“Right,” I said aloud to myself, a woman with a red handbag glancing my way as I walked down the road.
Where am I headed? Should I go to work? The only thing I absolutely knew was I wanted to move, to get away. What I didn’t want to do was keep thinking about my predicament. I needed to escape it.
My phone was pinging at me as ever and I felt a strange exhilaration at saying whatever I liked in response, ignoring the replies, switching off the sound notifications on the phone so the ping ping ping didn’t bother me.
I went to cross the road to the tube, remembering the cyclist only at the last moment. His bell, me wobbling.
“Woah,” I said.
“For fuck . . .”
“Sorry,” I shouted after him before stepping into the road to the tube.
“Whoooop,” I called out as I stood on the escalator, recognizing some of the faces. “Morning everyone, GOOD MORNING to you all.”
The woman in the blue coat probably hadn’t heard me over her music, the sad man in the padded coat looked up and then glanced away. Only the little boy, head peeking just above the escalator, stared at me curiously. I grinned at him and poked my tongue out. He laughed, the joyful noise traveling across the space and stopping me in my tracks.
My smile slipped, I watched the boy walk away, one look back at me as his dad steered him down a tunnel. Someone bumped into me from behind as I froze at the bottom looking around. Where was I going? I’d left my own house, my own kids, and was about to go to a meeting that I had been to already, twice, with a man I loathed and a boss I didn’t respect.
My feet responded to this thought by taking me down another tunnel, on to another tube line, going in the other direction. Bumping along with the other commuters, I sleepwalked onto a tube carriage, pressing myself into the side as I realized the day was mine. None of it mattered. I got some glances as I found an empty seat, my netted skirt spilling over the suited man on my left, the cargo pants of a student on my right.
I’d always liked the tube. Maybe because I could read on it and I could never read in a car. Maybe because I met the love of my life on one. His horrified expression on that platform as I pulled away clutching his phone number, that glow in my stomach knowing something special had just happened. Thinking of Dan caused a horrible mess of feeling, one I didn’t want to face. I pushed down those thoughts and focused on the adverts overhead promising me cheap flights, better broadband speed, and a meal supplement that would make me look like the toned silhouette in the picture.
“We should go to the zoo,” I said the moment I had exited the tube at Green Park and Hattie answered. “Do you want to go to the zoo?”
“The zoo?”
“No one will be there on a Monday in December, right? Let’s do it.”
“But . . . the zoo? Really?”
“There’ll be penguins! Probably baby ones.”
“I’m not really in a zoo mood,” Hattie said, her voice low. Oh shit, I shouldn’t have mentioned baby penguins. I thought back to the last time I saw Hattie, her rounded shoulders, her untouched food. Was that it? Had she got news? I’d drunk the wine—had she? I knew she’d been seeing a doctor privately, knew it was causing tension with her and Ed; he was finding it so hard, she’d said. I’d sympathized with him but had been more concerned with how she was finding it. Or was it something else entirely?
“Well, I definitely want to see you so what shall we do?” I said, walking along the pavement as people passed me.
“Are you not working today?”
“I’ve taken the day off!” I sing-songed.
Hattie sounded brighter then, “You never take the day off!”
“Well, I have,” I said, stung a little by the words, said in jest but uncomfortably true. My meetings with Hattie recently were always squeezed between work meetings or a lunch break I invariably cut short. I loved seeing her with Dan too but there’d always been something special about seeing her on our own. Although in the last few weeks she had been the one to cancel on me.
“I could come over to yours?” Hattie suggested.
I hadn’t heard her, too busy staring upward. “I’ve got a much better idea. Get a taxi to Green Park, I’ll pay.”
“I can get the bu—”
“Get a taxi now,” I interrupted firmly. “And wear some nice shoes,” I added, looking down at my boots. They just wouldn’t do.
“Now?”
“Now,” I said.
“Well, I could move a few things, could probably leave in just under an ho—”
“Green Park, Hattie. As soon as you can,” I said, marching on and hanging up the phone like I was in a movie.
I entered the first absurdly fancy shoe shop I could find, the air leather-scented, and spent £480 on the most gorgeous gray soft suede heeled boots. I never normally bought things in suede, too easy to scuff and ruin in bad weather, and I’d never spent more than two figures on a shoe. I handed over my card without a thought.