Someone Else's Shoes(12)

There is a short silence on the other end, as if he is considering it.

“Just a drink or two? We haven’t been out together for ages, have we? It would be nice to have something to celebrate for a change.”

Say yes, she urges him into the silence. Cat says her dad looks like he’s on standby mode, these days. Sam keeps thinking that there will be one thing that unlocks this, a night out or an event that will suddenly switch Phil on again.

“I’m a bit tired, love. Think I’ll stay here.”

But you haven’t done anything!

Sam closes her eyes. Tries to disguise the sound of her sigh. “Okay. I’ll be home once I’ve done these figures.”

Less than a minute after she’s ended the call, her phone rings again. It’s Cat. “So how did it go?”

She feels a surge of love for her daughter, who has remembered how important this day was. “It went really well, thanks, lovely. I got three deals out of four, and they’re all big ones.”

“Yay! That rocks. Well done, Mum. It must have been the trip to the gym that did it!” She lowers her voice. “What was Dad saying?”

“Oh, I invited him to the pub but he’s not really feeling up to it. I’ll get some food on the way back and I’ll be home at about . . . seven fifteen? I’ve got to pop to the gym first and hand something back.”

“Why are you coming home?”

“To cook dinner?”

“Mum. Go to the pub. You haven’t been out in months and you just pulled in a massive deal. What are you, a Stepford Wife?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like leaving your dad when—”

“Go on. Let your hair down for once. You don’t have to look after everything.”

She reassures her mother that, yes, she is sure, yes, it’s all fine, yes, she can make sure her father eats something. She is nineteen, not twelve. Dad is more than capable of making himself beans on toast! Women do not have to do all the emotional labor! she tells Sam emphatically, with the assurance of someone who has never had to do any. And Sam puts down the phone and thinks suddenly that it might be quite nice to have an evening somewhere other than her front room with her sad husband staring at nothing beside her.

Sam finishes her paperwork, enters the figures into the software, and tots up the zeros with satisfaction. She pulls a little face to herself as she does it, wrinkling her nose and nodding. This morphs into a little dance, her head bobbing on her neck as she bounces in her chair. Oh, yes. Ninety-two in that column. Tot up those totals. There’s another zero. And another. And another. “I am going to the pub. To the pub. To the pub.” She lets out a little “Oooh, yeah.”

She turns to reach for a pen and yelps. Simon is standing in the entrance of the cubicle. She does not know how long he has been standing there, but from the studied insouciance of his expression, probably long enough to see her pulling her victory chair-dance.

“Simon,” she says, when she’s recovered herself. “I was just entering today’s figures.”

“Mm-hmm.” He gazes at her impassively. “I heard we got Piltons and Bettacare,” he says.

That smile again. She can’t help herself. “Harlon and Lewis, too. Yes,” she says, turning to face him fully. “And on better margins than last time.” It is only as she speaks that she registers his use of the word “we.” As if he’d had anything to do with any of it. Swallow it, she tells herself. Everyone knows who brought these deals in. And the numbers do not lie.

“I’ve also managed to extend the deadline on the—”

“What happened to Framptons?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why didn’t we get Framptons?”

She has just brought in nearly a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of business and he wants to talk about the small one that got away? She feels winded, stumbles over her words, and he leans back against the door frame. He sighs. “I think we need to talk.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I had a call from Michael Frampton’s office. He said you turned up to the meeting drunk.”

She stares at him in disbelief. “Are you serious? Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

Simon puts his hands in his pockets and tilts his groin forward slightly. He does that a lot when he’s talking to women.

“Oh, God, that man. I wasn’t drunk in the slightest. There was a mix-up before work and I had to wear high heels that weren’t mine and there was an uneven surface in the loading area and I—”

“What are those?” She is interrupted by his finger pointing toward her feet. “What have you got on your feet?”

She follows the line of his finger. “Oh . . . flip-flops?”

“I hope you didn’t go to the meetings in those. They’re hardly professional footwear.” His shoes, she notices, are perfectly shiny lace-ups. Slightly pointed at the ends, in a nod to fashion. She thinks about what Miriam Price said: something about Simon’s shoes tells her everything she has ever needed to know about him.

“Of course I didn’t, Simon. I was just telling you that—”

“I mean if you’re meant to be representing our company—and I would remind you that it is a very different matter now you’re representing Uberprint too—then you need to be doing it in the utmost professional manner. At all times. Not slopping about wearing bloody flip-flops.”