Page 100 of Someone Else's Shoes
‘You’re not going to bail on us.’
‘I’m not going to bail on you.’
‘Why not put on some makeup, babe? You look a little bit pasty.’ Jasmine, who clearly needs something to do, is steering Sam to the mirror. She pulls out her oversized makeup bag, then starts to apply blusher and mascara to Sam’s face. Sam is completely expressionless, zombified in some private misery.What is wrong with her?thinks Nisha. Nisha is the one who will be shouldering this thing, after all. She’s the one who has the most to lose.
‘There,’ says Jasmine, finally. ‘Back from the dead!’ She laughs kindly and pats Sam’s cheek.
Sam gazes at herself in the mirror. ‘Thanks,’ she says dully. Her eyes have been outlined, her skin glows with bronzer. She wears so little makeup normally that the transformation is almost shocking.
‘What’s the time?’ says Nisha, glancing at her watch. ‘Do we need to be at Reception yet?’
‘Check-in is at three,’ says Jasmine. ‘Let’s grab some food. You can’t fight on an empty stomach, right?’
The three women stand in the corner of the kitchen. Jasmine has eaten her pancakes, but Sam isn’t touching her food, which Nisha knows will make Aleks jittery. He gets actual anxiety if he thinks someone isn’t enjoying the meal he’s made for them. Sometimes she sees him gazing out through the windowed swing doors, silently monitoring who has eaten how much of their omelette, or eggs Benedict and his back will bristle with unhappiness if more than half of it is left.
‘You don’t like it?’ he says, gesturing to Sam’s barely touched plate. ‘You want me to make you something else?’
‘Oh, no. It’s lovely,’ says Sam, her face creasing into a half-smile. ‘I’m just not very hungry.’
‘You should eat Aleks’s food. He’s the best.’ Nisha feels vaguely cross at Sam’s refusal.
‘I said I’m not hungry.’ They’ve snapped at each other all morning, tension bringing to the surface the strange resentments that each has tried to suppress.
Nisha is starving. She had forgotten to eat breakfast, thinking of all the possible angles she needed to cover and distracted by her phone. When Aleks placed a plate of pancakes in front of her, drizzled with maple syrup and ringed with blueberries, she had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to kiss him. She had finished them in a matter of minutes, letting out little moans of pleasure at the perfect fluffiness of them, the sticky syrup and the crisp slivers of bacon.
‘You’re ready?’ he said, tucking his white tea-towel back into his waistband.
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’ She hands back the plate. ‘Thanks for the pancakes.’
‘My shift finishes at four. But I will stay. In case you need me.’
‘We won’t,’ she says. And then, because it sounds unfriendly, ‘I mean, I hope we won’t need you. But it’s kind of you.’
He doesn’t flinch. He never does.
‘I stay here anyway.’ He checks with Sam that she really, really doesn’t want the pancakes and, with a barely suppressed sigh, takes the plates back to his station.
At a quarter to three, Sam waits in the hotel reception area. She has been sitting for almost half an hour, feeling self-conscious and out of place there, in the marble-clad fortressof imposed serenity. Guests walk by, followed by uniformed porters pushing huge brass trolleys full of luggage, or wheeling one-night cabin bags. Huge bowls of pale orchids punctuate the overstuffed sofas. The smell of vetiver hangs elegantly in the air. Sam cannot remember the last time she was in a hotel, let alone a hotel so grand. Perhaps that night in Formby when she worked for Henry and they went to pitch for a mammoth run of football programmes. She has vague memories of a Travelodge key card that didn’t work and a pervasive smell of fish.
She glances up at the ornate clock, then at the door behind which she knows Nisha is waiting, her expression as tense and determined as it has been all morning. She knows Nisha thinks she won’t go through with it, and she carries the irritation that comes from Nisha’s assumption and also the sneaking suspicion that she may be right. Every cell in her body is telling her to leave. And yet, she realizes, there is nothing for her to go home to. What else is she going to do? Then the glass doors to the street open and Sam sees them: Liz and Darren Frobisher, glancing around in the way that people do when they arrive somewhere they haven’t been before. She typesHEREinto her phone, takes a breath, and she’s on her feet, striding over to them before they can reach the reception desk.
‘Hello! Mr and Mrs Frobisher! How lovely to see you.’
They had gone over it all multiple times beforehand. Michelle on the front desk wouldn’t look twice at a couple being greeted by another guest in the foyer so Sam would be free to shepherd them away and upstairs to the designated room. People used the foyer as an unofficial meeting point even if they weren’t staying at the hotel: it’s glamorous, and quiet, in the centre of town, and good for Instagram selfies taken by the kind of people who want to suggest they have a posh-hotelkind of lifestyle. Liz Frobisher’s endless chatter is briefly quieted by the plush marble interior, and the couple follow Sam obediently to the lifts, where she talks mindlessly at them both, asking them about their journey, what a lovely day it had turned out to be, how very smart they look. Liz Frobisher isn’t wearing the shoes, but her husband pulls a cabin bag on wheels and she feels their presence inside it like something radioactive.
The door is unlocked when they reach Room 232 and Jasmine is already inside, pretending to plump pillows.
‘Are these our prizewinners?’ she says, smiling broadly, and Liz Frobisher offers her a hand, palm down, like a queen greeting a subject. Jasmine manages to restrain herself to only the faintest of eyebrow lifts. The room is a Mid-range Executive Comfort, 42 square metres with a queen-sized bed and a small sofa under the window.
‘So,’ Sam says. ‘Here is the room. One of the hotel’s best. We hope you’ll be very comfortable.’
Liz Frobisher is walking slowly around the bed, running her fingers over the bedspread and curtains, as if testing its quality. She looks up at the sumptuous décor, an expression of vague disappointment colouring her features. It is possible her status as prizewinner has gone to her head.
‘So when do we take the photographs of me?’ she says, turning to Sam.
‘It would be good if we could do them fairly soon,’ says Sam. ‘You know, while the light is good.’
‘Is this outfit okay?’
