Page 20 of Someone Else's Shoes
Sam takes a sip. It tastes like a lifeline. ‘Nice negotiating. Get her while she’s vulnerable.’
‘I learned from the best.’ Cat beams. ‘Thanks, Mum. I promise I’ll look after them.’
Sam has a sudden memory of Joel, the weight of his hands on her waist, smiling at her in that way he does. Marina’s voice in her ear:He’s sweet on you.She flushes and is not sure whether the prickling heat in her face is alcohol, embarrassment, or something hormonal. Either way, she pushes herself up from the sofa. ‘Have a lovely time at … Wait, did you sayprotest? What – what are you doing?’
‘Protesting! Just winding up the police a bit! Have a nice day, Mum!’
‘Wait – is that a tattoo?’
She hears the door slam and her daughter is gone.
Phil is curled up in the duvet, like a human sausage roll, and does not stir as she enters the bedroom. The air in the room seems peculiarly still and weighty, as if it sits more heavily in here. She stands for a moment and observes him, his brow furrowed even in sleep, his hands close to his chin, as if unconsciously braced to defend. Sometimes she wants to scream at him:You think I wouldn’t like to lie around all day and let someone else take over? Let someone else worry about the bills and my awful boss and walk the dog and do the shopping and vacuum the bit on the stairs that always gets covered with hair? You think I wouldn’t like to abdicate responsibility for everything?Other times she feels a terrible sadness for him, her once cheerful, motivated husband who used to sing tunelessly in the shower and kiss her when she wasn’t expecting it andwho now looks hunched and haunted all the time, buffeted by the double-whammy of losing his beloved job and even more beloved father in the same six months.I couldn’t help him, Sam, he would say, chalk white when he returned home, night after night. He had told her a few weeks ago that being this age was like walking among snipers, that people he cared about were being picked off and there was nothing you could do and no way of telling who was next.
‘That’s a bit of a gloomy way to look at it,’ she had said. It had sounded feeble even as it fell out of her mouth, and he hadn’t said anything after that.
Unlike Sam’s house, outside which the rusting camper-van is now host to a growing fortress of weeds and thistles, and shelter to a collection of takeaway cartons thrown from passing cars, the frontage of Andrea’s little railway cottage is always immaculate. No weeds sprout in the cobbled frontage, and the row of terracotta pots is dutifully tended, bright blooms switched according to the seasons, fed and watered daily with almost maternal care.
She knocks on the door – the special knock that tells Andrea this is neither a weirdo stalker nor a double-glazing salesman – and after a moment it swings open in front of her.
‘Ooh, you look like shit,’ Andrea says cheerfully, and Sam raises her eyebrows, faced with Andrea’s missing ones, the still ghostly pallor of her skin. ‘Come in, come in. You’ll have to make the coffee. For some reason milk keeps making me gag.’
They sit knees up, end to end on Andrea’s sofa, which is always covered with a selection of crocheted blankets and soft wraps, as she gets cold easily. They are in bold colours, because she likes things to be upbeat and cheery, and as they sit, Mugs, Andrea’s beloved battered ginger cat, climbsbetween them and kneads a cushion rapturously, sending out hoarse purrs of pleasure.
‘So what happened to you?’ says Andrea. She has placed a soft wrap on her head, which matches the blue of her eyes. ‘Tell me all the goss.’
‘I brought in three big deals, got accused by my new boss of being drunk, and got very, very drunk,’ she says.
‘Excellent. Any bad behaviour?’
She thinks about Joel and pushes away the memory. ‘No. Beyond dancing so much in high heels that my feet looked like unbaked bread this morning.’
‘Ugh. I dream of bad behaviour. Sometimes I dream about going out and getting slaughtered, and it’s almost a disappointment when I wake up and there’s no hangover.’
‘You can have this one. Honest. It’s on me.’
They had met on the first day of secondary school and Andrea had shown Sam her impression of an orange (it involved pursing her entire face and was oddly convincing), then revealed the love bite she had got from the PE teacher’s son. In all the years they have been friends Sam can remember only one falling-out, over a holiday Andrea had taken without her when they were eighteen, and after which they had tacitly agreed never to argue again. Andrea knows her to her bones. Every crush, every sadness, every passing thought: she is a constant conversation running through Sam’s life, and every time Sam leaves her she feels restored in some subliminal way she never quite understands.
‘Is Phil up?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Have you talked to him about the meds again?’
Sam groans. ‘He won’t do it. It’s like he’s decided that the moment he takes anti-depressants he’s officially mentally ill.’
‘It’s just depression, Sam. It’s ridiculous. Everyone needshelp sometimes. It’s like – it’s like this. But in his brain instead of his tits.’
Andrea is the only person she feels able to tell the truth to about Phil’s illness. How sometimes she hates him. How she is afraid he’ll never get better. How she is afraid that one day he will be better and she will hate him for this so much that she won’t be able to feel the same way again about him. How what has happened to him – and to Andrea – has left her feeling like the earth can shift under your feet without a moment’s notice so that nothing in the world, no happiness, feels secure.
‘How are you feeling?’ Sam says, to change the subject.
‘Oh, just tired, mostly. I’ve watched the whole ofERthis week on one of the streaming channels, just because it makes me feel better when people die and it isn’t me.’
‘The last scan was still good, though, right? You’re on the mend?’
‘Yep. One more to go before I can breathe again. Hey – my hair’s started to grow back.’ She lifts the wrap from her head, revealing a hint of fuzz.
Sam leans across and runs her hand over it. ‘Nice. You look like Furiosa inMad Max.’
