The Peacock Emporium

The novel weaves together three timelines across two continents, tracing how secrets about a mother's abandonment and a father's silence shape a woman who believes she caused her own mother's death in childbirth. Set primarily in the small English market town of Dere Hampton, it moves between the early 1960s and 2001, with interludes in Buenos Aires.

The story opens in Buenos Aires in 2001, where Alejandro de Marenas, a newly qualified midwife, delivers his first baby during a heat wave. The birth is successful, but the impoverished parents hand the newborn to a wealthy couple waiting in the delivery room. The blonde woman repeats, "She will be loved." The scene haunts Alejandro and establishes the novel's preoccupation with mothers, loss, and the question of who has the right to a child.

The narrative jumps to 1963 Norfolk, where Vivi Newton, a young woman who has loved her childhood friend Douglas Fairley-Hulme since girlhood, accompanies him to a hunt ball. She hopes the evening will be the night Douglas sees her romantically. Instead, the ball is disrupted when Athene Forster, a notorious society girl nicknamed "the Last Deb," rides a horse into the gaming room. Vivi watches Douglas stare at Athene with rapt fascination, and late that night discovers them having sex outside.

Four months later, Athene and Douglas marry. Vivi attends despite her heartbreak and overhears that Athene slept with an ex-boyfriend days before the wedding. The early marriage reveals a widening rift: Douglas proposes plans to redistribute the family estate's land, but his father rejects them; Athene refuses to engage with family duties and eventually runs off with a vacuum-cleaner salesman. Vivi realizes she cannot continue seeing her devoted boyfriend, Tom, knowing her feelings for Douglas have never changed.

The main contemporary storyline centers on Suzanna Peacock, Douglas's eldest daughter, and her strained marriage to Neil. They have moved to a small estate cottage in Dere Hampton after accruing severe debt. They argue about Suzanna's unhappiness in the country and her refusal to have children. Suzanna proposes a deal: If Neil gives her a year to run a shop, she will agree to try for a baby.

Suzanna opens the Peacock Emporium, a quirky shop combining a coffee bar with eclectic handmade and vintage goods. A family lunch exposes the central family wound: Douglas has willed the estate entirely to Ben, the younger son, following primogeniture, the tradition by which the eldest male heir inherits. Suzanna sees this as proof her father values her less.

The shop transforms when Jessie Carter, a warm, blunt young woman from the local council estate, volunteers to help. Jessie's energy draws in regulars and builds community. A painting of Athene Forster sits behind the counter, a focal point for Suzanna's grief: She believes she caused her mother's death in childbirth, and her father's emotional distance confirms her guilt.

Alejandro de Marenas, now working at Dere Hampton's maternity hospital, begins visiting the shop. His backstory mirrors Suzanna's: His twin sister died at birth when his umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and he carries the guilt. In Dere Hampton, he is isolated by racism from landlords who refuse to rent to him. A quiet attraction develops between him and Suzanna.

Meanwhile, Jessie arrives at work with bruised fingers, and Suzanna recognizes the real cause: Jessie's partner, Jason. Jessie defends Jason and turns the conversation on Suzanna, arguing that a "cool, polite, parallel life" with someone you hardly feel for is more frightening than volatile love. Suzanna is shaken, recognizing her own marriage.

At home, Vivi struggles with the increasing frailty of Rosemary, Douglas's mother, while receiving little support. She eventually erupts, telling Douglas and Rosemary she is "the bloody family" and demanding that Douglas either make Suzanna an equal heir or tell her the truth about Athene. Douglas follows Vivi to a hilltop and confesses he loves her.

Suzanna reveals to Alejandro her deepest belief: that she caused her mother's death. He takes her hand and rests his forehead against it in silent understanding. Back at the shop, they share the Argentinian drink mate from a single silver straw, and the connection between them becomes undeniable. Their growing intimacy is interrupted when Rosemary falls while trying to pull Athene's portrait off the gallery wall, where Douglas and Vivi had hung it as a gesture toward Suzanna.

That evening, Jason, drunk and enraged after seeing Jessie and Alejandro together through the shop window, drives his delivery van through the front of the Peacock Emporium. Jessie is killed instantly. Alejandro tries to revive her under the wreckage before being pulled away. Suzanna and Alejandro walk home in silence. At his flat, consumed by shared grief, they kiss.

The shop loses its heart. Trade declines. When Alejandro declares his love weeks later, Suzanna tells him she is married and pushes him away. Neil discovers Suzanna has secretly arranged contraception, and their marriage fractures further.

The truth about Suzanna's origins emerges through Mrs. Creek, the shop's elderly regular and former seamstress, who casually mentions having made a wedding dress for Athene Forster, whose baby "wasn't his." Stunned, Suzanna confronts Vivi, who reveals the full story. Athene did not die giving birth to Suzanna. She ran away with the salesman, became destitute, and eventually returned to hand baby Suzanna to Douglas at a London restaurant. Douglas took the baby home. Vivi, who had never stopped loving Douglas, volunteered to care for the child. Athene later died during a subsequent pregnancy. Two months after Athene's death, Douglas proposed to Vivi. Vivi tells Suzanna: "without you, dearest, dearest child, I would never have had him."

A chapter from Athene's perspective reveals the anguish of the day she gave Suzanna away. She walks to the restaurant in the rain, unable to look at the baby's face. Back at the bedsit, she lies on the bed for days, unable to eat or speak. She is pregnant again with the child whose birth will kill her.

Freed from guilt, Suzanna leaves Neil, telling him their marriage lacks the depth either deserves. She creates a memorial window display for Jessie in the Emporium. Alejandro, who has apparently left for Argentina, sends anonymous peacock-themed gifts. He returns on the day of Jessie's inquest, and when Suzanna tries to push him away, he refuses: "I will haunt you, Suzanna ... They are not your ghosts ... I am" (420). She opens the door and tells him her name is not Suzanna Peacock but Suzanna Fairley-Hulme, reclaiming her identity.

In a brief closing chapter, Suzanna describes the birth of their daughter, Veronica de Marenas, during a hospital blackout that echoes Alejandro's first delivery in Buenos Aires. "She will be loved," he says, the same words spoken over the baby given away, now transformed from a stranger's desperate promise into a father's certainty.