The Second Chance Shoe Shop (17 page)

S
adie checked on Esther
, found her fast asleep, and then settled down for the night. She sat on the sofa and flicked through the channels until she found her favourite soap. After a few minutes she realised she’d been staring at the screen but hadn’t got a clue what was happening. She kept thinking about Riley and what she had said the previous night about losing Ross. She’d wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her place to miss him, because he wasn’t her husband. But that was selfish. She knew how much Ross had meant to his friends.

Unable to concentrate, she got out her journal. But then an alert popped up on her phone to say there was a message on Grieve Together.

The hairs on Sadie’s neck stood on end as her hands rested on the keyboard.

Tanya had just called her Sadie.

She scrolled back through the conversation thread that had started several months ago. There was no mention of her name being Sadie during the last few months. She flicked back through more messages. There was no mention of it anywhere.

In a panic, she flicked through the messages again. This time round, she was definitely sure she hadn’t mentioned it. She slammed the lid down on her laptop, her breathing becoming rapid.

She was logged on to Grieve Together as Clara.

Had she slipped up? Said anything that would let someone know she wasn’t really called Clara? And if so, how would they have known that she was called Sadie?

Oh, this was too weird.

She stood up and paced the room, running a hand through her hair. If this wasn’t someone named Tanya, who the hell had she been talking to online for the past few months? It had to be someone she knew. Someone close to her.

She reached for her phone to ring Riley, but then decided against it. She had been really upset earlier after losing her job. She couldn’t burden her with this. As she was about to call Cooper, she stopped. For all she knew it could be anyone. Was it him?

Calm down, she admonished herself. It couldn’t be Cooper. He was her friend. But then who else could know she was Sadie?

Was someone pretending to be Tanya to get to her? And if so, why would anyone do something so low, to try and get information out of someone who was grieving? What on earth could their motive be?

And then it dawned on her. She sat down quickly before her legs gave way.
Was
it Cooper?
Had
he fallen in love with her and she hadn’t realised? They had become close since Ross died, and he had been acting quite secretive recently. He’d been calling less than usual too, saying he was busy during the evenings. She supposed it could be true . . .

Had she overstepped the mark? Made him think there was more to their relationship? Then she remembered what he’d said the last time she had been upset. It would be like sleeping with his sister. Was he trying to hide his feelings by joking about it to gauge her reaction? It had been good to feel his arms around her, but had it given him the wrong impression?

She thought back to the last time she had seen him. How had he been? But all she could think of was that he had been Cooper. Her friend, Cooper. There didn’t seem to be anything else.

Did there?

D
an was
in the middle of a long kiss. It had been instigated by Sarah, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Riley. Poor Riley. If it wasn’t enough that she had been slandered online all week, for her to lose her job now on top of it all . . . Well, it just wasn’t fair.

It wouldn’t be the same going to work if she wasn’t there. He wondered if they would get through a day without her. Would they be able to do the things she did almost in her sleep, because they were so routine to her?

Maybe Suzanne would come in and see what Riley did. Then she’d realise what a mistake she had made in sacking her. No amount of money would replace Riley and her knowledge. She not only knew how to run the shop – she
was
the shop.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Sarah, as she felt his reluctance.

‘I can’t stop thinking about Riley,’ said Dan. ‘I don’t know how Sadie and I will run the shop alone. We barely know how to―’

‘I don’t want to hear about that shop again.’ Sarah silenced him by pressing her lips to his. ‘I want to make love.’

But Dan didn’t want to. As much as he had wanted this a couple of weeks ago, already he was beginning to regret it. Almost straight away they had fallen into the same routine as they had before they split up.

In some respects, it was as if the last year apart hadn’t happened. In others, they were poles apart. And it was this that worried Dan.

‘Don’t you want to make love?’ she asked, staring at him.

‘Yes, of course I do, but it’s all we’ve done since we got back together,’ Dan sighed, knowing she wouldn’t understand what he meant. ‘Sex isn’t everything.’

‘It shows how much I’ve missed you, surely?’

Dan shrugged. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘You mean to tell me that you haven’t been thinking about me all day? Waiting to see me so that we can be . . . close?’

Dan would have to be careful what he said next. Of course the sex would be great – but he
hadn’t
been thinking about it. He’d been worried about Riley. He might have thought about Sarah a few times during the day, but it hadn’t been because he couldn’t wait to get her clothes off. It was because he still couldn’t work out if he was looking forward to meeting her or not. He should be happy that they were back together, and not continually processing their break up. But it still didn’t seem right.

He decided to come clean.

‘Maybe we’re taking things too quickly,’ he said finally, after he had told her how he felt.

There was a pregnant pause before Sarah spoke again. ‘Do you love me, Dan?’ she asked.

Dan faltered. They had only been back together for two weeks. How could she possibly think of being in love again at this stage?

But his silence told Sarah all she needed to know. She sat up and moved away from him. ‘I thought you wanted things to go back to how they were.’

‘I do,’ Dan said, although he couldn’t recall a time when they’d had sex twice in a week, never mind twice in one night. ‘But you hurt me and I― I need to be certain that this is what I want.’

Sarah gasped. ‘How can you sleep with me, if you’re not certain that you want to be with me?’

‘You sound like a bunny boiler.’ Dan began to laugh, although he was being deadly serious. He’d forgotten how clingy she could be.

‘That’s rich, coming from you,’ she remarked.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You were the clingy one. Always wanting to know where I was, and who I was with. What time was I going to be back . . .’

‘I wasn’t like that,’ Dan said truthfully. ‘I’ve never been the jealous type.’

‘Oh, that’s right. You’d never want to fight to keep me, would you?’

Dan frowned.

‘I didn’t sleep with Philip Carmichael.’

Dan’s mouth hung open. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I just said that to make you jealous,’ she confessed. ‘And once I had said it, I couldn’t take it back. I know it was wrong, but I just wanted you to show some feelings towards me.’

‘You’re lying.’ Dan couldn’t speak for a moment. Then his rage grew. ‘
You
slept with him because you wanted to, and then you told me because you knew it would hurt me to find out.’

‘I didn’t! I swear to you. I just wanted to make you jealous, because you didn’t love me enough!’

Dan’s mouth dropped open. How could she say that? She was the one who had messed up. She was the one who had told him they were in a rut and that she had wanted some excitement.

‘You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?’ he spat back at her. ‘If you’d wanted to make me jealous, then why didn’t you fight for me afterwards? If you’d tried harder, I might have given in. You know I’m a pushover. I would have come back to you eventually. And now you’re acting all strange because I won’t say that I love you after a year apart?’

Sarah sat down suddenly. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying.’

‘I’ve heard enough.’ Dan stood up and reached for his coat. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. It wasn’t working for me the second time round, and now this?’

‘Dan, wait!’

Sarah held on to his arm as he left the room, but he shrugged her off. To the sound of her protests he left the flat, almost running down the stairs and outside. How could he have forgotten how possessive she was? He’d put Sarah on a pedestal because she had left him with a broken heart, forgetting all the irritating things she did and said, how she had made him feel inadequate all the time. He’d been clinging on to the past when all he really needed to do was get a grip on his future.

Dan’s steps were lighter the further away from Sarah he walked, a huge grin erupting on his face and a feeling of optimism overwhelming him. Sometimes there was no point in going back.

Some things couldn’t be mended.

R
iley hadn’t switched
on her phone for a while because she didn’t want to see her name spread across her social media accounts. So when she did finally look, the first thing she found was a message from Ethan.

This is hard for me to write but I think maybe we should cool things. There’s too much in the way for us at the moment. Speak soon. Ex

The text message stunned Riley. She read it again as her eyes became blurry. Clarissa had won. But despite thinking she would be better off without him, her heart suddenly broke. Notwithstanding everything, she had really enjoyed getting to know him over these last few weeks. But she had doubted him over Clarissa.

Now it seemed he didn’t even want to give her time to explain, talk things through, see if they could move on from it all. Maybe unintentionally she had hurt him more than she thought.

But if he couldn’t see it was because of what had happened in
her
past, with Nicholas, then it was probably best that it ended now. Relationships needed sturdy foundations to build on. If they couldn’t trust each other at this early stage, then could they ever?

Everything had changed when he’d seen her with Nicholas and jumped to the wrong conclusion, and that really hurt. What the hell was she going to do now? Ethan was the only man she had let close to her since Nicholas. How could he not believe her when she said she hadn’t kissed her ex? Had he done it because he was hurting, seeing her with another man? When she’d explained what had happened, he had looked sheepish. Even so, he never should have doubted her.

And now she had been sacked, she had no job, no boyfriend, no rosy future to look forward to. Everything had slipped away since the flash mob had taken place.

S
ince Tanya had called
her by her real name, Sadie’s mind had been reeling. She wondered whether to message her and ask her why she had called her Sadie, but for now she didn’t want Tanya to know that she knew. Once she’d had time to think things through, see if she could wheedle some information out of Cooper, then she would make up her mind what to do.

She’d arranged to cook him tea that night. Cottage pie was his favourite, but when Christine had dropped Esther off, and had smelled it cooking, Sadie had had no choice but to ask her to stay. Paul was at work until 10:00 p.m. that night.

As they sat around the kitchen table, with Christine and Cooper chatting, Sadie glanced at him surreptitiously. Was this what he wanted? To be part of her family? Not to take Ross’s place, but to be with her?

‘I can’t believe Suzanne would sack Riley,’ said Christine, as they ate. ‘She’s such a hard worker and has the interests of the shop at heart all the time.’

‘I’m glad Riley stuck up for herself.’ Cooper scooped up another mouthful of mash onto his fork. ‘It’s about time someone gave that Clarissa woman a taste of her own medicine.’

‘Yes, you can’t hide behind social media all the time, can you?’ said Sadie. ‘It’s not fair.’

Cooper shook his head. She tried to gauge his reaction, but there didn’t seem to be any change in him.

She waited until Christine had gone to help Esther get into her pyjamas before getting Cooper alone in the kitchen. She couldn’t wait any longer. All the time she kept thinking of the intimate details she had shared, thinking he was Tanya. How could he have deceived her like that?

She closed the kitchen door and leaned back on it for a moment for support. Cooper was loading dishes into the dishwasher. He was humming an Adele song.

‘Why did you do it?’ she said.

He turned back to her abruptly. ‘Why did I do what?’

‘Pretend to be someone else.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He frowned when she didn’t elaborate. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I could ask you the same thing, Tanya,’ she almost spat.

‘I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.’

She pointed at him. ‘Pretending to be someone else online is a really low trick. Is it because you have feelings for me and you wanted to see if I still loved Ross? Because I can tell you right now, I will always love Ross. He was my rock, and I know I’ll never find another man like him. And I’m sure he would have been happy if you and I – well, did get together as a couple. But now I can see that you are just some sneaky, snide creep who was trying to wheedle information out of me. What I can’t figure out is why the hell you would want to trick me. You’re supposed to be my friend, looking out for me and―’

‘Wait!’ Cooper held up his hands. ‘I haven’t been talking to you online. And I certainly haven’t set myself up as this Tanya person you’ve been mentioning over the past few weeks.’

‘It
must
be you!’ Sadie couldn’t stop now. ‘No one else would say they were called Tanya and then chat to me about Ross for months on end, almost keeping him alive in my mind.’

‘I wouldn’t do that! And why just me? All our friends know things about Ross. For all you know, it could have been any of us.’

‘They wouldn’t trick me to try to get close to me.’ She was shaking now. ‘I just can’t understand why you would do that to me. All you had to do was ask me to my face.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’ Cooper stood staring at her. ‘I think you need to find out who’s been tricking you, because it certainly wasn’t me.’

‘You’ve been asking strange things lately.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like what’s happening on the anniversary of his death? Will I be celebrating it with you guys or just with Esther? Will I be taking her out on my own? Where am I going? How long will I be out? And you’ve not been visiting as much as you used to.’

Cooper laughed, but it wasn’t friendly. ‘You are so off the mark that it’s unbelievable.’

‘Have you any idea how hard it’s been for me, with you always trying to keep his memory alive, making me upset by talking about him all the time? I’m never going to move on!’

‘It wasn’t me!’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Cooper’s telling the truth.’ They both turned to see Christine standing in the doorway. ‘It wasn’t him. It was me.’