Someone Else's Shoes(109)

Nisha walks through the others, around the table, and up to her. The room falls abruptly silent. She sees Sam stiffen slightly, as if braced for whatever new verbal projectile is going to be hurled at her. They lock eyes.

“Thank you,” Nisha says. “Thank you for what you did.”

And as the others watch, a little disbelieving, Nisha takes a step forward and hugs Sam, pulling her in tightly, hanging on until she feels the other woman soften and tentatively, but surprisingly tightly, hug her back.



* * *



? ? ?

Like the best impromptu parties, this one takes place with minimal effort. The prosecco is drunk, and Aleks nips out for some wine. By nine thirty that evening there is music and conversation and the little flat has become a haven of warmth and laughter. Andrea, whose recovery seems to have gained momentum since her hospital appointment, insists Nisha tell them every second of her time in Room 232 and cries laughing, wiping tears from her eyes and dislodging her head wrap. Jasmine gives a blow-by-blow account of what she was feeling at every point, imitates the managers trying to work out who had set off the fire alarm. It had been put down to a troublemaker coming off the street, just one of those things that happen in a hotel in the center of the city. She congratulates Sam on wearing her hood inside the hotel, and Sam doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she had only done so because she had forgotten it was up. They consider the Frobishers, hauled abruptly from their sexy interlude (“Don’t tell that story again, Nish. I will actually wet myself”), who will even now be discovering the printed screenshot Nisha left in their room of Liz Frobisher dumping a cat in a bin. “They’ll think it was cat vigilantes!” Grace is hysterical with laughter.

“And if they do have the brass neck to complain about the missing shoes after that, they’re going to find they aren’t even registered as guests,” says Jasmine. What hotel is going to take seriously a claim of theft from someone illegally occupying one of their rooms? Someone goes out and gets chips, which they eat from a plastic mixing bowl, dipping them in a pot of tomato ketchup.

Sam, watching from a footstool in the corner, is struck by the change in Nisha—she is altered somehow: softer, more relaxed. She sits beside Aleks on the little sofa, and occasionally, when they think nobody is watching, they link fingers, without looking at each other. It makes Sam sad. I have lost this, she thinks. I had it and I lost it. Now that she has done the thing she had promised to do, her drive and determination have gradually leached out of her. She has helped Nisha recover her shoes, but she has lost everything. The evening swims and blurs. Hours pass in minutes. They are, Sam realizes, all quite drunk and she cannot bring herself to care. Cat is staying at Colleen’s, having texted to tell her baldly an hour earlier, and informed her that she has taken the dog “in case you had forgotten about him.” Phil is gone, and she has nothing to go home for.

She feels Andrea’s hand on her arm. “You okay, my darling?”

“Fine,” she says, trying to muster a smile.

Andrea’s eyes search hers. “We’ll talk later,” she says, and pats her reassuringly.

“Can I see the shoes?” says Grace.

“What?”

“I want to see what all the fuss was about,” Grace announces again, over the music.

Aleks smiles and reaches for his bag. “Sure,” he says. “Let’s celebrate the prize.”

Nisha looks suddenly unsettled. She waits as Aleks extracts each red high heel from his bag and he hands them to her carefully. She places them in a neat pair on the coffee-table in front of her.

“They’re really pretty,” says Grace, and Jasmine squeezes her shoulder.

“Mad, isn’t it?” says Andrea. “All that for one pair of shoes.”

It takes Sam a moment to register the way Nisha is staring at them.

“Do you know what’s weird?” Nisha says. “I don’t even care.”

“Don’t care about what?” Jasmine turns down the music.

“The shoes. Look at them.”

They look at the shoes. And then, with less certainty, at Nisha.

“They’re a game to him. A way to keep me running around. I think I actually hate them. They are the perfect summation of our marriage. All show. Me running around after him like a fool, dressed like a fucking show pony. Him pulling the strings. You know my son thinks they’re not even real Louboutins?”

“But you’ve got them now,” says Andrea, reassuringly. “And that means he has to give you what you’ve asked for. He has to give you a settlement.”

“No,” says Nisha. “There’s something off here. I don’t get why he would be so obsessed with one pair of shoes.”

“It doesn’t matter why he wants them,” says Aleks. “A deal’s a deal. You’ve done your bit.”

Nisha holds one of the shoes, suddenly angry, then puts it down again. “I mean, what the fuck is this? I was married to him for almost two decades, bore his son, gave my life over to his, gave him everything he wanted. I lost the best friend I ever had because he said I shouldn’t be friends with someone like her—and I let him persuade me. I let him tell me who I should be friends with. And after all this he humiliates me by making me run around after a pair of my own shoes?”

Sam stares at the glossy shoes, at Nisha’s contorted face. The atmosphere in the room has changed suddenly, the joy of the past hours evaporating. Jasmine and Andrea exchange glances. Nobody seems to know what to say.