Page 16 of Someone Else's Shoes
But Magda has started to cry. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Cantor. I couldn’t get any of your jewellery, your photographs, anything. They said they would get the cops if I tried to remove anything, it would be theft, and they would get Immigration involved. They literally pushed me out of the door! I tried to get your –’
‘Yes, yes. Look, call me as soon as you hear back. I need to know where to meet him. This is really important.’
‘I will, Mrs Cantor. I’m so sorry.’ She is sobbing now. A ringing sound has started in Nisha’s head. She has to get off the phone.
‘Don’t worry. Okay? Don’t worry. We’ll fix this and then I’ll rehire you. Okay?’ She has no idea if this is possible, but it makes Magda stop crying. She ends the call with Magda’s grateful exclamations still echoing over the line.
The stares of the people around her are becoming unbearable. Nisha is used to being looked at – she has always drawn attention – but it is for being fit and beautiful and privileged. These looks, she sees, are suffused with pity, or wariness, or even revulsion.What is that crazy lady doing in her robe?She has to get hold of some clothes.
She has avoided looking at the shop across the road thewhole time she has sat here nursing her soy latte, but now she knows she has little choice. She gets up, tucks her phone into the pocket of her dressing-gown, and makes her way across the road to the Global Cat Foundation goodwill store.
The smell. Dear God, the smell. The very air in the shop is a stale perfume of scraping by, of a singular lack of beauty, and of despair. She walks in, turns on her heel and walks straight out again, standing on the roadside breathing gulps of the relative freshness of traffic-filled Brompton Road. She waits a minute, composes herself, then turns and walks back in. ‘It’s only for a few hours,’ she mutters, under her breath. She just needs something that will get her through a few hours.
The barrel-shaped woman with turquoise hair looks at her as she walks in and she ignores her slightly challenging ‘Hello.’ Everything in here looks and feels cheap. She doesn’t even want to touch the blouses on their rails, the nylon shirts and market-stall jumpers. There is an old woman two rails away looking at the shoes, her face screwed up in concentration as she examines each for size and condition. She is going to have to wear the kind of clothes a woman likethisis buying.
Just for a few hours, she tells herself.You can do this.
She picks through the rails with the tips of her fingernails until she finds a jacket that looks barely worn, a pair of trousers that look like they might be a US 4. The jacket is seven pounds and fifty pence, and the trousers eleven.
‘Get locked out, did you?’
She doesn’t want to speak to this woman with her blue hair, but she forces a half-smile. ‘Something like that.’
‘Do you want to try them on?’
‘No,’ she says, curtly.No, I do not want to try them on. No, I do not want to go into your horrible, reeking, curtained-off corner cubicle. I do not want to be in the same zip code as these cheap, stale-smellingclothes that have been worn by God knows who, but my husband is having some kind of mid-life crisis and trying to destroy me so that he can get a divorce, and I cannot fight him in a bathrobe.
‘Would you like to fill out a Gift Aid form?’
‘Gift Aid?’
‘That way the charity gets to claim back tax. You just put down your name and address.’
‘I … I don’t have an address just now.’ The truth hits her like a punch. She recovers herself. ‘Actually, I do. My address is in New York. Fifth Avenue.’
‘If you say so.’ The woman lets out a quiet snigger.
She pays for the items, waving away the change, then changes her mind and demands it, a move that makes the assistanthmphaudibly. Then Nisha pulls the tags from the clothes, hauls on the trousers, grabs the jacket from the counter, and walks out, dropping the towelling bathrobe in a heap on the floor of the shop.
Magda books her a hotel she says is not far from the Bentley. The Tower Primavera. ‘I told them to tell the front desk you couldn’t give your credit card for security as your purse was stolen and they finally agreed.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ The used scent of these clothes has somehow lodged in the back of her throat, and she thinks she may be coming out in hives. She once read that if you smell something you’re absorbing actual molecules of it into your body. The thought makes her retch. She keeps plucking at her sleeves to try to keep the fabric from touching her skin.
‘But I’m afraid they say without a card you cannot have a minibar.’
‘I don’t care. I just need to shower and make some calls.’
There is a long pause.
‘I … have to tell you something else, Mrs Cantor.’
Nisha checks the map on her phone and starts walking. ‘What?’
‘It’s not … the kind of hotel you and Mr Cantor are used to.’
Magda rambles on about how she was sorry but they had no credit on their card this month, something to do with her medical insurance blah-blah-blah. ‘It was one hundred and forty dollars. But there is a kettle in the room to make a drink. And maybe cookies. I asked for extra cookies for you. I was thinking you must be hungry.’
She is too distracted to be mad about it. Whatever. She thanks Magda and ends the call, thinking at least now Magda will be able to reach her, if – or when – he cuts her phone.
