The Peacock Emporium(98)

“It’s not like that around here,” said Suzanna, who didn’t feel like being grateful to anyone. Especially not builders who were costing her an excess of four hundred pounds on her insurance policy and apparently drinking almost half that amount daily in finest Brazilian coffee beans. “Did you want another drink or are you going soon?”

“I’m all right for the moment. I’ll get as much done as I can before I have to head off. Leave you free to sort things out up here,” Neil said, and disappeared down the stairs again.

“That your husband?” Mrs. Creek was toying with an old magazine.

The way she glanced toward the stairs, as if Suzanna had done something duplicitous in having him here, made her feel intensely irritable. “Yes,” she said, and went back to her display.

“I saw him with you at the funeral.”

“Oh.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Who?”

“The daughter, Emma. Nice little girl, she is. I made her a daisy outfit. Fitted her beautifully, it did. I made it out of an old piece of crepe-de-Chine.” She sipped her coffee.

Suzanna had been trying to keep the vision of Jessie’s display intact in her head. She had known exactly what she wanted when she left the house, but already her ideas were getting blurred, corrupted by conversation.

“Ball gowns and wedding dresses. Crepe-de-Chine was lovely for those. Of course, most wedding dresses were silk—those who could afford it, anyway.”

What was left of her vision evaporated. Oh, please go away, thought Suzanna, fighting the urge to bang her head repeatedly on the counter’s hard surface. Just leave me alone. I can’t listen to your ramblings today.

The wind rattled down the lane, sending paper cups and the first stray leaves of autumn scuttling in errant circles in its wake. On the other side of the plywood hoardings, she heard the builders calling and exclaiming to each other, interrupted by the occasional burst of an electric drill. The windows would be going in next week, they said. Handmade by a local carpenter. Even better than the old ones. In a perverse way she had decided she quite liked the bare wood enclosure, the dim light. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to be so exposed again.

“You couldn’t do us another coffee, could you, love?” The oldest builder, a man with silver hair and a strong sense of his own charm, slid his face around the front door. “It’s turned bitter out here.”

She mustered a smile. Like she had mustered one for Mrs. Creek. “Sure,” she said. “Coming right up.”

Several minutes later she heard the door open again. But when she finally looked up from the coffee machine it wasn’t the builder who stood in front of her.

“Suzanna,” he said and, for a second, she could see nothing except him, his blue hospital tunic, his battered holdall, his intimate, lowered gaze. He glanced around the shop, at Mrs. Creek, apparently engrossed in her magazine, and stretched a hand across the counter toward her. “The shop was closed,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know how to reach you.”

His sudden proximity made her short of breath. She blinked hard at the coffees in front of her. “I have to take these out,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I need to talk to you.”

She glanced at Mrs. Creek, then up at him. “The shop’s quite busy at the moment,” she said distinctly, trying to convey something—she wasn’t sure what—in her voice.

From the other end of the shop, Mrs. Creek called, “Are you charging those men full price for their coffees?”

Suzanna tore her gaze away from him. “What? No,” she said. “I’m not charging them anything.”

“That’s hardly fair.”

Suzanna breathed in. “If you’d like to help replace my windows, Mrs. Creek, or compile my insurance claim, perhaps even my accounts, I’d be delighted to give you a free coffee.”

“Suzanna,” he murmured at her left ear now, equally insistent.

“Hardly very friendly, is it?” Mrs. Creek muttered. “I don’t suppose Jess . . .” She apparently changed her mind. “I suppose things will go back to how they were, now.” Her tone left no one in any doubt as to what she thought of that.

“I kept thinking about you . . . ,” he said quietly. She was focusing on his mouth now, several inches from hers. “I have hardly slept since . . . I feel guilty that I can feel so much joy, so much . . . at a time that’s so . . . so bad.” Despite the weight of his words, something had lifted in him: his face was glowing.

Suzanna’s gaze flickered from his mouth to Mrs. Creek, reading again in the corner. Outside she could hear people talking in the street, the answering tones of the builders, and wondered whether they were leaving more flowers. She was dimly aware of Neil whistling “You Are My Sunshine” several feet below them.

“You think it’s wrong?” Alejandro’s hand touched hers, the contact featherlight. “To be so happy?”

“Ale—I—”

“Did you say what you wanted done with that garbage bag? I could ask the guys outside if I could dump it in their can.”

She jumped, snatching back her hand, and whipped around as Neil, several feet away, rubbed at his nose then examined his fingers as if expecting to see dirt. “Oh,” he said amiably. “Sorry to interrupt.”