Someone Else's Shoes(78)

“Everything all right?” says Miriam, who has been studying the menu.

“Fine. Fine.” Sam pulls herself together. “Just work stuff. You . . . know how it is.”

“I know how Simon is.” Miriam lifts her gaze over the top of the menu. “That’s Simon Stockwell, right?”

Sam stares at her.

“Odious little man. He worked for us a few years ago, you know. Back when he was starting out. I had his number straight away. Is he giving you a hard time?”

Sam is frozen. She doesn’t know how to answer. “No! No. Everything’s fine. Just fine. There’s just a lot going on. I—Well, I—It’s just been—” Suddenly, abruptly, she is sobbing, huge, salty, unstoppable tears pouring down her face. Huge gulps hiccup out of her, her shoulders shaking, her palms pressed to her eyes. “I—I’m so sorry,” she says, mortified, mopping at her face with her napkin. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Oh, God. And now she has ruined the lunch. And Miriam Price will think—will know—she is the loser Simon has always had her down as. She glances around desperately trying to locate the Ladies, so that she can escape. But she does not want to have to ask, and she is afraid of getting up and heading in the wrong direction. When she turns back, Miriam is watching her steadily.

“I—I’m so sorry,” she says again, wiping at her eyes.

Miriam’s face is serious.

“It’s just been a tough time. I’m—I’m mortified. I’m not normally—”

Miriam reaches into her handbag and pulls out a pack of tissues. She passes them across the table. “Mum’s handbag staple,” she says. “You don’t even want to know what else I’ve got in here. Two sets of car keys, my wife’s nasal spray, a prescription for my daughter that she doesn’t want to pick up herself, HRT . . . dog treats . . . It’s endless, right?”

She smiles, rattling on about nothing, giving Sam the space to mop herself up. Sam scrabbles in her bag for a mirror, but Miriam interrupts. “You’re fine,” she says. “No smudges.”

“Really?”

The sobs have subsided to sporadic hiccups. Sam feels herself curl over with embarrassment.

“You know,” says Miriam, refilling her water, “I hope this doesn’t sound horribly inappropriate but when you walked in here, I thought the stuffing had been knocked out of you. You looked like a completely different woman from the one I met before.” She hands Sam her glass, waits as she takes a sip. “And I’m guessing at least fifty percent of that is Simon Stockwell.” She leans forward. “You know, the best bit about menopause—just in case you haven’t got there yet—is that you genuinely don’t give a fuck any more when you’re dealing with men like him. And they know it. And when they know you’re not intimidated by them, they somehow lose all their power.”

Sam smiles weakly. “Except when you depend on them for your job.”

“You’re very good at your job. Why would it be dependent on him?”

“I—I—” Sam wants to talk, to tell her the myriad ways in which Simon has made her feel useless, redundant, the many times a day in which she feels ignored or undermined. But it seems unprofessional to tell a client about how it has been since Uberprint took over. And what gay black woman wants to hear a middle-aged white woman whingeing about how hard she finds the workplace?

She musters a weak smile. “Oh, it’s not just him. Really. It’s been a tricky week.”

Miriam watches her. “You’re being admirably discreet.”

“There’s a lot going on.”

“There always is at this age. Oh, good, here’s our food. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

The whole time they eat, Miriam continues a slightly one-sided conversation, drawing Sam out on the capriciousness of teenage girls, the exhaustions of elderly parents, the necessities of treating yourself (she nods here even though she can’t remember the last time she treated herself to anything)—and Sam carries on a parallel conversation in her head, in which she tries to analyze how bad this is going to be for her: whether Miriam Price will reveal how this ridiculous woman burst into tears at a client lunch, whether Simon is going to dress her down in front of everyone in the awful glass office when she returns. The thing she feels saddest about is that her memory of her first meeting with Miriam is now spoiled: the woman she had been in the Chanel jacket and heels has evaporated, leaving the real Sam in her place, squashed, defeated, pathetic. She dares not look at her phone, knowing there will be a string of furious texts from Simon about her failings on the Dutch job. So she smiles politely and tries not to sound stupid and picks at her food, some distant part of her observing that remarkably she no longer has any appetite at all.

“Pudding?”

She is dragged back to the table. “Oh, no, this was lovely. But I think I should probably head back to the office to see what’s going on with this job,” she says, declining the menu. “I’m so sorry again about . . .” She waves a hand vaguely in front of her face, trying to dismiss it.

There is a long silence.

“Sam,” says Miriam. “This is no way to work.”

“I know,” says Sam, blushing. “I am going to sort myself out. I am. I promise I’m not normally this—”