Someone Else's Shoes(29)

Nisha looks up.

“You don’t want to go in smelling of ciggies. Frederik hates it. Here.” The woman pulls a spray from her handbag and before Nisha can protest has blasted her with a cloud of cheap musk. Nisha screws up her eyes at the chemical smell and coughs. Tucking the spray back into her bag, the woman says, “C’mon. You new? Follow me.”

Ari appears at the end of the alley, still looking the other way. Nisha makes a split-second decision and follows the woman into the back entrance of the hotel, walking along a narrow corridor, past hurrying waiters and someone pushing a large trolley of laundry. She backs against the wall to let it pass, not wanting to touch any of the pile of germ-ridden sheets.

“Your first time here?”

Nisha nods, gazing behind her.

“You got papers?”

“Papers?”

“National Insurance number?”

Nisha shakes her head.

“Don’t worry. Just say you’re waiting on a replacement passport. They never ask too much—how the hell else are they going to get anyone in on these wages?” She laughs drily, as if she has amused herself. “What’s your name?”

“Nisha.”

“I’m Jasmine. Don’t look so worried! They don’t bite here! C’mon. Let’s get you kitted out and I’ll take you over to Sandra. She’s in charge of rotas.”

Nisha finds herself in a room full of lockers, the air heavy with the leftover scents of food and overworked bodies. “Oi! Gilberto! Take your trash out, man! I’m not paid to clear up after you lot as well as the guests.”

A short, wiry man with nicotine-stained skin lurches in and picks up a polystyrene box from which a strong smell of fish seeps. “He’s put me on doubles till Thursday. I swear, Jas, I’m going to drop if this carries on.”

Jasmine lets out a noise that sounds like a growl, and Gilberto leaves. “They’re short-staffed at the moment,” she says, opening a locker and putting her bag inside. “It’s been a nightmare. Since Brexit the hotel has lost forty percent of the staff. Forty percent! Where are you from?”

“New York.”

“New York! Don’t get many Americans here. Only the paying kind. Here. What size are you? Eight? Ten? You’re just a little skinny thing.” She rifles through a pile of uniforms until she hauls out a black tunic and trousers. “We can wear our own stuff but it’s better to wear theirs. Some days I am too glad to leave the filth of this place behind and put my own clothes on again, you know? You don’t want to take that shit home with you.”

While she stands, holding the folded pile of clothes, Jasmine peels her way unselfconsciously out of her elasticated dress, then hauls on a pair of black trousers and a tunic. She checks her appearance in the small mirror on the back of the door, then glances back at Nisha.

“C’mon! Don’t hang around! If we get upstairs by quarter to there’ll still be some breakfast.”

She has no idea what she’s doing. But staying close to Jasmine seems as good a plan as any right now. Nisha wriggles into the clothes (thank God they smell of laundry service), rams her stuff into an empty locker, and follows Jasmine out and along the corridor.



* * *



? ? ?

    Nisha is not hungry, but in past days she has learned to eat when food is available, and she follows Jasmine mutely through the kitchens, watching as the younger woman greets her fellow workers. “What’s going on, Nigel? Your mum out of hospital yet? Glad to hear it, babe . . . Katya! I watched that thing you told me! I nearly crapped myself, man! What business have you got making me watch horror? You know I don’t have a man to protect me!” Jasmine laughs easily, and pushes through doorways like she expects the world to fall away and clear her path. Nisha’s mind races. She scans each room they enter, half waiting for Ari’s figure to appear in front of her. But, no, there are just these brisk, sometimes shuffling, figures hurrying past, their faces etched with exhaustion, clearly focused on their jobs.

“Here. What do you like? This is the one perk to starting early: Minette’s pastries. Oh, my God, I swear I was seven stone till I started working here.” Jasmine hands her a plate, and motions to a large tray on which a selection of pains aux raisins, pains au chocolat and croissants are laid out. Nisha takes a pain au raisin and bites into it. In less than a nanosecond she recognizes that this is the best thing she has eaten in three days: light and moist and delicately buttery, genuine French patisserie, still warm from the oven. For the first time in days her brain stops spinning and she is lost in pleasure.

“Good, right?” Jasmine takes two and closes her eyes in bliss as she eats. “My day from five thirty is mental. I have to get my daughter up and dressed, make her packed lunch if it’s a school day, then take her to my mum’s in Peckham, then two more buses to come here, and I swear the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of these beauties waiting for me.”

“Oh, that’s good,” says Nisha, through a mouthful of crumbs.

“Minette’s a goddamn genius. Almost as good as you, Aleks!” Over by the flaming stove a lean man in chef’s whites turns from his pans and nods at Jasmine. “You done?”

Nisha nods.

“Okay. Let’s go.” Jasmine wipes her mouth with a paper napkin and heads toward the door on the far side of the kitchen, pausing only to tell Nisha to “Straighten up your hair a bit,” reaching over to tighten her ponytail before Nisha can stop her. Jasmine pushes through the double doors, walks briskly down a corridor and turns left into a small office.