Someone Else's Shoes
Jojo Moyes
For JWH
one
Sam stares up at the slowly lightening ceiling and practices her breathing, like the doctor advised her, as she tries to stop her 5 a.m. thoughts congealing into one enormous dark cloud above her head.
In for six, hold for three, out for seven.
I am healthy, she recites silently. My family is healthy. The dog has stopped that weeing-in-the-hall thing. There is food in the fridge and I still have a job. She slightly regrets putting in that still because the thought of her job makes her stomach clench again.
In for six, hold for three, out for seven.
Her parents are still alive. Although admittedly it can be hard to justify including that in a mental gratitude diary. Oh, Jesus. Her mother is going to make some pointed comment on Sunday about how they always visit Phil’s mother, isn’t she? It will come at some point between the small sherry and the over-heavy pudding, as inevitable as death, taxes and these random chin hairs. She imagines fending her off with a polite smile: Well, Mum, Nancy has just lost her husband of fifty years. She’s a bit lonely just now.
But you visited her all the time when he was still alive, didn’t you? she hears her mother’s response.
Yes, but her husband was dying. Phil wanted to see his dad as much as possible before he shuffled off this mortal coil. We weren’t having a bloody knees-up.
She realizes she is having another imaginary argument with her mother, and pulls it back, trying to put the thought into a mental box, like she read in an article, and place an imaginary mental lid on it. The lid fails resolutely to shut. She finds she has a lot of imaginary arguments, these days: with Simon at work, with her mother, with that woman who pushed in front of her at the checkout yesterday. None of these arguments ever leave her lips in real life. She just grits her teeth. And tries to breathe.
In for six, hold for three, out for seven.
I am not living in an actual war zone, she thinks. There is clean water in the taps and food on the shelves. No explosions, no guns. No famine. That’s got to be something. But thinking about those poor children in war zones makes her eyes prickle with tears. Her eyes are always prickling with tears. Cat keeps telling her to go and get HRT but she still has periods and occasional hormonal spots (how is that fair?) and, anyway, there is no time to book a doctor’s appointment. The last time she rang they didn’t have a single one available for two weeks. What if I was dying? she had thought. And had an imaginary argument with the doctor’s receptionist.
In real life, she simply said: “Oh, that’s a bit far off. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Thanks anyway.”
She glances to her right. Phil is slumbering, his face troubled even in sleep. She wants to reach over and stroke his hair, but lately when she does that he jumps awake, looking startled and unhappy, as if she has done something cruel.
She folds her hands in front of her instead and tries to adopt a relaxed, even pose. Rest is as good as sleep, someone once told her. Just clear your thoughts, and let your body relax. Let your limbs release any tension they’re holding, from the toes up. Let your feet grow heavy. Let that feeling travel slowly up to your ankles, your knees, your hips, your stom—
Ah, fuck it, says the inside of her head. It’s a quarter to six. I might as well get up.
* * *
? ? ?
“There’s no milk,” says Cat. She is staring accusingly at the interior of the fridge, as if waiting for some to materialize.
“You could run to the shop?”
“I haven’t got time,” Cat says. “I have to do my hair.”
“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t got time either.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to that gym and spa you bought me a day pass for. Bodyworks. It expires tomorrow.”
“But I gave you that a year ago! And surely you’ll only get a couple of hours in there if you’re going to work.”
“I’ve arranged to go in a bit late. At least it’s right near the office. I just haven’t had any time.” She never has any time. She says it like a mantra, along with “I’m so tired.” But nobody has any time. Everybody is tired.
Cat raises her eyebrows. For her, self-care is a necessity, coming before the more prosaic needs of money, housing and nutrition.
“I keep telling you, Mum, use it or lose it,” says Cat, who eyes her mother’s increasingly indistinct hip-to-waist ratio with barely concealed horror. She closes the fridge. “Ugh. I just don’t know why Dad can’t even buy a carton of milk.”
“Leave him a note,” she says, gathering her things. “Maybe he’ll be feeling better today.”
“And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
Cat stalks out of the kitchen in the way that only a nineteen-year-old young woman can. A few seconds later Sam can hear the furious roar of her hairdryer and knows that it will be left in Cat’s room until she retrieves it.
“I thought you didn’t drink cow’s milk any more, anyway,” she shouts up the stairs.
The hairdryer stops briefly. “Now you’re just being annoying,” comes the response.
She locates her swimsuit at the back of the drawer and shoves it into her black kitbag.