Page 102 of Someone Else's Shoes
‘It is quite chilly,’ says Sam.
‘She’s going to wear herlucky shoes,’ Nisha spits, ‘even if it snows.’
‘I can’t believe they don’t drink.’ Jasmine runs her hand around the neck of the redundant bottle of champagne. ‘What kind of people don’t drink? It would have been so much easier if they were drunk.’
It is a quarter past five, and Jasmine’s theory is that the Frobishers will be early eaters. Darren is clearly a man of appetites. They had originally planned to wait until the coupleleft to go out, then Nisha would run in and get the shoes. Now they sit in the staff changing area, gazing out of the small window, ruminating on whether Liz Frobisher’s choice of footwear is going to alter everything.
‘Rain, you bastard,’ says Nisha, staring out at the grey sky. ‘It rains every day in this damn country. Would it hurt so much just to let some down today?’
The text she sent to Juliana has been marked ‘Read’. But she hasn’t texted back.
31
The Frobishers finally leave Room 232 at a quarter past six, about an hour after the women have decided silently that the plan is not going to work and sunk into despondency. Jasmine has been ‘tidying’ the office behind the front desk, issuing vague platitudes at Michelle’s endless conversations about the unfairness of the rota system while she watches for movement in the foyer. Sam and Nisha wait in silence in the stuffy little changing room, ignoring the incurious glances of the staff coming in to get things from their lockers, or change to go home. They are just anonymous staff to any casual passer-by, neither worth talking to nor acknowledging. The two women sit in silence, each locked in her thoughts. Nisha finds herself irritated by Sam’s droopy face, the air she carries of someone defeated by life. And then her phone pings, breaking into her thoughts. She stares at the screen, suddenly alert.
‘They’re moving.’ Nisha stares at her phone as another text comes through. ‘Oh, my God,’ she says, hardly able to believe what she’s reading. ‘She’s not wearing the shoes.’
‘Really?’ says Sam, hopefully.
‘It’s raining,’ says Nisha. ‘It’s actually raining. THANK YOU, LORD.’ She is already on her feet. ‘Okay. Remember what we said. You follow them out and make sure they’re gone, and I’ll run up and get the shoes.’
Nisha is wearing a dark shirt and trousers so that she can pass either for hotel staff, if wearing her lanyard, or a particularly boringly dressed guest, if she tucks it into her pocket.Jasmine has given her a newly programmed guest key, and her heart is thumping against her rib cage. This is it. She is going to have the shoes back. Finally.
She and Sam walk in silence along the corridor until they reach the side entrance and Sam heads out, her phone pressed to her ear as Jasmine instructs her as to which direction they went.Head right towards Regent Street. She’s still in the red suit. No overcoat. Damn fool must be freezing.
Nisha walks to the elevator, and presses the button for the second floor. She stares at her feet in Sam’s flat black shoes as it moves slowly upwards, and turns the key card over and over in her hand. This is it. The elevator arrives at the second floor, the doors open, and she steps out. Her mind is buzzing, a surge of anticipatory triumph pulsing through her veins. Twenty steps, ten steps, and they will be hers.
And there is Ari, talking to two men in suits, halfway down the corridor.
She swivels on her heel, ducks quickly back into the lift and stands with her finger on the ‘door open’ button, trying to figure out what to do. She moves her head forward tentatively, to check that it really is him, then ducks back. He is showing one of them something on a piece of paper. Just standing there, casually talking, like he has nowhere to go, nowhere else to be. She cannot reach the room without walking past him. But she is not confident she will be invisible a second time.
She exits the lift and sidesteps into the service cupboard, which has been left open by one of the housekeepers. Standing beside the shelves of towels and sheets, she texts Jasmine.
Can’t get into room. Ari is there.
Jasmine’s reply is immediate.Don’t panic. I’ll come and get them. Another message follows.We’ve got this. JUST BREATHE.
*
There is something unexpectedly soothing about tailing someone through the streets of London, Sam thinks, as she weaves in and out of the crowds milling down Regent Street. It takes all of her focus to keep track of the Frobishers, the bright red of Liz’s suit glowing, her pace measured as she pauses every few feet to point at shop windows. Sam stays thirty feet behind, the hood of her anorak over her head against the fine rain, her breath coming in steam puffs in the cold, feeling an odd sense of gratitude that she is doing something achievable, that the utter concentration it requires means there is no room in her head for anything else.
And Liz Frobisher is clearly enjoying herself. She walks with a faint swagger, as if expecting to be admired,the winner of the Global Cat Foundation charity-shop award, reaching up a hand periodically to smooth her hair or check her makeup in a window. Darren Frobisher, in contrast, looks sullen and fed up, surreptitiously checking his phone and visibly sighing every time she stops.
Sam’s phone rings. She answers immediately. ‘Well, it’s nice to know you’re stillalive.’
Sam watches as the Frobishers continue up Regent Street, are briefly lost between a large group of teenagers, then appear again. ‘What is it, Mum?’
‘What is it? That’s a lovely greeting, I must say. You didn’t find the hymns!’
‘What?’
‘Your father’s now looking at “For Those in Peril on the Sea”. He says all the others are too religious. I said it’s awfully gloomy. It makes me seasick to think about it.’
‘I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?’
‘And it’s so patriarchal. All those hymns are!’ Her motherstarts to sing. ‘Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm has bound the restless wave– I mean honestly. You might as well call on the Incredible Hulk. Though he’s gone into a terrible sulk because I said so.’
The couple pauses while they have some kind of conversation, head to head. Darren points eastwards, perhaps towards Chinatown, and pulls a face. Liz holds up a hand, as if she might be noticing the rain.
