But she didn’t reject it. ‘A treat indeed,’ she said, wrapping her gums around it and letting the juice run down her chin. She wiped it with the back of a rag-wrapped hand, removing days of grime from one small area of skin.
‘Mabel,’ I began, but the words wouldn’t come.
Mabel’s cracked lips softened as they sucked on the flesh of the pear. I felt myself flush, and the nausea I thought was over returned in a sickening wave that made me lean against the edge of Mabel’s crate.
‘That Lizzie won’t approve of what yer plannin’, ’ she said, her voice low.
It was a truth I’d been arguing with for days. Lizzie refused to hear me when I said I couldn’t have a child. The plainer my words, the more she would handle the crucifix around her neck. Like her faith, it was always there, hidden and quiet and personal. But in the past week, she hung onto it like it was the only thing keeping her from Hell.
It judged me, that crucifix, and I hated it. I imagined it twisting my words and whispering its translation in her ear. We were in some kind of tug of war, with Lizzie in the middle. It was not a contest I wanted to lose.
‘I reckon Mrs Smyth might still be in the trade,’ Mabel whispered, while picking up random objects as if to show me their worth. ‘She was an apprentice, so to speak, when I was in need. Be an old hag and good at it by now, I’d wager.’
A trembling began in my hands and worked its way along my limbs until my body was shivering with it.
‘Breathe normal, lass,’ Mabel said, holding my gaze with hers.
I held onto the crate and tried to stop taking the air in gulps, but the shivering continued.
‘You got yer pencil and one of them slips?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Take ’em out of yer pocket.’
I shook my head. It didn’t make sense.
Mabel leaned forward. ‘Do it,’ she said, then a little louder, ‘I just gave you a word and you’ll forget it if you don’t write it down.’
I reached into my pocket for a slip and a pencil. By the time I was poised to write, the trembling had subsided.
‘Trade,’ Mabel said, leaning back a little but not taking her eyes off my face.
I wrote trade in the top-left corner. Below that I wrote Mrs Smyth might still be in the trade.
‘You feelin’ better now?’ Mabel asked.
I nodded.
‘Fear ’ates the ordinary,’ she said. ‘When yer feared, you need to think ordinary thoughts, do ordinary things. You ’ear me? The fear’ll back off, for a time at least.’
I nodded again and looked at the slip. Trade was such a common word.
‘Where did you say Mrs Smyth lived?’ I asked.
Mabel told me, and I wrote it on the bottom of the slip.
Before I left, Mabel retrieved something from within the many folds of cloth that kept her warm. ‘For you,’ she said, handing me a disc of pale wood into which she’d carved a shamrock. ‘Thanks for the pear.’
I folded the slip around it and put it in my pocket.
It was an ordinary terraced house with identical terraced houses either side. A Christmas wreath still hung on the door. I checked the address again then looked along the length of the street. It was empty. I knocked.
The woman who answered the door might have been old, but she was straight-backed and well-dressed and could almost look me in the eye. I assumed I had the wrong house after all and began to stammer an apology, but she cut in.
‘Lovely to see you, my dear,’ she said, rather loudly. ‘How is your mother?’
I stared at her, confused, but she kept the smile on her face and took my arm to draw me into the house.
‘Keeping up appearances,’ she said when the door was closed. ‘The neighbours are all busy-bodies.’ She looked at me then, like Mabel had, searched my face and glanced down the length of my body. ‘I assume you wouldn’t want them all knowing your business.’
I couldn’t find the words for a reply, and Mrs Smyth didn’t seem to require one. She took my coat and hung it on a coat stand by the door, then she walked down the narrow hall, and I followed. She ushered me into a small sitting room, walls lined with books, a fire burning low in the hearth. I could see where she’d been sitting before I knocked: a velvet sofa, midnight blue with large, soft cushions of various patterns scattered across the back. It was big enough for two, but only at one end was the velvet worn and the seat depressed from years of being favoured. A book was splayed open on the table beside it, the spine strained. As Mrs Smyth stoked the fire, I moved closer to the book. In Mary’s Reign, by Baroness Orczy. I’d bought it years before, from Blackwell’s bookshop. For a moment I forgot why I was there and regretted the disturbance I had caused.
‘I like to read,’ Mrs Smyth said, when she caught me looking at the book. ‘Do you like to read?’
I nodded, but my mouth was too dry to speak. She went to her sideboard and poured a glass of water.
‘Take a sip, don’t gulp it,’ she said, handing it to me. I did as she instructed.
‘Good,’ she said, taking the glass from me. ‘Now, may I ask who recommended me?’
‘Mabel O’Shaughnessy,’ I whispered.
‘You can speak up,’ she said. ‘No one can hear us in here.’
‘Mabel O’Shaughnessy,’ I said again.
Mrs Smyth did not immediately recognise Mabel’s name, and it was little help to describe the way she looked. But when I told her what I knew of her past, and mentioned her Irish lilt, Mrs Smyth began to nod.
‘She was a repeat customer,’ she said, unsmiling.
