Someone Else's Shoes(19)

“Excuse me, would you happen to have a spare cigarette?” She smiles sweetly at the man, and he is disarmed immediately. Doesn’t even speak as he rummages hurriedly for his packet. He lights the cigarette, like a gentleman, keeping his hands from hers, and she rewards him with another smile. “Actually, you couldn’t give me a couple for later, could you? I’ve left mine at home.” He gives her the packet, insisting she take them, that he can buy some more. “You’re a doll,” she says, and his ears go pink.

She smokes the cigarette in short, angry puffs, relishing the acrid taste of the smoke, the chance to do something for a few minutes. Where the hell is he? She stubs the last of the cigarette out with her heel. Just hurry up, she wills him. She cannot remember the last time she was on her own in a public bar at night. She is normally insulated from people like this. That snotty kid wouldn’t have approached her if she was in her normal clothes. This is what she’s spent her whole life getting away from.

She checks her watch, then shoves her hands into her pockets, and pulls them out again quickly with an audible ugh when she remembers what she is wearing.



* * *



? ? ?

At a quarter past nine she makes her third circuit of the pub, pushing through the groups of increasingly raucous customers, her head dipping and bobbing as she tries to make out who is there. A young woman no longer wearing any shoes offers her a cigarette outside and tells her her hair is beautiful. She says thank you nicely because she wants the cigarette. She suspects the nicotine will give her a headache tomorrow.

Nisha waits as the hours pass and the bar takes a more Bacchanalian turn around her, the voices louder, the glasses sloshing alcohol as people push past her. A group of office workers starts dancing on the tiny, sticky dance-floor and she stares at them, marveling at people’s willingness to humiliate themselves. The side door is locked at a quarter to eleven, and people begin to spill out of the main doors, laughing, stumbling, stopping to smoke or kiss messily, or wait for taxis. He does not come.

“Is it closing time?” she asks a young Asian man, part of the office celebration.

“Yes, babe,” he says, saluting. “Nearly eleven, innit?” He slings an arm around the shoulders of a ginger-haired man in an ill-fitting T-shirt and they walk off singing.

She cannot believe it. She turns and peers inside: the place is emptying, barmen wiping tables and stacking chairs. Could she have missed him? He couldn’t have been here without her knowing. He just couldn’t. She curses under her breath, preparing to walk back to the hotel.



* * *



? ? ?

She is only a few minutes away from the pub when she hears them behind her, catcalling, their footsteps echoing on the wet pavement. Oi! Yankee Doodle! She turns and recognizes him immediately, pushing forward, like a pustulent boil, from the surface of their little gang. Oh, great.

She picks up her pace, but they pick up theirs too and she knows they are gaining on her. Her heart thumps in her ears with a sudden surge of adrenaline. She runs through the calculations that every woman knows as standard: this street is too dark; there are no other people nearby; the main street, with its strip lights and traffic, is still a hundred, two hundred paces away. She has no Ari, no personal alarm, not even any keys to wedge between her fingers. He is coming. She knows it in her gut.

Three strides, two strides. She hears his approach, feels the hot breath on her neck. Just as his arms surround her in a clumsy bear hug, Nisha squats and drops abruptly, shifts her weight onto her back foot, turns and swings her right forearm up hard between his legs. Just as her Krav Maga tutor had shown her. She hears his high-pitched cry as he collapses onto the pavement behind her, the shocked exclamations of his friends as they reach for him. The curses. The what the f—

But they are drunk, and before they can fully grasp what has happened, she is sprinting away down the unlit back road, all the power of a thousand tedious daily sessions on a treadmill in her feet, suddenly grateful that, for this day in her life at least, she is not wearing a pair of beautifully handmade couture high heels, but a pair of cheap and nasty perfectly flat pumps.

She is almost at the hotel, her brain still fizzing, before she discovers that during the scuffle her phone has fallen out of the too-shallow pocket of the second-hand jacket.

She curses, then doubles back and runs the route she has come, ignoring the drunks weaving their way along the street. She scans the sidewalk but there is nothing. Of course there isn’t. How long does a cellphone last on an inner-city street? Nisha stands under the flickering sodium light, closes her eyes and wonders how much worse this day can get.



* * *



? ? ?

“Magda! There are six different White Horses in London! Why didn’t you tell me? I just looked them up! He must have gone to a different one!”

She has borrowed the phone of the soft-voiced Nigerian man on Reception, and as Magda answers, she is standing in the corner by the vending machine, ignoring the anxious glances he is sending in her direction.

“What? But he called me!”

“What do you mean he called you?”

“He said he handed it to you two hours ago. He got held up so he was late and he called me.”

“He did not give it to me. He went to the wrong bar!”

“No. No, Mrs. Cantor. The White Horse. I told him what you would be wearing. I knew this was Friday’s outfit, because I have them all on the chart. He said he recognized you by your shoes.”