Someone Else's Shoes(86)

“Hold on!” The blue-haired woman is bustling round from the counter. “Get back, please. Get back. I’m a qualified first-aider.” She lunges for a red plastic case under the counter, then pushes past to the end of the shop, where the other customers are gathered around. “Put her in the recovery position!” Quickly, Nisha throws her upper body over the desk, and swivels the ledger toward her. She sees the list of items from the previous day and scans them swiftly until she sees it: Red crocodile-skin Christian Bolton sandals. And there it is in blue biro beside it—GIFT AID: Liz Frobisher, 14 Alleyne Road, SE1.

She rips the page from the ledger and stuffs it into her pocket, just in time to hear Andrea say: “I’m fine, honestly. I’m just weak from all the chemo. No, no, you don’t need to take my temperature. Just get me a sip of water and I’ll be right as rain. Thank you so much . . .”



* * *



? ? ?

The three women do not speak until Andrea has started the car and pulled out into the road. They drive down two streets and across a set of traffic-lights. Then Nisha leans forward between the front seats.

“Hey, Scarfy. Are you really okay?”

“Of course I am.” Andrea signals left at the roundabout and allows herself a small smile. “That was actually the most fun I’ve had in nine months. I hope you both admired my acting skills.”

“You deserve an Oscar,” says Nisha. “Scared the crap out of me.”

“Seriously, though. The woman was trying to put a plaster on my knee! Like that’s what I need to worry about.”

“You need to be in the recovery position,” Sam mimics the shop assistant. “For at least half an hour. My cousin was married to a paramedic.”

“Because lying between Uncle Fred’s nylon long-johns, a framed picture of Brighton Pier and a porcelain pig is exactly where I want to spend half my day.”

Nisha cannot help but laugh. “So where are we going?” she says, composing herself. “Where is Alleyne Road?”

“Not a clue,” says Andrea. “But we’re on our way.”



* * *



? ? ?

Number 14 Alleyne Road sits squat in the middle of a row of identikit houses built sometime in the early seventies and apparently not modernized since. The brief euphoria of getting hold of the address has gradually faded during the car journey, and Sam has found herself preoccupied with what was currently happening a few miles away at home. Did what she had done with Joel qualify as an affair? It was a betrayal of sorts, for sure. Exchanging secret text messages? Sitting in cars? Kissing someone who isn’t your husband? She thinks about Joel’s lips and feels a flush of heat that might be either pleasure or shame. She doesn’t want to interrogate herself as to which. Her daughter had seen it: Cat, who now hates her and thinks of her as some kind of adulterer. She keeps thinking of Phil’s aloofness, the way he had looked at her. Even in the depths of his depression he had never regarded her so coldly. She thinks about the conversations that await her at home and her stomach clenches. She has no poker face. Even if she hasn’t had an affair they will be able to see guilt written all over her when she discusses it.

“So what do we do now?” says Andrea, turning off the ignition.

“Break in, of course,” says Nisha.

“You can’t just break into someone’s house,” says Sam.

Nisha considers this. She’s probably right. Who knows who else is in that house? Or if the woman is even inside?

“We could just knock on the door and talk to her? Ask to buy them from her?” says Sam.

“What if she says no? Then she knows something is up. Do you understand anything about deals?”

“I know plenty about making deals. That’s what I do for a living.”

“Well, if you were any good at it, you’d know you never let your opponent guess that what they have is valuable to you. And, besides, none of us have any cash. No offense,” she adds, as the two women stare at her, “but you two don’t look like you’re exactly loaded. I say we break in.”

Nisha leans forward and scans the front of the building, looking for a point of entry. “And hurt her until she tells us where my shoes are.”

Nisha is a child again, walking the aisles of the DollarSave, trying to work out which bottle of bourbon she can sneak under her coat. Her shoes are in that house, calling to her. She tries to recall how she used to feel, assessing the potential dangers, already preparing her get-out explanation. As she watches, a ginger cat strolls along the wall outside the house and sits, staring at them with greedy yellow eyes.

“The window on the left looks rotten. We could probably force that.”

Sam turns in her seat to stare at Nisha. “What is wrong with you?”

“What do you mean, what is wrong with me?”

“For all we know, this may be a perfectly nice woman who cares deeply about a cat charity and feels delighted to have bought a nice pair of shoes—legally, I might add—and you’re talking about going in there and burgling her house or scarring her for life? Seriously? What kind of a person are you?”

Nisha winds down the window and ducks back so that she doesn’t need to look at Sam’s annoying, anxious face. “A person who needs her fucking shoes back.”