Someone Else's Shoes(119)

“I love you so much, Sammy. I won’t lose you again. I promise.” His voice cracks on the words.

“You’d bloody better not,” she says, into his shirt. She cannot let go. She may never let him go. They clutch each other and she is aware suddenly of a rising feeling of gratitude and hope, two sensations that feel utterly, utterly unfamiliar. Maybe sometimes things do work out, she thinks, and it feels like a radical thought.

They are still in this position when the door opens. They hear Kevin’s bark before they see Cat, who is standing a little warily in the hall, looking at them through the living-room door. Phil makes as if to move back, but Sam doesn’t release him. She thinks she may stay here for the rest of her life.

“I got us another telly,” Phil says, when they cannot think of anything else to say. He gestures toward it.

“Dad is fixing everything,” says Sam, into his shirt.

There is a short silence.

“Oh, no. Does this mean I don’t get two Christmases?” says Cat. “Bummer.” But she’s smiling as she strides down the little hallway to the kitchen.





thirty-six


Juliana texts her at 1:43 a.m.

    He’s okay. I’ve told him you’re coming. And I’ll go every day until you’re here.



Another text follows a couple of minutes later. He reminds me so much of you x



* * *



? ? ?

There is something about Aleks’s scent that Nisha could inhale forever. It’s not aftershave: Carl used to wear a cologne that was both expensive and intrusive, so that you could tell which room he had been in for half an hour after he had left it. Aleks’s scent is indefinable but comforting, and she likes to bury her face in the place where his neck meets his shoulder and just breathe it in.

“Not sleeping?” His voice eases into the dark.

“No.”

“You okay?”

“I think so.”

His hand slides along her side, and she closes her eyes, enjoying the gentle, speculative weight of his warm palm. He lives in a building two streets back from the river, an ex-council block where most of the residents had bought out their leases, so that it carries a sense of pride. His apartment is whitewashed and spare, as if it reflects the aesthetics of its owner. He has installed wooden floors, insulated against noise—he did them himself, he told her with quiet satisfaction—and aside from his daughter’s room, which is rich with color and shelves of rainbow-colored tchotchkes, there is little to distract the eye in each room. So little noise seeps in that it is hard to remind herself they are in the center of London. His bedroom contains simply a low bed with no headboard, an antique chest of drawers, and two large vintage Polish film posters hang on the wall. In the living room there is nothing bar two sofas and a huge built-in shelving unit of books. She had felt infused with its calm, as if it had somehow seeped into her via osmosis as soon as she walked in.

“You don’t have much stuff,” she had said.

“I don’t need much.”

It is the first time she has slept in another man’s bed in almost twenty years. It is the first time she has slept in a double bed in weeks, and the combination of space, fresh cotton sheets and the freedom to wrap herself around Aleks’s good hard body have felt like the greatest of luxuries. Aleks doesn’t seem to want anything from her, doesn’t pepper her with questions or demand responses. He has no expectations as to how she should be when she is with him. He just seems quietly to assess her mood and her wants, then decide where to meet her. She wants him, of course. She can barely look at him without wanting him. It’s as if her body is drawn magnetically to his; she needs to feel her skin on his, the warmth of his lips, cannot bear him being close by but physically separate from her. The less he appears to need this from her, the more she wants him. But this changes when he kisses her; it is at this point that she feels something different emerge. He stops being laconic and careful: he drinks her in greedily, his hands stroke and grip, hold her, worship her. His whole self insists she stay connected to him. His eyes are on hers, and there is something raw and deep in this kind of intimacy that feels almost terrifying to her.

“Are you thinking about tomorrow?” he says, pulling her into him.

“Maybe.”

“Your son?”

“Always. But maybe . . . with a little less anxiety.”

“She sounds good, this Juliana. I’m glad you found her again.”

He kisses her forehead, winds his fingers into her hair. If Carl had done this it would have felt like the precursor to an assault. With Aleks it feels delicious, as if they are a knot that cannot be untied. She hooks her leg over his hip, pulling him in further.

“Your head is still whirring,” he says sleepily. “I can hear it.”

“Really?”

“Like an engine.”

She can hear the smile in his words. She lifts her face to look at him, tilts her hips toward his.

“If you were any kind of gentleman you would find a way to take my mind off it.”

“Oh,” he says, amused. “I see. You think I am not a gentleman.”

“I’m very much hoping not,” she says. And then he is poised above her, his lips on her skin, and she is breathing him in and a short time later she is not thinking about very much at all.