The Other Woman's Shoes (6 page)

‘Can you pick up some Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes whilst you’re out? No, get Coco Pops. No, get Frosted Shreddies. Oh God, I can’t decide. Which do you think?’

Eliza let the door bang after her and didn’t bother to reply.

8

Poor Dog. He’d rather fancied a brief trip to the nearest lamp-post or, at most, to the local corner shop to pick up the cereal, but Eliza had something altogether different in mind. She power-walked him through the streets, all the way along the bustling Uxbridge Road, dragged him past Shepherd’s Bush Green, not allowing him so much as a sniff of the grass, along Holland Park Avenue and to her sister’s home.

Martha opened the door. She had Maisie on one hip and Mathew latched to a leg. She was dressed in smart navy slacks, a white shirt and slip-on suede pumps. Her hair was immaculately styled, as always, and she was wearing lipgloss. Eliza felt distinctly scruffy and underdressed in her tracky bottoms and sweatshirt.

Her question seemed redundant. ‘Hi Martha, is it too early for a visit?’

‘Not at all, the children and I have been up since six.’ Martha beamed, delighted to see Eliza. She didn’t let on that she’d had a punishing start to her morning: Maisie had been grizzly with teething again, and Mathew was agitated by the attention Maisie was getting. Martha was beginning to find it difficult to distinguish between their cries as they meshed into a more or less continuous drone. Eliza’s arrival was a welcome distraction. Martha shuffled out of the way as best she could with Mathew hooked to
her leg, and gestured for Eliza to come in. Eliza carefully wiped her shoes but feared that Dog was going to damage irreparably the plush, immaculate cream hall carpet anyway.

‘Is it all right if I bring Dog in?’

‘Oh yes, yes, fine. Take him through to the garden; Mathew will be thrilled, something for him to tease other than his sister.’ Martha tried not to think about worms and made a mental note to check the garden for dog poop when Eliza left.

Eliza followed the instructions whilst Martha tried to set both children up with distractions. The kids rejected the clutch of wooden educational toys, as they clearly would prefer to poke and prod Dog. Eliza felt mildly irresponsible leaving Dog to fend for himself but still she chose to go back to the kitchen and join Martha for a cup of coffee.

‘Where’s Michael?’ asked Eliza as she jumped on to a stool.

‘In bed. He’s had a very busy week.’

I want a husband who’s in bed because he’s had a very busy week rather than because he’s a lazy bugger, thought Eliza, but she didn’t say as much; instead she asked if she could have some breakfast.

‘Haven’t you eaten?’ Eliza could hear from the shock in Martha’s voice that she disapproved of Eliza leaving the house on less than a full stomach. Eliza’s lips tightened, waiting for the reproach.

Perhaps Martha noticed because she didn’t articulate her reproach; instead she rolled off the bill of fare available. ‘Well, I have some freshly squeezed orange juice, some
home-made Bircher muesli, which is very nice, even if I say so myself. You could have that with organic yogurt or milk. I’ve got skimmed, semi-skimmed or the tasty stuff. I have eggs, which I could poach, boil or scramble. I also have bacon and sausages. And I think there are some pastries.’

Eliza couldn’t help but compare the feast on offer here to the contents of the fridge and cupboards at Greg’s. If someone dropped in unexpectedly on her for breakfast on a Saturday morning they’d have to make do with Ryvita, Marmite and black coffee. ‘I’ll have muesli, please, and some orange juice.’

Martha scurried around preparing Eliza’s breakfast; it was the fourth she’d prepared that morning. The children had eaten first, then she’d had time to grab a slice of toast for herself. After Eliza was sorted out, Martha would have to start on Michael’s cooked breakfast – which he liked to have at 11.30. At noon Martha would begin cooking the children’s lunch. Eliza looked out of the window.

It was a lovely Indian summer morning. Freakily hot, hot enough to believe that it was August. God or Mother Nature or the guys in the white coats who invented aerosol sprays had got it all muddled again. Throughout the summer you were considered at best irresponsible, at worst an insurance risk, if you ventured out of doors without the protection of knee-high wellies and an umbrella. Now, in mid-September, you wouldn’t be thought peculiar if you shimmied along the high street in a shift dress and slapped on sun oil.

The unseasonally hot weather made Martha worry about global warming. It made Eliza smile. This time last
year half the population had been barricading their doors with sandbags against flooding rivers. Anything had to be better than that.

Eliza watched her niece and nephew play. They were glowing with sun and excitement. ‘Look at their rosy cheeks,’ she sighed adoringly.

‘And muddy knees,’ sighed Martha, her tone noticeably less whimsical. She ran outside and rubbed some more sun cream on to Mathew’s face, then scooped Maisie up into her arms. Maisie let out a wail of defiance. She wanted to stay and play with her brother and Dog.

‘Is this Bircher muesli difficult to make?’ asked Eliza thoughtfully. ‘It’s delicious.’ She wasn’t exactly sure what Bircher muesli was.

Martha flushed with pride, unused to compliments. Not that Michael didn’t appreciate her, of course he appreciated her, it’s just once you’d been together as long as they had you got out of the way of paying compliments. ‘It’s very easy. Just buy a batch of muesli, get a good-quality one, packed with grains, fruit and nuts. It’s worth adding extra nuts to a shop-bought one. Pour a cup of cream and a cup of milk over it and refrigerate it overnight. It’s especially nice served with kiwi. I’m sure you’ll have most of the ingredients in your cupboard.’

No, actually, Eliza had absolutely none of these ingredients in her cupboard. She did most of her grocery shopping on an ad hoc basis at the local garage shop. Eliza rarely visited supermarkets; she hated them with a passion. The frustration began almost as soon as she drove into the car park. She rarely drove anywhere, as her battered, ancient Morris Minor was so unreliable. However, her
dread of getting on and off buses with huge shopping bags was greater than her dread of trailing oil up London roads, so she did take the car to the supermarket if she really had to go there. Annoyingly, it was almost impossible for legitimate shoppers to find a space because so many commuters from out of town chose to drive to the supermarket, park their cars and then catch the Tube into the centre of town.

Even if she did find a space, there was the bloody trolley to contend with. She loathed the fact that the trolley couldn’t be released from its captivity unless you paid a pound for the privilege. Eliza remembered the time when these things were free. Nothing in life was free now, not even going to the loo. Eliza never had a pound coin, although she did wish that she were the type of woman who always had the correct change. And, of course, after she had run about trying to buy a packet of chewing gum with a twenty-pound note to get a pound coin, and finally secured a trolley, she always discovered that she’d selected the one with the cranky, wobbly wheel. A trolley with suicidal tendencies that wanted to dash across an aisle and throw itself under another trolley.

Then there were the shoppers. Eliza had more or less come to terms with the fact that shopping in supermarkets meant that she was bound to encounter the oddball who insisted on taking six items through the five-items-or-less till. Which didn’t necessarily have to be a problem, but did turn into one if the assistant was an oddball too, and insisted on voiding the transaction and sending the customer through another till. The old dears who were slow, the drunks who were smelly, the Filipino
housekeepers who were hysterical, the Mediterranean au pairs who were exhausted, were all an inevitable part of Eliza’s shopping experience. It all bored her.

Usually.

But now Eliza wanted to make muesli. She was sure that making muesli was where she should be as a person.

So it was with some reluctance and great trepidation that Eliza muttered, ‘I think I might go to the supermarket.’

‘Come with us. We always go on a Saturday afternoon, after I’ve made Michael’s breakfast and given the kids their lunch. That way Michael can read the papers in peace, and there’s a chance at least one of the children will fall asleep in the car.’ Martha made the offer with a huge smile on her face, as though she were inviting Eliza somewhere nice. In truth, Martha thought she was. She liked supermarkets. She liked the clean tidy aisles. She admired the armies of people ensuring that the bottles sat side by side, just so. She enjoyed the fact that the jars and tins stood in perfect lines. She loved choosing items, and always imagined the enormous pleasure she’d get as she’d place a special dish on the table and the fresh ingredients, the exotic spices, or the flavoursome cheeses would impress her guests. Her supermarket was her friend and helped her achieve that swell of pride and satisfaction. She liked visiting the supermarket best when Mathew was at playschool and Maisie fell asleep in the trolley. Then she had time to really examine the new lines and products. Reading labels was Martha’s idea of ‘me time’.

Eliza couldn’t think of anything more depressing than spending her Saturday afternoon in a supermarket – it
seemed unnatural. Didn’t Martha know that the shops on the King’s Road were open?

‘Why don’t we go now and leave Michael to get his own breakfast?’ suggested Eliza.

‘Yes, we could – why don’t we?’ giggled Martha.

‘Let’s live dangerously,’ muttered Eliza as she reached for her wallet. ‘I’ll leave Dog here.’

An hour and a half later, Martha and Eliza, Mathew and Maisie finally trundled through the doors of the local hypermarket because ‘now’, with two children under the age of two and a half, actually means an age later.

‘There’s so much choice,’ mumbled Eliza, somewhat overwhelmed, as she walked through the fruit and vegetable aisle. There were fruits Eliza could hardly pronounce the names of, let alone recognize – tamarillo, guava, feijoa, grenadillo. She wondered what prickly pear, custard apple or star fruit tasted like and whether she ought to keep them in the fridge.

‘Where do you usually shop?’ asked Martha.

‘The newsagent’s at the corner of our street, or the garage.’

Maisie sat in the trolley that Martha pushed, and Mathew sat in Eliza’s.

‘It’s a joy to have an extra pair of hands,’ commented Martha. It really was turning out to be such a lovely day for her. ‘If they’re both in the same trolley Mathew often attempts to beat Maisie over the head with a tin of beans or something similar.’

Eliza looked at her angelic, smiling nephew and wondered why Martha exaggerated about how difficult it was
to look after the children. It sometimes grated on Eliza that Martha didn’t know how lucky she was. Mathew and Maisie always behaved beautifully whenever Eliza was with them. It was just a matter of discipline; children would push you as far as they could. If
she
became a mother her children would know the boundaries. Fun time would be great fun, and the other times would be calm, tranquil, relaxed. Perhaps she’d do Zen meditation throughout her pregnancy – that would certainly help the baby’s karma.

Eliza looked around the supermarket and noted with some disappointment that most of the parents with children hadn’t explained the boundaries clearly enough. She doubted whether any of them had ever benefited from Zen meditation. It seemed that every child, in every trolley, was crying, sulking, begging for sweets or pestering a sibling. Eliza couldn’t understand why one mother, standing near the dairy fridge, was arguing with her three-year-old daughter about yogurts. If she really wants the yogurts with the ghastly cartoons of TV characters, then let her have them. That’s the fun of being a child.

But Eliza had no concept of sugar content.

She lost interest in the ignominious yogurt battle between the mother and daughter and turned her attention to trolley-reading. That woman over there had digestion problems: her trolley had more prunes and bran cereals than was normal. That other woman was bulimic: two apples, one carrot and a box of Milk Tray. This one was cooking dinner for a lover: salmon, a selection of florets on a microwave tray that cost an entire trust fund per pound, tubs of Häagen-Dazs. That couple was happy:
mozzarella, tomatoes, avocados, fresh pasta and pesto sauce. That couple was waiting for payday: baked beans, sliced loaf, tinned fruit.

Eliza and Greg never shopped together.

Eliza sighed, wondering if her obsession with other people’s trolleys was healthy. Was it something to do with her intense feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, all brought on by the lack of a suitable husband? The woman with the trust-fund-microwaveable florets was certainly not the type of woman to waste four years – four significant, biological-clock-ticking years – dating a commitment-phobe musician.

Then again, had the floret woman ever had multiple orgasms or made love on a kitchen unit? Had she ever drunk wine out of her lover’s mouth?

Aghhh. Eliza couldn’t, no wouldn’t, think about this now. She picked up a packet of biscuits, then noticed that another brand had a ‘two for one’ offer. She couldn’t choose, and so she eventually put all three packets in her trolley.

Comfort food.

‘How do you do it?’ marvelled Martha, looking at Eliza’s shopping. Despite Eliza’s good intentions to buy fresh fruit and nutritionally valuable products, her trolley was full of biscuits, microwave chips, pizzas, sugary cereals and crisps. ‘How do you manage to keep your figure? And your skin is terrific.’

Martha’s trolley was full of nappies for Maisie; for Mathew there was organic chicken, organic cheese and organic crisps (the only concession to childhood). There were a number of expensive products labelled ‘Tastes so
special’ for Michael. And whilst Martha knew that these were probably another marketing ploy, she found the Parmesan cheese – with black and white pictures on the packaging of Italian kids eating pasta – irresistible. Michael would love it. Then there were a number of low-fat, low-taste products for herself. Eliza looked at Martha’s groceries and began to doubt her ability to read trolleys like books. Because Martha’s trolley said she was repressed and that she undervalued herself, which simply wasn’t true. Eliza knew Martha was a happily married woman with a fulfilled life. Martha was always saying as much.