Someone Else's Shoes(65)

Phil doesn’t know how long he cries for. He is not sure he has ever cried like this, huge howls erupting out of him, shaking his whole body, his palms wet with his tears. After a couple of minutes he feels Dr. Kovitz’s hand on his back, becomes aware that the box of tissues is being held in front of him and he wipes and wipes at his face, apologizing because every tissue is immediately damp and discarded and he needs another.

Finally, it subsides, a storm passing. And Phil sits in stunned, exhausted silence, his breath shuddering unevenly in his chest. Dr. Kovitz waits, then stands and slowly makes his way back to his seat on the other side of the room.

“Phil,” he says finally. “I’m going to tell you something. I don’t know whether your father meant any of the things he said in his last moments, or whether they were just the flailings of a very ill and frustrated man. But I would like you to consider this. I don’t know many people who could have coped with what you went through. Strength—real strength—is not doing what someone asks you, necessarily. Strength is turning up every day to a situation that is intolerable, unbearable even, just to support the people you love. Strength is being in that terrible room hour after hour even though every cell in your body is telling you it’s too much for you to cope with.”

Phil is crying hard again now, but over the sound of his own gasping breaths he can just make out the last thing Dr. Kovitz says.

“By that measure, Phil, you have done something very brave indeed.”



* * *



? ? ?

Something odd has happened to Nisha. She keeps thinking about Aleks. She has become hyper-aware of his presence whenever she goes to get lunch, feels his casual glances like something burning in her back. At night she finds herself thinking about the place where his neck meets his shoulders, the way his eyes narrow when he considers something she’s said, as if everything should be given serious weight. He is the most level person she has ever met: no abrupt tantrums or mood switches, like Carl, no bursts of laughter or fits of anger. He smiles the same way when he sees her, hands her food she hasn’t known she wanted to eat, lets her go again with a small wave or nod. He is always pleasant, and nice to her, and completely unreadable. It is, frankly, infuriating.

During her lunch break she has started to ask him questions about himself, perching on the surface near him as he works or sharing cigarettes with him out in the alley. He comes from Poland but considers England his home, having been here sixteen years. He is separated, on good terms with his ex, he has always been a chef and, no, never wanted to be anything else. He thinks the management of the hotel is not so great, but he has known worse and he is comfortable here. It is good to work somewhere where you are valued. He would like to own a restaurant one day but is not sure how he would raise the capital. He likes London, owns his small apartment, thanks to his late father, and on 31 December he is going to give up smoking. He says it like it is something he can just decide upon, and Nisha has no doubt it will happen. He has a daughter, eleven, who stays with him when he is off work. His face softens when he talks about her, and his eyes grow distant, as if there is a well of something Nisha has not yet been allowed to see. Everyone likes him in the kitchen, but he doesn’t make jokes or hang out in the locker room during his downtime, whingeing about double shifts, or Michel’s latest outbursts, like the others. He keeps to himself, apparently content to do his job and then retreat to wherever he goes afterward. He reads cookery books incessantly. He rarely looks at his phone, and has no apparent interest in sport, or going out drinking. He doesn’t try to impress her, or calm her down, or flirt, or ask her questions. She cannot work him out.

“I left your duck on the bus,” she says one day, almost to provoke him.

“Then I will get you another,” he says.

“You never ask me anything about myself,” she says, when he sits opposite her as she eats a sandwich. As they spill from her mouth, the words sound almost like a complaint, which is irritating. He pauses before he answers.

“I think you will probably tell me what you want me to know.”

“How come you never hit on me?” she says, when they walk out one evening at the end of her shift. He has stayed late to deep-clean his station and it is dark, the traffic roaring past them along the Embankment.

“Do you want me to hit on you?” he says, tilting his head toward her.

“No.”

“Then there you go.”

“What does that mean?” She stops, frowning at him.

“It means if you are a man with any sense you can read whether a woman wants you to come on to her.”

“Most men come on to me anyway.”

“I am not surprised. You are very beautiful.”

She gives him a hard look. “Are you coming on to me now?”

“No. I’m stating a fact.”

He is extremely annoying. And her inability to read him, like she can read almost any man on the planet, makes her feel unbalanced, and cross around him, so that she adopts a weird, challenging tone when she talks to him or, occasionally, avoids him altogether.

And here is the thing: Nisha misses sex. She doesn’t miss Carl, exactly. There were times when she would groan inwardly when she caught that look in his eye. But she feels starved of physical contact. She misses being held, touched, desired. She misses the feeling of power she experienced when a man was physically affected by her. She cannot even sort herself out, given that she sleeps on a bunk bed with a fourteen-year-old beneath her.