The Other Woman's Shoes (16 page)

‘All three of us used to go shopping every Saturday to buy both of you something new for your dates that evening.’

‘We did, didn’t we?’

Suddenly Martha could remember the hours she and Eliza had dragged their mother in and out of endless, tiny changing rooms.

‘How do I look?’ they’d demanded.

‘Gorgeous,’ Mrs Evergreen had always gushed (and believed).

‘No, I don’t, my stomach looks fat!’

‘This makes my legs look short!’

‘It’s molly!’ (That had been the ultimate censure.)

‘God, we were horrible,’ sighed Martha, remembering how ungrateful they were.

‘No, you were just normal teenagers. You were often a lot of fun.’

They had laughed a great deal in those days. Laughed at the recounting of awful dates, laughed at new dance routines, laughed at determined teenage pursuers, laughed at puffball skirts, leg warmers.

Martha let the thoughts drift away and came back to her more miserable present. ‘Don’t forget that Maisie needs –’

‘Chest rub after her bath. No, I won’t forget.’

‘And Mathew can be very picky. There’s a chicken leg in the fridge, but he’ll only eat it if you take the skin off and cut it up into very small pieces.’

‘Oh no, Martha, you would have smiled this lunchtime. Mathew tucked into the leg with your dad. He ate it all up, skin included, straight off the bone. He loves playing the little man. The chicken’s gone, I’m planning on doing them pasta for tea.’

‘And Maisie?’

‘Pasta for Maisie too, I’ll chop it up. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before, you know,’ added Mrs Evergreen cheerfully. She was clearly in her element. She adored spending time with her grandchildren, but more than that, which perhaps Martha hadn’t quite tuned into, Mrs Evergreen was desperate to help her daughter, to give her a break.

Martha insisted that she would be home for bath-time and then hung up. She looked through the dirty window of the telephone box. The school kids had dispersed, and she couldn’t see any young mums either – although now there were dozens of smiling couples striding down the street. It wasn’t actual hatred Martha felt for them, but it was something close. There were also lots of tired-looking pensioners pottering about. Martha noted that pensioners tended to carry large shopping bags, but they only ever seemed to purchase one or two products at a time. A tin of cat food, a quarter of ham, a very small cauliflower. This way they’d have to come out again the next day and buy something else. It was something to do, she supposed.

Oh God, who would she grow old with?

She called Eliza. ‘Eliza, it’s me.’

‘Hi Me, what are you up to?’

‘Nothing much. You know Mum and Dad are looking after the children today.’

‘So you’re young, free and single, you lucky thing.’

The happy words had bounced out of Eliza’s mouth before she’d had a chance to really think them through. The problem was that Martha had called her right in the middle of a very important meeting about tonality and treatment of a very important vid. Eliza couldn’t be expected to put Martha’s disintegrating marriage at the top of her agenda 24/7, could she? Of course Martha didn’t want to be young, free and single, and therefore she didn’t feel in the least bit lucky. Eliza wanted to grab the words back, but she couldn’t. Martha was exhaustingly sensitive nowadays. Eliza missed the calm, reliable Martha of old.

‘I’ve just called mum, and the kids seem fine without me,’ said Martha. Her voice sounded small and forced, as if she were actually trying to throttle the words before they came into existence.

‘That’s good then, isn’t it?’ asked Eliza. She thought it was, but already sensed that Martha didn’t.

‘Not really,’ Martha muttered.

‘Why, Babe?’ Eliza signalled to her boss that she had to take the handset out of the room. Her boss waved her hand impatiently. It was a divorce, not a death. Still Eliza didn’t cut the conversation short.

‘I know Mum and Dad mean well by coming to babysit two days a week, and of course it is very kind of them to offer to babysit tonight but…’ The tenuous bubble of happiness that Martha had been blowing – by abandoning
a dull exhibition, eating a muffin and buying a pumpkin – had burst. There had been a few minutes when life had seemed bearable. But suddenly, Martha felt lonely and cold again. The sun chose that second to dodge behind a cloud. Martha shivered. ‘No one needs me. I can’t get Mathew to eat chicken with skin, I’m a failure.’ Martha was a sentence away from sobbing. The children being happy in her absence was in fact a tribute to her mothering skills; she wanted them to be confident with other people. And after all she hadn’t abandoned them in a station with a begging note tied around their necks, they were with their grandparents. But Martha had never felt more forlorn and alone.

‘What?’ Eliza was lost. She used lots of criteria to measure her success or otherwise as a person. Her achievements at work, whether or not she was in a happy relationship, if she remembered to send her parents an anniversary card – but getting Mathew to eat chicken with its skin on was a new one on her. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this when I get home tonight. I have to go now, my boss is looking for me.’ Eliza felt terrible but she had work to do.

‘Yeah, OK. My money is about to run out anyway.’ Martha was desperately trying to swallow back her sobs; Eliza could hear it in her voice.

‘Your money? Where are you calling from?’

‘A call box on the Caledonian Road.’

‘A call box?’ How quaint. ‘Don’t you have a mobile?’

‘No, Michael had one.’

The sisters paused. Eliza was fighting back the urge to blast Martha with the words, ‘Well, that’s no frigging use to you now, is it?’ Martha was still fighting back tears.

‘Well, you’ll have to get a mobile now you’re a single girl about town. They’re essential,’ said Eliza with a joviality that was entirely forced.

‘I don’t want to be a single girl about town.’ Martha’s needs and wants were very tame. She wanted a clean, warm and safe home. Something someone of her age, class and social position was surely pretty much guaranteed. She wanted her children to be healthy, happy and not absolute rogues in the playground. She wanted her husband to have a good income but – and this was the bit that was most important to her – she wanted him to earn it doing a job he liked. She wanted her parents to live to a comfortable old age. And she wanted to remember her friends’ birthdays.

She did not want to be divorced.

She did not want to be looking around garden centres on her own, aged fifty-five.

She did not want to be a single girl around town.

‘I know, Martha.’ Eliza’s resolve stiffened. ‘But you are.’

Like it or not.

18

Eliza got home just after nine that evening, which wasn’t late, considering she’d been working on the final edit of a video for a fairly prominent band. Often the way bands liked to work was that they’d arrive in the editing suite at about 11 p.m. and then insist on ordering takeaways, alcohol and drugs. Sometimes the real work didn’t even begin until after 1 a.m. Often the final approval wasn’t secured until dawn. Eliza, as the most junior member of the editing team, was always required to stay until the bitter end. Sometimes it seemed that the most important aspect of her job was scooping the band members into taxis, as discreetly as possible, at the end of the session. However, this band had been consummate professionals. They’d arrived in the studio at 2 p.m. as agreed, there were no surprises in the video treatment from the editors, nor were there any last-minute requests for changes from the band. The vid was very trippy, very cool; Eliza was proud to be involved in it, even in a small capacity. By seven-thirty everything was signed, sealed and delivered, and though Eliza had been invited out for a well-earned celebratory drink, she’d declined. She needed to make a quick detour to Tottenham Court Road, and then she wanted to dash home as quickly as possible.

She’d been worrying about Martha even since she’d
received the phone call about chicken skin a couple of hours earlier.

Bloody Michael.

When Eliza got home, the children were asleep in bed and her parents had gone home.

‘Where are Mum and Dad? Did you scare them off?’

Martha had the decency to look a tiny bit guilty and shifty. ‘I perhaps didn’t express my gratitude as clearly as I should have.’

In fact, Martha had bitten their heads off. Mr Evergreen had fixed the dripping tap in the downstairs cloakroom. He’d also changed two light bulbs and put up a shelf in Mathew’s bedroom. He was clearly commenting on Michael’s inadequacy in the field of DIY, and Martha took exception. Besides her triumph with the chicken, her mother had also had time to restock the fridge, cupboards and freezer. She’d vacuumed, and she’d changed the sheets on the bed. It was true Martha had let her standards slip a little since Michael had left. The house used to look like a show home, and now it looked more like a pigsty.

Martha really couldn’t see the point of tidying up; the house seemed to untidy itself the next day. In the past she had made it a point of principle that all the children’s toys were cleared away before 7 p.m. As were the clothes that had dried on the radiators during the day. (Michael hated to see that, it was so working class; what was the point of having a dryer if you were going to hang clothes on the radiators?) Now toys lay scattered on the floor, day in, day out, and it was surprising how much time that saved Martha. She didn’t use the time to pair up socks or slice vegetables, the way she’d always used any spare moments
when Michael lived at home. Now she tended to squander her extra time watching soap operas and reading magazines. She took some comfort from the fact that the lives of the characters were even messier than her own. She couldn’t remember when she last washed out the inside of the fridge. Her mother’s industry today left Martha feeling inadequate and exposed. She was a lapsed housewife.

‘I thought they might have waited to say hello to me,’ commented Eliza, a little grumpily.

Martha decided not to mention that she’d led her parents to believe that Eliza wouldn’t be back until very late. She changed the subject. ‘You’ve had a telephone call.’

‘Who from?’

‘Hubert.’

‘Oh yeah, we met at your friend Chloe’s dinner party last weekend. I was sloshed, so gave him my number,’ sighed Eliza.

‘Give him a call,’ urged Martha.

Eliza did as she was told. She was losing interest in the search for Mr Pension Policy but felt she had to continue with it – because what other option was there? ‘Hi, Hubert, it’s Eliza Evergreen here.’

‘Eliza. Great to hear from you. How are you keeping?’

‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Eliza wasn’t prepared to be interesting.

‘Well, that’s good. I’m well too. In fact a funny thing happened today.’

Blah, blah, blah. Eliza doubted that anything really funny could possibly ever happen to someone called Hubert, so she tuned out of the conversation.

She only tuned back in again when she heard him say, ‘We should meet up.’

‘Why not,’ said Eliza.

It was all the encouragement he needed. ‘I’ll cycle over, if you like, we could have tea.’

Tea! Christ, she was about to accept a date with Rupert Bear. ‘That sounds great,’ said Eliza with fake enthusiasm. Luckily, Rupert Bear was not too alert to conversational nuances. He lived in a world where meeting for tea really
was
a great idea. Eliza fixed a time and day and then put the phone down. She looked despondent. Tea was so cheap. He wasn’t even trying to impress her. He might have been thirty and single, but he was male, therefore nobody noticed. It was a crucial difference.

‘Mum left a beef casserole. Should I serve it up?’ offered Martha in an effort to cheer her up.

‘OK,’ agreed Eliza, instantly brightening. ‘But before that I have a surprise for you.’

Eliza left the room and Martha could hear her grunting as she shifted something in the hall. Martha crossed her fingers and prayed it wasn’t a puppy.

Eliza staggered back into the room carrying a large box. ‘Clear a space.’

‘A computer?’ asked Martha, not attempting to hide her disgust.

‘Not just a computer, but the key to your chastity belt, fair maiden.’

‘What?’

‘No mobile: therefore no text messages. No computer: therefore no email. How do you hope to flirt in the twenty-first century?’

‘I don’t propose to flirt at all.’

‘Awful defeatist attitude,’ snapped Eliza bossily, and for a moment Martha felt like the little sister. ‘Here.’ Eliza tossed a smaller box over to Martha; it was a mobile phone.

It took them four and a half hours to set it up. Neither woman could honestly list ‘instruction comprehension’ as a skill on her CV, but both had to admit to a huge sense of satisfaction when it finally whirled into action, and the little icons declaring ‘email facility’, ‘Internet Explorer’, ‘my briefcase’, ‘recycle bin’ littered the screen.

Eliza was thrilled. The phone and computer had been the most expensive gifts she had ever bought anyone, and she had enjoyed being generous. Martha wouldn’t accept any rent, and so for the first time since moving to London Eliza felt a bit flush.

Martha was dubious. ‘But what use will it be?’

‘Well, you
need
access to the Internet.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s lonely living in the Dark Ages.’

Martha looked concerned and cautious.

‘Email is great fun,’ encouraged Eliza.

Martha still wasn’t convinced. She feared that email might just turn out to be like her answering machine, another reminder that no one cared.

As if reading her mind, Eliza said consolingly, ‘Look, at the very least you can shop.’

November

19

Maisie would be a year old in mid November. Martha had set herself a target to get Michael to return home by the time Maisie was due to blow out the candle. She had ten more days to succeed. Surely this silliness wasn’t going to last longer than that.

Was it?

Martha wasn’t certain.

Since Martha had thrown the glass of wine over Michael they had not seen each other without the restraining presence of the children. Michael used them as a shield to avoid any difficult questions or discussions, so she had no idea what his current thinking on their situation was. Martha’s head hurt from beating it against the invisible brick wall that had grown up between them. If only she had the confidence to admit, even to herself, that she was becoming heartily sick of his sanctimonious mutterings –‘Not in front of the children, Martha, we’ll talk about it later.’ When? When was bloody ‘later’? The whole situation was beginning to have a horrible sense of ‘already too late’.