Someone Else's Shoes(69)

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? ? ?

Even if he were the kind of man who was comfortable talking about emotional stuff, there is not a friend in the world Phil can discuss this with, or ask advice from. He thinks about Dr. Kovitz: what would he say? He probably wouldn’t be surprised, given everything Phil has told him. Would he tell Phil to confront his wife? To get angry with her? Would that be more manly? Tell her he knows and she needs to make a choice? But Phil is afraid. Not just because if he confronts Sam he will have to decide what he wants, and he doesn’t know what this is yet. But, worse, if he confronts her she may simply pack up the bag with the shoes and everything else and move in with this man, whoever he is.

Phil sits, frozen, staring at his intermittently trembling hands, until he realizes he has grown chilled in his pajamas and T-shirt. He stands rubbing at his arms and notices the pile of old magazines that someone must have moved in here from the house while waiting for recycling day. Perhaps the bins were full. He can’t remember. He stares at the pile, and then, finally, takes a couple of steps across the floor and picks up the top half of it. He adjusts the weight of the magazines against his chest, then pushes open the door with his shoulder and steps out carefully, down the steps, and walks along the short path to the recycling bin, where he dumps them. He returns and takes the other half, gazing at the dusty space that is left. Then he peers inside the bin bag that sits behind them, in which they had left a load of junk items from the old shed at his father’s, things his mum couldn’t bear to get rid of but nobody actually wanted: blunted tools, old car manuals, lightbulbs and keys for long-dead locks. He had taken the bag to save her feelings. But what for? What was he ever going to do with this junk? He hauls out the bin bag and places it beside the black refuse bin. And then he climbs back into the van and continues going through the contents unthinkingly, on some unknown impulse, methodically working his way through the neglected interior, taking out everything that had been stuffed in there as a temporary measure and carrying it all outside, stacking it in or beside the bins. By the time he has cleared the inside, two hours later, he is sweating, his pajama bottoms smeared with dust and dirt.

His jaw set, his mouth pressed into a thin line, Phil heads back into the house and goes upstairs, where he casts his gaze around until he sees his hooded sweatshirt, under a pile of his other clothes. He hauls it over his head, then down over his T-shirt, pulls on a pair of socks and boots, and heads back out again. He will be there, wrestling with the innards of the engine, when Sam comes home, and he will not come into the house again until she is sleeping.





twenty-one


Nisha has never suffered serious physical violence, but every time she spies Charlotte around the hotel wearing an item of her clothing she feels a sensation that she imagines must be just like being stabbed. Charlotte has worn the Chloé shearling coat in public twice, once the first time in that corridor and again the following Saturday, sashaying through the foyer as if it were hers. Two days later, she wore Nisha’s silver Alexander McQueen dress, with the slash at the side, to an evening event—she and Jasmine had spotted her just as they were finishing their shift, heading out from the side-street as she climbed into the waiting car and it was all Nisha could do not to cry out in pain.

But clearly this was not insult enough. On Tuesday lunchtime, as Nisha heads wearily to the sandwich platter, she glances through the open kitchen doors and sees Charlotte about to take a seat in the restaurant. And she is wearing Nisha’s pristine white Yves Saint Laurent suit.

“No!” she says, and stops in her tracks, so that a waiter almost collides with her and curses.

Aleks appears at her shoulder. The lunch sitting is nearly over and he is wiping his hands on a cloth. He follows her gaze. “It is the mistress?”

“She’s going to spill something on it.” Nisha is finding it hard to breathe. “I would never, ever eat in that suit.”

Aleks stares through the door for a moment and sighs. She feels his hand on her shoulder, gently steering her away.

“No no no,” she says, pushing it off. “You don’t understand. You don’t eat in that suit. It would be like—like eating spaghetti next to the Mona Lisa. It’s white. Yves. Saint. Laurent. 1971. It’s probably the only one left of its kind in the world. I got it from a collector who got it from an exclusive estate sale in Florida. The woman had kept it in a climate-controlled sealed closet and it still had the store tags. The actual tags. It had never been worn! You see? That suit is vintage and it is pristine. Completely pristine. She shouldn’t be touching it, for God’s sake. Not even touching it. But she can’t—she can’t eat in it.” Her voice is anguished. As the doors close, she glimpses Carl sitting down heavily at the table opposite Charlotte, his phone pressed to his ear.

“No,” she says. “I can’t let this happen. I can’t—”

“The bodyguard will be nearby,” Aleks murmurs into her ear. “You cannot go near her. You know this.” She turns and looks at him. His expression is sympathetic, but it says, also, clearly, that it is time for her to walk away.

“How is this fair, Aleks?” she says, as he steers her through to the back of the kitchens. “How? How can they even get away with this?”

Afterward she realizes that Aleks’s arm is around her shoulders as he offers her a cigarette and waits until she stops hyperventilating. But before she can consider what she thinks about this, he has told her he will fetch Jasmine, she is not to move from that spot, and leaves.