The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (24 page)

'Hi, Luke,' he says, flinging the stick high into the air, making the dog race off at an angle. 'Haven't seen you for a while. How are you doing?'

Iris sees Luke give a kind of flinch. 'Alexander,' Luke says, with a cough.

'Alex,' Alex corrects.

Luke manages a nod. 'It's good to see you.'

Alex does a curious sideways movement of his head, which somehow manages to convey the message, I remember you, and also, I don't like you. 'Likewise,' he says.

Luke raises himself up on his toes, then starts nodding. Iris finds that she is nodding too. They nod at each other for a moment. He cannot meet her eye and his face is heated, and Iris has never seen him flush before. She finds she cannot look at the wife. She tries, she tries to pull her gaze in that direction, but every time she gets near an odd thing happens and her eyes veer away, as if the wife exudes some negative forcefield too strong for her. The silence is growing, clouding the air between them all, and Iris is raking about for things to say, for excuses, for reasons they have to go when, to her horror, she realises that Alex is speaking: 'So,' he is saying, in a dangerously chatty tone, 'this must be your wife, Luke. Aren't you going to introduce us?'

Luke turns to his wife, as if he'd forgotten all about her.

'Gina,' he says, to the ground between them, 'this is ... Iris. She ... We, ah, we...' he falters. There is a gaping pause and Iris is curious about what he will say next. What could it possibly be? We fuck whenever we get the chance? We met at a wedding while you were in bed with flu? She wouldn't give me her number so I found out where she worked and went there every day until she agreed to go out with me? She's the one I'm planning to leave you for? 'She ... she has a shop,' he finishes, and there is a smothered, choked sound from Alex and Iris knows that he
is trying not to laugh and she makes a mental note to make him sorry later, sorrier than he's ever been.

But Gina is smiling and reaching out, and her face is empty of guile, empty of jealousy. As she takes her hand, Iris thinks: I could ruin your life. 'Nice to meet you,' she mutters, and she cannot look at this person, she cannot take in an image of the woman she is betraying, the woman who shares his house, his bed, his life. She would like to but she cannot.

But Iris does look at her, she makes herself look, and she sees that Gina is a small woman with pale hair held back in a band, and that she is holding a pair of binoculars, and as Iris focuses on the binoculars she sees something else. Gina is pregnant. Unmistakably pregnant – her body pushed out beneath a black woollen sweater.

Iris stares for long enough to take this in. She sees the interlocking weave of the sweater's fabric, she sees the silver catch on the binoculars' case, she sees that Luke's wife has had a manicure recently and that her nails are painted in the French style.

Iris has the sensation of sinking, of her pulse knocking at her temples, and she would really like to leave, like to be anywhere else but here, and Gina is saying something to Luke and there is a little interchange between them about how cold it is and whether they will walk to the summit of the hill and, in the middle of all this, Esme suddenly turns to look at Iris. She frowns. Then she takes Iris's wrist.

'We have to leave,' she announces. 'Goodbye.' She pulls
Iris away and steers her down the path, glaring at Luke as they go.

When the car pulls up outside the home, Iris observes that her hands haven't stopped shaking, that her heartbeat is still uneven, still fast. She opens and shuts the glovebox as Alex gets out, as he helps Esme do the same. She pulls down the mirror and has a quick glance at herself, decides she looks deranged, pushes her hair off her face, then opens her door and steps out.

As they walk across the car park and in through the glass doors, she avoids meeting Alex's eye. He lopes along beside them, hands in his pockets. Iris passes her arm through Esme's and walks with her to the front desk, where she signs them in.

'Do you want to come as well,' she addresses the region of Alex's shoulder, 'or wait here? I don't mind, it's up to—'

'I'll come,' he says.

At the door to Kitty's room, Iris says, 'Here we are,' and Esme stops. She looks up to her left, at the point in the corridor where the wall meets the ceiling. It is the movement of someone who has just seen a bird passing overhead or felt a sudden gust of wind. She looks down again. She folds her hands over each other, then lets them dangle back to her sides.

'In here?' she says.

The room is bright, sun glaring through the French
windows. Kitty is seated in a chair, her back to the view. She is dressed in a taupe twinset, a tweed skirt, a pair of polished brogues, looking for all the world as if she is about to get to her feet and tackle a good country walk. Iris can tell that the hairdresser has visited recently – her hair is brushed back in silver-blue waves.

'Grandma,' Iris advances into the room, 'it's me, Iris.'

Kitty swivels her head to look at her. 'Only in the evenings,' she replies, 'very rarely during the day'

Iris is momentarily stalled by this but then rallies herself. 'I'm your granddaughter, Iris, and—'

'Yes, yes,' Kitty snaps, 'but what do you want?'

Iris sits on a footstool near her. She feels suddenly nervous. 'I've brought some people to see you. Well, one person, really. The other one, the man over there, is Alex. I don't know if you remember him but...' She takes a deep breath. 'This is Esme.'

Iris turns to look at Esme. She is standing beside the door, very still, her head on one side.

'What have you done to your hair?' Kitty shrieks, making Iris jump. She turns back and sees that Kitty is speaking to her.

'Nothing,' she says, wrong-footed. 'I had it cut ... Grandma, this is Esme. Your sister, Esme. Do you remember your sister? She's come to visit you.'

Kitty doesn't look up. She looks determinedly at her watchstrap, rolling it between her fingers, and the thought crosses Iris's mind that she sometimes understands more
than she lets on. Something in the room flexes and stirs, and Kitty rolls the watchstrap, a chain of gold links, between her fingers. Someone somewhere is playing a piano and a thin voice floats out over the top of the melody.

'Hello, Kit,' Esme says.

Kitty's head jerks round and the words begin to fall out of her mouth, without pause or reflection, as if she's had them ready: '– sit there with your legs like that, over the chair arm? Whatever it was you were reading anyway. And what was I supposed to do? My chances all ruined. You look just the same, just the same. It wasn't me, you know. It wasn't. I didn't take it. Why would I have wanted it? The very idea. Anyway, it was for the best. You have to admit that. Father thought so too, and the doctor. I don't know why you've come, I don't know why you're here, looking at me like that. It was mine, it was mine all along. Ask anyone.' She lets go of the watchstrap. 'I didn't take it,' she says, quite distinctly. 'I didn't.'

'Take what?' Iris says, solicitous, leaning forward.

Across the room, Esme unfolds her hands. She places them on her hips. 'But I know that you did,' she says.

Kitty looks down. She plucks and plucks at the fabric of her skirt, as if she can see something stuck to it. Iris looks from one to the other, then at Alex, who is standing beside Esme. He shrugs and pulls a face.

Esme steps further into the room. She touches the bed, the patchwork coverlet, she looks out of the window, along the sweep of the garden, out at the roofs of the city. Then
she moves towards her sister's chair. She looks at Kitty for a moment, then reaches out and touches her hair, as if to smooth it into place. She puts her hand to the silver-blue waves at Kitty's temple and holds it there. It is a strange gesture and lasts for only a moment. Then she removes it and says to the air around her, 'I would like to be left alone with my sister, please.'

Alex and Iris walk down the corridor. They walk quickly. At some point, one of them reaches for the other's hand, Iris couldn't say for certain which of them it was. They hold hands, anyway, fingers laced together, and they walk round each corner and out into the sunshine. They walk as far as the car and then they stop.

'Jesus,' Alex says, and exhales as if he's been holding his breath. 'What was all that about? Do you know?'

Iris tilts her head to look at him. The sun is behind him and he is just a black silhouette, blurred and smudged against the light. She extracts her hand from his and leans against the car, pressing her palms against the heated metal. 'I don't know,' she says, 'but I think...'

'You think what?' Alex comes to lean next to her.

She pushes herself away from the car. Her arms hurt as if she hasn't moved them for a long time. She tries to order her thoughts. Kitty and Esme. Esme and Kitty. Chances all ruined. Wouldn't let go of the baby. Mine all along but I know that you did. 'I think I don't know.'

'Eh?'

She doesn't reply. She unlocks the car and gets in,
behind the wheel, and after a moment Alex joins her. They sit together in the car, looking out at a man with a mower, cutting the lawn in even stripes, at an elderly resident of the home making his way down a path. She is thinking about Esme and Kitty but is also conscious of something pressing on her that she needs to say to Alex.

'I didn't know,' she says absently. 'I didn't know about the wife. Being pregnant. I would never have...'

Alex is looking across at her, his head tilted back into the seat. He gazes at her for a long moment. 'Ah, love,' he says, 'I know.'

They sit in the car together. Alex reaches over for her hand, her left hand, and Iris lets him take it. It lies there, in the lap of his jeans. He straightens out each of her fingers, one by one, then lets them curl back. 'Do you ever wonder,' he says, in a low voice, 'what it is we're doing?'

Iris looks at him. She is still running and rerunning the words in her head. I didn't take it. But I know that you did. 'Sorry?' she says.

'I said,' he speaks again in a soft tone, so that Iris has to strain forward to hear him, 'do you ever wonder what we're doing? You and me?'

Iris stiffens. She readjusts her position; she touches the steering-wheel. The elderly resident has reached the shade of a tree and is gazing up into the branches at something. A bird, perhaps? Iris gives her hand a small tug but Alex holds it fast.

'It's only ever been you,' he says. 'You know that.'

Iris snatches away her hand, pops the catch on the door and opens it with such force that it swings back on its hinges with a grinding noise. She leaps from the car and stands with her back to it, hands over her ears.

Behind her, she hears the other car door open, his feet on the gravel. She whips round. Alex is leaning on the car roof, and with one hand he is extracting a cigarette from its packet. 'What are you so afraid of, Iris?' He gives her a smile as he presses down on his lighter.

Esme holds the cushion between both hands. Its fabric – a textured damask in a deep burgundy – is packed tight with foam stuffing. It has gold piping at its edges. She turns it over, then turns it back. She takes two steps across her sister's room and she places it back on the sofa. She does this carefully, propping it against its twin, making sure it looks exactly as it did when she found it.

Two women in a room. One seated, one standing.

Esme waits for a moment, looking out of the window. The trees shake their heads at her. The sun appears from behind a cloud and shadows slide out from under everything: the tree, the sundial, the rocks round the fountain, the girl, Iris, who is standing beside her car with the boy. They are arguing again and the girl is angry, gesticulating and whirling one way then the other. Her shadow turns and turns with her.

Esme backs away from the window, keeping the girl and boy in her sights. She keeps her face averted from the other. If she is very careful she will not have to think about this just yet. If she holds her head just so, she can almost imagine that she is alone in the room, that nothing at all has happened. It is a relief that the noise has stopped, that everything is still. Esme is glad of that. One seated, one standing. Her hands feel empty now she has put down the cushion so she presses them together. She sits. She continues to press her hands together, with as much force as she can muster. She stares down at them. The knuckles turn white, the nails pink, the tendons standing out under the skin. She keeps her face averted.

Behind her, by the bed, a red cord hangs from the ceiling. Esme saw it when she entered the room. She knows what it is. She knows that if she pulls it, a bell will ring somewhere. In a moment, she will get up. She will cross the room. She will cross the carpet, keeping her face averted so she doesn't have to see anything because she doesn't want to see it again, doesn't want it imprinted on her mind any more than it is, any more than it will be, and she will pull the red cord. She will pull it hard. But for now she will sit here. She will take just a few minutes for this. She wants to watch until the sun goes in again, until the sundial loses its marker, until the garden sinks into softness, into shadow.

***

'I'm not afraid of anything!' Iris shouts. 'I'm certainly not afraid of you, if that's what you mean.'

He takes a long draw on his cigarette and seems to consider this. 'I never suggested you were.' He shrugs. 'I just happen to make it my business to interfere in your life. Especially when your life concerns mine too.'

Iris looks about wildly. She considers making a run for it, she considers leaping into the car and driving off, she contemplates the stones beneath her feet and thinks about hurling a handful at Alex. 'Stop it,' she falters instead, 'just stop it. It was ... it was all so long ago and we were just children and—'

'No, we weren't.'

'Yes, we were.'

'We weren't. But I'm not going to argue the toss with you about that. We're not children now, are we?' He grins at her as he releases a cloud of smoke. 'The point is that you know it's true. It's only ever been you and you know it's only ever been me.'