Someone Else's Shoes(128)
* * *
? ? ?
Andrea wakes with a hangover, and observes dully that feeling like death when you have sunk the best part of a bottle of wine each with your friends is not that much better than actually feeling like death. She smiles wryly at the thought as she moves slowly down the stairs of the cottage to make what she promises herself is going to be a large mug of her very good coffee, the final capsule before she will finally have to admit financial defeat and switch to the supermarket own-brand instant variety. She feeds the cat that winds itself around her legs and, while the machine is brewing, reaches over to the cupboard to get her favorite striped cup. It is then that she notices the envelope on her doormat. It is several hours before the post usually arrives (if it arrives at all), and as she steps closer she notes that the envelope has no stamp.
Briefly comforted by the fact that this, at least, is unlikely to be another final demand, she checks the handwriting, which she does not recognize, and then, taking a sip of her coffee, opens the Jiffy bag carefully, squinting at the writing as her eyes are still a little blurry.
It takes her two attempts to read the note inside.
Take this to the address below at Hatton Garden. He will give you less than it’s worth, but it should be enough to keep you going until you’re back on your feet.
N x
PS Do not tell Sam or Jasmine. They’ll just get weird about it.
Underneath the address, secured to the note-card with a piece of sticky tape, is what appears to be a large, glittering, cushion-cut diamond.
It will be three weeks before Nisha returns with her son, ready for the introductions and joyful reunions that will herald this next stage of their lives. It will be three months and eleven nights out—the last to celebrate the opening of Jasmine’s new business—before Sam, Jasmine and Andrea discover during a tentative and then increasingly animated conversation that each of them received exactly the same note.
* * *
? ? ?
Nice jacket.” Miriam has arrived late, and is slightly breathless as she enters the boardroom. She has called Sam to declare a hamster emergency: she needed to take her daughter’s pet to the good small-animal vet on the other side of town. Miriam is big on flexible working, for whatever reasons. If you do the work, she says, and get the results, then you can work in the small hours for all she cares. Sam takes her seat at the boardroom table. She has bought Miriam a coffee and Miriam accepts it gratefully, sitting down.
“Thanks. It’s just Zara,” says Sam, “but I think it looks good.”
“It does. You should wear more bright colors. Hey, do you and Phil fancy lunch this Sunday? We want to christen the new extension. There’ll be some people there I think you’ll like. I promise we won’t talk work.”
“That would be really nice. Thank you!”
Phil and Sam are trying to do something new every weekend. It’s a thing Sam read in a magazine, an article about how to inject fun back into your marriage. She thinks she might enjoy lunch with Miriam and Irena more than the indoor climbing wall Phil had insisted on the previous week. They had agreed, ruefully, as they rubbed their aching, middle-aged limbs afterward, that rock-climbing might not be their thing.
“Ah. And here they are,” says Miriam, shuffling the papers in front of her into a neat pile. She looks up and smiles at Sam. “So this is the company we’re taking over. I couldn’t really talk about it until the legals were done. But I thought you might like to lead this one. We’re going to have to make some personnel cuts, to start. I think you’ll have no problem working out where that should happen. My feeling is that it needs someone like you to be in charge.”
“In charge?”
“Yes. The board would like you to consider heading up this company. Or should we say, this new division of Harlon and Lewis?”
Sam looks through the doorway where Emma, the receptionist, is just showing in two young men, both carrying folders. Sam blinks at the familiar slightly pointed shoes, and then registers the shiny suit, the sudden unease visible in their owner as Simon recognizes her.
She looks at Miriam, her jaw dropping slightly.
Miriam raises her eyebrows. Smiles. “Like I said, I thought you’d like to take this initial meeting. We can discuss your more formal change of position later.”
Sam lets her hands rest on the table for a moment. Then she picks up her pen and takes a deep breath.
“Well,” she says, beckoning them in, “this is going to be fun.”
Acknowledgments
All books are a collaborative endeavor and so thank you as ever to my wonderful editors: Louise Moore and Maxine Hitchcock at Penguin Michael Joseph, Pamela Dorman at Pamela Dorman Books, Penguin Random House, in the US, Katharina Dornhofer at Rowohlt Germany and the other editors across the globe who have continued to support, help and guide me. It is such a privilege to be published by such excellent publishing houses, and I never forget it.
Thank you to my tireless agent, Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown; the translation rights team present and past, including Katie McGowan, Grace Robinson and Claire Nozieres; and thanks to Jonny Geller, Nick Marston and everyone else at the agency. Thanks across the pond to Bob Bookman of Bob Bookman Management for his endless energy and support, and giving me tastes for wine some way beyond my budget.