Someone Else's Shoes(82)

It is only when the doors open, when she feels the cold air hit her face and sees the American woman standing there, stubbing out a cigarette that it hits home: I’ve lost my job. I have actually lost my job. And she puts the box on the ground and picks up her phone to call the only person she can think will be able to get her through this.

“Andrea?”



* * *



? ? ?

Sam has no car and she does not want to be stuck in a taxi with this crazy woman, who is giving off scary, aggressive vibes. So she begins to walk, the woman maintaining a tail exactly two steps behind her. She is wearing her Chanel jacket, checking the sleeves ostentatiously for signs of dirt or damage.

“I’m not going anywhere, lady. Just so you know.”

“I know,” says Sam, staring straight ahead. “I’m just walking home.”

Sam puts one foot in front of the other, her head still ringing with Simon’s words, the sight of her workmates’ faces as everything they thought they knew about her began to slip away. She should have made more of an effort to return the shoes. She should have made it a priority. And now she has lost everything.

“And my stuff had better be at your house.”

“It is at my house. Look, I did try to return your bag. The gym was closed until further notice.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Okay. Well, I’m just telling you. I’m not a thief.”

“Says the woman with my Chanel jacket slung over the back of her chair.”

Sam spins around, tears in her eyes. “I had an important meeting today, okay? I had a meeting with someone I was trying to impress and I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I just wore it once. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, okay. So you’re Mother Teresa. Whatever.”

“What?”

“Just get me my shoes. I don’t care what you are. I just go on the evidence.”

The evidence. Sam keeps seeing Simon’s face, the way his lip curled with a kind of satisfaction as he called her a thief. She has lost her job. She has actually lost her job. And of course he won’t be obliged to give her a reference, she thinks, and her stomach begins to hurt. She will never get another job. Phil and Cat will be out on the streets with her. They will end up in a tiny bed-and-breakfast room, the kind of place the government puts refugees, with one electric ring to cook on and communal toilets. Or they will have to move in with her parents. And everyone will blame her. And they will have every right to. How has she ended up in such a mess?

They walk on in silence for two more streets until Sam turns and stops. “Can you at least not walk two steps behind me like some kind of security guard? It’s unnerving. You really think I’m going to run away? Lugging this bloody box?”

“I don’t know you, lady. You could try anything. You could be a top-class sprinter for all I know.”

“Do I look like a top-class sprinter?”

“You don’t look like a thief. But somehow that happened.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sam puts the box down and presses her palms into her eyes for a moment, trying to contain the panic attack that is building in her chest. When she opens them again the woman is staring at her.

After a couple of minutes, however, she does start walking alongside her.

The walk continues like this for some time. Sam is grateful for her sturdy shoes, though the box weighs heavy in her arms with all the photo frames of her family, and she has to keep pausing to adjust the weight. Her elbows hurt, and then her lower back. The American woman strides effortlessly beside her in, Sam realizes, with some surprise, her own flat black shoes. It is a half-hour walk that feels endless. She needs Andrea. She just needs to see Andrea’s face and feel her arms around her and know that something in this world is constant and good. That someone knows she is not a bad person. Finally they turn into her street, and she notes that Andrea’s little blue Nissan Micra is outside and the relief she feels at the sight of it causes a huge sob to hiccup out of her chest so that the American woman gives her a sharp, quizzical look.

“Here. We’re here,” Sam mumbles, and walks past the camper-van, where Phil is noisily sanding a bumper on the roadside, wearing a pair of plastic goggles. He does not look up.

Sam wrestles the door open. She drops the box in the hallway and heads straight upstairs, ignoring the dog’s delighted welcome. She does not want this woman here a moment longer than is necessary. She pushes open her bedroom door, heads to the wardrobe and hauls out the black Marc Jacobs bag. She hoicks the handles over her shoulder and walks back downstairs. The woman is standing by the front door watching Phil, her arms folded across her chest. She looks up when Sam appears and her eyes switch immediately to the bag.

“At last,” she says, and pulls it from Sam’s arm. “Is everything in there?”

“Of course,” says Sam.

The woman gazes at her for a moment. “I’m going to check.”

“Fine.” Sam walks away back along the corridor to the kitchen. And there is Andrea, sitting at the table, her head wrapped in a new bright pink paisley wrap. She climbs heavily to her feet when she sees Sam. “What’s going on, lovely?”

And suddenly Sam is in her arms, her head buried in Andrea’s neck, sobbing. And even as she sobs she feels how frail Andrea still is, the boniness of her shoulder, and it makes her even more grief-stricken.