Someone Else's Shoes(27)

You’re a bit moody these days, Mum, her daughter had said. Shouldn’t you think about taking HRT or something?

No, I’m not tougher. I’m not moodier, she wanted to yell at them. I’m just bloody tired. But if I give up and lie on the sofa all day the whole damn thing will fall apart at the seams.

She scolds Kevin, who dawdles outside the neighbors’ house, sniffing endlessly at the base of their privet. Then she feels guilty because none of this is poor Kevin’s fault, crouches down and throws her hands around his fat neck, whispering, “Sorry, darling, I’m so sorry,” until she looks up and sees Jed from number 72 staring at her like she’s finally lost her marbles.



* * *



? ? ?

She walks all the way to the canal because she cannot think what to do if she’s at home, ignoring the couples who walk arm in arm, scowling at the cyclists who force her onto the side of the path. Cat is working this afternoon. She seems to have a portfolio of part-time jobs—barista, delivery girl, waitress (“It’s making the gig economy work for you, Mum. You don’t want to be dependent on just one job.”)—and Sam knows that if she stays at home she will either have to sit with Phil in the dead-aired, enervating living room, or start one of the 148 tasks that need doing in the house that everyone else seems to believe are her responsibility. If she does this, she will be seething, her rage barely suppressed, within minutes. And then she will hate herself for it, because depression is no one’s fault. As she has never had it, she reminds herself, she cannot fully understand the compulsion to do nothing. Or perhaps the lack of compulsion to do anything. Either way, at least if she’s walking Kevin she can feel like she’s done something—and boosted her step count while she’s at it.

She recalls a philosophy teacher asking her class, “How many of the decisions you make each day are because you actually want to do something, and how many are to avoid the consequences of not doing it?” Nearly everything she does these days is just to stop something else happening. If she doesn’t keep her steps up she will get fat. If she doesn’t walk the dog he will wee in the hall. Sometimes Sam feels she has been so conditioned to be useful every minute of every day that there is almost nothing she does in which she is not simultaneously keeping a subconscious tally.

Do men hear this constant inner voice, telling them constantly to strive to be better, to be productive, to be useful? Even when Phil was happier he was mostly oblivious to the towel rail that had half come out of the bathroom wall, the pile of socks that needed sorting on the washing-machine, the crumbs on the floor, the fridge that really needed its shelves wiped before they all died of penicillin poisoning.

She finds herself wondering absently if Joel does things. She pictures him changing a toilet roll without being asked, his expression cheery, no hint of I changed the toilet roll for you, babe on his lips. Like some kind of fantasy man. And then she thinks of dancing with him the previous night, the heat of his hands on her waist, and flushes with guilty pleasure. He’s sweet on you, Marina had said, and she finds herself mentally counting all the nice things he has said to her before deciding she’s being ridiculous and pushes the thought of him away.

She pulls Kevin out of the path of another rampaging cyclist who rings his bell and swears as he whooshes past (she wants to yell at him but she once read a newspaper story about a woman who was pushed into the canal after protesting to a cyclist so she stays quiet). She remembers, with a jolt, she hasn’t taken that kitbag back to the fancy gym. Will the owner have alerted the police about the missing designer clothes? She thinks about the list of things she has to get through in the rest of her day: pick up her father’s prescription and drop it round to her parents, stopping for a cup of tea so they don’t complain that they never see her, sort out the pile of washing on the upstairs landing, defrost the freezer because the door has stopped closing, go through the pile of bills on the side that she has put off all week. She checks her watch. She’ll take the bag back before work on Monday. Another job to squeeze into her already packed day.

Then she thinks about Andrea, who has nothing in her day except time in which to contemplate the abyss she has been staring into for months. And then she feels guilty for complaining about anything.

I need a holiday, she thinks. And that thought makes her think of the camper-van. She puts her head down and trudges toward home.



* * *



? ? ?

The camper-van. Sam lets out an involuntary sigh every time she sees it, staring at the giant yellow sunflower painted on its side. Phil had bought it two years ago from a friend at work—back when he was still in work—and had arrived home full of enthusiasm and visions of their future trips together. “It just needs a bit of TLC. I’ll respray it, replace the bumper and update the interior. The engine’s in pretty good shape. It’s always the roof on these things that you need to watch. Water seepage,” he had added knowledgeably, as if he had any more experience of a camper-van than a week-long family holiday in Tenby when he was ten years old.

She had been quietly furious at first—how could he splurge three thousand pounds of their savings without consulting her?—but gradually she had allowed herself to be carried along by the picture he painted of holidays around the south coast—“Maybe even the continent. Wouldn’t that be great, Sammy? Lying out in the South of France? Sleeping under the stars?” He had hugged her to him, murmuring into her ear. Sam had remembered a holiday in the South of France where being bitten by mosquitoes and the horror of the pit-like campsite toilet you had to squat over had reduced them to hysterical laughter. They had been good at adventures. Even the ones that involved having to wash your shoelaces after you’d been to the bathroom.