Someone Else's Shoes(102)

Nisha walks to the elevator, and presses the button for the second floor. She stares at her feet in Sam’s flat black shoes as it moves slowly upward, and turns the key card over and over in her hand. This is it. The elevator arrives at the second floor, the doors open, and she steps out. Her mind is buzzing, a surge of anticipatory triumph pulsing through her veins. Twenty steps, ten steps, and they will be hers.

And there is Ari, talking to two men in suits, halfway down the corridor.

She swivels on her heel, ducks quickly back into the lift and stands with her finger on the “door open” button, trying to figure out what to do. She moves her head forward tentatively, to check that it really is him, then ducks back. He is showing one of them something on a piece of paper. Just standing there, casually talking, like he has nowhere to go, nowhere else to be. She cannot reach the room without walking past him. But she is not confident she will be invisible a second time.

She exits the lift and sidesteps into the service cupboard, which has been left open by one of the housekeepers. Standing beside the shelves of towels and sheets, she texts Jasmine.

    Can’t get into room. Ari is there.



Jasmine’s reply is immediate. Don’t panic. I’ll come and get them. Another message follows. We’ve got this. JUST BREATHE.



* * *



? ? ?

There is something unexpectedly soothing about tailing someone through the streets of London, Sam thinks, as she weaves in and out of the crowds milling down Regent Street. It takes all of her focus to keep track of the Frobishers, the bright red of Liz’s suit glowing, her pace measured as she pauses every few feet to point at shop windows. Sam stays thirty feet behind, the hood of her anorak over her head against the fine rain, her breath coming in steam puffs in the cold, feeling an odd sense of gratitude that she is doing something achievable, that the utter concentration it requires means there is no room in her head for anything else.

And Liz Frobisher is clearly enjoying herself. She walks with a faint swagger, as if expecting to be admired, the winner of the Global Cat Foundation charity-shop award, reaching up a hand periodically to smooth her hair or check her makeup in a window. Darren Frobisher, in contrast, looks sullen and fed up, surreptitiously checking his phone and visibly sighing every time she stops.

Sam’s phone rings. She answers immediately. “Well, it’s nice to know you’re still alive.”

Sam watches as the Frobishers continue up Regent Street, are briefly lost between a large group of teenagers, then appear again. “What is it, Mum?”

“What is it? That’s a lovely greeting, I must say. You didn’t find the hymns!”

“What?”

“Your father’s now looking at ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea.’ He says all the others are too religious. I said it’s awfully gloomy. It makes me seasick to think about it.”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?”

“And it’s so patriarchal. All those hymns are!” Her mother starts to sing. “Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm has bound the restless wave—I mean honestly. You might as well call on the Incredible Hulk. Though he’s gone into a terrible sulk because I said so.”

The couple pauses while they have some kind of conversation, head to head. Darren points eastwards, perhaps toward Chinatown, and pulls a face. Liz holds up a hand, as if she might be noticing the rain.

“Anyway. You’re obviously not going to help with the hymns. So I simply want to know when you’re coming to help sort the house out. It’s really in a terrible state. We have a blockage in the downstairs loo, which has been there for days. Your father feels quite abandoned. I don’t know what’s going on with you but—”

“I can’t do this now, Mum.”

“And I don’t like him going in the upstairs loo because he’ll probably block that one too. You know what happened after he had those prunes.”

“Mum—I’ll call you back.”

“But when—”

Sam ends the call and ducks into a shop entrance, fearful that the couple might see her. Whatever they’re talking about has clearly made Darren even less delighted. They stand in heated discussion for a few moments, the crowds of shoppers and commuters surging around them, and then their voices start to lift, so that Sam can hear snatches of it, carried on the breeze in spite of the roar of the traffic.

“Well, I didn’t know it would be this cold, did I?”

“I’m starving, Liz. And it’s raining. I don’t want to walk all the way back to—”

Sam cannot make out the rest of it, but she sees Liz gesticulating, and Darren raising his arms in a gesture of exasperation. As she watches, Liz turns and begins to walk toward her. Sam swivels in the doorway and sees that both are now walking back in the direction of the hotel, still arguing. She glances down at her phone and starts to punch in Nisha’s number—just as the phone screen goes dead. Her heart briefly stops. She stares in disbelief. She’s out of charge. With everything going on she had forgotten to charge the bloody phone.

Sam looks up. They are already some twenty meters ahead of her, walking back briskly toward the Bentley Hotel, Darren shaking his head at something Liz has said.

Oh, God, oh, God.