‘Those emails are all the explanation I need. And to think, I sat at the table and ate dinner with you two! Honestly, Amy, was it all a lie? All that “Oh, I’ll never cheat on you, I’m not Natasha” bull?’
‘No!’ Amy wailed.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You have to, it’s true!’
‘I’m going now; I’ve got a gig to sort out. Don’t call back.’
‘Justin, wait!’
‘Goodbye, Amy.’
She thought he’d gone. She held her breath, waiting for the click on the other end of the line.
Instead, this:
‘Oh, and, Amy, your shoes?’
She had temporarily forgotten all about her shoes.
‘Y … yes?’
‘I sold them.’
What? It may have been a dodgy phone line, but had she just heard that correctly?
‘I sold the lot on eBay while you were away in the Isle of Wight. Or, come to think of it, while you were away who-knows-where. Could’ve been the Isle of Wight, could’ve been Moscow, for all I—’
‘YOU SOLD MY SHOES?’ Amy had never shrieked so loudly in her entire life.
‘Yup,’ came the calm reply. ‘You didn’t even notice that I’d been beavering away on my computer most of last week, did you?’
‘But—’
‘Huh, you were probably too busy dreaming about Sergei. Sheez, what a name! But yes, the bidding went on all last week. It was very decent of you to have stored a photo of each pair on your hard drive – made my job a whole lot easier.’
‘You utter—’
‘And thanks, as well, for going away at the weekend, to wherever it was you actually went to – and giving me peace to parcel them all up and get them posted out.’ Then, after a pause, ‘And to arrange to get the locks changed later this morning.’
‘You know how much they meant to me,’ Amy breathed, not knowing or caring if her words were audible or not.
There was the merest pause at the other end of the line. Then Justin replied, ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’
Now, at last, Amy was beaten. Robbed of words, of responses, even of anger. She closed her eyes and let the hot tears course down her cheeks.
‘They’ve all gone, Amy, to the four corners of the earth.’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Goodbye, Amy. Have a nice life.’
‘Isle of Wight wellies again, Amy?’ Jesminder said, raising an elegant eyebrow as she glanced beneath Amy’s desk later that morning.
Amy was on autopilot. She’d almost not come in to work at all – not having any shoes to wear playing only a small part of that decision. But then in a pocket-sized flash of defiance she’d pulled on the wellies she’d worn all weekend at the sodden festival and trudged in to the office. Besides, the four walls of the lonely apartment were suffocating her.
And work would be a distraction. She could immerse herself in the cyberworld of Internet travel – and life at aclickaway.com was always busy – then before she knew it the horrible, horrible day would be over. Plus, she’d be able to talk to Jesminder and Debbie. Hopefully get some advice.
Then, when she got back to the apartment, it would all have been a horrible mistake. Justin would give her time to explain everything, and he would apologise, and so would she, and her shoes would be safely back in her cupboard where they belonged, not on their way all around the world, as though blasted from a scattergun.
Jesminder drifted away, frowning, as Amy remained silent. She worked in finance on the floor above Amy, not far from Debbie, who was in the sales section.
It was impossible to concentrate. Amy found herself veering between wanting to howl with anguish, or else leap to her feet in fury, go to track Justin down, in her wellies, and force him to see sense.
But putting aside her wounded feelings about Justin, she was full of a kind of bewildered wonder at how badly the loss of her shoes was affecting her. They were only shoes, for heaven’s sake – she could easily put in an insurance claim and buy more! But somehow that missed the point. Rightly or wrongly, Amy loved her shoe collection; depended on it, even. No longer having her shoe collection was like losing a personal diary that one had been keeping faithfully year after year, recording the events, the people, the emotions of the time. They were her private history, the blocks on which her memories were built. Remove them and she was in danger of collapse.
Worse had been to follow. It hadn’t dawned on Amy until an hour or so after her discovery of the missing shoes that Justin had even gone so far as to get rid of her most precious possession of all – her mother’s ballet shoes. The only pair Amy owned, stored in that plain little box, the one without a photo on the outside. And Justin, the snake, wasn’t answering his phone now, so she couldn’t find out where he’d sent them. But anyway, who would bid for an old pair of dancing shoes? Then Amy’s heart sank as the answer thumped right back out at her. The Internet was crawling with souvenir hunters. There would be ballet aficionados all over the world who would jeté at the chance to pick up a small piece of Royal Ballet history – the shoes once worn by Hannah Powell, Britain’s most beautiful Odette.
And meanwhile, as the shoes winged their way to some nameless, faceless, thoughtless, tactless, blameless buyer, there was a young woman, wearing yellow wellington boots that smelled faintly of beer-soaked mud, sitting distraught behind a desk at aclickaway.com, trying to make sense of her monthly target sheet, who had just been robbed of her most precious link to her dead mother.
Just then, on her screen, her Instant Messenger sprang into life. It was Jesminder, from upstairs:
Jes: U ok, Amy?
Then, from the other end of the building:
Debs: Jes tells me ur wearing ur wellies to work. Have u finally flipped?
Amy forced half a grin, and tapped her response:
Amy: How long have u got?
Debs: How long is the so-called ‘working’ day?
Jes: Only tell us if u want to, Amy, we don’t want to pry.
Debs: Speak for urself, matey.
Amy took a deep breath, and began to type.
Amy: Justin has accused me of having an affair. He wants me out of the flat and he’s changed the locks. And he’s sold all my shoes on eBay when I was away with you guys at the weekend. He’s up north and won’t answer the phone. It’s over.
Debs: Ur having a laugh.
Jes: Unbelievable!
Amy: I know.
Debs: What a total creep.
Jes: Are u going to go?
Amy: I don’t know.
Debs: So is it true?
Jes: Debs, leave it.
Amy: Is what true?
Debs: R u having an affair?
Jes: