The Other Woman's Shoes

by Adele Parks

  ‘I have to,’ insisted Martha.

  ‘Why do you have to?’

  Martha thought about how her biggest ambition had been seeing Eliza married so that Maisie could be a flower girl and Mathew a page. That wasn’t her ambition now. Her ambition had changed. She’d like to learn how to snowboard. She’d like to see an Elvis-impersonator, preferably in Vegas. She’d like to see the tulip fields in Holland. Her idea of a good time on a Saturday had been weeding the garden, then finding time to de-scale the showerhead before she did the weekly shop. Now she took the children for lunch in the Bluebird restaurant and blew a fortune in Miss Sixty. She now wore a toe-ring and was considering having her belly button pierced. Jack wasn’t responsible for all of that, but he was part of it. Since meeting Jack, Martha hadn’t become a better person or a different person, she’d become herself. It felt right wearing hipster jeans and steel-heel boots. Better than neat suits and court shoes had ever felt. She thought she was just at the beginning of something, and she didn’t want it to finish yet. ‘Because my life is better with him in it than out of it.’

  ‘You’re going to make a fool of yourself. He doesn’t want to know, and he’s going to find your pursuing him embarrassing.’

  ‘Maybe, Baby.’

  Maybe, Baby, maybe, Baby. Eliza repeated the phrase in her head, ‘What kind of talk is that?’ she demanded. ‘Jack-shit-talk?’

  But Martha didn’t reply, she’d already rung off.

  Martha called Jack’s mobile. It went through to voicemail, but she didn’t leave a message. She feared that she was only going to get one shot at this, and she didn’t want to blow it by mumbling something stupid to his answering service. And experience showed that there was no chance of her saying anything sensible or accurate to the answering service – she didn’t even do that if she was leaving a meter reading with the gas board.

  Five minutes later her phone trilled; the reverberation thrilled like a vibrator. ‘Jack Mobile’ flashed up on her screen.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’ He sounded hound dog.

  Guilt, probably, thought Martha. ‘Hi,’ she said again because she couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘Hi.’ Evidently neither could he.

  ‘You said that.’

  ‘So did you.’

  ‘Well, about last night, I was really pissed off.’ Martha was finding it extremely easy to use expletives these days.

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘You made me feel cheap, unwanted and used. Like a shag, not a naked friend, not any kind of friend at all.’

  ‘I have no idea how I did that,’ said Jack slowly.

  ‘Because I’m not a shag, you can’t just come round after the pubs kick you out. I’m over that. I’m older than that. I deserve more than that. And, OK, so I sent you a Crunchie bar, and that may mean more than the fact that I know you have a sweet tooth, but you could at least have called and said you thought things were going too quickly. Just ignoring me and hoping I’d go away was the coward’s way out.’ Martha finally paused for breath.

  ‘Crunchie bar. Way out? What are you talking about? I explained about Philip’s birthday party. I said I wouldn’t be round until later.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said that I was previously committed and wouldn’t be able to make it for ages. I said it was a duff idea to hook up, but you insisted that I still come round.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘If my memory serves me correctly, you were very insistent.’

  Somewhere grey, Martha began to remember the conversation they had had on Wednesday evening.

  ‘Oh fuck, bloody, bloody, bloody fuck,’ said Martha. She thought that summed up the situation. She had said that she was fine with it. ‘Go to the party, we’ll meet later on,’ she’d said. She started to giggle, part relief, part embarrassment.

  ‘I think maybe we had that discussion when you’d had one or two vinos,’ suggested Jack.

  Martha could hear relief in his voice too; which made her want to punch the air. She didn’t bother denying the vinos, it was true, she was so useless at drinking.

  Fuck, fuck. What female fuckwittage.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ said Martha, because she was. She really, really was. All that torment for nothing. ‘I’d totally forgotten that was what we’d agreed. I thought it was because of the Crunchie bars.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you were – sort of – put off. That I’d…’ Martha didn’t really know what to say. It seemed so silly. She seemed so silly.

  ‘Oh yeah, the Crunchie bars. Very funny. Thanks.’

  ‘You liked them?’

  ‘I loved them. You make me laugh, Little Miss E.’

  She knew it. She knew it. This world was a good world. She didn’t have to be frightened. There were all sorts of possibilities out there. She should have trusted him. She should have believed, and hoped, and trusted, and cared, and not tarred him with the same brush, because he wasn’t the same canvas, and he did deserve that respect and chance. So did the world. Martha wasn’t going to be bitter.

  ‘You’re right, I remember now. God, I’m mortified. I am so sorry.’

  ‘I was upset, girl. What was all that about last night? Why did you dump me? What did I do wrong?’

  ‘I’d forgotten. Oh God, I’m sorry.’ He thought she’d dumped him.

  ‘I’m glad you’re back. Lovely Little Miss E.’ Jack was smiling; Martha could hear it in his voice as he instantly forgave her. As he understood her frailties and insecurities. ‘Martha, there’s something you need to remember. There’s only one thing you need to remember. I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. In fact, I’m going to do my best to make you happy and make sure you have as much fun as possible. I’m very straightforward. If I change my mind, I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t just not turn up.’

  And Martha believed him. Despite the popular fiction of her day advising her otherwise.

  ‘The thing is, I like you in my life. My life is better with you in it than out of it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking all day, too,’ said Martha.

  36

  For the first time in years, Martha felt excited about Valentine’s Day. Giggly to her core. Would he send her a card? He probably would, he’d mentioned Valentine’s Day to her a couple of times, so he must be planning on celebrating it. She couldn’t believe that either, that there were men in Britain who actually remembered February 14th and didn’t need prompting. In all the shops where Martha had browsed through the cards, chocolate kisses and chocolate willies, where she’d bought heart-shape sparklers and seriously considered buying a velvet eye mask, she’d seen other women browsing, not men. It was women who pondered, considered and finally purchased the cards. Women who fingered the pretty little boxes that held candies but offered dreams.

  Whilst selecting her Valentine’s gift Martha had fun chatting to the other female shoppers. They compared merchandise and swapped stories as they looked at the displays of red crêpe paper and pink tissue roses; the women had nothing in common other than the fun and expectancy. Would he buy her a present? She doubted it would be flowers or chocolates; in fact, she’d be a bit disappointed if it was. It would be a bit predictable, which would make the fact that she’d had her pubes shaved into a heart shape and dyed red a tiny bit embarrassing.

  What a laugh she’d had at the beautician’s. She remembered the first time she’d heard of anyone having their pubic hair waxed into a shape. An arrow, if she remembered correctly. Martha had been horrified. ‘How silly! How frivolous!’ She’d said so to Eliza, but Eliza had surprised her and said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I once had mine shaped into a heart and that was quite fun.’

  At the time, Martha had seen this simply as further evidence of her sister’s status as a changeling. Now Martha thought a heart, just as Eliza had described it, sounded quite fun.

  ‘New twist on wearing your heart on your sleeve,’ commented Amy, Martha’
s beautician. She hardly smirked at all, which was good of her, since prior to this, the most outrageous thing Martha had ever requested was a colour on her toe nails. It was Amy who suggested the red dye.

  Martha had huge fun choosing Valentine cards and gifts. She couldn’t quite remember Valentine’s last year. She was sure that Michael must have given her a card. They always gave cards. They handed them over with the cornflakes at the breakfast table. But when was the last time they’d done something really special for Valentine’s Day? She couldn’t remember the last time they’d shared champagne, or a meal, or a bed, especially because it was Valentine’s Day. Michael had always thought that the whole event was very commercial; the only winners were the card and chocolate manufacturers. And Martha had always agreed with him.

  Publicly.

  But she did remember the thrill when, as a girl of about fourteen, she’d received six Valentine cards, more than anyone else in her class. She’d walked on air for a month.

  In a Stalinesque manner, Martha had now rewritten history. With a week’s perspective, ‘the Crunchie Debacle’ was now fondly looked back upon as a roaring success. Jack and Martha’s first misunderstanding had, conversely, brought them closer. Without being conscious of it, they were building a bank of shared experiences. They had happy days going to the cinema, playing with the children, chatting, reading, listening to music, and wonderful nights sharing a bed, a pizza and a pot of bio yogurt; now they even had a shared misunderstanding. The misunderstanding wasn’t consequential enough for either party to hold an actual gripe, but it was important enough for both to realize that they could hurt each other – seriously – therefore they had to be careful not to. Couples had misunderstandings.

  The rewriting of history was so complete that Martha convinced herself that the indisputable success of delivering the Crunchie package to Jack’s office demanded that she do something similar for Valentine’s Day. Similar, but on a grander scale. She didn’t share her plan with Eliza, as she knew that Eliza would make disparaging remarks and Martha could do without the discouragement. Recently Martha had started to question whether Eliza really did know so much about men, romance and all the associated matters of the heart. From where Martha was standing, Eliza seemed to get as much wrong and as much right as the next woman. In Martha’s considered opinion, not that Eliza ever asked for Martha’s considered opinion, Eliza had made a mistake in leaving Greg. A grave mistake. She hadn’t seemed happy since. So Martha didn’t tell anyone her plans for Valentine’s Day. She simply did what seemed right to her.

  The reception area of Jack’s office was intimidating. It was one of those places that needed and used nothing but space to tell you just how trendy it was: white walls, white marble floors, white lilies in a white vase perched on a walnut reception desk. The desk was high, almost at Martha’s chest level.

  ‘I need your help.’ Martha smiled her broadest smile at the burly-looking guy on reception. She was grateful that the receptionist wasn’t a beautiful, skinny, starlet type. That would have been crippling. It was lucky that she had come at lunchtime when the regular receptionist would be on her break and the security guard was in charge.

  ‘Erm, how into Valentine’s Day are you?’ she asked, giggling and blushing at once. Being careful to flutter her eyelashes extravagantly. What was it that Eliza had said? ‘Practice flirting with everyone. It will make you a better flirt and everyone will be your friend.’

  The burly guy was smiling, at least with his eyes. He was enjoying Martha’s embarrassment and her flirtatiousness.

  ‘I’d like you to send up this card and pressie, and then send up these cards, drip-fed through the after—’

  The beautiful receptionist emerged from nowhere. She was carrying two cups of steaming coffee. She passed one to the security guard and then looked at Martha. ‘Can I help you?’ she sang pleasantly.

  ‘Erm…’ Now the embarrassment was tenfold. Martha wondered if she should make a run for it, or whether she had already been recorded on CCTV somewhere.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I need your help,’ Martha repeated. She managed the smile, but really couldn’t bring herself to bat the lashes. She explained once again that she wanted one card and pressie to be delivered first, with strict instructions that the card must be opened before the present, and then the other three cards needed to be delivered at intervals throughout the day. The first card read ‘I wanted to take the opportunity of this special day to say something meaningful…’ Then the pressie was a Thorntons chocolate heart, upon which she’d had iced an anagram of ‘something meaningful’: ‘I shag fun men longtime.’ She hoped he’d get it. The other three cards were all in different styles, and she’d written different messages with different pens. The messages ranged from the raunchy to the romantic. Martha was really pleased with herself.

  The receptionist warmed to Martha and beamed.

  ‘Er, they’re for–’ started Martha.

  ‘Jack Hope,’ smiled the receptionist, revealing that although it was an office of over 300 employees, most of whom were male, as far as the gagging-for-it female population of West London was concerned, there was only one real option. ‘Are you the one who rang earlier this morning?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘No.’ Martha managed to continue wearing her smile whilst she begged God to strike her down with a flash of lightning right there and then. The receptionist looked mortified; the burly security guard looked amused. He was too old to be Jack Hope, but, hell, he wished he had at least sired him.

  ‘No, that wasn’t me. I’m one of a number.’ Martha tried to ease the receptionist’s discomfort, she was very used to making everyone else feel OK. ‘Don’t worry, I know the score.’ She tried to sound more hip than she was feeling. It was becoming increasingly difficult to blank out the other naked friends. ‘That’s why I’ve bought so many cards. I want to give him the thrill of loads of women, without actually having to have loads of women.’ Suddenly her romantic plan seemed desperate and ludicrous. ‘I am going out with him tonight,’ she added gormlessly.

  The receptionist nodded pityingly. Martha realized it was probably wisest to shut up. She didn’t owe these people an explanation, even if they were lovely people.

  ‘Err, so who was this other caller this morning? D’you have any ideas?’ Martha then inquired, blowing her cool 100 per cent.

  ‘She didn’t sound very nice,’ said the receptionist kindly, immediately forgetting that she’d initially thought the caller and Martha were one and the same. ‘She didn’t know his schedule. She wanted to know if he’d be in the office today, or whether he’d be in the West End. He’s–’

  ‘In the office,’ said Martha. She knew. She knew he was in the office because he’d already called her several times that day. This mystery Valentine caller was nothing to worry about. Martha was so used to trying to reassure people that she wanted to put the receptionist and security guard at their ease, but then sensibly decided against it. ‘Have a nice day,’ she said instead.

  ‘You too,’ smiled the receptionist.

  37

  It was a long day. The longest. Martha took the children to the park and the shops, and they had lunch out.

  At two minutes past two, Jack called. ‘Thanks for the chocolate heart, Little Miss E.’

  ‘What chocolate heart?’ Martha feigned ignorance, as convention demanded.

  ‘I know it was from you,’ he insisted.

  ‘Why? Can’t any of the other women you sleep with spell?’ teased Martha.

  Jack laughed. ‘You’re very funny. That anagram thing, very witty. You’re the most fabulous woman I’ve ever met.’

  And then he hung up.

  Hung up!

  He’d said she was fabulous – the most fabulous – and then he’d hung up, before she had a chance to reply or react.

  OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod.

  He thought she was ‘the most fabulous’ woman he’d ever met.

  Martha walked on air for the rest of
the day, which she spent in the lingerie department of John Lewis. Jack had texted her and asked if she would ‘indulge him as it was Valentine’s Day and wear cute underwear’. Martha was thrilled, flattered and petrified in equal parts. Thrilled and flattered that Jack believed that she was the type of woman to have cute underwear, and petrified because she wasn’t that type of woman at all, and so obviously she’d have to go and buy something new.

  Martha assumed cute underwear meant stockings, suspenders, a lacy bra and knickers. She wasn’t going to entertain the idea of crotchless or anything kinky like that; she wouldn’t manage to keep a straight face. Besides, she wasn’t absolutely certain as to whether crotchless knickers really existed, or whether they were just a figment of the imagination of the type of man who read the Sun. She supposed a visit to Ann Summers would put her mind at rest one way or the other, but she couldn’t pluck up the courage, not on such short notice. Martha had never worn stockings before. No one had ever taken the time to ask her to bother. Possibly because she had always voiced the opinion that stockings were ludicrous. She was the type of woman who slept in pyjamas, for goodness sake; it was a significant jump from that to Agent Provocateur lingerie.

  She decided to buy black. Red was out of the question. Well, at least first time round. Martha didn’t think it was an unrealistic idea to introduce red at a later date. How much lace before she looked like a saloon girl? And did you wear the belt around your waist or hips? Under or over your panties? The picture on the packet showed the belt over, but then would you be able to go to the loo? Then what to wear over the top of ‘cute underwear’? Trousers were out of the question; a little black dress seemed too dressy. In the end, Martha chose a black T-shirt and a beige leather skirt, not too tight, but tight enough, with black knee-high boots.

  At seven o’clock Mrs Evergreen knocked on Martha’s door. Martha had arranged for her mother to babysit because obviously Eliza had a date.