Page 15 of Someone Else's Shoes
Someone has put on music and the pub is now packed with people competing for space on the little square dance-floor, office workers marking their survival through the stress of another week, those with quiet crushes on colleagues looking to alcohol to ease their way forward, those unwilling immediately to embrace the responsibilities, the dread silences, of a weekend at home. Marina grabs her hand and they are suddenly in the throng, arms up, clapping to the music, dancing in the way that middle-aged people do, badly, but with the confidence that comes from the fact that they no longer care, that sometimes just the act of dancing, letting go in a room of people while a beat thumps through your veins, is an act of rebellion against the dark, against the tough times that will inevitably come tomorrow. Sam dances, closes her eyes and enjoys the clench of her thighs, the feel of the heels on the hard floor. She feels powerful, defiant, sexy. She dances until her hair sticks in strands to her face, and sweat runs into the small of her back. She feels Joel’s hand around her waist, and he takes hers and lifts it so that she twirls under his arm. ‘You looked absolutely gorgeous in those shoes today,’ he murmurs into her ear, as she spins. She laughs and blushes.
She has just sat down, still pink and giddy, when the man appears.
‘Blimey, you’ve pulled,’ Marina mutters, as he stops in front of her. Tall, wearing the kind of dark uniform and muscularbulk that shows this is a person who takes themselves very seriously indeed. He looks her up and down.
‘Um … hello?’ she says, half laughing, when he does not speak. She wonders briefly if the shoes have gifted her some strange new sexual potency.
‘This is what you want.’ He hands her a Jiffy bag. And before she can say anything, he turns and is gone, swallowed by the throng of sweaty, extravagantly gyrating bodies.
6
The problem with having more than one home is that the thing you want at any given time is nearly always in another place. Likewise, the problem with only having rich people as friends is that they are always in the wrong damn country. Nisha has three friends living in London – if you can call them friends – Olivia, who, her answering service tells her, is currently at her house in Bermuda, and Karin, who is back in the US, visiting family. She calls both but is put onto voicemail. It’s a time-zone thing. She asks, in as casual a tone as she can manage, whether they might call her back when they get this message. When she puts the phone down she realizes she is not entirely sure what she will say to either of them when or if they do.
Angeline Mercer has been divorced twice, the second time after she caught her husband sleeping with the nanny. She at least might be sympathetic to Nisha’s situation. Angeline greets her charmingly, listens while Nisha explains insouciantly that there has been a little situation with Carl – all rather embarrassing – and could she possibly just see her way to wiring her a small sum while she sorts it all out? Angeline’s voice is just as smooth when she tells her that, yes, Carl had explained the situation to James, and she is very sorry but they don’t really feel they can get involved. ‘It would be like taking sides,’ she says sweetly, making it quite clear which side they have taken.
Nisha wants to ask what the ‘situation’ was that Carl had described, but some last vestige of pride will not allow her to. ‘I quite understand. So sorry to have troubled you,’ she sayscalmly. And then lets out three curses so bald and extreme that they would have sent her grandmother racing for the emergency Bible.
She does not try anyone else. Nisha is not big on female friends. School had left her with a deep distrust of the subtly volatile dynamics that form when girls get together. Female friendships were febrile, prone to little explosions, frequently leaving you feeling like the ground was shifting under your feet in ways you couldn’t quite fathom. After she left home and started her new life in the city, she was too nervous of betraying herself to feel she could truly unburden herself to anyone, except Juliana. And she doesn’t think about Juliana any more. Some things are just too painful. No, women trade compliments or troubles like currency. Women smile understandingly at your confidences, then use them against you like weapons. Men she finds predictable, and Nisha likes predictability. You behave a certain way, a man responds in a way that ismanageable.She understands the rules of this game.
And then, of course, as the wife of any wealthy man knows, other women become competitors, threats to a hard-won status quo. When she was newly married to Carl, there were the women who eyed her with disdain –team Carol –who couldn’t believe Carl had been so disappointingly predictable, soobvious.But Nisha didn’t put a foot wrong as Carl’s wife. She educated herself into his world so comprehensively that there was no tiny crack in which weakness could be exposed. She had watched Carl’s friends’ marriages implode around her in stages, just as his first had, and she understood exactly what was going on with the new wives, their careful, blank faces and honeyed words, that each was loyal only unto her husband and her own position.
Yes, that had served her very well indeed, until she reached forty and learned there was a whole new threat. The youngerwomen. The ones who would sniff out a sell-by date, and decide, like a targeted missile, to home in. Tight young bodies, willing to please, pleased to be willing, with nothing to lose and not yet weighed down by disappointment or anger or just plain exhaustion at trying to be all the things all the time. Nisha, in response, learned just to be better. She was a good-looking woman, her hair lustrous, her skin the constant recipient of whatever top-of-the-range serums and moisturizers hit the market, so that she frequently passed for someone ten years younger. She worked out every day, had her nails done weekly, her waxes done fortnightly, her hair extensions refreshed every four weeks, Botox every twelve. She was there, ready for him in La Perla, fresh flowers in his room, his favourite wine in the cellar. She laughed at his jokes, applauded his speeches, flattered his colleagues and emphasized his superiority and virility in infinite subtle ways, in public and private. She replaced his shirts and pants, booked his barber’s appointments before the assistant knew they were even due, made sure every property was ready for his arrival with his favourite food and wines. She allowed no domestic stresses to impede his path. She let nothing drop. She was all over this being-female thing.
And it turns out even that isn’t fucking enough.
Nisha has walked to four different cashpoints in the vicinity and each one has either swallowed her remaining array of cards or spat them out, telling her in bald digital terms to contact bank staff. But she doesn’t have to contact bank staff to know what is going on here. She had walked to Mangal, the exclusive boutique she had used for the past five years whenever she was in London, and before she had even tried on the thick Alexander McQueen coat, Nigella, the manager, had come out to explain that she was very sorry but Mr Cantor had closed their account that morning and without a creditcard they were not going to be able to help. She had peered surreptitiously at the towelling robe as she said the words, as if trying to assess if this was some new-season fashion-forward item she hadn’t been aware of.
Nisha sits in the coffee shop, ignoring the curious stares of the other customers, and tries to think. She needs something to wear, she needs somewhere to stay and she needs a lawyer. Without money she can access none of these things. She could ask Ray to wire some, but then this will be out there, irreversible, and she does not want to drag her son into it. Not just yet. Not with everything else he has gone through this year.
‘Hello?’ She snatches up the phone.
‘It’s me. I’m so sorry, Mrs Cantor.’ Magda’s voice is hushed. ‘I had to use my husband’s phone because mine was cut off.’
‘Did you speak to your guy?’
‘Yes. He’s got it. He’s going to call me shortly and tell me where to meet you. He doesn’t want to call you directly … in case. This is why it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’
She sounds genuinely apologetic.
‘When is he going to call? I need help here, Magda. I’ve got nothing.’
‘He says within the next hour or so.’
‘I am literally wearing a bathrobe. Carl won’t let me get my things. Can you send some clothes? And I’m going to need my jewellery FedExed, and some cash. And, oh, my laptop –’
‘This is the other thing, Mrs Cantor.’ Magda sniffs noisily down the phone and Nisha shudders slightly. ‘Mr Cantor fired me. I didn’t do anything and they say he fired me.’
Nisha knows she should say something comforting. But all she can think isfuck fuck fuck.
‘The housekeeper shut me out of the house and they said he’s paid me off with immediate effect. I don’t know what we’re going to do because Laney’s medical bills –’
‘You can’t even get in the house?’
‘No! I had to get the subway all the way to Janos’s work to use his phone because they took the phone off me before I left. I got there seven a.m. as usual and they threw me out by seven fifteen. Luckily I knew your number by heart so I could still call you.’
She must write down every number in her phone book, she thinks suddenly. He will cancel her phone, too, as soon as he remembers to.
‘I need money, Magda. I need a lawyer.’
