Someone Else's Shoes(32)

“Uh . . . Tower Hill,” she says.

“Not too bad. Though the Highway is nuts this time of night, even on a Sunday. Aleks lives over that way and sometimes it takes him an hour on the bus just to get that far.”

“I’m walking,” she says.

“The whole way? Good on you. That’s why you’re such a little bitty thing! See you tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. What is she going to do tomorrow? Her brain is so tired she can barely think. “Sure,” she answers, because it’s the easiest thing to do. “Hang on,” she says, as Jasmine makes to leave. “What about my money?”

“Money?”

“For today.”

Jasmine pulls a face. “You don’t get paid by the day, babe. What do they do where you come from? Agency and temp workers get paid at the end of the week. Just talk to Sandra and she’ll sort it for you. I’m guessing you’re cash in hand?”

She must have caught Nisha’s look of horror, because her face softens. “You really short, huh?”

Nisha nods, dumbly. Jasmine stops and reaches into her bag.

Nisha stares at her. She does not want to take money from this woman, with her catalog-quality jacket and cheap trainers. She does not want to think of herself as poorer than this.

Jasmine gives her a steady look, as if assessing her, then pulls out twenty pounds and holds it toward her. “I wouldn’t normally do this but . . . I like you. You worked hard today. Make sure you get yourself something good to eat—if you haven’t done this for a while, today will have taken it out of you.” Nisha takes the notes and stares at them.

Jasmine lets out a small hmm.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she says eventually. And smiles. “I’m trusting you. And don’t you come in smelling of cigarettes again, okay?”

She hoists her bag over her shoulder, and she is gone, her phone already pressed to her ear, her free hand spraying clouds of the perfume around her shoulders.



* * *



? ? ?

She tries the White Horse on Bailey Street before she goes back to the hotel. It is almost empty, just a handful of red-faced elderly men punctuating the corners, and the carpet sticks slightly to the soles of her feet. When she explains that she’s looking for a missing pair of high-heeled shoes the barman actually laughs in her face.





eleven


Company gone into liquidation. Closed until further notice. Sam looks at the sign, the kitbag slung over her shoulder, then peers through the glass door that has already been covered with newspaper, as if to stop the outside world looking in at a financial murder scene.

A young man, his tanned, rippling arm muscles visible through his tank top, even though the air is chilly, arrives beside her and lets out a loud curse. “I just joined!” he protests at Sam, as though it is her fault. “I just paid them a year in advance!”

Sam watches him stride back across the car park, still cursing, wondering what she’s supposed to do now about returning the bag to its owner. She feels briefly cross at the thought that she will now have to lug it to the office and home again afterward and work out what on earth to do about it. This makes her think about Simon, no doubt checking his watch already, waiting to see if she is even a minute late to add to his checklist of things she has done wrong. She hauls the bag more tightly over her shoulder and heads for the Tube station.



* * *



? ? ?

There was a time, not that long ago, when Sam enjoyed her job. She didn’t spring out of bed every morning whistling, or come home feeling like she had particularly added to the joy of the world, but there had been a quiet satisfaction in being with people whose company she enjoyed every day, and knowing she could do the job she had done for twelve years pretty well. There were Sams in every office, the people who quietly, and without drama, kept everything running smoothly, willing to step in if extra hours were required, satisfied enough by what they did not to require ego-stroking or excessive praise. She had received three salary increases in that time, none of which had been huge, but enough to make her feel like a valued member of staff.

That had changed the day that Simon had arrived. He had stalked his way coldly around the offices of Grayside Print with thinly veiled disappointment, as if the desks themselves were a let-down. He had repeatedly interrupted Sam during her first meeting with him, and even shaken his head a couple of times while she was speaking, as if everything she said was in some way wrong.

You’re going to have to explain more clearly what you mean.

But why are you taking ten days on jobs that could be done in seven?

You’re aware that Uberprint strives for excellence in every single job?

And your boss was happy with the way you run things here, was he?

Everything he said seemed calculated to imply some deficit on her part, her attention levels, her schedules, even her punctuality (Sam was never late).

At first she tried to brazen it out. Joel told her not to take it personally, there was one like Simon wherever you went—“He’s just dick-waving, babe, trying to make his mark”—but the relentlessness of it had started to chip away at her so that she became all fingers and thumbs in his presence when trying to flick through her desk diary, or stammered pre-emptively, waiting for him to cut in over her in meetings. Now, as she left the house in the morning, a heavy, sickly feeling would settle in Sam’s stomach. She had taken to listening to podcasts or ambient music on her journey to work, just so that she didn’t have to think about what was likely to happen when she arrived. Every day, when she walked in, Simon, visible in his glass-walled office, would look ostentatiously at the office clock and raise an eyebrow, even if she was five minutes early. He would text her late into the evening asking what had been done about improving the margins on the Carling job, or whether she had double-checked the pages weren’t stuck together on the garden-furniture catalogs (this had happened once, while she was away on a week’s holiday and Hardeep was meant to be covering, though this fact seemed irrelevant to Simon).