The Peacock Emporium(82)
She looked over at Jessie, who had been writing price labels for a box of multicolored Perspex letters for the past half hour, although Suzanna had told her it really wasn’t necessary.
Now that Suzanna thought about it, Jessie had hardly spoken all morning. In the days since she had returned to work she had not quite been herself: not subdued exactly, but distracted, slow to pick up on jokes that previously she herself might have instigated. She had apparently forgotten all about Arturro and Liliane, her former obsession, and Suzanna, preoccupied, had taken longer to notice. External bruises might fade, she thought now, regretting her own distraction, but perhaps internal ones were harder to shift.
“Jess?” she said carefully, when Mrs. Creek had gone. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you want to take some more time off?”
Jessie looked up sharply, and Suzanna immediately wanted to backtrack. “It’s not that I don’t want you here. I just thought . . . well, we’re not busy at the moment, and you might want to spend more time with Emma.”
“No, no. It’s fine.”
“Really. It’s not a problem.”
Jessie stared at the table for a moment, then moved her head slowly, taking in the whereabouts of the customers, and turned reluctantly to Suzanna. “Actually, I need to talk to you,” she said, not meeting her eyes.
Suzanna hesitated, then moved silently around the counter and sat down opposite her.
The younger girl looked up. “I’m going to have to quit,” she said.
“What?”
Jessie sighed. “I’ve decided it’s not worth the aggravation. He’s getting worse. We’re on the list for his anger management and couples counseling, or whatever it’s called, but that might take weeks, months, even, and I’ve got to do something to get him to see sense.”
Her face framed into an apology. “I’ve dreaded telling you,” she said. “Really. But I’ve got to put my family first. And with a bit of luck it might only be temporary. Just till he calms down a bit, you know.”
Suzanna sat in silence. The thought of Jessie disappearing from the shop made her feel ill. Even without her current distractions, it no longer seemed the same on the days when Jessie wasn’t there: she didn’t feel the same enthusiasm for opening up; the hours stretched, instead of skittering by in ridiculous jokes and shared confidences. And if Jessie disappeared, how many customers would vanish with her? They were barely breaking even as it was, and Suzanna knew well enough by now that the girl’s smiling face and her interest in everyone’s lives were a draw in a way that she alone could never be.
“Don’t be cross with me, Suze.”
“I’m not cross. Don’t be silly.” Suzanna reached out her hand, placed it on Jessie’s.
“I’ll stay on a week or two if it leaves you in the lurch. And I’ll understand if you want to get someone else. I mean, I’m not expecting you to keep the job open for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Suzanna saw a tear plop onto the tabletop. “You know the job is always yours,” she said quietly.
They stayed like that for some minutes, listening as a delivery van reversed wetly down the road, sending waves of water onto the curb.
“Who’d have thought it, eh?” Jessie’s smile was restored.
Suzanna kept hold of her hand, wondering if she could bear to hear it. “What?”
“Suzanna Peacock. Needing people.”
The rain beat fiercely on the lane, the view from the windows a gunmetal blur.
“Not people,” said Suzanna, trying and failing to sound grumpy, in order to mask the constriction of her heart. “You might have a split personality, Jess, but I don’t think even you qualify as people just yet.”
Jessie grinned, a hint of her old self shining through, and gently removed her hand. “But it’s not just about me, is it?”
* * *
—
The annoying girl left at a quarter past three, taking all that hair, still sticking out as if she had been dragged through a hedge backward, with her. She had taken to shouting at Rosemary, as if she were deaf, and Rosemary, irked by this patronizing treatment, had taken to shouting back, to show her it wasn’t necessary. Young people could be so irritating.
She had told the girl, as she left, that if she wanted to hang on to her husband she was going to have to get herself a girdle. “Tidy yourself up a little,” she said. “No man likes to see someone who’s hanging out all over the place.” She had thought, secretly hoped, perhaps, that the girl would take offense and leave. But instead she had placed her podgy little hand on Rosemary’s own (another overfamiliar gesture) and hooted with laughter. “Bless you, Rosemary,” she had said. “I’ll be volunteering my husband for the corset treatment before I do it myself. Hasn’t he got several gallons of bitter slooshing around in his?”
She really was impossible. And she was meant to leave at two—two, not a quarter past three. Rosemary, checking her watch every few minutes, had become quite anxious for her to leave. Vivi always walked the dog after lunch, and Rosemary was counting on having the house to herself.
She called out, making sure Vivi hadn’t come back in through one of the back doors, and then, a little stiffly, began to make her way slowly upstairs, hauling herself along with both bony hands on the banister. They had thought she wouldn’t know, she mused bitterly. Just because she no longer went upstairs, they had thought they could ignore her wishes. As if her advanced years meant that she no longer counted. But she wasn’t stupid. Hadn’t she had her suspicions from the day her son had brought up all that business about dividing the estate again? Even in his sixties he had barely the sense he had been born with, was still swaying with the whims and fancies of women.