Someone Else's Shoes(118)

She creeps around the side of the house to the back door and reaches slowly behind the moss-covered garden gnome for the back-door key. They must have broken in, but she can’t see where: there are no obvious signs of forced entry. Of course there aren’t. They are professionals, like Nisha said. But that doesn’t mean they can just let themselves in. Adrenaline begins to course through her, and as she stands listening to the sounds of movement inside she finds that, instead of fear, she feels only cold fury. There is someone in her house, her home. Treating it like it’s theirs to walk all over, to take what they want. Well, they’re not going to take anything else. And she’s not going to be walked over any more. Sam sees the cat in the bin, Simon’s smirk, her kitchen, smashed and desecrated, her beloved family photographs trodden into the floor, the hours it took to get everything straight. Sam Kemp has had enough.

She places her hand quietly on the handle, sees the shadow behind the glass door, and there he is, the man, bending down. To do what? Sift through what he has already wrecked? Finish what he started?

Sam does not have a plan. She knows there are a million reasons why it will be unwise for her to interrupt the intruder who is in her house, but something in her body propels her with a roar that seems to come from somewhere in the pit of her stomach, pulls her right fist back, and with a jab that would have had Sid cheering, punches the intruder full in the face, sending him tumbling backward onto the floor.



* * *



? ? ?

“But what—what were you doing?”

“Putting things straight.” Phil’s voice is muffled. He is still holding some screws in his left hand and now, as she holds the ice pack against his nose, he drops them gently onto the coffee-table. They leave indents in the skin of his palm where he must have been clutching them too tightly. “Cat told me what happened. I came to help.”

She’d like to know what else Cat has told him but she doesn’t want to ask. She takes the ice pack off for a moment and touches his nose where the bruise is already purpling, the small cut that she has carefully covered in Savlon. His face, so familiar and unfamiliar to her touch. She puts the ice pack back, desperate for something to do with her hands. It is then that she sees the television propped in the corner.

“Oh. Yeah. She told me they’d smashed ours so I rang around the lads and asked if anyone had a television we could borrow. This one’s Jim’s. He said it lives in his garage because his wife prefers him to watch the racing out there. He’s a bit noisy apparently when he has a horse coming in.”

“I thought you didn’t like asking your friends for anything.”

“It seemed daft not to. It—it sounded like it was quite a mess.”

“Yes,” she says. “It was.”

He looks different somehow. Even under the ice pack. She realizes he has shaved. He is wearing jeans instead of jogging bottoms and a fresh shirt. But there is something else: he seems less hunted, like he’s more certain of the space he occupies.

“The boxing training’s working, then,” he says, and touches his nose gingerly.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “If I’d thought for one moment it might be you I wouldn’t have—”

“That was quite a punch.”

She feels a little weak as the last of the adrenaline leaches away and she sits heavily back on the sofa. They smile awkwardly. She looks at her knuckles. The middle one has gone a purplish color and the skin is grazed where it may have made contact with Phil’s teeth.

“I—I didn’t actually know I could hit that hard.”

He looks at her ruefully. “Yeah. Well. You always were stronger than you thought.”

They sit for a moment, his words hanging in the air. Phil leans back beside her. He rubs his free hand over the top of his head. Neither of them looks at the other.

“I messed up, Sam,” he begins.

“You didn’t mess up. I—”

“Please. Let me just say something. I messed up. I just . . . lost myself for a bit. And I didn’t want to admit it. But I’ve started on anti-depressants—the happy pills. Apparently they should start kicking in soon”—he raises a small smile—“and I’ve been talking to someone. A therapist. Yes. Me,” he says, at her shocked expression. “I should have told you but I knew you were worried about money and, well, I guess I just didn’t. I didn’t tell you a lot of things.” He sighs. “I don’t know why but I’m doing it now. I’m doing all the things.”

“Phil—”

“Sam. I don’t know if I want to talk about what happened yet. I’m not sure I want to know. But—but you and Cat are my life. Spending a few days at my mum’s, away from you both, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I don’t blame you, Sammy. I don’t blame you, whatever it was. I just know I want to be better. I want my wife back. I want us back. I want—I want just to feel like I have a home again.” He swallows. “If . . . if I do still have a home.”

She throws her arms around him then. She had listened to his words, one part of her thinking she should be reserved, maybe argue her case, but he’s speaking and there’s a sweetness to his face, a hopefulness and openness that makes something in her crack apart. She holds him around his solid waist, feeling his arms slide around her, his lips on her hair, and she thinks, This is where I need to be.