Page 113 of Someone Else's Shoes
Of course it is, Andrea had said firmly, but she was twicedivorced and four glasses of wine in, and Andrea loves her enough to tell her everything will be okay because she so badly wants everything to be okay for her.
Sam turns into her street, noting how different it feels knowing she is walking home to an empty house. She wonders, dully, if this is how it will be from now on. No Phil. Cat increasingly absent until she, too, finally flies the nest completely. Even Kevin will not last for long. He is thirteen, positively geriatric in dog years. It will be just her, alone in that little house, watching the soaps and circling crappy jobs in the classified section of the local paper, being summoned twice a week to clean up for her increasingly crotchety parents.
Stop it, she tells herself firmly. She stands still and breathes –in for one, hold for four, out for seven. Was it out for seven? Or should she be holding for seven? She hasn’t done it for so long she can’t remember. She forces herself to think about her unlikely group of new friends, the warmth of Jasmine, the way even Nisha had held her like she might be someone she actually cared about. She had helped Nisha get the shoes back. She had brought an entire hotel to a shuddering halt, and changed someone’s life as a result. She was capable ofsomething, even if it was just chaos.
She pauses in front of her house, looking up before she opens the gate, some part of her still hoping that a light might flicker on upstairs, that Phil might have decided to come home. And then she sees it: the faint glow in the upstairs landing. They never leave that light on when they go out. She walks up the pathway, suddenly full of anticipation, wrestles open the front door – and then stands blinking in disbelief at the shimmering fragments of glass, the broken chair and her smashed television on the living-room floor.
34
‘Cat?’ Sam is shivering in the garden. She had made her way through to the kitchen, her feet crunching on the mounds of upturned cereal and pulses, the smashed crockery, and had turned and walked rapidly back outside, suddenly fearful that the intruder might still be in there. She had waited outside for ten minutes now, nothing stirring in the house, but she didn’t feel safe in there.
‘Mum?’ Cat’s voice is bleary, fogged with sleep.
Sam’s hand goes to her mouth. ‘Oh, thank God.’
‘Why are you calling at … half past nine in the morning?’
‘We’ve been burgled, love. I just – I just didn’t want you to come back here and find it.’ She doesn’t tell her the truth: that she had suddenly been overwhelmed with fear that Cat might have been here after all, that this had been something so much worse than a burglary.
‘What?’
‘I know. It’s a – a bit of a mess. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out. Have you got Kevin?’
‘Yep. Ugh. He’s just farted.Kevin.’
She lets out another breath. She can hear Cat struggling to sit up.
‘What did they take? Shall I come back?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve called the police. But no. Stay there for now. I don’t – I don’t want you to see it like this.’
‘Have you called Dad?’
Sam stares at the front door, still slightly open. ‘I – I don’t know if he’d want me to call. It’s fine. I’ll sort it out.’
‘Mum –’
‘I’ve got to go, sweetheart. I’ll speak to you later. Don’t come until I call, okay?’
In the end she sits in the camper-van. It feels less awful than being in the house. She climbs into the passenger seat and stares through the windscreen, unsure what to do next. The police said they would send round an officer – but added that they were very busy and she would probably be wise to get a locksmith in and secure the property. There was no mention of dusting for fingerprints, or even any kind of investigation. ‘There’s been a spate of them lately in your postcode,’ the operator says, in resigned tones.
I wish you were here, she tells Phil silently. She calls Andrea, who says she is on her way. When she tells her friend about the mess, the damage, it hits her that this is real, not some strange fever dream. Her house looks like a war zone and she doesn’t know how she’s going to afford a new television. Before she hangs up, Andrea says, ‘You don’t think it’s the shoes, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The break-in. Could it have been someone looking for the shoes?’
Sam goes cold. She heads back inside, suddenly completely alert. She walks with new eyes through the house, noting now how all the usual targets, televisions, iPads, are still there, albeit broken. But the house has been ransacked ruthlessly, every packet and box overturned and emptied, every drawer tipped out.
When Andrea arrives, she is sitting on the front step, her puffy coat around her shoulders, holding her jewellery box on her knees. Everything is still in it. She knows the little gold trinkets are not valuable – most are gold-plated necklaces,earrings Phil bought her back before Cat was born – but they are also proof that, whoever was in here, they were not opportunists, or junkies trying to get enough for a fix. These intruders were looking for something specific.
‘Sammy.’ Andrea is out of the car before the engine has stopped ticking, a soft woollen beanie in place of her usual wrap. She half walks, half runs up the path, and as Sam stands up, she embraces her. It is then, for the first time, that Sam feels overwhelmed and tearful. She feels herself giving in to Andrea’s tight hug. ‘It’s so awful in there. It’s a complete mess,’ she says, into her shoulder. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
‘Good job we’re here, then, isn’t it?’ Sam glances up and Jasmine is standing behind Andrea on the path, a large bag of cleaning materials in one hand and a roll of black rubbish sacks under her arm. ‘No point waiting for the police, babe. You got to be an oligarch or a politician to get police for a break-in these days. Believe me, Iknow.’
Nisha climbs out of the rear car door, bringing with her a mop and bucket, and from the other side of the car Grace emerges, trailing at the rear, carefully holding a cardboard tray of coffees with both hands. ‘Andrea called,’ Jasmine says. ‘We swapped shifts to go in late. We figured this wasn’t something you should handle alone.’
She can’t even speak. The relief she feels at the sight of them makes her knees go weak. Nisha stops and peers in through the front door. She stands, surveying it for a moment, then turns back to Sam.
