Someone Else's Shoes(34)

“Hi, love,” she says, forcing brightness into her voice. “How are you doing?”

“Okay,” Phil says flatly.

She can hear the burble of the television down the phone, and pictures him staring blankly at the overly made-up women discussing current affairs on the screen.

“Well . . . Des Parry finally got back to me. They’re going to start work on the wall next Monday—finally!—so you’ll need to move the camper-van.”

“The camper-van? To where?”

“I don’t know. Onto the road?”

“But it’s got no tax.”

“Well, we’ll have to tax it. He can’t get to the wall if it’s parked where it is. Or maybe one of your friends with a garage could look after it.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can ask the boys.”

She closes her eyes for a moment.

“We haven’t really spoken in a while. It would feel . . .” His voice tails away.

“Phil. Love. We need to move the van, whatever. It would be great if you could work out how to do that. I’m pretty stretched here.”

There is a long pause.

“Can’t we put them off for a bit? I don’t think I’m up to that right now.”

It is then that she feels the anger boil up inside her. “Up to what? Moving a van six feet?”

“The whole tax and safety-checks thing. And . . . I don’t know where we would put it. I can’t really handle it right now.”

“Well, you’ll have to work something out. Because the builder is coming.”

“Just put him off a week. I’ll think about it.”

“No, Phil.” She can hear her voice becoming high and shrill. “I will not put him off. It’s taken me months to get him in the first place, and I can’t risk him going to another job. And that wall is dangerous. You know it is. If someone climbs on it and it collapses, they’ll be seriously hurt. And we’ll be liable. So just sort out the bloody van and move it. Then we can both get on with our lives, okay?”

There is a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“You don’t have to be aggressive about it,” he says grimly. “I’m doing my best.”

“Are you, though? Are you really?” Something has unlocked in Sam and she can’t help it: words pour out of her mouth like hard pebbles. “I’m working flat out and running the house and trying to look after Andrea and Cat and the incontinent dog and dealing with bloody Simon and you are lying on your arse on the sofa for sixteen hours a day, and in bed the other six. When did you last do a supermarket shop? Or walk Kevin? Or—or sweep the kitchen floor? Or anything at all other than feel sorry for yourself? You’re not doing anything! Just wallowing! You do nothing but wallow!”

Silence. And then he says: “Eight. It’s eight hours in bed.”

“What?”

“There are twenty-four hours in a day. Sixteen hours on the sofa. That leaves eight.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Phil. You know what I’m saying. Just do something, okay? I know you’re sad and I know you feel like life is hard, and it is. My God, I know it is. But sometimes you just have to get up and bloody get on with it. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for months and I can’t do it on my own any more. Okay? I just can’t!”

This time she doesn’t wait to see how he will respond. She ends the call, and stares at the wall, her heart pounding in her chest.

It is then that she turns and jumps at Simon standing in the doorway.

“?‘Dealing with bloody Simon,’?” he says slowly, nodding, a peculiar half-smile on his face. “Interesting. I was just coming to tell you that you need to renegotiate the figures on the Billson job. Head Office says the margins aren’t good enough.”

Sam stares, as he turns and walks away. She looks at the clingfilm-wrapped sandwich on her lap, her blood pumping in her ears, and without even really knowing what she’s doing, she hurls it across the room so that it explodes soggily against the wall.



* * *



? ? ?

Seven minutes later Sam straightens her jacket, gets up and, using squares of kitchen towel, picks up every bit of sweetcorn from the carpet, wipes the mayo and butter from the wall with a damp cloth, then puts the whole thing carefully into the bin.





twelve


So what . . . do I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

Phil looks at the man, and wonders if this is a trick question. If he sits on the seat closest to him will it look needy? Or weird? But he doesn’t know about lying on that bed thing. Plus he’s a little worried that if he lies down he will immediately fall asleep. He falls asleep all the time, these days. If he does, will he look like a crazy person?

It’s as if he can hear his thoughts. “Some people find it more comfortable to sit. Some lie down. It’s really just about what’s most comfortable for you.”

Phil hesitates, then sits on the edge of the rattan sofa, leaving an empty seat between them. The man gazes at him and waits. Phil wonders whether he could get up and leave now. There is nothing keeping him here, after all. But Cat had been adamant, and his daughter is surprisingly hard to contradict.

“Do I talk? Or do you talk?”