Page 30 of Someone Else's Shoes
Tomorrow. What is she going to do tomorrow? Her brain is so tired she can barely think. ‘Sure,’ she answers, because it’s the easiest thing to do. ‘Hang on,’ she says, as Jasmine makes to leave. ‘What about my money?’
‘Money?’
‘For today.’
Jasmine pulls a face. ‘You don’t get paid by the day, babe. What do they do where you come from? Agency and temp workers get paid at the end of the week. Just talk to Sandra and she’ll sort it for you. I’m guessing you’re cash in hand?’
She must have caught Nisha’s look of horror, because her face softens. ‘You really short, huh?’
Nisha nods, dumbly. Jasmine stops and reaches into her bag.
Nisha stares at her. She does not want to take money from this woman, with her catalogue-quality jacket and cheap trainers. She does not want to think of herself aspoorer than this.
Jasmine gives her a steady look, as if assessing her, then pulls out twenty pounds and holds it towards her. ‘I wouldn’t normally do this but … I like you. You worked hard today. Make sure you get yourself something good to eat – if you haven’t done this for a while, today will have taken it out of you.’ Nisha takes the notes and stares at them.
Jasmine lets out a smallhmm.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ she says eventually. And smiles. ‘I’m trusting you. And don’t you come in smelling of cigarettes again, okay?’
She hoists her bag over her shoulder, and she is gone, her phone already pressed to her ear, her free hand spraying clouds of the perfume around her shoulders.
She tries the White Horse on Bailey Street before she goes back to the hotel. It is almost empty, just a handful of red-faced elderly men punctuating the corners, and the carpet sticks slightly to the soles of her feet. When she explains that she’s looking for a missing pair of high-heeled shoes the barman actually laughs in her face.
11
Company gone into liquidation. Closed until further notice.Sam looks at the sign, the kitbag slung over her shoulder, then peers through the glass door that has already been covered with newspaper, as if to stop the outside world looking in at a financial murder scene.
A young man, his tanned, rippling arm muscles visible through his vest, even though the air is chilly, arrives beside her and lets out a loud curse. ‘I just joined!’ he protests at Sam, as though it is her fault. ‘I just paid them a year in advance!’
Sam watches him stride back across the car park, still cursing, wondering what she’s supposed to do now about returning the bag to its owner. She feels briefly cross at the thought that she will now have to lug it to the office and home again afterwards and work out what on earth to do about it. This makes her think about Simon, no doubt checking his watch already, waiting to see if she is even a minute late to add to his checklist of things she has done wrong. She hauls the bag more tightly over her shoulder and heads for the Tube station.
There was a time, not that long ago, when Sam enjoyed her job. She didn’t spring out of bed every morning whistling, or come home feeling like she had particularly added to the joy of the world, but there had been a quiet satisfaction in being with people whose company she enjoyed every day, and knowing she could do the job she had done for twelve years pretty well. There were Sams in every office, the people who quietly, and without drama, kept everything running smoothly,willing to step in if extra hours were required, satisfied enough by what they did not to require ego-stroking or excessive praise. She had received three salary increases in that time, none of which had been huge, but enough to make her feel like a valued member of staff.
That had changed the day that Simon had arrived. He had stalked his way coldly around the offices of Grayside Print with thinly veiled disappointment, as if the desks themselves were a let-down. He had repeatedly interrupted Sam during her first meeting with him, and even shaken his head a couple of times while she was speaking, as if everything she said was in some way wrong.
You’re going to have to explain more clearly what you mean.
But why are you taking ten days on jobs that could be done in seven?
You’re aware that Uberprint strives for excellence in every single job?
And your boss was happy with the way you run things here, was he?
Everything he said seemed calculated to imply some deficit on her part, her attention levels, her schedules, even her punctuality (Sam was never late).
At first she tried to brazen it out. Joel told her not to take it personally, there was one like Simon wherever you went – ‘He’s just dick-waving, babe, trying to make his mark’ – but the relentlessness of it had started to chip away at her so that she became all fingers and thumbs in his presence when trying to flick through her desk diary, or stammered pre-emptively, waiting for him to cut in over her in meetings. Now, as she left the house in the morning, a heavy, sickly feeling would settle in Sam’s stomach. She had taken to listening to podcasts or ambient music on her journey to work, just so that she didn’t have to think about what was likely to happen when she arrived. Every day, when she walked in, Simon, visible in his glass-walled office, would look ostentatiously at the office clock and raise an eyebrow, even if she was five minutesearly. He would text her late into the evening asking what had been done about improving the margins on the Carling job, or whether she had double-checked the pages weren’t stuck together on the garden-furniture catalogues (this had happened once, while she was away on a week’s holiday and Hardeep was meant to be covering, though this fact seemed irrelevant to Simon).
It took her two months to realize that he never did it to the men. He would chat with them, his face wreathed in smiles, any suggestion that there was a problem covered with matey caveats, a suggestion that they go for a drink later and sort it out. He would stand too close to the younger women, his hands half submerged at angles in his pockets as if he were perennially pointing to his genitals, and smile and stare at their chests. Some – like Dee – would smile back and flirt with him, then bitch about him in the Ladies: ‘That slimeball. He gives me the ick.’ But aside from Betty in Accounts, who never spoke to anyone but had a mathematical brain that could work faster than a desk calculator, and Marina, who didn’t give a monkey’s what anybody thought about her, and would say as much without prompting, Sam was now the oldest woman in the office and, Simon had apparently decided, not worthy of any attention that wasn’t entirely negative in tone. It was exhausting.
Once, she could have confided all this to Phil, and he would have calmed her, commiserated, offered strategies to help deal with it. She had mentioned it one evening after a particularly bad day but instead of sitting her down and pouring her a glass of wine he had put his head into his hands and told her he was sorry, he couldn’t deal with anything else. She had been so alarmed at his apparent fragility that she had immediately reassured him it was nothing, nothing at all. Just a bad day. And never mentioned it again.
Ted, Joel and Marina kept her going, day to day, but nobody ever stepped in, or stood up to Simon when he was haranguing her. Of course, Simon would save his most negative comments for when they were alone, or murmur them as he passed her cubicle –Jesus, I don’t know how you get any work done with a desk like that. Most of the time, if there was an audience, he would simply ignore her. But what could she do? With Phil out of work, and their savings depleted, they were reliant on her salary. She kept her head down, did her best, ignored the ever-present knot in her stomach, and hoped that at some point he would grow bored and decide to pick on someone else.
‘Simon’s headed your way.’ Marina puts a coffee on her desk furtively, like she’s imparting classified information, and her expression as she turns away fills Sam with dread.
‘What now?’ she says, but Marina has already gone.
She slides the kitbag under her desk and hangs her handbag on the back of the chair, sits down and logs on to her screen.
