Stacey looks at the harbor, half an eye on her watch. She has not come down here to observe the gulls and ships, but she cannot yet bring herself to walk along Grenoble Street and enter the one door she must enter. — I’ve got to. Can’t stay away from home much longer. It isn’t fair to Katie, to expect her to look after Jen all day. Come on, Stacey. Okay, in a minute when I feel stronger. Just a minute. You haven’t got the guts of a grasshopper, that’s your trouble. Come on. Not later. Now. She turns and walks quickly. She reaches Grenoble Street and her footsteps dwindle, dawdle past cafés and the cheap hotels where old men doze in the barely waking lobbies which will blare and brawl when night falls. Stacey finds Honest Ernie’s cut-price children’s clothes, and enters the doorway at the side. Up the brown linoleum stairs to the second landing. She stops, then, being unable yet to knock. The gigantic woman, outspread like rising dough gone amok, swelling and undulating over the stiff upholstery of the chair, gaping body covered with tiny-flower-printed dress huge and shroud-shaped, and beside her on a low table the pink-pearl glass mug and the port-filled teapot.
