legs underneath her. She shook her head. ‘It’s fine, Amy, truly. I know you’d do it for me.’
‘Course I would,’ Amy replied.
‘But we need to make a plan, don’t we? You’re going to have to hit the road and get your shoes back. You have to.’
Amy sniggered.
‘What’s so funny?’ Jesminder asked.
‘Sorry, but I notice you’re not kicking off with a plan for getting my man back. Priorities, huh? You been listening to Debs all afternoon?’ She grinned as she spoke.
‘No!’ Jesminder aimed a cushion at her. ‘But you’ve got to see this through, right? Besides, this’ll be good for you. It’ll keep your mind occupied and, most importantly, get you your mum’s dancing slippers back. Now, where’s that list of addresses?’
Amy stretched towards her Karen Millen bag and pulled out the list, checking her phone as she did so for the umpteenth time to see if Justin had sent her a text.
‘OK.’ Jesminder gently prised the list from her hand and scanned the details. ‘Ah. Quite an itinerary for you. Wow, Japan!’ She read further. ‘And the USA! Ireland! Newcastle!’
‘But I can’t go all round the world knocking on doors asking for my shoes back,’ Amy moaned.
‘Why not?’ Jesminder actually looked serious.
‘Oh, come on. I’ve been thinking about it. Hacking into Justin’s computer to find out where they’ve all gone to is one thing, but setting off round the world to ask for them back? People will think I’m a bizarre shoe fetishist if I turn up on their doorsteps and start asking about their shoes.’
‘Your shoes, Amy,’ Jesminder corrected. ‘And you are a bizarre shoe fetishist. Get over it, as Debs would undoubtedly say if she were here. Right, how long can you take off work?’
‘Two weeks max,’ Amy replied instantly before checking herself. ‘I mean, no. I didn’t mean that. No time off work. Drop everything and circle the globe, not knowing if the people will even be there or what I will find? It’s bonkers. Who on earth would do a thing like that?’
‘Someone with nothing to lose?’ Jesminder said quietly.
Amy opened her mouth to reply, but no words came. Instead she turned her head and gazed out the basement window to the shoes of pedestrians passing by on the street outside.
Is Jes right? Do I really have nothing to lose? She shook her head, panicked by the notion, and rounded on her friend.
‘Since when was I defined by my boyfriend and my shoes?’ she said, far more sharply than she meant. ‘I’m me! I’ve got a life! And a job! And friends! And … and …’
Jesminder slid down from the sofa and sat silently by her side. Now both of them gazed outside with glittery, tear-filled eyes. The only sounds were the faint hum of traffic outside and occasional slurps as they gulped their tea.
‘Do you know something?’ Amy said, after a long, long time.
‘Not yet,’ Jesminder replied.
‘I miss them. I miss my shoes. But I don’t miss Justin – not yet. I’m too angry with him to miss him and that’s not going to change until he believes my “side of the story”, as Debs put it – huh, cheek! That makes it sound like there are two sides, doesn’t it? But there aren’t. There never were. I’m not cheating on him – there is no so-called other side. And if he won’t believe me, well – y’know, I’m starting to think that even if he does believe me now, I can’t imagine just jumping back into his bed tomorrow as though all this never happened. I didn’t know he had such a vindictive streak in him, Jes, I really didn’t.’
Jesminder nodded. ‘Sounds like it’s going to take time, sorting that lot out in your head. You know you’re welcome here for as long as it takes.’
Amy reached over and hugged her friend. When she drew back, her eyes were like saucers. She’d made it. Out of the blue, she had made a decision.
‘That’s the key, isn’t it?’ she cried, leaping to her feet. ‘Time!’
‘Erm …’
‘Time. It’s like, time is showing me the way.’
‘Is that a song?’ Plainly Jesminder thought Amy had flipped.
‘No. Well, probably, but anyhow, listen, Jes. Justin needs time to read my letter, calm down and come to his senses, correct?’
‘Definitely.’
‘And I need time to work out how I feel about him not being prepared to face me like a man and hear me out. Correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘But on the other hand – or at least, on the other foot – with the shoes, there’s no time to lose, is there? I need to get them back in as short a time as possible so that their owners don’t become too attached to them and wear them to death and forget where they bought them from.’
‘Bingo,’ Jesminder agreed.
‘And if I don’t go and find them, then in time I’ll forget them and that would be horrible.’
‘Bingo again.’
‘And even if it’s impossible to find them I’ll be getting away and giving myself time to think things over.’
‘Bingo times three.’
‘And I’m due some holiday, having finished that big Morocco contract last Thursday ahead of time, so work might just about manage to stay afloat without me if I took off now.’
‘Uh-huh, we’ll muddle through somehow,’ Jesminder nodded, her voice full of mock-doubt. ‘Debbie and I will pull every string in the business and get you some disgustingly cheap flights, have no fear.’
Amy was circling the room, her hands fidgety. ‘The time is right!’
‘Is that really a decision?’ Jesminder asked. ‘You’re going to get your shoes back?’
‘I am. It’s show time!’ Amy gulped, flinging her arms out wide and feeling better than she had done in hours.
‘Don’t you mean shoe time?’
Laughing, Jesminder ducked to avoid the cushion that flew in her direction.
For the most part Amy was grateful to have Debbie, a Newcastle native, in the passenger seat of the crumbling 2CV as they negotiated their way into the city centre on a stuffy Friday evening. Debbie had swiftly arranged a weekend trip north to see her family, so that she could keep Amy company on the first of her shoe-finding missions, brushing off Amy’s gratitude with a gruff, ‘No, no, if it wasn’t for you I’d never get off my arse and come to see the old folks at all.’ Which was untrue, but deeply touching all the same.
The car hadn’t enjoyed the long journey all the way to the north-east of England, and the girls had had to make three unscheduled stops to give it rest time and allow it to cool down. Now, though, on the final stretch of the journey, stopping and starting at traffic lights, it wasn’t just the car that was overheating.
They were trying to find Delsey’s Gym, the first address on the hit list, and Debbie had spent a lot of motorway time bragging about her thorough knowledge of Newcastle city centre. Amy, her eyes and head aching from concentrating on the road for hours, was growing irritated at Debbie, whose skills as a navigator seemed to depend entirely upon the existence of familiar shops and nightclubs in the immediate vicinity.
‘Gottit!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘Go that way! There! Past