Someone Else's Shoes

Sam picks Andrea up from a procedure at the hospital and tries to calm her fears about her illness. When she drops her off, Sam gives Andrea £740 for her month’s mortgage, which is almost all the money that Sam has left in savings. At work, Simon threatens Sam with dismissal unless she improves her job performance. Joel messages her afterward to show her support and invites her out twice, but she refuses. When she gets home, she sees that Phil has passed along a message from her mother asking her to come by and clean, but Sam has had enough. She goes upstairs and gets changed into her Louboutins to go out, ignoring Phil, who doesn’t seem to notice her. She meets Joel at the pub and tells him that the shoes make her feel like a better version of herself. She feels herself getting closer to Joel but is also nervous about how she feels about him, and she feels even guiltier when he mentions Phil. Joel suggests that Sam should take up boxing to relieve some of her stress and invites her to come to his gym the next night.

Nisha obsessively ponders the mystery of why Carl is so determined to recover her missing shoes and calls Magda for more information. At the end of her shift, Aleks gives her a duck and tells her how to cook it, and Nisha worries that he implicitly expects to be paid back somehow for all of his favors and free meals. Jasmine asks Nisha to pick up Grace after work, and on the bus ride there, she gets into an altercation with another passenger and is kicked off the bus. The police are called, and she realizes that she forgot her duck on the bus. At Jasmine’s apartment, Nisha takes a bath and becomes angry at the many unfair expectations made upon women: feelings that she has repressed throughout her marriage but is now considering anew in the light of Carl’s decision to leave her for his young assistant.

Jasmine comes home as Nisha is getting out of the bath, and they fight about Nisha not having the food she promised and not considering that Jasmine has to worry about money. Nisha fears that Jasmine wants her to leave, so she offers Jasmine some money, promises to repay her, and tells her she can be packed and gone in half an hour. Jasmine tells her not to be ridiculous because it was just an argument but that she needs to consider how her actions affect others. Before going to bed, Nisha tells Grace about her son, and Grace asks whether he is happier at boarding school than with his parents. Nisha admits that neither she nor Carl ever asked their son about his preference.

Cat tells her friend Colleen that she saw her mother hugging a man that was not her dad outside of a gym. Colleen advises her to talk to her parents. At Dr. Kovitz’s office, Phil has similar worries after noticing that Sam is coming home later and happier each night. Phil also tells this therapist about their family and how it is especially important that they have Cat because Sam had miscarried four times before finally having a successful pregnancy. Dr. Kovitz keeps pushing Phil to talk about his father, but he is reluctant to do so. Finally, Phil tells Dr. Kovitz that his father wanted Phil to help him end his life because he was in too much pain and did not want his wife to see him so weak. Phil reveals that his father died in the middle of telling him how weak he was. Once Phil stops crying, Dr. Kovitz assures him that he was brave.

Cat comes home and is surprised to find her mother gone and Phil in bed rather than watching television. She tells Phil that Sam is out with another man and shows him Nisha’s bag and shoes. Phil is stunned. Sam comes home in high spirits after her boxing session with Joel. She loves the feeling of power that boxing provides, reveling in the casual vibe of Joel’s gym, which does not place emphasis on people’s appearance. She finds Cat and Phil at the dinner table and asks Phil what is wrong, but he leaves without saying a word. At night, Phil worries about what Cat told him but understands why Sam would cheat. Phil finds the bag and shoes in Sam’s wardrobe and is disgusted. He takes the shoes and shoves them into a cabinet in the camper van. For a moment he is frozen, but then he begins cleaning up the van and becomes determined to do so until after Sam falls asleep so that he will not have to confront her.

At the hotel restaurant, Nisha sees Charlotte wearing one of her vintage white suits and breaks down in front of Aleks and Jasmine. She calls Carl later from Jasmine’s apartment, and he immediately asks if she has found the shoes. Carl is much colder this time but remains firm about not giving her anything until she gives him the shoes. Jasmine states in a neutral tone that Nisha cares more about losing her things than losing her husband. Nisha replies, “I guess [the shoes] represent [...] the version of me I fought for,” and she tells Jasmine her backstory, which she has never told anyone before. Nisha explains how she grew up poor and had to buy her clothes secondhand or wear her father’s clothes. She had told Carl parts of this story, which he sometimes found funny and sometimes used against her. She is reminded of Juliana, who had been her best friend before she became wealthy and ended the friendship at Carl’s insistence.

Nisha calls her son, Raymond, and he asks her when she is coming back to the United States. She finally tells him about the separation, and he says that he does not mind if his father goes. He tells her how much he hates being at boarding school, and she promises to get him out of there and apologizes for the fact that Carl is not a better father. They end up talking about the shoes, and Raymond tells her that he thinks they are fake, but Nisha does not know why Carl would give her fake shoes. She has a flashback to when she was seven and her father had made her start stealing from stores, telling her that if she looked innocent, no one would believe that she was capable of stealing.

The next day, Nisha goes back to the White Horse and uses her good looks to manipulate the bartender into showing her the CCTV footage. In the footage, Nisha finds Sam wearing her shoes, and the bartender tells her where Sam works. When she gets to the hotel, she tells Aleks that she knows who took her shoes. They hug in celebration, and she begins to kiss him.

On a day when Simon specified that she absolutely cannot be late, Sam’s car will not start. When she asks Phil to help, he reacts coldly, and she receives the same coldness from her mother, who calls to ask for more help while Sam is taking a cab to work. She is only four minutes late, but Simon still treats her poorly. That day, she has a lunch meeting with Miriam Price, one of her previous clients who reached out to her personally to thank her for a job well done. At lunch, Simon calls to tell her that she has missed an appointment with a client, who only emailed her 15 minutes prior. Simon gives the opportunity to someone else. Miriam says that she knows how Simon can be, and Sam suddenly begins to sob. She feels incredibly embarrassed, but Miriam is sympathetic and tells Sam that she wants her to meet her team and asks whether she would be interested in working with her instead.

Nisha sits at a coffee shop outside of Sam’s office and contemplates how to get her shoes back. When Sam returns from lunch with Miriam, she finds Joel in the drivers’ office, which has a punching bag. She borrows some boxing gloves from him and punches the bag until she feels better. She tells Joel about Miriam’s job offer, he says he doesn’t want her to leave, and she says she doesn’t want to leave either. She kisses him, but when she pulls away, their coworker Ted has seen them, so she runs back toward the office. Joel texts her to see if she is all right. Still off-balance from the kiss, Sam is startled to find Nisha in the doorway of her office, loudly demanding the return of her shoes.