The Other Woman's Shoes (7 page)

The sisters split up. Eliza wanted to stock her cupboards without Martha seeing the full extent of her neglect, and Martha wanted to buy the food for that night’s dinner party and read the headlines of the quality papers.

Martha dawdled in the aisle with magazines and newspapers and started to read the tawdry and tantalizing headlines of the gossipy mags. Were they true, she wondered, or did people make them up so that other people, people like her for instance, felt dissatisfied and provincial? Not that Martha wanted one of those messy lives. She had never broken a rule, let alone a law, in her life. She had never parked in a disabled-driver space, and she paid her TV licence by direct debit. She was a law-abiding, upstanding citizen.

Eliza wondered if there was a single person in the whole world who had never stolen anything at all. She asked herself this question as she watched a well-dressed man in his forties slip a can of furniture polish under his coat. What an odd choice of booty. Eliza decided not to report him to the burly-looking security guard; it was probably a
mid-life crisis thing, so why bother? Besides which, the burly-looking security guard elicited absolutely no sympathy in Eliza’s heart; he looked bored and aggressive. Whereas the man with the furniture polish now in his inside pocket looked excited and pathetic. Eliza started to list mentally all the things she’d ever stolen: biscuits and pens from work; as well as Tippex, paper clips, Post-it Notes. As a student she’d regularly raided her flatmates’ kitchen cupboards. She’d avoided her council tax for three consecutive years. She’d never paid Tube fares when she visited London as a teenager; she could afford them but it was a thrill to jump the barrier, part of the holiday experience. Eliza started to feel a bit like a cross between Ronnie Biggs and Bonnie-and-Clyde, so she pursued a different train of thought.

Chioca, what the fuck was it? Apparently, it was ‘tasty waxy red tubers, originally cultivated by the ancient lncas’ – or so the packet said. Eliza looked for the cooking instructions; she was none the wiser. ‘Do not need peeling and have a slightly sweet taste; ideal roasted.’ Eliza shrugged. She put a bottle of organic balsamic vinegar and a bag of wheat-free flour into her trolley. She had a vague idea that you could splash balsamic vinegar on salads, but she wasn’t sure if it would work with chips; she would never open the wheat-free flour but the packaging was very attractive and would look good on Greg’s shelves.

Bored by her own ignorance, Eliza headed towards the bakery, drawn by the smell of freshly baked bread and sugary doughnuts. She decided to ditch her idea of buying rye bread and honey to be served with prunes. She was going to buy some bacon and eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms.
She was going to go back to Greg’s flat and cook a massive fry-up and then they could spend the afternoon making love. She’d put all ideas of pension policies and mortgages out of her head for now.

9

They did not spend their afternoon making love. When Eliza returned from Martha’s she found the flat empty. There was no note to say where he’d gone. Of course not. To think of writing a note, Greg would have had to… well, think, for a start. A note would assume a measure of responsibility way beyond Greg’s capabilities. Eliza didn’t bother cooking up the eggs and bacon; she had no stomach for a brunch for one.

Eliza flung open the windows in an attempt to rid the flat of the various stenches of their lives: from fish and chip wrappers, stale tobacco, sweaty clothes and trainers. She couldn’t help but think of the aromas that drifted around Martha’s home: freshly brewed coffee, clean clothes, shampooed babies. Eliza felt grubby. She went to the bathroom with the intention of removing some of the grime that seemed to be a permanent symptom of her lifestyle. She pushed the door with some caution – the bathroom was never a pretty sight; even spiders objected to being in there on grounds of health and safety. Wet towels abandoned on the floor had obviously reproduced in her absence and were now forming a barricade. There was a tide mark around the bath that suggested Eliza and Greg worked down t’pit. Various ointments and unguents had mysteriously splurged from their tubes and tubs. They oozed across the sink, mirror, tiles and floor, as though
they too were trying to effect an evacuation from this hole of Calcutta to a more sanitary environment. Her feet stuck to the lino, there was no loo roll, the blind didn’t open.

Eliza sat on the edge of the bath and cried. When she stopped crying, she started packing.

‘Hi, Babe,’ Greg called from the hall. Well, from the sitting room really, as the front door more or less opened into the sitting room, which smudged into the kitchen, which was barely divided from the bedroom. Only the bathroom was a separate entity in Greg’s flat, and even then the door was always open. Eliza was not going to live in a studio flat for the rest of her days.

She flung another pile of Ts into her open suitcase. She heard the front door slam, the TV come on, and the pshushhh of a can of beer being opened. She checked the clock; it was half past four in the afternoon. She knew Greg was now lying on the futon (with his trainers no doubt muddying the throw). His jacket would be on the floor. Greg didn’t actually fling it there: his clothes seemed simply to drop off him and land in untidy heaps. Eliza listened to him flick through the channels, horse racing, documentary, rugby, soap omnibus. Greg paused at the
Tweenies
and shouted, ‘The Tweenie Clock, where will it stop?’ He did a great impression of Jake. Eliza would have thought this adorable if they’d had children, but they didn’t, so, as it was, she thought it was stupid. Finally Greg settled on MTV. She knew he’d be scratching his stomach and wondering what to wear to the club tonight.

What a man, she sighed.

Eliza continued to pack her clothes. She didn’t really know what to take. She’d noticed that whenever anyone
ever left anyone on TV they always packed one neat case. How was that possible? Eliza had already filled a rucksack, a suitcase, a vanity case and three bin liners. She hadn’t even opened her summer wardrobe. Perhaps she didn’t need that black roll neck – she had packed two others, she could come back for it. Eliza sat on the bed and stroked the duvet. Why was she worrying about what to pack when what she should be worrying about was what to say to Greg? She rubbed her hand across their duvet again; it felt cool and smooth, nice. It was just a cotton thing from Debenhams, nothing particularly special, so why did touching it make her stomach lurch? She lay down to smell it. It smelt of Dog and Greg.

‘What are you doing?’

Eliza jerked upright at the sound of Greg’s voice; he stood in the doorway smoking a cigarette. She hated him smoking in the bedroom.

‘Smelling the bed.’

‘I can see that. I mean, what are these bags about? Are you feng shui-ing your wardrobe?’ Greg was trying, and failing, not to sound amused. He was very aware of Eliza’s constant (and doomed) quest for a neater, more efficient, more financially successful self. He really didn’t get it. He didn’t get her compulsion to buy every book on the market that dangled the carrot of an improved self. She didn’t need improving. She was pretty damn fly as far as he was concerned. If he were squeezed to name a fault in her, he might say that she was a bit too hung up on appearances, but that only manifested itself in this quirky habit of buying in to feng shui, self-improvement, self-help crap.

‘No. I’m not feng shui-ing.’

‘Car boot sale?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t tell me, you’re running away with the guy from the corner shop?’ laughed Greg. It was an ongoing joke that the guy in their local shop really fancied Eliza; he was ninety if he was a day. Still, occasionally, the infatuation had been useful when Greg had needed something on tick. In one swift movement, Greg threw himself on to the bed and the bags off it. The clothes spilt out on to the floor. Greg cupped Eliza’s breast and started to kiss her leg through her sweat pants. He hadn’t even bothered to stub out his fag.

‘Look at the mess you’ve made,’ complained Eliza. ‘Everything will be creased now.’ In fact the clothes hadn’t been ironed; they both thought ironing was a tedious waste of time and, besides, Eliza had thrown things into the case in a more than haphazard manner. Greg knew all this and so didn’t bother to defend himself. Instead he increased the intensity of his kisses and tried to edge Eliza’s T-shirt up above her bra.

Eliza broke away. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘How can that be?’ The question was genuine.

‘I can’t just switch it on like that,’ lied Eliza. In all honesty, she found it almost impossible to resist Greg and he could always just switch her on like that, by kissing her leg, stroking her hair, staring at her, eating spaghetti – lots of ways, actually. Right now, that annoyed her intensely.

‘What’s up, chick?’ asked Greg as he gently thumbed Eliza’s left nipple.

‘Where’ve you been?’ This question was asked as a stalling tactic rather than from any genuine curiosity.

‘At Bob’s, jamming. We’ve been doing something new – hang on, I’ll play it for you.’ Greg jumped up and went back through to the sitting room to grab his saxophone. He stood his lit cigarette vertically on the dressing table.

Eliza simmered with irritation.

He started to play.

Fucking treacherous toe, tapping away as though she were enjoying his music. And her finger gently counting out the beat on her thigh. Heresy. So he looked good and sounded even better. Eliza had seen Greg perform on countless occasions. She always felt a thrill of pride that he made people stop and listen, that he had that power to entertain. And although she wished he didn’t smoke, she had to admit that the smoke looked beautiful reflected back from his eyes and the saxophone.

So?

It was so childish to feel his beat and want to follow him as though he were the Pied fucking Piper. Eliza was so angry with herself that all she wanted to do was storm out of the flat that very moment. She wanted to leave behind her the woeful, soulful notes that were trying to climb inside her brain.

‘I’m leaving you, Greg.’

Greg stopped playing. ‘What?’

‘I’m leaving you,’ Eliza repeated. She sounded more together than was actually the case. But then a thousand-piece jigsaw was more together than Eliza was.

‘Why?’ He felt as though she’d punched him. He put down the saxophone and crouched by Eliza.

‘This isn’t what I want,’ she said.

‘What isn’t?’ he asked, genuinely bemused.

‘This lifestyle. I feel’ – Eliza had been practising this speech all afternoon, but was suddenly stuck for words –‘I feel stifled.’

‘Stifled?’ Greg didn’t get it. Their life together was very creative. They often wrote lyrics together for his songs. Only the other evening they’d been bathing together and scribbled one on the bathroom wall. He’d thought that was so cool. They read together, and discussed books, gigs, gags, films and clothes. They had great, adventurous sex, and no one had that after four years. What did she mean, stifled? ‘What do you mean, stifled?’

‘I don’t think I’m all I could be. I want more.’

‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked reasonably. She probably didn’t mean she was leaving. She was probably being over dramatic. It didn’t sound like a dumping speech. But then he’d never been dumped before. His past chicks had always just been there and then not been there. It hadn’t been a big deal. But he hadn’t thought Eliza would ever not be there. Thinking about it now, he couldn’t imagine it. If he could, he knew it would be a really big deal.

‘It’s not you, it’s this lifestyle,’ Eliza tried to explain.

‘You’re not going out with a lifestyle.’

‘You can say that again,’ Eliza sighed. She hadn’t wanted to get into a big debate. She hadn’t imagined being questioned or made to explain herself, she hadn’t thought Greg had that sort of energy. ‘What’s chioca?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘It’s a root vegetable. It’s the type of ingredient that Martha uses when she’s cooking for dinner parties. We don’t even know what it is!’

‘Aren’t we well suited?’ Greg’s flip comment went down like a lead parachute. Eliza’s eyes blazed with anger but he honestly did not know what was making her so furious. ‘You’re dumping me because I don’t know about some spice or other?’ asked Greg, amazed.

‘It’s a
vegetable
, and yes… well, no, not exactly. We don’t have dinner parties,’ she declared.

‘Fran and Andy ate round here just the other night.’

‘A fish and chip supper without plates is not a dinner party.’ Eliza was surprised to hear she was shouting.

‘OK, OK, we’ll have plates next time.’

Eliza wasn’t placated. She stood up and hauled her case back on to the bed. Frantically, she crammed her clothes back inside. What was wrong with them? They seemed to have metamorphosed into tightly coiled springs. Everything she packed jumped straight out again. With determination she pushed knickers inside of shoes, weighed down slippery, flimsy dresses with heavy jumpers.

‘I want matching crockery, I want shiny cutlery, I want private health care and travel insurance. I want a mortgage, not a rent book. I want dinner parties, I want to visit supermarkets and B&Q.’

‘You can’t be serious. B&Q is always full of angry, resentful couples,’ argued Greg.

‘I want to be an angry, resentful couple,’ yelled Eliza without really thinking what she was asking for.

‘Well, you’ve got that at least, chick.’ Greg tried to smile – he wanted to appear flip and fearless; he was sure he sounded bitter and sad.

‘No. We’re not a couple, Greg, that’s what I’m trying to say. I want a partner, not a boyfriend.’

Greg started to roar. ‘Now I know you’re having a laugh. You’ve always hated the word
part-ner
.’ He said it in the stupid voice they both always used whenever they said the word and with the ‘carrot-up-the-bum’ expression they usually adopted when introduced to someone who insisted on referring to their lover as their partner. ‘You don’t want a
part-ner
. I don’t believe you.’

Eliza stopped rolling garments into tight angry balls and froze. It was true she didn’t want a
part-ner
. She seriously doubted her ability ever to say the word out loud without the aid of fury or a silly expression. But she did want security, stability and respectability. She wanted to own furniture that wasn’t so scanky that it had to be covered by tie-dye throws (which in point of fact were also scanky). She wanted to collect Denby pottery, not DVDs. She wanted stacks of Tupperware, smart pans with matching lids, and a fridge without the magnets arranged to spell rude words. She wanted all the things Martha had. And, most of all, she wanted a husband.