The Other Woman's Shoes

by Adele Parks

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Other Woman’s Shoes

  Adele Parks was born in the North-east of England. She read English Language and Literature at Leicester University. Since graduating she has lived in Italy and Africa. She now lives in London with her son and her soulmate. Her earlier novels, Playing Away, Game Over and Larger than Life, were all bestsellers and are published in fourteen different countries.

  www.adeleparks.com

  The Other Woman’s Shoes

  ADELE PARKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Published in Penguin Books 2003

  1

  Copyright © Adele Parks, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  EISBN: 978–0–141–90719–2

  For Jim,

  a 116, 834-word love letter.

  If it were not for hope the heart would break.

  (ancient proverb)

  September

  1

  Martha wasn’t usually to be found on Earl’s Court station in the middle of the afternoon. She rarely travelled by Tube at all; it was so impractical with the children. Not enough of the stations had lifts, and dragging ten-month-old Maisie and two-and-a-half-year-old Mathew (not to mention the related paraphernalia of double buggy, endless bags, several dolls, books, rain covers, etc, etc) up and down escalators or stairs was not Martha’s idea of fun. Martha rarely went anywhere without the children so mostly she drove around London in the family car. But today the car was in the garage being serviced.

  Lucky bloody car.

  Martha looked around, guiltily, as though she’d said her thought aloud. No one was paying her the least bit of notice, which suggested she hadn’t.

  It’s not that she was complaining about Michael’s lack of attention, it was just that… OK, she was complaining.

  The children were being looked after by her mother. Martha felt a little bit guilty about this too, although as guilt was the emotion Martha experienced most, she no longer even recognized that she was feeling guilty. Nor did she realize when she felt tense, stressed or even exhausted. She was terrifyingly used to the horrible dull ache in the pit of her stomach, the ache that told her she’d forgotten, or failed, or ruined something somehow, despite all her best efforts.

  Martha thought it was unfair to ask her mother to babysit just so she could go to the hairdresser’s, however much her mother insisted that it was a pleasure looking after the children. It seemed selfish. She’d visited Toni and Guy’s in Knightsbridge to have her hair cut by the amazing Stephen for over five years. Martha normally took the children with her to the salon, which was quite a challenge. One or the other, or both, usually screamed throughout, turning the experience into an ordeal rather than a treat. Martha had considered bringing them along today and taking a cab to avoid the Tube. But then she would have had to fit both car seats into the cab, and the driver always became impatient when she did that. Where would she have put the seats when she arrived at the hairdresser’s? They’d have been in the way.

  Martha hated being in the way, or causing any sort of scene at all, however minor. She liked to blend, to fit in. Ideally she’d like to be altogether invisible. Besides which, Martha always felt cabs were just a tiny bit self-indulgent, and such extravagance was not her style. Indeed there could hardly be anything less Martha’s style than self-indulgence, except perhaps fluorescent-pink hair accessories.

  So it had been a toss-up. Luckily, her mother had taken the decision out of Martha’s hands, by turning up with balloons and E-additives in the form of sweets and squash.

  Martha fingered the already impeccably neat collar of her shirt and straightened it again. She checked her reflection in the shiny chocolate machine that stood, temptingly, on the platform. She brushed a few errant hairs from her shoulders. The cut was perfectly symmetrical. Martha went to the hairdresser’s on the first Friday of every month, at 2.15 p.m. Only the very observant would notice that her hair had been cut at all. It was an iota sharper, a fraction tidier. Martha was pleased with it, all the more so because you could hardly tell it had been done.

  Martha’s hair, like Martha, was neat, sleek, orderly. It was brown with subtle dark-blonde highlights. She loathed bed-hair, scrunched hair, artfully sculpted hair and even curls. Martha liked straight, reliable, controllable hair. Her heart went out to those women who had ‘bad hair days’. Imagine getting out of bed and having random bits of hair sticking out at jaunty, irresponsible angles. Or treacherous hair that went flat when it was supposed to be full, and full when it was supposed to be sleek. Martha breathed in deeply, fearful at the very thought.

  Her coat was beige, pure wool, very long. It was tied with a belt, which showed off her neat waist. It wasn’t a fashionable coat but it was a classic, and it was flattering. She wore 10-denier skin-tone tights (stockings were ludicrous, stay-ups simply didn’t). She wore patent court shoes that she’d bought in Russell and Bromley but somehow, on Martha, they appeared entirely Dr Scholl. The heel was a sensible inch and a half.

  Under her coat she wore a neat tailored navy suit (not black, goodness, she wasn’t a barrister and she certainly didn’t work in advertising). Her shirt was pale blue and other than her wedding ring and engagement ring (a large cluster of diamonds), she didn’t bother with jewellery, although she did wear a beautiful, expensive watch. Whilst women commented that Martha’s skin, hair and nails were perfect and would agree to call her attractive, men were more likely to compliment her on her good brain (new man), or quiche lorraine (traditional-variety). She was popular with men who were turned on by school marms and the young Princess Diana. That type of man thought of her as extremely sexy.

  It seemed to Martha that just about everybody on the platform at Earl’s Court thought just about everybody else on the platform was extremely sexy. She tried, very hard, to keep her eyes on the chocolate-bar machine.

  It was about four o’clock, school kicking-out time. The outrage was that all the people finding all the other people sexy were children. Martha wanted to keep her face impassive and not allow her mouth to tighten into a tell-tale grimace. But girls, aged anywhere between twelve and sixteen (Martha couldn’t tell, who could nowadays?) were blatantly flirting with boys of the same age! Mathew would be this age in the blink of an eye. The thought caused the dull ache in the pit of Martha’s stomach to flare into a spasm of searing angu
ish. It was September, they ought to have been wearing their jackets and there would certainly soon be a need for handkerchiefs, as these girls all insisted on sporting skirts the size of one.

  Martha (along with every testosterone-driven youth on the station) found it impossible to avoid staring at one particular girl who stood a few metres along the platform, chewing gum. The girl was leaning against a poster advertising the latest blockbuster movie. It struck Martha that the girl herself had a cinematic quality, as pretty young girls often did. This was probably because they spent a lot of time imagining they were in movies, so every movement was calculated for its effect on an audience. Martha remembered at least that much from her own teenage years. The way the girl wore her jumper tied around her hips and her shirt buttoned up incorrectly was designed to look deliberately casual and to suggest a hasty dressing, the circumstances of which were left to the imagination of the inquisitive voyeur. Martha knew that the look would no doubt have been achieved only after several painstaking rearrangements.

  Martha and a gaggle of jostling noisy boys watched as the girl put her finger in her mouth, found the gum, pulled it and stretched it like an umbilical cord from mouth to finger. She twisted it around her finger then popped it back into her mouth again. The action, whilst blatantly flirtatious, was harmless, really, but still it unsettled Martha. It reminded her of something – she couldn’t, wouldn’t, think what. The tallest boy in the group of jostling noisy boys stepped forward and bravely started talking to the girl. He stared at the girl with obvious longing. It was clear that his only thought was how to get to leave his hand prints all over her body. Martha felt a lump of envy sit heavily on her chest, her hand fluttered to her neck as though she were trying to brush the envy away. Envy was an illegal emotion.

  The tall boy wasn’t sure how to explain his appetite and possibly wouldn’t be eloquent enough for several more years, so the pair stuttered and blushed through a conversation about what Martha presumed was a ‘pop band’ of some sort. How strange that such rampant sexiness was so innocent, so hopeful. Martha’s envy dissolved into longing. The girl caught Martha staring and stared back with all the hostility and honesty of youth. Martha blushed and dragged her eyes away. Thank God, the train pulled into the platform. Martha scolded herself; longing was even more dangerous than envy.

  2

  Eliza gazed around Greg’s flat. It was a shambolic hole. There was no other way to describe it, and no amount of tie-dye throws or candles in empty wine bottles could disguise the fact; straight up, the opposite was true.

  She was thirty. Thirty, not twenty. Because she’d just drunk the best part of a bottle of red wine the number thirty swam around her head, bashing up against her battered brain cells. Thirty. The number hovered like an annoying wasp that she couldn’t shoo away. Thirty. It was so close to forty that for a moment she stopped breathing. She slowly folded the pizza box in half, taking care not to allow the discarded olives or uneaten crusts to spill on to the carpet. At thirty, she ought to remember when ordering a Fiorentina pizza to say, ‘But hold the olives.’ Then again – at thirty, she should not be eating pizza out of a box, in front of a box, on a Friday night. Should she?

  Definitely not.

  She should be attending, or maybe even hosting, dinner parties for six or eight guests, all of whom ought to be sophisticated, droll and fashionable in equal parts. That’s what Martha did. She ought to be wearing Wakely not Warehouse – although these jeans were undoubtedly comfortable. She ought to be on a tropical beach, or in a sauna in a cabin in the snowy foothills of some fashionable ski resort, or dancing in a salsa class at the very least. God, there were countless places that would be more appealing.

  Eliza allowed her gaze to drop to Greg. He was smoking pot. Pot, for God’s sake! Even his drug selection was embarrassingly unhip and outdated. No one smoked pot any more except for students (who were too young to know any better) and the over-sixties (who were desperate to recreate the days when they were too young to know any better). Eliza hadn’t known Greg when he was a student. They’d met four years ago when Greg had already blown out the candles on his thirtieth cake, and yet she’d never known him to behave as though he were anything other.

  Initially, she’d been attracted to his ‘portfolio career’ and she’d been extremely irritated when her father had laughed and said, ‘That’s what they’re calling too idle or too stupid to get work nowadays, is it?’

  Greg played in a band and he was talented, that was certain.

  But he’d never be ‘discovered’, that was certain too.

  The most annoying thing was, he didn’t seem to care. Eliza, as a pop-video editor (well, assistant – she too had come to her career rather late in life), was in a position to help him (well, at least introduce him to some guys who might be in a position to help him). But whenever Eliza mooted the idea Greg just shrugged and laughed, and told her she was cute.

  He quite enjoyed his day job. He sold hats in Covent Garden, in the Apple Market. The girl who made the hats paid him cash so he always had ‘spends’ for nights at the pub, and he made a bit to finance his gigs, which were also in the local pub.

  ‘Spends’. Eliza repeated the word that Greg used to describe his income, and despaired.

  Eliza was too old to have a boyfriend whose vocabulary was on a par with her nephew’s. Mathew wasn’t even three yet.

  Aging. Eliza hated it. Or rather, she felt unprepared for it. She had been good at being young, a natural. She had rebelled, yelled, sulked and clubbed. She’d drunk too much, eaten too little, done the drug scene, danced with drag queens. She’d dyed her hair, pierced her nose, tattooed her arms, displayed all her charms (just once, at a rugby match, and the policeman had seen the funny side of it; apparently streakers were more common than you’d imagine). She’d suffered from dysentery in India, eaten fresh fish on Thai beaches, lived on a barge in Camden, and she’d been a beach bum in California. She’d drunk sake with Japanese businessmen, and vodka with some dodgy blokes who claimed to be involved with the Russian Mafia. She’d drunk G&Ts in London town. Plenty of them. It was only in the past few months that she’d started to question whether the nights out were really worth the hangovers.

  In the past Eliza had set the pace. Now she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to be in the race.

  Eliza didn’t look her age. Like many Londoners she looked anywhere between eighteen and forty. Age in London was a mindset, although Eliza currently felt it was a minefield. Eliza was five foot eight and very thin. She’d been waiting for boobs to grow since she was ten. Now, twenty years later, she admitted that Jordan must have got the share God had intended for Eliza Evergreen. And whilst she hated the fact men could be categorized by their preference for either leg or breast (as though women were chicken dinners) she was grateful to have long, strong brown legs that seemed to stretch up to her ears. She worked out to maintain her shapely calves and flat stomach and to wage war against the flab that was gathering on her upper arms.

  Eliza’s hair was cut into a messy bob. Or, rather, whether it was cut that way or not, her hair had a will of its own and always fell that way. Eliza was naturally a brunette, although only her mother knew this. Eliza herself could hardly remember as she dyed her hair as frequently as other girls painted their nails. She had been titian, red, honey, golden, raven, chestnut, scarlet and silver. It was hard to say which colour was most flattering; she always looked good. She had huge brown eyes that dominated her elfin face. She dressed in Kookai, Roxy, Diesel and Miss Sixty. She was one of the few people in this world who manage to look as good as the adverts promise, in such skimpy, trendy kits.

  Eliza was a babe.

  On two occasions in the 1980s, when Eliza was squandering her youth kicking her heels and smoking Marlboro Lights outside the off-licence, she’d been approached and asked if she’d ever considered modelling. Which just goes to prove it does happen.

  ‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?’ she’d replied succinctly and picke
d up her school bag and dashed off to earn a sackful of GCSEs and A levels with respectable grades.

  A bright babe.

  Eliza gave the impression that she was an indigenous Londoner, born and bred. Her skinny, tapering limbs, her hip clothes, her high cheekbones and her in-depth knowledge of the music industry all conspired to lend authenticity to the illusion. But she wasn’t. She was from a small town in the Midlands, although she’d rather eat ground glass than volunteer that information. But London was in her soul. She was confident, independent, quirky and, when necessary, selfish. The only thing that set her apart from true Londoners was the fact that she could still feel overwhelmed when she saw the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, or Westminster Bridge. She never understood those people who dashed across the bridge, head down against the wind, holding their briefcases or laptops tightly to their chests, armour to protect them from the cold and bustle.

  But, then, Eliza didn’t have a briefcase.

  Eliza still remembered the thrill of arriving in the city, when she came to study at St Martin’s, aged eighteen. Then her favourite place in all of London had been Covent Garden. The smell of aromatherapy oils wafting up against the smell of coleslaw on jacket potatoes had thrilled her. The stalls selling second-hand Levis or people offering to tell your future for a fiver had struck her as chaotic, avant-garde and creative, everything her hometown was not. Now she hated helping Greg set up at the Apple Market. Covent Garden was changing. Or, rather, it wasn’t changing at all, and perhaps that was the problem. Far from being the epitome of cool, it now struck Eliza as a dismal mash of tat and trinkets. The stalls sold stuff that amazed and dismayed Eliza. Who bought it? Who’d want it in their home? Where were the dinky little eateries serving delicious apple strudel and soft nougat? All Eliza could see were homogeneous pizza chains.