‘Tomorrow,’ she muttered to herself as she stomped down the hall, ‘I shall show that prehistoric man how to sort a washing load. Honestly, what did Phyllis teach him when she was bringing him up?’
Just then their landline rang. Amy padded over to the hall table and picked it up.
‘Hello?’
As though summoned by mere thought, it was Phyllis, Justin’s mum. Of course, there was a good chance it’d be her as it must have been, oh, a full three hours since her last call.
‘Amy, is that you?’ came Phyllis’s thin, clear voice. Phyllis always asked Amy if it was her. Who else would it be? But still, Amy loved her. Having lost both her parents – her father in a car accident twelve years ago and her mother barely two years ago to breast cancer – Amy found that she often craved the older woman’s company, even though she could be a little exasperating at times. Amy glanced nervously at her watch. She really didn’t have a lot of time, but neither did she have the heart to make her excuses and hang up. So, crossing her fingers that the call would be brief, she smiled down the line and confirmed that yes, it was indeed she.
‘Can I come up, Amy dear?’
Phyllis lived in the lower-ground-floor flat in the same building, an arrangement that had come about when Phyllis announced out of the blue to Justin the year before that she was, to all intents and purposes, moving in. Amy could see why it would be lovely for her. Phyllis’s house in Kent was too big for her now she was on her own, and a number of her friends had either died or moved away. Yet it had been a bit daunting for Amy to imagine her living in the same building. But then, after the initial surprise had worn off and Amy started to think of the benefits of having Phyllis so close by – a shopping companion, a friend to chat with when Justin was away on tour, a babysitter (OK, this was thinking far too far ahead!) – she warmed to the idea and, in fact, things had turned out just fine.
‘Oh, Phyllis, I’m really sorry, but Justin and I are off out this evening,’ Amy replied. ‘Well, I mean, we’re off out separately, but whatever, we won’t be in. Can I maybe pop down and catch you tomorrow morning? Scrounge a coffee?’
Phyllis didn’t seem to hear. ‘Amy dear, you know those putty-coloured linen trousers I was telling you about a while ago?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Amy fibbed, furrowing her brow.
‘The ones in Next.’
‘Of course I do. You look great in them!’ I’m definitely busking it now, Amy thought guiltily.
‘What?’ Phyllis queried. ‘But I haven’t bought them yet. Maybe I told you they were cream, not putty? Well, more a biscuity beige, veering into a kind of taupe?’
‘Ri-ight?’
‘I’ve hidden them!’
‘You haven’t!’ Amy grimaced and rubbed her forehead. No, please – not another attempt to beat the retail system. Only last week Phyllis had scored a replacement sweater in Marks & Spencer after accidentally snipping a hole in the original one when she was cutting the label off, then distressing the hole so that it looked like it had unravelled of its own accord. ‘Phyllis, you’ll get caught one of these days!’
‘I have! They’ve only got one size twelve left, so I’ve stashed it behind the eighteens! Smaller ladies never rake that far back in those long rails, trust me.’
‘Too right they don’t,’ Amy agreed, recalling the times shop assistants had pointed her towards the petites in disdain when she dared to touch some gorgeous item of clothing in the grown-up section. ‘But why didn’t you just, well, buy them?’ she queried. Phyllis was, after all, comfortably off, having run her own bookkeeping business for over twenty years before she retired.
‘Because they’ll be in the sale next week, of course. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten? I thought the two of us could go and have a look on the first day when the shop opens at seven? Mmm? Before work? They’ll be half price!’ Then, in a lower, conspiratorial tone: ‘You can borrow them for work sometimes, if you like – oh, but then I don’t suppose we’re the same size. Hmm, well, if you wear a belt and heels, maybe?’
Amy played with the end of her dressing gown cord and murmured, ‘That’s a lovely idea, thank you.’
Phyllis’s world hadn’t always been small. It caught Amy in a deep, melancholy way that now it consisted mainly of searching for bargains, searching for her wayward cat with its prodigious vagabonding habit, and searching for reasons to ring up her only son, four floors above. And Amy, with precious few links to anyone else of Phyllis’s generation, didn’t really mind.
Justin, in the sitting room, was at last wrapping up his call. A wave of ‘yup … great … yup …’ assailed Amy’s subconscious as Phyllis talked on.
These days Phyllis wore sensible shoes. Comfortable shoes. Footgloves, nubuck loafers, Clarks easy-fit sandals, and flat pumps for her fortnightly trips to play bridge in a decaying hotel in Greenwich. Once, Amy mused, Phyllis might have worn scandalous shoes. Dancing shoes. But not now. Today, Phyllis’s shoes took her round the shops, and home again. Amy’s passion for mapping people’s lives according to their shoes had a habit of being spookily accurate.
‘Phyllis, you’re a star,’ she said. ‘I’d love to come to the Next sale with you next week. Seven o’clock it is. Uh-oh, we’ll need to be up before six.’ Amy realised that she didn’t even know which branch of Next Phyllis was talking about and, flushing with guilt, resolved to spend more time with her in future. ‘Those trousers have obviously got your name on them, and we’ll make sure you get them.’
More than anything, Amy silently wished that she were talking about shopping trips with her own mother right now, rather than dear, lonely Phyllis, as lovely as she was. But there wasn’t time to get all emotional.
‘Tell you what,’ Amy chirped, after a longish interval, ‘I’ll borrow those trousers for work if you wear my turquoise Christian Louboutin wedges on Christmas Day. OK? Deal or no deal?’
Phyllis chuckled on the other end of the line, just as Justin emerged into the hall, pocketing his mobile. He sought Amy out, sliding his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzling his face into her collarbone.
‘I’ve never known such a girl for shoes!’ Phyllis laughed down the line. ‘High heels? Do you want to send me to my grave?’
Both women felt the full force of the dreadful pause that followed. Unwelcome tears pricked Amy’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Amy,’ Phyllis said after a few moments. ‘How clumsy of me.’
‘It’s fine, really,’ Amy gulped as Justin, listening in, hugged her tight.
‘Anyway, you have a lovely night, all right?’ Phyllis went on.
‘I will,’ Amy whispered. ‘Thanks.’
‘And tell that son of mine he must be working far too hard if he’s leaving you to go out on your own rather than taking you somewhere nice.’
‘I hear you, Ma,’ Justin mumbled, from deep in the hollow above Amy’s collarbone.
‘Bye, Phyllis,’ Amy said, not trusting herself to say more.
‘Goodbye, dear.’
Replacing the receiver, Amy wriggled out of Justin’s embrace and turned to face him. She clasped his shoulders, took a deep breath, and eased him into an upright position, fixing him with the sternest glower she could muster. Justin couldn’t help giving a little snort of