Page 96 of Someone Else's Shoes
‘Did you really?’
‘You and Dad seemed so unhappy. Like you never did anything together any more. Like … you don’t get any joy from each other’s company.’ Her words are a series of little blows. Cat rubs at her nose. Doesn’t look Sam in the eye for the next sentence. ‘And then I saw you with that man.’
‘Joel is just a friend.’
‘But the sho–’
‘I was wearing those shoes because … well, because sometimes you need to feel like a different version of yourself.’
Cat looks at her then, and Sam is unsure whether it’s incomprehension or suspicion she can detect in her daughter’s face.
‘I have been unhappy, Cat. You’re right. For a long time. Your dad doesn’t see me any more. Most days I’ve felt likeI don’t even exist. It’s hard for you to imagine now, while you’re young and beautiful and everyone notices every move you make. But I seem to be invisible, these days, and when even the man you love doesn’t see you it’s … well, it’s pretty soul-destroying. I needed to feel like a different version of myself – and the shoes, I guess, were a part of that. It’s hard to explain. I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself. But I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in it.’
‘Why do you need a man to tell you who you are?’
‘What?’
Cat edges around the dark stain on the carpet. ‘Why do you need validation from someone else? Dad is down in the dumps, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to fall apart. You’re still you. I wouldn’t let some man dictate how I felt about myself.’
‘Yeah. Well, you always did have it all worked out. I think you knew who you were from the age of three.’ She looks at her daughter, whose generation seems to have this all sorted, with their talk of autonomy, of slut-shaming, allyship and body positivity. She feels the reflexive clench of sadness she has started to feel when she remembers that soon this girl will be gone, storming through her own life, no longer clumping through the door in her heavy workmen’s boots.
Cat sits down heavily on the bottom step. She reties the laces on one of her boots and waits a moment before she speaks.
‘Colleen’s mum left her dad last month. She said they were “on different paths”.’
Sam is not sure what to say to this, so she organizes her face into a neutral expression.
Cat’s face is suddenly vulnerable, like a child’s. ‘Are you and Dad going to split up?’
Do you have feelings for Joel?he had asked her, the previous evening, as she brushed her teeth. She had struggled withhow to respond to him honestly, and continued brushing for an extra few seconds before she spat out the paste.Not the same as I have for you, she said. He had gazed at her reflection in the mirror for a moment, then headed off to bed.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says, and hugs her daughter, relishing the brief proximity. She hopes she sounded more convinced than she feels.
Joel has texted her twice. A long, rambling message informed her that he had told everyone in the office what had been going on and they were trying to work out what to do to make things right. Marina felt awful. Franklin had already cocked up on the Dutch order. She shouldn’t worry. She should call him if she needed anything, anything at all. He hoped she would soon come back to the gym. She was doing great! The second, sent twenty-four hours later, says simply:I miss you. She stares at it several times a day, when she is alone, and her heart gives an erratic thump every time, like an engine trying to jump-start into life.
29
Phil cannot sit down. Every time he lands on the little couch he springs back up again as if it’s electrified, as if there is too much in him to be contained by mere furniture. He paces backwards and forwards around the little room, his words coming in scattergun explosions.
‘I mean she pretty much admitted it! Even if it wasn’t an affair she hadfeelingsfor him. What am I supposed to do with that? Can you tell me? Because I don’t have an answer. It goes round and round in my head and I don’t have an answer.’
Dr Kovitz sits, his notepad on his knee, wearing an expression of eternal patience. It makes Phil want to punch him on the nose.
‘She didn’t even deny it. She just said her feelings forhimweren’t the same as they were for me.’
‘What did you take from that?’
Phil looks at him incredulously. ‘What do you think I took from that? My wife has feelings for another man!’
‘I have feelings for plenty of people. It doesn’t mean I’m going to run off with them.’
‘Spare me the word games today, please.’
‘They’re not word games, Phil. She has told you she isn’t having an affair. And, given you say she’s an honest person, we have to assume she’s telling the truth. She had feelings for another person. You told me in one of our previous sessions that you would actually understand if she went off with someone else.’
‘But that was before it was true!’
Phil puts the heels of his hands into his eyes and presses hard so that tiny explosions of dark matter go off behind them, wanting his thoughts to still, wanting it all to stop.
