Someone Else's Shoes(21)

“Ooh, you look like shit,” Andrea says cheerfully, and Sam raises her eyebrows, faced with Andrea’s missing ones, the still ghostly pallor of her skin. “Come in, come in. You’ll have to make the coffee. For some reason milk keeps making me gag.”

They sit knees up, end to end on Andrea’s sofa, which is always covered with a selection of crocheted blankets and soft wraps, as she gets cold easily. They are in bold colors, because she likes things to be upbeat and cheery, and as they sit, Mugs, Andrea’s beloved battered ginger cat, climbs between them and kneads a cushion rapturously, sending out hoarse purrs of pleasure.

“So what happened to you?” says Andrea. She has placed a soft wrap on her head, which matches the blue of her eyes. “Tell me all the goss.”

“I brought in three big deals, got accused by my new boss of being drunk, and got very, very drunk,” she says.

“Excellent. Any bad behavior?”

She thinks about Joel and pushes away the memory. “No. Beyond dancing so much in high heels that my feet looked like unbaked bread this morning.”

“Ugh. I dream of bad behavior. Sometimes I dream about going out and getting slaughtered, and it’s almost a disappointment when I wake up and there’s no hangover.”

“You can have this one. Honest. It’s on me.”

They had met on the first day of secondary school and Andrea had shown Sam her impression of an orange (it involved pursing her entire face and was oddly convincing), then revealed the love bite she had got from the PE teacher’s son. In all the years they have been friends Sam can remember only one falling-out, over a holiday Andrea had taken without her when they were eighteen, and after which they had tacitly agreed never to argue again. Andrea knows her to her bones. Every crush, every sadness, every passing thought: she is a constant conversation running through Sam’s life, and every time Sam leaves her she feels restored in some subliminal way she never quite understands.

“Is Phil up?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you talked to him about the meds again?”

Sam groans. “He won’t do it. It’s like he’s decided that the moment he takes anti-depressants he’s officially mentally ill.”

“It’s just depression, Sam. It’s ridiculous. Everyone needs help sometimes. It’s like—it’s like this. But in his brain instead of his tits.”

Andrea is the only person she feels able to tell the truth to about Phil’s illness. How sometimes she hates him. How she is afraid he’ll never get better. How she is afraid that one day he will be better and she will hate him for this so much that she won’t be able to feel the same way again about him. How what has happened to him—and to Andrea—has left her feeling like the earth can shift under your feet without a moment’s notice so that nothing in the world, no happiness, feels secure.

“How are you feeling?” Sam says, to change the subject.

“Oh, just tired, mostly. I’ve watched the whole of ER this week on one of the streaming channels, just because it makes me feel better when people die and it isn’t me.”

“The last scan was still good, though, right? You’re on the mend?”

“Yep. One more to go before I can breathe again. Hey—my hair’s started to grow back.” She lifts the wrap from her head, revealing a hint of fuzz.

Sam leans across and runs her hand over it. “Nice. You look like Furiosa in Mad Max.”

“Well, people are always mistaking me for Charlize Theron.”

There is a brief silence in the little room. Mugs has fallen asleep, his back legs in the air like a rabbit’s, and they pause to stroke him gently.

“Oh, and I was let go from work.” Andrea doesn’t look up from the cat.

It takes a moment for Sam to register what she said. “What?”

“Nothing to do with this, of course, just a restructuring of the department so that my position no longer exists.”

“They can’t do that! Not after what you’ve just been through!”

“Well, they did. I get a small payoff, so there’s that.”

“But—but how will you get by?”

Andrea shrugs. “No idea. I thought I might sell my body.” She smiles weakly at Sam. “I’ll go to the benefits office next week and see what I’m entitled to. You’d think being half dead would entitle me to something.”

“Don’t,” says Sam. “Don’t even joke about it.” She reaches across and takes Andrea’s hand. She squeezes it gently.

“It’ll be all right,” says Andrea. “Something will happen.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I’ve got savings.”

“You told me you’d burned through most of them.”

“Your memory is way too good,” says Andrea. “Anyway, you’re as skint as I am.”

“Seriously, can I do something? Can we sue them? Get a lawyer involved?”

“It’s a huge corporation with whole legal departments devoted to squishing people—and honestly? I haven’t got the energy to fight anything else just now.” Andrea keeps her eyes on the cat as she speaks, and the conversation is apparently closed. They sit in silence for a while, both lost in their thoughts, still both stroking the cat until he decides this is way too much human contact and stalks off the sofa.