Page 121 of Someone Else's Shoes
Nisha looks up. ‘Are you okay? You’re more nervous than I am!’
‘I guess it’s weird, isn’t it? Knowing that this guy was responsible for … you know. What happened. And we’re just going to sit down with him.’
‘I’m pretty sure he’s done worse.’
‘And this is supposed to make me feel better?’
Half an hour passes. Nisha, checking the time compulsively, decides she needs a cigarette and makes Sam followher outside. ‘Disgusting habit,’ she says, standing by the bins and inhaling deeply. ‘I’m giving up.’
She keeps glancing down the alley as if she’s looking out for Ari. ‘I’m just going to have one more.’ When she finishes she says: ‘Shall we walk through the foyer? Just to work out where to sit?’
There is clearly some huge internal turbulence going on, and Sam has decided the most helpful thing she can do is just go with it. She follows Nisha through the side door into the foyer, only half wondering if someone might recognize her, and there is Michelle, the heavily made-up blonde girl at Reception, chatting on the phone. Jasmine is standing by the concierge. She clocks them and raises an eyebrow. She nods towards the end of the room and Nisha turns to follow her gaze.
‘Shit. He’s here already.’
Sam feels a shot of adrenalin shoot through her. She glances over to a low table, surrounded by three plush, curved sofas, at which a group of besuited businessmen are drinking coffee. A young blonde woman sits to the side of Carl, taking notes on an iPad. She looks slim, glossy and vaguely proprietorial. Sam looks back at Nisha, who is staring hard, her thoughts clearly somewhere far away.
Sam looks again at the man in the centre. It’s clear even at this distance which of the men is Carl: he is bigger, stockier, older than the others, and he gives off a subtle air of authority, a king presiding over a court. The only man larger than he is stands behind him wearing an earpiece.
‘I recognize him.’
‘Yeah. He’s been in a lot of business magazines. He loves being photographed. Hard to believe, right?’
Sam cannot take her eyes from him. The grey-flecked hair, slicked back behind his ears, the oversized belly. And then ithits her. She puts her hand on Nisha’s arm. ‘Nisha. I have to go.’
‘What?’
‘I have to get something. I’ll be right back.’
Nisha turns to her, disbelieving. ‘Are you … bailing on me?’
Sam is pushing her way back down to the staff corridor.
‘Seriously? You’re bailing?’
She can hear Nisha’s protest – ‘You’re just going to leave me to do this by myself?’ – and then she is gone, running as fast as she can towards the van.
‘What do you mean she ran off?’ Aleks is cooking but turns to face her, one white cloth slung over his shoulder.
Nisha is pacing backwards and forwards in the breakfast station, oblivious to the furious glances of the sous-chefs nearby. ‘She took one look at him and his goons and she bailed. Just ran away. Honestly? I should have known. She’s too timid. She’s too freaked out because of the burglary. I should have asked Andrea.’
Aleks gives his pan a brisk shake. Behind him the kitchens are in full swing, the air filled with the sound of clattering pans and yelled instructions. ‘Can you ask Jasmine to be in the foyer? Keep an eye on you? I can’t leave my station for at least an hour.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, and reaches up to kiss his cheek. ‘Seriously. I’m just … mad at her. Just needed to vent. Can I get them?’
He reaches into his pocket with his free hand and pulls out a locker key. She takes it and heads to the staff changing room. In the stale, quiet little room she scans the wall of lockers until she finds 42 and opens the door. Inside are jeans, a clean T-shirt (the chefs always smell of frying when they’re done).She lifts his T-shirt out carefully and inhales the scent of his washing powder, briefly taken back to the previous evening, and as she puts it back, she notices the picture on the door: a small, battered image of him with his arm around a young blonde girl, who is gazing at him adoringly. She stares at it for a minute, and thinks of Ray at the same age.I’m coming for you, baby, she tells him silently. And then she reaches into the back, where the shoes are secured in a black plastic bag, and closes the locker again.
‘I’ll be right here, Nisha,’ he says, when she hands back the key. ‘Call me when you’re done.’ He puts his pan down, places his arms around her and kisses her, not even caring if the other kitchen staff see. ‘You’re going to be fine. You’re going to get what you want. Because you are a magnificent, magnificent woman.’
She closes her eyes for a moment, letting him murmur the words into her ear.
‘Thank you,’ she says, and straightens her Chanel jacket.
She smokes two more cigarettes out by the bins, goes to the staff toilet twice (what is it with nerves and bladders?), then brushes her teeth and rearranges her hair, putting it up and taking it down again just three or four times. She checks her phone, and takes several deep breaths. It is five minutes to twelve.
37
The businessmen are just leaving when Nisha approaches the little table. She waits a few feet away until she’s sure he’s seen her, and he takes an extra long time over his goodbyes. A power move. She’s watched him do it a million times: make someone wait and they are already somehow less important than you. The anger that had fuelled her through their last meeting seems to have dissipated and now Nisha feels the butterflies trembling in her stomach, the slight shakiness in her legs. She remains visibly emotionless, conscious of the men looking at her curiously, at the proximity of Charlotte, who shifts just an inch closer to Carl, either to display her own power, or perhaps because she is a little nervous about Nisha too. Finally, after an interminable wait, he acknowledges her.
