The Peacock Emporium(76)

“No,” Father Lenny said. “They don’t.” He pushed away his plate. “She’s at forty-six The Crescent. As you go in off the hospital road, take the first right and it’s there on your left.”

“Thanks.” Suzanna had already risen from her seat.

“Tell her I send my love, will you? And I’ll look forward to seeing her back in the shop.”

“I will.”

“And, Suzanna . . .”

“What?” She hadn’t meant to be rude. “Sorry. Yes?”

“I’m glad she’s got a friend.” Father Lenny hesitated. “Someone to talk to.”

But while it was one thing to have the address, it was quite another, Suzanna realized, to push her way in, presumably unwanted, into a potential snake pit. What if he was there? She wouldn’t know what to say to him. What was the etiquette in such situations? Did you ignore the woman’s appearance? Make polite conversation? What if he was there and wouldn’t let her in? She might make things worse by just turning up.

Suzanna had only ever come up against something similar once: at school, her geography teacher, an apologetic, bespectacled woman, would regularly come in trying to shield purplish marks on her face and arms. “Her husband beats her up,” the girls would say knowledgeably to each other afterward, then give it no further thought. It was as if, Suzanna observed now, they had been parroting parental wisdom: these things happened, that was life.

But this was different.

Suzanna felt weak and inadequate. She could just not go, she thought. Jessie didn’t seem to want her there. It would be the easier path, and she would be back in a day or two. Yet, the degree of complicity in that course of inaction made her ashamed for even considering it.

It felt almost inevitable that he should go with her. She looked up, still passing her keys from hand to hand, to see him standing in front of her, his long legs for once in pale trousers, a T-shirt in place of the familiar scrubs and jacket. “Locked yourself out?” He looked relaxed, as if wherever he had been in the intervening days had been restorative.

“Not exactly.” She thought he might ask for coffee, but he just waited for her to speak. “It’s Jessie,” she said.

He glanced up and past her into the empty shop.

“I don’t know whether to go to her house.” She kicked at a stray stone. “I don’t know how much it’s right to interfere.” He didn’t need an explanation.

He squatted in front of her, his expression set and grim. “You are afraid?”

“I don’t know what she wants. I want to help, but she doesn’t seem to want it.”

He looked down the lane.

“She talks a lot, Jess,” she continued, “but she’s actually quite private. I don’t know whether she’s kind of comfortable with . . . the way things are. Or whether she’s secretly desperate for someone to jump in and help her. And—” She scratched her nose. “I’m not very good at confidences and intimacies and all that stuff. To be honest, Ale, I’m out of my depth. And I’m terrified of getting it wrong.” She didn’t tell him her darker thoughts—that she was afraid of getting too close to the mess of it, to the dark unhappiness—that having salvaged some kind of fragile peace in her own life, she didn’t want it corrupted by someone else’s misery.

He touched her hand with his fingertips, a reassuring, gentle gesture.

And then he lifted himself to his feet. He held out a hand. “Lock up your shop. I think we should go.”



* * *



—

Jessie’s house was recognizable outside for its window boxes and its bright purple front door. It was prettier than Suzanna had expected—prettier inside than it deserved to be, considering the uniformly depressed air of its neighbors. Inside, Suzanna had expected a war zone. Instead she found an immaculate sitting room with plumped gingham cushions and carefully dusted shelves. The ungenerously sized rooms were colorfully painted, decorated with cheap furniture that had been customized, loved into something more attractive. The walls were decorated with family pictures and paintings evidently completed by Emma in the various stages of her school career. Jokey birthday cards still lined the mantelpiece, and a pair of slippers in the shape of stuffed animals that announced they were “bear feet” lay on the floor. The only sign of any disturbance was a parcel of newspaper next to a dustpan and brush, presumably concealing broken glass. But what the apparently cheerful interior could not disguise was the air of stunned stillness, an atmosphere quite different from peaceful silence, as if it were still digesting actions that had previously taken place there.

“Tea?” said Jessie.

Suzanna had heard Alejandro’s intake of breath as the younger girl opened the front door. Her fine features were swollen, her mouth smeared at a grotesque angle, for both lips had been split by some historic blow. There was a large purplish bruise to her upper right cheek and some kind of homemade splint supported her left index finger.

“It’s not broken,” she said, wiggling it, as she followed Alejandro’s eyes. “I would have gone to the hospital if I thought anything was broken.”

She tried and failed to disguise a slight limp when she walked. “Go through to the front room,” she said, a parody of a hostess. “Sit down and make yourselves comfortable.”