And then Miriam Price looks down. “Oh, my God, I love your shoes,” she exclaims.

  Sam follows Miriam’s gaze down to her feet.

  “They are absolutely gorgeous.”

  “Actually they’re n—” Sam stops. “They’re great, aren’t they?”

  “Can I see?” Miriam points at them. She holds the shoe that Sam removes, lifts it up under the lights and examines it from all angles with the reverence one would apply to a work of art, or a fine bottle of wine. “Louboutin, right?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Is it vintage? He’s made nothing like this for at least five years. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it at all.”

  “Uh . . . uh, yes. Yes, it is.”

  Miriam runs her finger down the heel. “He’s such a craftsman. You know, I once queued for four hours just to buy a pair of his shoes. How crazy is that?”

  “Oh . . . not crazy at all,” says Sam. “Not where I’m concerned.”

  Miriam weighs it in her hands, examines it a moment longer, then hands it back almost reluctantly. “You can always tell a proper shoe. My daughter doesn’t believe me, but you can tell so much about someone from what they wear on their feet. I always dress from the ground up. These old things are Prada. I just felt like I needed an on-the-ground kind of a day so I’m wearing flats but, honestly, looking at those I’m overcome with heel envy.”

  “I tell my daughter the exact same thing!” The words are out of Sam’s mouth before she even knows what she’s saying.

  “Mine just wears trainers the whole time. I don’t think they understand the totemic power of shoes.”

  “Oh, mine too. Enormous Dr. Marten’s boots. And they really don’t,” says Sam, who is not sure she understands the meaning of “totemic.”

  “I tell you what, Sam. Can I call you Sam? I hate negotiating like this. Shall we speak next week? Let’s the two of us thrash something out away from the boys. I’m sure we can reach a deal that works for both of us.”

  “That would be great,” Sam says. She wrestles the shoe back onto her foot, and takes a breath. “So . . . can I say we have an agreement in principle?”

  “Oh, I think so.” Miriam’s smile is warm, conspiratorial. “I have to ask . . . is that jacket Chanel?”

  four

  Nisha sits in the depths of a plush rose-colored sofa in the foyer of the Bentley Hotel, a towering arrangement of birds of paradise in a torso-sized vase beside her, her cellphone pressed to her ear. Around her a few guests cast glances at the woman in the dressing-gown when her voice lifts over the sound of the chatter.

  “Carl, this is ridiculous. I’m in the foyer. Come down and let’s talk.” The message ends. She redials immediately. “Carl, I’m going to keep calling until you pick up. This is not the way to treat your wife of eighteen years.” The message ends and she redials again.

  “Nisha?”

  “Carl! I—Charlotte? Charlotte? No. He’s forwarding his calls. I want to talk to Carl. Please put him on.”

  “I’m so sorry, but I can’t do that, Nisha.”

  Charlotte’s voice is as calm as if she featured on a meditation app. There is something new in her tone that makes Nisha bristle too, a faint air of superiority. And then she registers: Oh, my God, she called me Nisha.

  “Mr. Cantor is in a meeting and has issued direct instructions that he can’t be disturbed.”

  “No. You get him out of the meeting. I don’t care if he doesn’t want to be disturbed. I’m his wife. Do you hear me? Charlotte? . . . Charlotte?”

  The line has gone dead. The girl actually put the phone down on her.

  When she looks up, the people on nearby sofas are staring at her. She stares back, until their heads swivel away, in a flurry of raised eyebrows and murmurs. Her whole body is suddenly flooded with cortisol, and she might actually want to kill someone, or run somewhere, or scream. She is not entirely sure which. Nisha looks down and realizes she cannot get through this wearing a cheap robe and flip-flops. She thinks of her clothes upstairs in the penthouse and feels an almost maternal anxiety that she cannot get to them. Her clothes.

  She glances around and sees a concession store across the foyer. She shoves her phone into her pocket and walks over. The clothes are predictably awful and hideously overpriced. Nisha rifles quickly through the rails, pulling off the least gaudy jacket and shoes she can find, trying to ignore the awful muzak being piped through the tiny store. She looks at the shoes in their size-delineated boxes and grabs a pair of plain beige pumps in a size seven. She piles them onto the checkout desk where a young woman is watching her with a faint air of anxiety.

  “Charge those to the penthouse, please,” she says.

  “Certainly, Mrs. Cantor,” the girl says, and starts ringing them up.

  “I need to try the shoes. With a stocking. A new one.”

  “I’ll just check if we’ve got—” She stops abruptly. Nisha glances up at her, then follows her gaze and turns. Frederik, the hotel manager, has entered the concession. He smiles at her and stops, several feet away.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cantor. We have instructions not to charge anything to Mr. Cantor’s account.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Cantor says you are no longer authorized to charge anything to his account.”

  “Our account,” she says, icily. “It’s our account.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Frederik stands completely still, his eyes never leaving her face. His manner is unruffled, his tone completely implacable. It is as if everything is crumbling around her. An unfamiliar feeling of panic is rising in her chest.

  “We are married, as you know. That means his account is my account.”

  He says nothing.

  “Frederik, how long have I been coming here?” She takes two steps toward him, resists the urge to grab his sleeve. “My husband is clearly in the grip of some kind of episode. He won’t even let me get my clothes. My clothes! Look at me! The least you can do is let me get something to wear, surely.”

  The manager’s expression softens very slightly. There is a faint wince when he speaks, as if it pains him to do so. “He has given very . . . emphatic instructions. I’m so sorry. It’s not up to me.”

  Nisha lifts her hands to her face. “I don’t believe this is happening.”

  “And I’m afraid . . .” he says “. . . I’m also going to have to ask you to leave. The bathrobe, it’s . . . The other guests are . . .”

  They stare at each other. Some distant part of Nisha registers that the checkout girl takes advantage of this moment to sweep everything swiftly off the counter. “Eighteen years, Frederik,” she says slowly. “Eighteen years we’ve known each other.”

  There is a long silence. It is the first time he has looked properly embarrassed. “Look,” he says finally. “I’ll organize a car for you. Where do you want to go?”

  Nisha looks at him, opens her mouth a little, then gives a small shake of her head. She feels suddenly swamped by an unfamiliar sensation, something huge and dark and ominous, like quicksand sucking at her feet. “I don’t . . . I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  And then it is gone. She will not have this. She will not tolerate it. She crosses her arms and sits down firmly on a small wicker chair beside the shoe area.

  “No, Frederik. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sure you’ll understand, but I’m just going to sit here until Carl comes down to talk to me. Please go and fetch him. This whole thing is ridiculous.”

  Nobody speaks.

  “I’ll stay here all night if I have to. Please go and get him, we’ll sort this out, and then we’ll work out where—or if—I go anywhere.”

  Frederik gazes at her for a moment, then lets out a small sigh. He looks behind him and, as he does, two security men walk into the concession and stand there, waiting. All eyes are on her. “I’d really rather there wasn’t a scene, Mrs. Cantor.”

  Nisha stares. The two security men move forward. One step each. The neat choreography of it is almost impressive.

  “As I said,” Frederik continues, “Mr. Cantor was very emphatic.”

  five

  Nice one today,” says Marina, lifting her hand for a high-five as they pass in the corridor. “Joel says you played a blinder.”

  Sam is back in the flip-flops, had put them on in the van, as her toes had begun to go numb, and the balls of her feet ache in a way that tells her she will be hobbling in trainers tomorrow. But she is still buoyant, an unfamiliar smile creeping into the corners of her mouth with every conversation. She feels a strange mixture of invincibility and slightly limp relief. I did it. I brought in the business. Maybe this is the turning point. Maybe now everything will be okay. She meets Marina’s palm with a slap that is only mildly self-conscious. She is not normally a high-five sort of person.

  “Ted says everyone’s going for a drink later. He said we haven’t had that much business in at once since he was in thirty-six-inch-waist trousers. You are coming, right?”

  “Uh . . . sure! Why not? I’ve just got to call home first. White Horse, is it?”

  Sam gets back to her cubicle and dials home. It takes Phil six rings to answer, even though she knows the phone will be on the coffee-table in front of him.

  “How are you doing, love?”

  “I’m okay.” Just for once she had hoped she wouldn’t hear that defeated, resigned tone. She forces a smile. “Listen. I had a really good day today. Brought in a lot of business. A few of us are going to the pub after work to celebrate and I thought maybe you could come down and meet us. Ted will be there. You like Ted. And Marina. You and she did that X-rated ‘Islands in the Stream’ at the karaoke night, remember?”

  There is a short silence on the other end, as if he is considering it.

  “Just a drink or two? We haven’t been out together for ages, have we? It would be nice to have something to celebrate for a change.”

  Say yes, she urges him into the silence. Cat says her dad looks like he’s on standby mode, these days. Sam keeps thinking that there will be one thing that unlocks this, a night out or an event that will suddenly switch Phil on again.

  “I’m a bit tired, love. Think I’ll stay here.”

  But you haven’t done anything!

  Sam closes her eyes. Tries to disguise the sound of her sigh. “Okay. I’ll be home once I’ve done these figures.”

  Less than a minute after she’s ended the call, her phone rings again. It’s Cat. “So how did it go?”

  She feels a surge of love for her daughter, who has remembered how important this day was. “It went really well, thanks, lovely. I got three deals out of four, and they’re all big ones.”

  “Yay! That rocks. Well done, Mum. It must have been the trip to the gym that did it!” She lowers her voice. “What was Dad saying?”

  “Oh, I invited him to the pub but he’s not really feeling up to it. I’ll get some food on the way back and I’ll be home at about . . . seven fifteen? I’ve got to pop to the gym first and hand something back.”

  “Why are you coming home?”

  “To cook dinner?”

  “Mum. Go to the pub. You haven’t been out in months and you just pulled in a massive deal. What are you, a Stepford Wife?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like leaving your dad when—”

  “Go on. Let your hair down for once. You don’t have to look after everything.”

  She reassures her mother that, yes, she is sure, yes, it’s all fine, yes, she can make sure her father eats something. She is nineteen, not twelve. Dad is more than capable of making himself beans on toast! Women do not have to do all the emotional labor! she tells Sam emphatically, with the assurance of someone who has never had to do any. And Sam puts down the phone and thinks suddenly that it might be quite nice to have an evening somewhere other than her front room with her sad husband staring at nothing beside her.

  Sam finishes her paperwork, enters the figures into the software, and tots up the zeros with satisfaction. She pulls a little face to herself as she does it, wrinkling her nose and nodding. This morphs into a little dance, her head bobbing on her neck as she bounces in her chair. Oh, yes. Ninety-two in that column. Tot up those totals. There’s another zero. And another. And another. “I am going to the pub. To the pub. To the pub.” She lets out a little “Oooh, yeah.”

  She turns to reach for a pen and yelps. Simon is standing in the entrance of the cubicle. She does not know how long he has been standing there, but from the studied insouciance of his expression, probably long enough to see her pulling her victory chair-dance.

  “Simon,” she says, when she’s recovered herself. “I was just entering today’s figures.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He gazes at her impassively. “I heard we got Piltons and Bettacare,” he says.

  That smile again. She can’t help herself. “Harlon and Lewis, too. Yes,” she says, turning to face him fully. “And on better margins than last time.” It is only as she speaks that she registers his use of the word “we.” As if he’d had anything to do with any of it. Swallow it, she tells herself. Everyone knows who brought these deals in. And the numbers do not lie.

  “I’ve also managed to extend the deadline on the—”

  “What happened to Framptons?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why didn’t we get Framptons?”

  She has just brought in nearly a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of business and he wants to talk about the small one that got away? She feels winded, stumbles over her words, and he leans back against the door frame. He sighs. “I think we need to talk.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I had a call from Michael Frampton’s office. He said you turned up to the meeting drunk.”

  She stares at him in disbelief. “Are you serious? Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

  Simon puts his hands in his pockets and tilts his groin forward slightly. He does that a lot when he’s talking to women.

  “Oh, God, that man. I wasn’t drunk in the slightest. There was a mix-up before work and I had to wear high heels that weren’t mine and there was an uneven surface in the loading area and I—”

  “What are those?” She is interrupted by his finger pointing toward her feet. “What have you got on your feet?”

  She follows the line of his finger. “Oh . . . flip-flops?”

  “I hope you didn’t go to the meetings in those. They’re hardly professional footwear.” His shoes, she notices, are perfectly shiny lace-ups. Slightly pointed at the ends, in a nod to fashion. She thinks about what Miriam Price said: something about Simon’s shoes tells her everything she has ever needed to know about him.

  “Of course I didn’t, Simon. I was just telling you that—”

  “I mean if you’re meant to be representing our company—and I would remind you that it is a very different matter now you’re representing Uberprint too—then you need to be doing it in the utmost professional manner. At all times. Not slopping about wearing bloody flip-flops.”

  “Simon, if you let me finish, I told you I—”

  “I haven’t got time for this, Sam. It’s not just Grayside now. I hope you can conduct yourself in a more professional manner in future. I can’t be worrying about whether I’m going to have more clients calling up to complain about you being drunk, or whatever it is you’re wearing on your feet. You’ve put me in a very awkward position today.”

  “But I—I wasn’t . . .” she begins, but he has already turned and left the cubicle.

  Sam stares at the space where he had been, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  Then she shuts it abruptly. Knowing Simon, he will suddenly reappear and accuse her of wearing an unprofessional facial expression.

  * * *

  • • •

  “He’s a grade-A wanker,” says Ted, shaking his head so that his jowls wobble. “A proper waste of skin.”

  She had been so shaken by the exchange that she had nearly gone home. She should stop off at the gym after all. But Marina had come past just as she was packing the cream Chanel jacket into her bag and told her there was no way she was letting her go straight home tonight. She was the one who had brought in all the money. She could drop off the bag in the morning. “Don’t let that little scrote ruin your day. Don’t give him what he wants. C’mon, Sam. Just for one drink.”

  So she has come next door to the White Horse, surrounded by the workmates she has known for more than a decade, a family of sorts. She knows the names of their partners and children, the various pets of the child-free, and often, these days, people’s ailments. She used to bake birthday cakes and bring them in, but the first time she had done that after Uberprint took over, Simon had walked into the breakout area as they gathered round to sing “Happy Birthday” and said he really couldn’t believe they thought they had time for this. What was it? A kindergarten?

  “How’s Phil?” Marina puts another glass of white wine on the table in front of her and settles in. “Has he found another job yet?”

  She does not want to talk about Phil tonight so she utters a bright “Not yet!,” the kind that suggests she has every confidence that this is the most temporary state of affairs, and changes the subject swiftly. “Hey, you’ll never guess what happened to me this morning.”

  Marina is agog. “Show me,” she demands, as Sam tells the story, and Sam reaches under the bench and pulls out the kitbag, unzipping it to show her one of the shoes.

  “I should really have taken them back instead of coming here,” she says. “I’ll have to do it tomorrow.”

  But Marina isn’t listening. “Oh, my God. You did a whole day in these? I wouldn’t have been able to walk five steps.”

  “I nearly didn’t. But, Marina, by the end of the day I was working it. I swear it was wearing them that got me the deals.”