Page 69 of Someone Else's Shoes
He probably hasn’t even noticed, she thinks. And suppresses a sigh. ‘I had some good news today,’ she says gamely. ‘Well, I don’t know if it’s actual good news, but Miriam Price, the woman I got a big contract from, has asked to meet me for lunch again later this week. She’s got no reason to meet me, given we finished the job, and she was happy. She said there’s something she wants to discuss. I mean it might be nothing, right? She might just want advice on something. But it’s nice, because she’s … one of those really impressive people, you know? It just feels good to have someone like that want to take you to lunch.’
Phil nods, putting another forkful into his mouth.
‘There’s a bit of me that wonders if … Well, I know Harlon and Lewis are looking for more account managers. So I was thinking maybe I should bite the bullet and ask her if there are any positions available. It would get me out of Simon’s way, you know?’
‘Yup,’ he says.
‘It might be more money,’ she says. She hasn’t told him about the threat to her job yet. It’s another conversation she feels he probably isn’t up to.
He doesn’t say anything.
‘I mean I really love the people I work with.’ She feels a slight flush rise to her cheeks as she says this, and hopes it’s not as apparent as it feels. ‘But if Simon’s not going anywhere then maybe I should. It’s worth a try anyway, right?’
He looks at her for a moment. His face is blank, unreadable. And then he turns back to his plate.
‘Phil? … Is everything okay?’ she says, finally.
‘Fine.’ He finishes his meal, and as Sam sits, he raises himself heavily from the table, takes his plate to the dishwasher and heads into the living room. Sam is left eating alone at the table.
For some time now, during the hours that Sam has assumed he was sleeping, Phil has been awake, his eyes closed, wrestling with his father through the small hours, feeling his bony hand gripping his wrist, unable to turn from the intensity and fury of his stare. Sometimes he feels paralysed, lost in the endless repetitive loop of his thoughts:You are a weak, useless man.Do it! DO IT!Now, for the first night in months, his father has left him alone, but this has brought no relief. Instead he has been haunted by thoughts of the woman lying beside him, her hands on another man’s body, her face lit up by his presence. How long has this been going on? What lies has shetold in order to sneak away? In the past couple of weeks she has often returned home flushed and slightly breathless and the thought of what she has been doing with this unknown lover causes a pain in his stomach that pulls his knees to his chest. His Sam. The woman he has laughed with, lain with for more than two decades, who now cares so little for him that he might as well be a piece of discarded furniture. She feels suddenly like someone he has never known. And how could he not have noticed what was happening? Some part of him had known something was different, something off in the air between them. But it had felt like just too much to confront, and he had turned his head away until the fury of his daughter had forced him to see it.
The one thing Phil does not ask himself is why. Because it is obvious why. What can he offer Sam these days? He has been a hollow thing for months, unable to function. Unable to offer her anything. Useless. He should have known she would turn to someone else eventually.
These thoughts whirl and chase each other all night, so that by dawn he is gritty-eyed and overwhelmed. He feels nauseous, restless and exhausted at the same time. He hears her get up, the sound of her showering and getting dressed around him – is she thinking about what to wear forhim? Some special lingerie, or an outfit this man has told her he particularly likes? – then she’s heading lightly downstairs. She no longer reaches across the bed to kiss him before she leaves. He used to think this was her not wanting to disturb him but now he thinks it is probably just that she no longer wants anything to do with him at all. She probably despises him. He hears the front door close and her car starting, and he presses the balls of his hands into his eyes, wanting it all to stop. Wanting to be lifted out of this body, this life, and put somewhere that he doesn’t have to deal with any of it.
*
He has lain there for some unknown length of time – half an hour? Two hours? His hands, his arms, feel odd, his body curiously disconnected from his mind. When he can bear this sensation no longer he gets up and out of bed and walks around the room. He gazes out of the bedroom window at the street, which looks the same but is clearly altered for ever. Then he turns to the wardrobe, opens it, and stares down at the black kitbag his daughter had brandished at him the previous day. He scrutinizes it, his breath coming hard in his chest, as if the thing sitting there is radioactive. And then, slowly, he crouches down and unzips it. There they are, peeping out from the opened zip, the sexy red high-heeled shoes. It’s like they belong to someone he doesn’t know. He picks one up, staring at it, and then, compelled by some unknown impulse, he presses it to his nose, and as he holds it, he feels his face twisting into a grimace, and then a howl, a silent howl, is emerging from him. She wears these shoes for this man. These shoes are a shared secret between his wife and her lover. He probably fucks her in them. The word hammers its way into his head, even though this is a word he almost never uses out loud. His hands have begun to shake and he stuffs the shoe back into the bag. Phil paces backwards and forwards, letting out low moans of distress. Then he sits again, his head in his hands. Finally he stands up, walks over to the bag, grabs the shoes and stuffs them into the empty plastic bag that sits in the bottom of his wardrobe. He has no idea why the bag is there. It has just been there for no reason for as long as he can remember, like so much in this house. He holds it in front of him, his face contorted, as he walks briskly down the stairs, as someone would if they were disposing of a full nappy or a dog turd. Then he stands in the hallway, unsure what to do with it. He just knows those shoes cannot stayin this house. They cannot be here, their presence contaminating everything he has known and loved. Almost without realizing what he is doing, he opens the front door and walks outside, wrenches open the door of the camper-van (they stopped locking it months ago, when Sam started secretly hoping someone would steal it) and climbs inside, breathing in the mouldering smell of neglect and mild, steady decay. He opens one of the laminated cupboards above the little cushioned sofa bench and shoves in the shoes, slamming it shut. And then he sits down on the bench and breathes hard, trying to clear the red mist that has landed in front of his eyes.
Even if he were the kind of man who was comfortable talking about emotional stuff, there is not a friend in the world Phil can discuss this with, or ask advice from. He thinks about Dr Kovitz: what would he say? He probably wouldn’t be surprised, given everything Phil has told him. Would he tell Phil to confront his wife? To get angry with her? Would that be moremanly? Tell her he knows and she needs to make a choice? But Phil is afraid. Not just because if he confronts Sam he will have to decide what he wants, and he doesn’t know what this is yet. But, worse, if he confronts her she may simply pack up the bag with the shoes and everything else and move in with this man, whoever he is.
Phil sits, frozen, staring at his intermittently trembling hands, until he realizes he has grown chilled in his pyjamas and T-shirt. He stands rubbing at his arms and notices the pile of old magazines that someone must have moved in here from the house while waiting for recycling day. Perhaps the bins were full. He can’t remember. He stares at the pile, and then, finally, takes a couple of steps across the floor and picks up the top half of it. He adjusts the weight of the magazines against his chest, then pushes open the door with his shoulderand steps out carefully, down the steps, and walks along the short path to the recycling bin, where he dumps them. He returns and takes the other half, gazing at the dusty space that is left. Then he peers inside the bin bag that sits behind them, in which they had left a load of junk items from the old shed at his father’s, things his mum couldn’t bear to get rid of but nobody actually wanted: blunted tools, old car manuals, light bulbs and keys for long-dead fixings. He had taken the bag to save her feelings. But what for? What was he ever going to do with this junk? He hauls out the bin bag and places it beside the black refuse bin. And then he climbs back into the van and continues going through the contents unthinkingly, on some unknown impulse, methodically working his way through the neglected interior, taking out everything that had been stuffed in there as a temporary measure and carrying it all outside, stacking it in or beside the bins. By the time he has cleared the inside, two hours later, he is sweating, his pyjama bottoms smeared with dust and dirt.
His jaw set, his mouth pressed into a thin line, Phil heads back into the house and goes upstairs, where he casts his gaze around until he sees his hooded sweatshirt, under a pile of his other clothes. He hauls it over his head, then down over his T-shirt, pulls on a pair of socks and boots, and heads back out again. He will be there, wrestling with the innards of the engine, when Sam comes home, and he will not come into the house again until she is sleeping.
21
Nisha has never suffered serious physical violence, but every time she spies Charlotte around the hotel wearing an item of her clothing she feels a sensation that she imagines must be just like being stabbed. Charlotte has worn the Chloé shearling coat in public twice, once the first time in that corridor and again the following Saturday, sashaying through the foyer as if it were hers. Two days later, she wore Nisha’s silver Alexander McQueen dress, with the slash at the side, to an evening event – she and Jasmine had spotted her just as they were finishing their shift, heading out from the side-street as she climbed into the waiting car and it was all Nisha could do not to cry out in pain.
But clearly this was not insult enough. On Tuesday lunchtime, as Nisha heads wearily to the sandwich platter, she glances through the open kitchen doors and sees Charlotte about to take a seat in the restaurant. And she is wearing Nisha’s pristine white Yves Saint Laurent suit.
‘No!’ she says, and stops in her tracks, so that a waiter almost collides with her and curses.
Aleks appears at her shoulder. The lunch sitting is nearly over and he is wiping his hands on a cloth. He follows her gaze. ‘It is the mistress?’
‘She’s going to spill something on it.’ Nisha is finding it hard to breathe. ‘I would never, ever eat in that suit.’
Aleks stares through the door for a moment and sighs. She feels his hand on her shoulder, gently steering her away.
‘No no no,’ she says, pushing it off. ‘You don’t understand. You don’teatin that suit. It would be like – like eating spaghetti next to theMona Lisa. It’s white. Yves. Saint. Laurent. 1971. It’s probably the only one left of its kind in the world. I got it from a collector who got it from an exclusive estate sale in Florida. The woman had kept it in a climate-controlled sealed closet and it still had the store tags. The actualtags. It had never been worn! You see? That suit is vintage and it is pristine. Completely pristine. She shouldn’t be touching it, for God’s sake. Not even touching it. But she can’t – she can’teatin it.’ Her voice is anguished. As the doors close, she glimpses Carl sitting down heavily at the table opposite Charlotte, his phone pressed to his ear.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I can’t let this happen. I can’t –’
‘The bodyguard will be nearby,’ Aleks murmurs into her ear. ‘You cannot go near her. You know this.’ She turns and looks at him. His expression is sympathetic, but it says, also, clearly, that it is time for her to walk away.
‘How is this fair, Aleks?’ she says, as he steers her through to the back of the kitchens. ‘How? How can they even get away with this?’
Afterwards she realizes that Aleks’s arm is around her shoulders as he offers her a cigarette and waits until she stops hyperventilating. But before she can consider what she thinks about this, he has told her he will fetch Jasmine, she is not to move from that spot, and leaves.
