The Peacock Emporium(116)

Alejandro grinned at him, and Jorge felt the familiar pleasure at being in the company of his handsome son. He thought of how Alejandro had held him tightly, pulling him close at the airport gates, kissing his cheeks, a drastic progression from the reserved handshakes he had habitually bestowed, even as a small boy returning from boarding school. They said travel changed you, Jorge thought. Maybe, in this cold climate, his son was finally thawing out a little. “We’ll be boys together, eh? We’ll hit the best restaurants, a few nightclubs. Live a little. There’s a lot to catch up on, Turco.”



* * *



—

Jorge’s conference finished every day at four thirty, and while the other delegates met in bars, admired glossy photographs of each other’s handiwork, and muttered about their colleagues’ supposed butchery behind their backs, he and his son set out on a frantic bout of evening activities. They visited a friend of Jorge’s, who lived in a stucco-fronted house in St John’s Wood, went to see a West End show, although neither liked theater, took drinks at the bar of the Savoy, and had tea at the Ritz, where Jorge insisted the waiter take their picture (“It’s all your mama asked for,” he said, as Alejandro tried to disappear beneath the table). Drunk, they clapped each other on the back, and said what a great time they were having, how good it was to be together, how the best times were to be had by men alone. Then, more drunk, they became tearful and sentimental, expressing their sorrow that Alejandro’s mother couldn’t be there too. Jorge, while gratified to see these unusual displays of emotion from his son, was aware that something was yet to be told. Alejandro had said a friend had died, and this explained something of his change in character, something of the sorrow that hung about him, but it didn’t explain the tension, a fine yet increasing anxiety that even Jorge, a man with the emotions of a carthorse, as his wife often told him, could sense in the atmosphere.

He asked him nothing directly.

He was not sure that he wanted to know the answer.



* * *



—

Cath Carter’s house was two doors along from her late daughter’s, a throwback to the days when council policy tried to put family members near each other. Jessie had told Suzanna stories of families whose members occupied whole cul-de-sacs, grandmothers next to mothers, sisters, and brothers, whose children had melded into an amorphous family group, running in and out of each other’s homes with the confident possession of the extended family.

Cath’s house, however, couldn’t have been more different from her daughter’s. Where Jessie’s front door and gingham curtains spoke of an esoteric taste, a love of the bright and gaudy, an irreverence reflected in her character, Cath’s spoke of a woman certain of her own standing; its neat floral borders and immaculate paintwork betrayed a determination to keep things orderly. Suzanna averted her eyes from Jessie’s front door. She did not want to think of her last visit to that house. She wasn’t convinced she wanted to be there at all. The morning school run had just finished, and the estate was dotted with mothers pushing prams, others carrying cartons of milk purchased from the mini-mart down the road. Suzanna walked on, her hands thrust deep into her coat pockets, feeling the envelope she had prepared half an hour earlier. If Cath wasn’t there, she wondered, should she push it through the door? Or was this the kind of conversation that needed to be had face to face?

There was a photograph of Jessie in the front window, her hair in bunches, the familiar grin on her face. It was bordered in black and there were around forty cards of remembrance around it. Suzanna glanced away from them, and rang the doorbell, conscious of the curious stares of passers-by.

Cath Carter’s hair had gone white. Suzanna stared at it, trying to remember what shade it had been before, then caught herself.

“Hello, Suzanna,” Cath said.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been over,” she said. “I wanted to. I just—”

“Didn’t know what to say?”

Suzanna blushed.

“It’s okay. You wouldn’t be the only one. At least you came, which is more than most. Come on in.” Cath stepped back, holding open the door, and Suzanna walked in, her step leaden on the immaculate hall carpet.

She was shown into the front room and directed toward a sofa, from where she could see the back of the framed picture and the cards, a few of which were turned inward toward the little room. It was the same layout that Jess’s house had been, the interior just as pristine, but the atmosphere heavy with grief.

Cath moved heavily across the room, and sat down on the easy chair opposite, folding her skirt under her with careworn hands.

“Emma at school?” Suzanna asked.

“Started back this week. Half-term.”

“I came . . . to see . . . if she was okay,” Suzanna said awkwardly.

Cath nodded, glanced unconsciously at her daughter’s picture. “She’s coping,” she said.

“And to say—if there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

Cath tilted her head enquiringly.

There was a photograph behind her on the mantelpiece, Suzanna noted, of the family all together, with a man who must have been Jessie’s father holding Emma as a baby. “I—I feel responsible,” she said.

Cath shook her head briskly. “You’re not responsible.” There was a huge weight in the words she left unspoken.