Peacock Emporium

by Jojo Moyes

  ‘Lunch,’ she said, handing over the basket. And then, as he was about to thank her, she added, ‘Got a minute?’ He indicated the one remaining barn, and passed Ben’s sandwiches to him on the way.

  They had not seen each other in the twenty-four hours she had been in the house. He had been out with the demolition team, and she had spent much of her time in her room, a good portion of it asleep. He motioned towards an old fertiliser sack, and she rested carefully against it, as he hauled one over for himself.

  There was an expectant pause. She didn’t bring up the circumstances of her birth, or her leaving Neil, although she knew Vivi would have discussed both with him. As far as Suzanna knew, Vivi had never kept a secret from her father.

  ‘Looks strange, without the middle barns.’

  He glanced up to the holes in the roof. ‘I suppose it does.’

  ‘When do you start work on the new houses?’

  ‘It’ll be a while. We’ll have to level the ground first, put in new drainage, that sort of thing. Those still standing will have to have most of the timber replaced.’ He offered her a sandwich, and she shook her head. ‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘We’d originally thought we could convert the lot. But there are times when you have to accept that you’re just going to have to start from scratch.’

  They sat side by side, her father breaking off from his sandwich to drink from a flask of tea. She found herself staring at his hands. She remembered Neil telling her that when his own father had died, he had realised, with shock, that he would never see his hands again. So familiar, so mundane, yet so shockingly gone.

  She glanced down at her own. She didn’t need to see a picture to know that they were her mother’s.

  She placed them between her knees, and looked out to where the men had stopped for lunch. Then, finally, she turned to her father. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’ Her palms pressed against each other, her skin surprisingly cool. ‘I wanted to ask if you’d mind if I took a little of my share of the estate money now.’

  She saw from the way he looked at her that he hadn’t known what was coming. That what he had perhaps expected was somehow worse. His eyes were both questioning and relieved, checking that this was what she wanted. She understood that, in asking, she had told him what she now found acceptable.

  ‘You need it now?’

  She nodded. ‘Ben will do good things with the estate. It . . . it’s in his blood.’

  There was a brief silence as the words descended between them. Wordlessly, he took a chequebook from his back pocket, and scribbled a figure, then handed it to her.

  Suzanna stared at the cheque. ‘That’s too much.’

  ‘It’s your right.’ He paused. ‘It’s what we spent putting Lucy and Ben through university.’

  He had finished his sandwich. He screwed up the greaseproof paper it had been wrapped in, and put it back into the basket.

  ‘You might as well know,’ she said, ‘that I’m going to go abroad with it. Spread my wings.’

  She was conscious of his silence, of the silences with which he had spoken to her all her life. ‘Lucy’s got me a ticket. I’m going to Australia. I’ll be staying with a friend of hers for a while, just till I find my feet.’

  Her father shifted position.

  ‘I haven’t done much with my life, Dad.’

  ‘You’re just like her,’ he said.

  She felt herself boil up. ‘I’m not a bolter, Dad. I’m just trying to do what’s right for everyone.’

  He shook his head, and she realised that the look on his face had not been of condemnation. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said, slowly. ‘You . . . need to strike out. Find your own way of doing things.’ He nodded, as if reassuring himself. ‘You sure that money will be enough?’

  ‘God, yes. Backpacking’s pretty cheap, from what Lucy says. Actually, I’m hoping not to spend too much. I’m going to leave most of it here in the bank.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And Father Lenny’s going to sell off my remaining stock for me. So that will be a bit more coming in, hopefully.’

  ‘Can he manage it?’

  ‘I think so. Everyone tells me I can’t really get rid of it without him.’

  They watched as Ben moved between the two bulldozers, apparently issuing instructions, breaking off once to answer his mobile phone and laugh uproariously.

  Her father stared at him for a while, then turned to her. ‘I know things haven’t been easy between us, Suzanna, but I do want you to know something.’ His knuckles were white round the flask. ‘I never did a test, you know – we didn’t have DNA and suchlike in those days – but I knew from the start you were mine.’

  Even in the darkened barn Suzanna could see the intensity of his gaze, heard the love in what he was saying. She realised that even he was hidebound by the past, by deeply ingrained beliefs about blood and heritage. There were ways to be certain about these things. But suddenly she understood they were irrelevant. ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ she said.

  They were quiet for a moment, conscious of a gap widened by years of hard words and misunderstanding, of the ghost that would always come between them. ‘Maybe we’ll visit. When you’re in Australia,’ he said. He was now close enough to her for their arms to be resting against each other. ‘Your mother has always fancied a bit of foreign travel. And I wouldn’t want to go too long – without seeing you, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Suzanna, allowing the warmth of him to seep into her. ‘Me neither.’

  She found Vivi in the picture gallery, staring at the portrait.

  ‘Are you going to your shop?’

  My shop, thought Suzanna. It no longer felt like the right phrase to describe it. ‘I’m going to pick up the last of my clothes from Neil’s first. I think it’s fairer on him to do it while he’s out.’

  ‘Just clothes?’

  ‘A few books. My jewellery. I’m going to leave the rest.’ She frowned. ‘Will you keep an eye on him while I’m gone?’

  Vivi nodded.

  She had probably already decided as much Suzanna thought. ‘I’m not completely heartless. I do care about him, you know,’ she said. She would have liked to add, I want him to be happy. But she was glad that she wouldn’t be around to witness that. Selflessness didn’t stretch that far.

  ‘Will you be happy?’

  Suzanna thought of Australia, an unknown continent on the other side of the world. She thought of her own tiny world, of what had once been her shop. Of Alejandro. ‘Happier than I have been,’ she said, unable to explain quite what she felt. ‘Definitely happier.’

  ‘That’s a start.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  Suzanna stepped forward, and they stood side by side, gazing up at the gilt-edged painting. ‘She should be here,’ said Vivi. ‘If it’s all right by you, Suzanna dear, I shall probably be on that wall opposite. Your father, silly old fool, thinks I should be up there too.’

  Suzanna wrapped her arm round Vivi’s waist. ‘You know what? I’m not sure it shouldn’t just be you. It might look a bit odd otherwise. And that frame of hers doesn’t really go with the surroundings.’

  ‘Oh, no, darling. Athene has a right. She has to have her place too.’

  Suzanna was transfixed briefly by the glittering eyes of the woman in the portrait. ‘You’ve always been so good,’ she said, ‘looking after all of us.’

  ‘Goodness has nothing to do with it,’ said Vivi. ‘It’s just the way we were made – I was made.’

  Then Suzanna turned from the portrait to the woman who loved her, who had always loved her. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Vivi said, as they made their way towards the stairs, ‘something came for you while you were out. It was delivered by the most extraordinary old man. He kept smiling at me as if he knew me.’

  ‘An old man?’

  Vivi was examining the wood of a table, rubbing at its surface with a fingertip. ‘Oh, yes. Well into his sixties. Foreign-looking cha
p with a moustache. No one I’ve seen in town.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t explain who it was from. But it’s a plant. Roscoea purpurea, I think it is.’

  Suzanna stared at her mother. ‘A plant? Are you sure it’s for me?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s from one of your customers. Anyway, it’s in the utility room.’ She walked down the stairs, then called over her shoulder, ‘We used to know it as the peacock eye. Not one of my favourites, I must admit. I’ll give it to Rosemary if you don’t want it.’ With a noise that sounded like a gasp, Suzanna almost pushed past her mother and ran down the stairs.

  Twenty-Seven

  She had thought she knew almost all there was to know about Jessie. Now, an hour and a half into the inquest, she learnt that the late Jessica Mary Carter had been exactly five feet two and a half inches tall, that she had had her appendix and her tonsils removed more than ten years previously, that she had a birthmark on her lower back, and that the index finger on her left hand had been broken at least three times, the last time relatively recently. Among her other injuries, many of which Suzanna had chosen not to listen to, there were bruises that could not be explained by the events of the night of her death. She didn’t sound like Jessie: she sounded like an amalgam of physical elements, of skin and bone and catalogued damage. That was what was so disturbing: not that there were so many injuries she hadn’t known about, but that nothing of the essence of her was there at all.

  Inside the court, Jessie’s friends and relatives who had braved the inquest, some because they still could not accept that she was gone, others because they were secretly enjoying being part of the biggest thing that had happened to Dere Hampton since the 1996 pet-shop fire, murmured among themselves, or wept silently into handkerchiefs, cowed by the occasion. Suzanna shifted in her seat, trying to look from the edge of the public gallery to the other door. She had to fight the suspicion that he was, at this moment, sitting outside on the bench, with Cath Carter’s chain-smoking sisters. It would be disrespectful to keep leaving the courtroom to check.

  He hadn’t been there when she arrived; he had not been there when she had left the court twenty minutes previously to visit the ladies’ room. But as the sole witness to the event, he would have to give evidence.

  He would have to come.

  Suzanna smoothed back her hair, feeling the familiar clench of her stomach, the winding coil of excitement and fear that had possessed her for more than twenty-four hours. Twice, to comfort herself, she had stared into her bag at her trove of peculiar treasures. There was the label from the plant that had arrived that first day; then, addressed to her at her parents’ house, a paper butterfly sent in an unmarked envelope, which Ben, an amateur enthusiast in his teens, had identified only as Inachis io. She had written the name on the back. Yesterday, when she had gone to the shop to complete her final task before handing over the keys, she had found an oversized feather pinned to the door frame. It now stuck incongruously from the lip of her shoulder-bag. There had been no messages. But she had known they had to be something to do with him. That there must be some meaning.

  She tried not to think too hard of the possibility that they might have come from Neil.

  The coroner had finished with the post-mortem report. He leant solicitously over his bench and asked Cath Carter if there was anything she would like clarified. Cath, sandwiched tightly between Father Lenny and an unidentified middle-aged woman, shook her head. The coroner returned to the witness list in front of him.

  It would be her turn next. Suzanna gazed down at the bespectacled reporter in the corner, faithfully scribbling shorthand in his notebook. Suzanna had spoken to Father Lenny beforehand of her fears that if she told the coroner everything she knew, everything, that Jessie would be painted in the newspapers as a domestic-abuse victim. She hadn’t wanted to be seen as a victim, Suzanna had told him. Didn’t they owe her that small dignity at least? He had told her that Cath had similar concerns. ‘But there is a bottom line here, Suzanna,’ he had said, ‘and that is where you’d rather see Emma growing up. Because although there won’t be a criminal verdict in this court, you can bet that what gets said here will go on to be used in any criminal case. I think even Jessie wouldn’t mind sacrificing her privacy a little for the sake of her daughter’s . . . stability.’ He had chosen the word carefully.

  Which had made it a pretty straightforward decision. Suzanna heard her name called and stood up. Under the surprisingly gentle prompting of the coroner, she told him in measured tones of Jessie’s injuries during the time she had worked for the Peacock Emporium, of the sequence of events that had led to the evening on which she died, and of the gregarious, generous personality that had inadvertently led to her death. She had been unable to look at Cath as she spoke, feeling still as if she were betraying the family’s trust, but as she stepped down she had caught the older woman’s eye, and Cath had nodded. An acknowledgement of sorts.

  He had not come in.

  She sat down in her seat, feeling herself deflate, as if she had spoken while holding her breath.

  ‘You okay?’ Father Lenny mouthed, turning in his seat. She nodded, trying not to let her eyes drift again to the wood-panelled door. Which, any minute now, threatened to open. And smoothed, for the fortieth time, her too-short hair.

  Three other people gave evidence; Jessie’s doctor, who confirmed that in his opinion Jess had not suffered from depression but had intended to leave her partner; Father Lenny, who, as a close friend of the family, told of his own attempt to remedy what he called her ‘situation’, and of her fierce determination to sort it out herself; and a cousin whom Suzanna had not met. The latter had burst into tears and pointed an accusatory finger at Jason Burden’s mother: she had known what was going on and should have stopped it, stopped him, the bastard. The coroner suggested that she might like to take a break to compose herself. Suzanna listened with half an ear, straining to place every muffled voice outside, wondering at what point she could legitimately leave the court again.

  ‘We now turn to our sole witness,’ said the coroner, ‘a Mr Alejandro de Marenas, an Argentinian national, formerly resident at Dere Hampton hospital where he was working in the maternity ward . . .’

  Suzanna’s heart stopped.

  ‘. . . who has provided a written statement. I will pass this to the court clerk to read aloud.’

  The court clerk, a plump woman with enthusiastically dyed hair, stood and, in a flat, estuary accent, began to read.

  A written statement. Suzanna slumped forward as if winded. She heard almost nothing of Alejandro’s words, the words she had heard whispered into her ear on the night of Jessie’s death, words uttered through tears and kisses, words she had stopped with her own lips.

  Then she stared at this woman, who should have been Alejandro, and tried to stop the wail of exasperation that was building inside her.

  She couldn’t sit still. She fidgeted in her seat, feverish and despairing, and when the woman stopped reading, she slid rapidly along the bench and, with a nod of apology, fled to the hallway where two of Jessie’s aunts, her cousin and a friend from school were already seated on the bench.

  ‘That murdering bastard,’ said one, lighting a cigarette. ‘How can his mother show her face in here?’

  ‘Lynn says the boys are going to have him if he tries to come back to Dere. Her eldest carries a baseball bat in his car, just in case he sees him out.’

  ‘He’s still inside. They’re not going to let him out.’

  ‘It’s not Sylvia’s fault,’ said the other. ‘You know she’s devastated.’

  ‘She still visits him, doesn’t she? She still goes to see him every week.’

  The older woman patted the girl’s arm. ‘Any mother would,’ she said. ‘He’s blood, isn’t he? Whatever he’s done.’ She called to Suzanna, ‘You all right, love? Found it too hard to listen to, did you?’

  Suzanna, leaning against the wall, could not reply. Of course he hadn’t co
me. Why would he, after everything she had said? Perhaps he had been leaving as she had sat there, vainly checking her appearance. The arrogance of her certainty! She stood for a second, her face crumpling, her hands lifting to her head as if she could physically hold it together. She felt an unfamiliar female arm round her, smelt the acrid aroma of just-smoked cigarettes. ‘Don’t fret, love. She’s with the angels now, isn’t she? We’ve just been saying, she’s with the angels. No point fretting now.’

  Suzanna muttered something and left. She didn’t need to know whether the death would be recorded as misadventure, manslaughter, or even as an open verdict. Jessie had gone. That had been the only relevant fact.

  She could only pray that Alejandro hadn’t gone too.

  There had been several delays, ascribed variously to engine trouble, security matters and bad weather, and Heathrow airport was packed with people milling around, dragging suitcases on wheels, or stacked high in trolleys that swerved mutinously on the shining linoleum floor, floor which squeaked under the combined weight of endless pairs of soft-soled shoes. Exhausted travellers stretched out proprietorially on lengths of seating while babies wailed and small children did their best to get lost in brightly lit cafés, fraying their parents’ already shredded tempers.

  Jorge de Marenas, a little too full of airport coffee, looked up at the flight board, stood and picked up his suitcase. He patted his jacket pocket, checking that ticket and passport were in place, then gestured towards the departure gate, where a snaking line of fellow Argentinians were queuing patiently, tickets in hand. ‘You sure you want to do this?’ he said to his son. ‘I don’t want you to think about me. Or your mother. This should be about you. About what you want.’

  Alejandro followed his father’s gaze to the departure board. ‘It’s okay, Pa,’ he said.

  The nurses’ accommodation block at Dere Hampton hospital was bigger than Suzanna had remembered. It had two entrances, both of which she thought she recalled, and a wide grassy area surrounding it, punctuated by straggly looking shrubs that she didn’t remember at all. It all looked so different in the light, dotted with people, lightly frosted with autumnal leaves, hardly recognisable as the place that had been a backdrop of her dreams.