The Second Chance Shoe Shop (16 page)

R
iley walked
home from Sadie’s house. It was a good thirty minutes, but her head didn’t feel any clearer when she got back to her flat.

She walked across the car park, heard a car door slam and looked up. Her heart faltered. Ethan was coming towards her. His face was like thunder. She wasn’t in the mood for this now.

‘What’s going on, Riley?’ said Ethan, flashing his phone at her. ‘Who the hell is this?’

‘It’s not how it looks,’ she told him. ‘This is your ex’s attempt to sabotage everything for me, again.’

‘She says you’re a liar. What does she mean by that?’

‘I don’t have a clue. I didn’t even know her three days ago, so I’m not sure how much she knows about me.’

‘But these tweets.’ Ethan held up his phone again. ‘They’re saying you were seeing a married man. Is that the man you were so hurt over?’

‘If I was, it was before I met you.’

‘That’s supposed to make it okay?’ He shook his head in dismay.

‘Look, can we go inside?’ Riley pointed to the entrance. ‘Despite being splashed across social media, I don’t want everyone to know my business.’

Going indoors gave Riley a little time to compose herself before speaking to him again. From the tone of his voice, Ethan was angry enough to believe that everything was true.

‘I didn’t have an affair,’ she started, after she had made them coffee. She sat down and told him what had happened with Nicholas, and what had happened over the past two days.

‘When Clarissa took the photo, Nicholas was trying to kiss me,’ she said. ‘What it doesn’t show you is that two seconds later I pushed him away and slapped his face. No one takes advantage of me like that.’

Ethan had the decency to look shamefaced. ‘I just thought―’

‘You just jumped to the same conclusions everyone else did!’ Riley’s tone was sharp. ‘Thanks a million. And aren’t you going to question why it was your ex who took the photo? I had no idea that Nicholas was going to turn up at the shop today. I haven’t seen him since last year. Don’t you find it strange that Clarissa just happened to be around to take a photo of us together? She must have been spying on me.’

‘She might not have taken it. She might have had it sent to her.’

‘Which makes it even more devious that she should put it on social media! She’s clearly not going to leave us alone. What will she do next? Take photos of us leaving the flat? Or
in
the flat? I wouldn’t put anything past her.’ She pointed to the window. ‘She could be watching us right now.’

‘She won’t be.’

‘But even more so, I can’t handle the fact that you were angry with me over something that was out of my control.’

‘I’m sorry. Now that you’ve explained everything, I realise how wrong I was.’

‘You didn’t believe me.’

‘You can hardly blame me. I saw that photo and thought you were kissing him!’

‘You’re a photographer! You of all people should realise things can be misrepresented and then blown out of proportion.’

‘A bit like you’re doing now?’

Riley turned to him sharply. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You’re blaming me for what Clarissa has done.’

‘You accused me of seeing someone else.’

‘I didn’t know who he was!’

‘You should have asked me first!’ She looked at him. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘Riley.’ He reached for her hand but she moved away.

‘I’ll be fine. I just want to be by myself right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

Once she was alone, Riley fell back onto the settee. What a day. Surely things couldn’t get any worse? She hated falling out with Ethan but he shouldn’t have accused her of seeing someone else. He should have tackled Clarissa first, or, if not, asked her who was in the photo rather than jumping to conclusions.

But she couldn’t put all the blame on Ethan. They both should have been grown up enough to work things out for themselves. Perhaps if they had been seeing each other longer, this might not have happened. But their relationship was new. They hadn’t even passed the lust stage yet. There hadn’t even been a mention of the L-word.

Riley went over to the window and looked down on the car park. Was Clarissa hiding behind one of the cars? She squinted, trying to see out into the dark. Then she cursed, and drew the curtains shut on the night.

Although none of this would look okay in the morning, all she wanted to do right now was go to bed and forget about everything.

A
s she suspected
, nothing looked any better the next morning. Riley had hardly had any sleep, getting up twice in the night to make a drink and sitting on the settee for a while before taking herself back to bed.

When she got to work everything seemed calm, but she knew it wouldn’t last long. Once Suzanne got wind of the last bit of scandal, Riley would be in for it. She kept looking at the door, waiting for her to burst through it in dramatic fashion.

Her mind not on her job, Riley stared out onto the High Street and wondered how many of the people were happy. The man with the briefcase, rushing past, not seeing anyone. The woman who had gone into the newsagent’s, who owned a stall in the market. The women who owned the sandwich shop over by the shopping centre.

Was anyone truly content, or did they all trundle through life thinking things can only get better?

Something caught her attention. Someone was watching the shop. Her eyes narrowed, then widened in disbelief.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she told Sadie and Dan, getting out her phone before leaving the shop.

Out on the pavement, she put her phone up to eye level and, pretending to take a selfie in front of the shop, took a photo in the opposite direction. She zoomed in and took a few more. As she did so, she realised that the person she was staring at through the lens had looked up from tapping on her phone and had now noticed her. Riley glanced up the street to see no traffic was coming her way, and ran across to the other side.

‘Don’t you run away from me, Clarissa!’ she cried, putting a hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘What do you think you were you doing?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Clarissa, trying to look anywhere but at Riley.

‘You were taking photos of the shop. What do you do? Loiter around here to see if any opportunities come up?’ Riley snorted. ‘You chose the right day yesterday, good for you.’

‘I’m only showing the world how devious you are.’ Clarissa put away her phone and folded her arms. ‘You’re seeing someone else at the same time as Ethan. He deserves to know. He deserves someone better than that.’

‘Like you, you mean?’

‘Yes, he belongs with me.’

‘You’re welcome to him.’

The remark threw Clarissa and she frowned.

‘Yes, you heard me. You wanted to ruin my relationship with Ethan? Congratulations, you did it. Satisfied?’

Clarissa said nothing.

‘Oh, has the cat got your tongue now?’ Riley stepped forward. ‘Leave me alone or I will report you to the police for harassment.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘No?’ Riley turned to leave. ‘If you’re still here in five minutes, just watch me.’

Riley marched back to the shop, head held high. She hoped that was the last she’d see of Clarissa. Bullies were nothing when you squared up to them.

‘Was that Clarissa you were talking to?’ asked Dan, when she went back inside the shop.

‘Yes, She was taking photos of the shop.’

‘Again? She’s bloody mad. What did she say when you confronted her?’

‘She said she was showing the world how devious I was.’

‘The cow!’ Dan paced the room. ‘Is she gone? Because if not, I’ve a good mind to go over there and give her a piece of my mind. She can’t keep doing this!’

But Riley had her head down. She looked at the photo that she had taken of Clarissa. She could clearly be seen holding her phone up, looking their way. She flicked on to Twitter, to see if Clarissa had posted anything about her, but the feed was free of her nasty comments.

Before she had time to think of the consequences, Riley typed a tweet

There are two sides to every story. #Stalkeralert @Clarissapops

Then she uploaded the photo of Clarissa watching the shop, clear for everyone to see. Two could play at Clarissa’s silly games.

And then she froze. With horror, she realised she was logged in to the wrong account.

She hadn’t sent the tweet from her personal account. She had sent it from Chandler’s’. She deleted it quickly, hoping that not too many people had seen it on their feeds.

But knowing that it would have been sent to Clarissa, and what she would do when she saw it, a sense of dread enveloped her.

A
n hour later
, Riley was cursing her impromptu tweet. Clarissa had begun to bombard her with tweets again, tagging Ethan too. She tried to remain calm as more and more came in, hurling abuse at her. If it was left to her, she would have gone home immediately, shut the door on the world and cried her heart out. But she couldn’t leave the shop, nor leave Sadie and Dan to deal with the mess.

Mess. That’s exactly what it was. She reached for a bag of pound coins and dropped them into the till as she tried to stop the tears from falling. Everything she had done had been out of the goodness of her heart. She’d tried to keep the shop open, keep them all in jobs. How had it all backfired?

‘Chin up, Riles,’ said Dan, giving her arm a quick squeeze as he served a customer.

‘I was wrong, Dan,’ she replied. ‘I let you all down, and I let myself down.’

‘I know it was wrong, but you’re only human. Everyone makes mistakes. You know it will be old news tomorrow. There’ll be someone else to tweet about for the trolls by then.’

‘I wish I had your optimism,’ Riley sighed. ‘It’s made our competition just that little bit harder now. All our work down the pan because of other people.’

‘Things are never as bad as they seem,’ said a customer.

Riley looked to see an old lady smiling at them. She was buying slippers. Riley fumed inwardly. Slippers weren’t going to stop the shop from closing.

‘That’s what I keep telling her,’ said Dan. ‘Whatever is done, is done. It’s what we do afterwards that counts.’

‘I agree,’ said the woman, pressing a twenty-pound note into his hand. ‘Everything happens for a reason, even if we don’t always notice at the time.’

Riley forced a smile before turning back and muttering under her breath. The woman obviously meant well but she was through with people sticking their noses into her affairs. Why was it that everyone else thought they could offer advice, even when you didn’t need it?

Then she looked at Sadie, who was staring at her thoughtfully. Sadie smiled, a smile that said she was always on her side, that she would always have her back no matter what.

She looked at Dan. He caught her eye and gave her a wink before turning back to the woman and giving her his charm.

‘She’ll be okay,’ he told the customer. ‘Riley is the strongest person I’ve ever known.’

Riley smiled, but the tears fell.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, rushing from the shop floor. Dan was wrong. She was weak. She had let herself down by sending that tweet.

Right now she hated herself.

T
hat afternoon
, Riley’s heart sank when the shop door opened and she looked up to see Suzanne. She marched up to the till where Riley was standing, her face a mask of dark emotions.

‘A word in the back, please,’ she said in a clipped tone.

‘Stand tall, Riles,’ whispered Dan, as he rushed over to her. ‘We’ve got your back.’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ Riley muttered. ‘I can’t leave the shop floor at the moment, Suzanne,’ she shouted at her boss’s disappearing figure.

Suzanne stopped abruptly and turned on her heels. ‘I can say what I need to right here, so that everyone can hear, or I can say it to you in private. Which is it to be?’

Riley stared at her. She hadn’t got anything to lose, and anything Suzanne did say could be said in front of Dan and Sadie.

‘What’s going on?’ Sadie moved over to the counter with a shoe in her hand.

Undeterred, Suzanne took the shoe from Sadie and threw a large smile in the direction of a woman who was waiting to try it on in her size. ‘The shop is closing for the rest of the day.’

‘But it’s not time yet!’ the woman protested.

‘If you’d like to come back tomorrow, I’m sure we can come up with some kind of discount.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t be back. If you can treat your customers so badly, I won’t be buying anything from you.’ The woman picked up her bag and stormed out of the shop.

‘Well, that’s yet another customer you’ve lost us, Riley,’ Suzanne said as she locked the door and flicked the sign to ‘closed’.

Riley still said nothing.

‘Just what the hell is going on with you?’ Suzanne rounded on her as soon as she got back to the till. ‘First, you create a ludicrous campaign that goes viral. Then you bring trouble to the shop.’

‘I didn’t bring trouble,’ said Riley. ‘It came looking for me.’ Even as she said it, she knew it sounded catty.

‘Oh, poor you,’ Suzanne hissed.

‘If you hadn’t threatened us with losing our jobs, none of this would have happened. As it is, I’ve been subjected to abuse from all sides.’ Riley tried to swallow down her emotions. ‘All I wanted was to create some well-needed publicity for Chandler’s and―’

‘You certainly did that!’ Suzanne pointed in Riley’s face. ‘
Bad
publicity!’

‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ Dan said, trying to defend Riley, but he was cut down by Suzanne.

‘Of course there is, you idiot!’ Suzanne waved an arm around the shop. ‘There was one customer in here when I came in. One!’

‘There were two, actually,’ said Sadie. ‘One was just leaving.’

Suzanne glared at her.

‘It’s nearly closing time!’ said Riley. ‘We were much busier earlier.’

‘And I’m not an idiot,’ remarked Dan.

‘You’re right,’ Suzanne nodded, taking them all by surprise. ‘I’m the idiot for letting this farce continue. Riley,’ she folded her arms, ‘I’d like you to collect your things and leave.’

‘You’re firing me?’ Riley gasped – after all the effort she had put in lately?

‘You can’t do that!’ said Sadie.

‘Riley is the backbone,’ Dan stated. ‘Without her, there wouldn’t be a shop.’

‘This is
my
shop! And it
is
going down the pan, whether we like it or not. And now’ – Suzanne pointed at Riley – ‘because of your little escapades, no one is going to take us seriously. I must admit, I’m surprised at you.’ Suzanne didn’t address Riley’s last comment. ‘I would never have you down as a home-wrecker.’

Riley saw red. She pressed her knuckles down on the counter and leaned forward in confrontation. ‘You might be my boss, but you do not have any say in my private life. For your information, I have never stolen anyone else’s man, and I never will,’ Riley pouted. ‘As for you and this shop, I think Albert would be turning in his grave. Working for you and the invisible Max has been a nightmare. I’ve a good mind to tell Dan and Sadie why I think he’s missing.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Suzanne held up her hand.

Riley continued talking, noticing the looks shooting from Sadie to Dan. ‘If you’re sacking me, then they’re going to hear some home truths first. See how you like it when your world comes crashing down around you and you can’t control it.’

The air was crackling with tension. Riley’s breathing rate ratcheted up at an alarming rate. She could hear her heart beating rapidly, her head fit to burst with the sound. Anger shot through her, but . . . She took a few seconds to regain her composure. There had been enough secret-spilling, enough damage caused.

‘This was your idea all along, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Get us to sell as much stock as possible and then sell the shop. That’s why you were annoyed when I ordered in the sandals.’

‘Is this true?’ exclaimed Sadie.

‘Unbelievable!’ cried Dan.

Behind them, the door handle rattled.

‘We’re closed!’ Suzanne shouted without turning her head.

Riley groaned when she saw it was Ethan. Had he turned up to have a go at her too?

Suzanne stood her ground, staring at Riley. ‘Please leave my shop immediately.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m going.’ Riley headed downstairs to get her belongings.

‘Riley,’ said Sadie. ‘Wait!’

Riley grabbed her coat and bag and went back upstairs. Ethan was still waiting on the doorstep for her. She walked towards the door with her head held high, unable to look at Dan or Sadie for fear of bursting into tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of Suzanne.

‘If you lose her, you lose us all,’ she heard Dan say.

Riley left them to it. For once, let them fight their own battles. She was through helping everyone else. It was time to put herself first. After all, that’s what everyone else seemed to do.

Outside, she threw Ethan an icy look. ‘If you’ve come to have a go at me, it will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve had as much as I can take for today.’

‘Riley, I―’

She ran down the street, not even looking back as he shouted her name.

R
iley had sent
Ash a text message after she fled the shop and left Ethan standing in the street. It was only ten minutes until her friend finished work, so she headed to the shopping centre and waited outside Jazz.

Tears pricked her eyes. She bet half of Hedworth knew what she’d done, and if they didn’t, they probably would by the end of the day. Clarissa was the type of person who would milk her mistake.

How could she have been so stupid? She’d always prided herself on being fair, seeing both sides to every story, and here she was, just like everyone else. She had been just as bitchy, reacted just as angrily, as Clarissa, Liz and the trolls on Twitter. Ethan probably thought she was a bitch, too. The whole of the internet probably thought she had a screw loose. Nicholas was still trying to get away with things, despite his wife leaving him. How had she allowed that man to get under her skin and continue to ruin her life long after he had disappeared from it?

She noticed a few people staring at her as she waited outside Jazz, so turned to look in the window. But she caught a shop assistant pointing at her. Embarrassed, she turned away and walked a few feet along, keeping her head down. Word had obviously got out about her tweet. What a fool she’d been to overreact, make herself as bad as all the trolls who had been causing her trouble since the competition started.

Someone touched her shoulder gently. ‘She can’t do this.’

Riley turned to see Ash and found herself in her friend’s arms. ‘What a mess!’

It was raining when they left the shopping centre. All the way to the bus station, Ash tried to make Riley see sense.

‘All this because of that dickhead, Nicholas,’ Ash continued, when they were settled on the bus. ‘If he hadn’t left your photo on his phone – I mean, what kind of arse would have an affair and do that? – his wife wouldn’t have seen it, Clarissa wouldn’t have spotted you with him and tweeted the photo to get back at Ethan, and then you and Ethan wouldn’t have argued because Nicholas, his wife and Clarissa would never have been in the picture.’

‘Clarissa would,’ said Riley. ‘She was watching me as soon as the campaign started.’

‘Which you need to finish and pick a winner for.’

Riley balked. ‘I’m not doing that now. Not after Suzanne sacked me. She can do her own bloody competition. See how she likes keeping up with all the social media. Although, now the trolling has started again, there might not be as many shoe-ies coming in.’

‘Are you kidding? You might be getting trolled by some pathetic people who have latched on to Clarissa’s bad behaviour, but the photos of shoes are still coming in, especially as there are only a few days left before the competition closes. If anything, your bad press has increased the number of entries. You started a craze all by yourself.’

‘Really?’ said Riley. ‘I’ve switched my phone off in case Ethan tries to call.’

‘Look.’ Ash handed her phone over to Riley, open on the Twitter app.

Riley scrolled through photo after photo of shoes. ‘At least I did something right,’ she said. ‘Even though it won’t do much for sales if no more sandals are ordered in, Chandler’s will still be well-known for the flash mob.’

‘I guess, but it won’t be the same without you there, my friend.’

‘People will have to get used to it, I’m afraid.’ Riley looked at Ash, tears welling in her eyes again. ‘What am I going to do, Ash? One minute everything was going fine and now everything has gone so wrong. I shouldn’t have overreacted about Clarissa. It makes me look as childish as her.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ said Ash. ‘It was a genuine mistake. Besides, someone ought to give her a taste of her own medicine. She thought she could do anything and get away with it. Now she’s been caught out – people are calling her out for what she did.’

Riley gave her a half-smile. The bus came to a halt at a set of traffic lights. She wished it would stay there forever. She wished she could hold back time, go back even. Then neither Clarissa nor Liz would have seen her in the flash mob, and she would still have her job. It had been hard enough to think that Chandler’s might close, but to be forced out was too hard to bear.

Then again, if she hadn’t called the newspaper to speak to a journalist, she wouldn’t have met Ethan. Even though that had gone all wrong, she still couldn’t stop thinking of him. He was going to be so mad with her for walking off, as well as for tweeting out about Clarissa. Riley had switched off her phone once she’d texted Ash after leaving Chandler’s, but Clarissa was bound to have linked him to a tweet with her response.

Ethan had let her down too. She had trusted him with the Clarissa predicament. If he couldn’t stand by her after she’d made a simple mistake, then he wasn’t worth her time. She had made an error in judgement. Everyone made them – even him. He wasn’t perfect.

One thing was certain: it was about time that Riley started to look after number one. Stop worrying about Dan and his disastrous dates. Stop worrying about how Sadie was getting on without Ross. Stop worrying about what Ethan thought of her.

She needed to think about the consequences of losing her job.

Maybe it was time to move on from Chandler’s and make a fresh start somewhere else.