Someone Else's Shoes

by Jojo Moyes

Sometimes Sam feels she has been so conditioned to be useful every minute of every day that there is almost nothing she does in which she is not simultaneously keeping a subconscious tally. Do men hear this constant inner voice, telling them constantly to strive to be better, to be productive, to be useful?

You look . . . beautiful. Happier.” She bristles slightly in her jacket. “I don’t know why. I have absolutely nothing to my name right now.” “You have self-respect. You have friends. You have satisfaction every day, of a job well done. You have agency over your own life. These are not small things.”

“Yeah. Well, you always did have it all worked out. I think you knew who you were from the age of three.” She looks at her daughter, whose generation seems to have this all sorted, with their talk of autonomy, of slut-shaming, allyship and body positivity.

“when we’re low, it can be easy to see everything through a prism of negativity. Human beings are remarkably bad at understanding other people’s motivations, even when they know them terribly well. We write all sorts of inaccurate stories in our heads.”

The world is full of lasts, she thinks. The last time you pick up your child. The last time you hug a parent. The last time you cook dinner in a house full of the people you love. The last time you make love to the husband you once adored who will walk away from you because you turned into a crazy, resentful hormone-fueled idiot. And with all these moments you don’t know that this will be the last or you would be overwhelmed by the poignancy of them, hang on to them like someone unhinged, bury your face in them, never let them go.

I’m okay for now,” she said philosophically. “That’s all we can ever be, right? Okay for now.”