finances, the task ahead of recovering the shoes, and just talk instead in small bursts of the deliciousness of the bun, the glorious strength of the coffee, the simple bliss of the unexpected warmth of the day. Today Andrea is well and everything else has become small and insignificant. It was the best coffee Sam can remember.
And then she runs the red light. She only realizes when she hears the outraged blare of the horn, the sound of the elongated skid as the other driver is forced to brake.
‘Jesus,’ says Andrea, grabbing at her seatbelt. ‘This is not the time to get me killed, Sammy.’
Sam pulls across the junction, her heart thumping, one hand raised in an apology to the other driver.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, her body hot and cold with the shock of what has just happened. ‘I just – my mind wasn’t –’
‘I mean you could give meone dayof being alive and well.’
They laugh, with terrified eyes.
And then Sam looks in her rear-view mirror and sees the blue light. ‘Oh, great.’
She pulls the camper-van over into the nearest space, struggling to steer its bulk in safely, then manoeuvring it back a foot in case the policeman says she has parked unsafely too. She looks in her rear-view mirror and sees the police car pull up behind her, the blue light still flashing. An officer climbs out. The other, whom she cannot see clearly because of the glare on the windscreen, remains in the passenger seat.
Sam lowers her window as the woman approaches. She is fifty-something, stocky, her walk slow and deliberate, and her expression that of someone who has seen seventeen different kinds of bullshit already this morning and is so not ready for yours.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sam calls, before she can speak. ‘It was entirely my fault.’
‘You just ran a red light. You nearly caused quite a pile-up back there.’
‘I know. I’m really sorry.’
The officer peers in at Andrea. She turns back to Sam, scanning the interior of the van with a practised eye, then leaning back on her heel to regard the giant sunflower on the side panel. She squints. ‘This your vehicle, is it, madam?’
‘Yes,’ says Sam. ‘Well, mine and my husband’s.’
‘And it’s insured? Roadworthy?’
‘It was MOTed last week.’ Phil hadn’t told her. She had only found out because he had left the certificate on the side in the kitchen.
‘Brakes work, do they?’
