Someone Else's Shoes(28)

Phil had serviced the engine, got it through the safety checks, and removed the rear bumper, ready to find a replacement on his online auction site. But then his father had received his diagnosis, and there was no time to do anything, aside from work, but look after Rich and Nancy. Three months after the awful toxic mix of chemotherapy and suppressed emotion, Phil had been made redundant, and the camper-van had apparently been forgotten.

“Why don’t you spend some time this afternoon working on the van?” she would suggest every few weeks, hoping that the mixture of practical problem-solving and fresh air would make him feel more himself. And at first he would nod and say, sure, definitely, if he had time. But as the weeks passed he would look hunted if she mentioned it, and after a while it was easier never to mention it at all. Now the van sits, its innards three-quarters removed, its bumper still missing, silently rusting in their driveway until it’s taxed again, its unmoving bulk a rebuke to her dreams of holidays, and a better way of living, and also to the idea that they might be able to park the car somewhere other than three streets away from their own house.

Kevin sniffs its rear tire, which is as deflated as she feels, then abruptly cocks his leg, letting out a thin stream of urine against it. She has a sudden urge to do the same thing, just lowering her pants and cocking her leg against the wheel, a bald expression of her disgust at the whole damn thing. She pictures the neighbors, appalled, staring out of their windows and conferring as she crouches, and smiles. And as she tells Kevin he is a good dog, a very good dog, and makes her way inside, she realizes this is the first thing that has made her laugh all day.



* * *



? ? ?

“How was the pub?” Phil has raised himself to a sitting position on the sofa. Kevin bounds up to him, giddy and delighted to see the man he hasn’t seen for a whole forty-five minutes, completely free of resentment for his stretched bladder. Phil fondles the dog’s ears.

“The pub? Oh. Fine. It was fine.”

He looks at her for a moment and, briefly, something sad and self-aware passes across his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it. I was just . . . really tired and . . .” His voice tails away.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, quietly, looking down. And Sam, parking her mental list of jobs, sits down beside him, takes his hand and lets her head rest, just for a while, on his shoulder.





ten


Nisha has located two more White Horse pubs, walking miles through insalubrious London streets in the awful shoes, in both cases to be told, no, they had no idea about any stolen shoes, and none of the bar staff at the one pub with CCTV knew how to work the playback. “You can come back when the manager is here.” The girl had shrugged in a way that told her he was likely to be even less interested than she was. Nisha has barely slept these two nights, her thoughts twisting and congealing as she considers what Carl has done to her, her fury mounting, along with her determination to reclaim what is hers.

She was at the breakfast buffet when it opened at 6:30 a.m., her hair damp and scraped into a ponytail, and downed two swift coffees, ignoring the growling of her stomach.

She finally slows her pace as the Bentley Hotel comes into view. She sees the top-hatted doorman greeting a weary traveler, whose suitcases are being unloaded from a taxi, and wonders briefly whether Frederik will have briefed him not to let her in. She doesn’t care, she tells herself. She will walk straight past him, sit down in the lobby and this time she will refuse to move.

She straightens the awful jacket, and checks her watch. Seven thirty-seven. Carl will be dressed by now, up in the suite, sitting at his desk and checking the financial pages while waiting for his coffee: black, two sugars. Who is bringing him that coffee? she thinks suddenly. Is it Charlotte? Nisha’s favorite black silk dressing-gown draped around her body? A smile of post-coital satisfaction on that tight, young, duplicitous face? She pauses, her jaw setting, and runs through what she plans to say to him: You can have your divorce, Carl. I just want what’s mine. I want simply what you owe me. She will do it with dignity, with pride. Or maybe she will just kick him in the nuts.

She takes a deep breath, walks two steps toward the door, and it is then that she spies Ari standing a short distance from the doorman, his earpiece in, his mouth barely moving as he conducts some discreet conversation with one of his men. Ari, whom she once watched knock a man to the ground with a single swift jab to the neck. That can only mean one thing: that they half expect her to try to come back. Before he can see her, she ducks into the side alley that runs alongside the hotel, her heart pounding in her chest. Outside a door, halfway down, two kitchen workers are sitting on a step, smoking and drinking coffee. She stands close to them and lights a cigarette, turning her back to the road and trying not to breathe in the scents of urine and stale food.

She might get past the doorman, but she will not get past Ari. And there is somehow a greater humiliation involved in being blocked and removed by the man who had been paid for the last decade to protect her. She takes short, jittery drags on the cigarette while she considers her options, oblivious to the two men who glance at her with incurious eyes, then continue their conversation. A woman in an anorak with a bowed head walks past and steps into the doorway beside them. And then another, talking animatedly in a foreign language on her cellphone. A third, with braided hair and a long, padded coat, stops in front of her. “You waiting to go in, darling?”