Page 98 of Someone Else's Shoes
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Nisha says, for the fifth time. ‘You’ve done so much for me. I don’t want to put you at –’
‘Nish. Do I look like someone who does things they don’t want to do? No. I’ve thought about this over and over. What we’re doing is righteous. We’re getting you what is rightfully yours. We’re going to help you. I’m your friend, and I’m goingto help you.’ She sneaks a sideways look at Nisha. ‘Besides, if I don’t get you out of my daughter’s bunk bed and back into your own place soon Gracie is going to kick my arse.’
They smile. Then Jasmine’s smile falls and she takes another sip of her coffee. ‘The thing I’m worried about is when you hand the shoes over. If your bloke is going to keep his side of the bargain.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that too.’
Carl will do anything to win. If this is just a game to him – and it is entirely possible that it is – he will simply find some other obstacle to place in the way of her settlement. This is her greatest fear: that he will simply have her running in circles endlessly in this strange city, penniless and powerless, while her boy sits alone in that school of his, growing sadder and sadder, thousands of miles away from her. She had thought her position protected her. She had thought the law protected her. And what she had discovered was that everything could be stripped away, and all she had was her own resources, whatever it was that kept her standing.
They drink their coffee in silence, looking at the lights of the city as it slowly comes to life, the red tail-lights of the vehicles making their way into the lead-lined dark.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
Nisha closes her eyes. The thread pulls ever tighter.
‘Well, you know what they say? One step at a time.’ Jasmine swigs the last of her coffee and pats the wrap on her head that holds her hair in place as she sleeps. ‘Come on, babe. We get to work. Then we get your shoes. We’ll worry about the rest of it later. And step one is I’m going to put some toast on.’
She disappears inside. Nisha sits and stares at the sky. And then she pulls out her phone and types a message.
JULIANA? Is this still your number?
She hesitates, and then adds:It’s Anita.
She waits another moment then presses send, watching the little message wink its way into the ether.
Sam walks the dog in the dark, forgetting for once to be nervous of shadowy strangers on the sodium-lit street. She is thinking about the day ahead, the strange thing she has agreed to. She has never done anything like this in her life. Samantha Kemp: a middle-aged woman, a print manager, married, one kid, still living in the same postcode in which she was raised. She is about to do something completely ridiculous to return shoes to a woman who doesn’t even like her. These facts swirl around and around her head. But in truth everything in her life feels so unhinged, so unreal just now, that this day does not feel so far removed. Besides, the worst of everything has already happened: she has lost, or pretty much lost, everything that was important to her, aside from Andrea.
As Kevin sniffs interestedly at the base of every tree and lamppost, she thinks about Jasmine and Andrea, and how they took to each other immediately. Andrea can do that with people: she seems to have a kind of shorthand, a straightforward, open friendliness that cuts through awkwardness and leaves people basking in her glow. When they were younger she could never understand why Andrea was friends with someone like her. Sam had never possessed that charisma, the strange unidentifiable aura that meant people always wanted to be near her. Andrea was not coming today, though – ‘Too identifiable,’ Jasmine had decreed, and Nisha had said, ‘Damn. Scarfy can turn it on when she has to.’
Sam had flinched, but Andrea had just laughed and said she was probably right. ‘Yeah, you don’t want Gollum in apolice line-up. Just wait till my eyebrows grow back, and I’ll be like Tom Cruise inMission: Impossible.’
Nisha and Sam still eyed each other warily. There was a kind of boundarylessness around Nisha, a suggestion of fearlessness that made Sam nervous. She had always felt most comfortable around people who followed the rules as she did. She sensed that something about her made Nisha uneasy too. They were perfectly polite, but perhaps the circumstances of their meeting were too weird and too laden with baggage to allow them to be properly warm with each other.
It didn’t matter. Sam had lost Nisha’s shoes: therefore she had to help her recover them. It’s the right thing to do, at a time when nothing else is clear. It is the only thing she can do. Once she’s got that out of the way she’ll clear the decks, and start worrying about getting another job.
The door is unlocked when she and Kevin arrive home, the roads slowly clogging with traffic, the speculative Sunday shoppers already up and out. She walks into the kitchen and experiences a small jolt when she discovers Phil is up, making a cup of coffee with his back to her, already dressed in a hoody and his old tracksuit bottoms. He turns a fraction and nods as she enters, the most he can bring himself to do in greeting, these days. To hide the stomach-flopping dismay it gives her, she mutters something about taking a shower before he says anything else and leaves him to feed Kevin.
She showers, and dries her hair, conscious, as she moisturizes her face, how the corners of her mouth seem to have settled into tight, downward grooves. She is pretty sure those are new. She stops staring at her face in the magnifying mirror – honestly, they should be banned to all women over the age of thirty – and pulls on a black T-shirt and black jeans, as instructed by Jasmine, then puts a grey jumper and her navy blue parka over the top.
She is just tripping down the last two stairs when he appears in the hallway.
‘Can we … talk?’
She blinks at him.
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Now.’
She glances at her watch. ‘I – It’s not great timing, Phil. I – I have to get to work.’
‘Work,’ he says. His eyes are dead when he speaks to her. ‘On a Sunday.’
‘It – it’s a special job. I can’t really – Look, can we talk when I get back? I’ll be a bit late this evening but we can definitely –’
He is staring at her like she’s someone he has never met. Just then her mobile phone rings. She glances down, expecting it to be Nisha or Jasmine, but it’s Joel. His name flashes, like a grenade going off. She stares at it, colour rising to her cheeks, willing him to go away.
