The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Fran makes her way through the tables, clutching her bag to her side. When she reaches them, they are exploding into laughter and Alex is shaking his shirt, as if something is caught in it.

  'What's so funny?' Fran says, standing between them, smiling. 'What's the joke?'

  'Nothing,' Alex says, still laughing.

  'Oh, go on,' she cries, 'please.'

  'It's nothing. Tell you later. Do you want a drink?'

  Across the city, Esme stands at a window. To her left, a flight of stairs stretches up; to her right, the stairs sink down. Her breath masses on the cool glass. Needles of rain are hitting the other side and dusk is starting to colour in the gaps between the trees. She is watching the road, the two lines of traffic unwinding in contrary motion, the lake behind, ducks drawing lines on the slate surface.

  Down on the ground, cars have been leaving and arriving all day. People climb in, through one of the back doors, the engine is fired and the cars leave, gobbling gravel as they swing round the bend. Bye, the people at the door call, waving their hands in the air, byebyebye.

  'Hey!' The shout comes from above her.

  Esme turns. A man is standing at the top of the stairs. Does she know him? He looks familiar but she's not sure.

  'What are you doing?' the man cries, surprisingly exasperated for someone Esme thinks she's never met. She doesn't know how to answer, so doesn't.

  'Don't dawdle at the window like that. Come on.'

  Esme takes one last look at the driveway and sees a woman who used to have the bed next to her, standing beside a brown car. An old man is stowing a suitcase in the boot. The woman is weeping and peeling off her gloves. The man doesn't look at her. Esme turns and starts climbing the stairs.

  Iris climbs into the window display of her shop. She eases the velvet suit off the mannequin, shaking it out, pairing up the seams of the trousers, placing it on a hanger. Then she goes to the counter and unwraps, from layers and layers of muslin protectors, a folded dress in scarlet. She takes it up carefully by the shoulders, gives it a shake and it opens before her like a flower.

  She walks towards the light of the window with it spread over her hands. It's the kind of piece she gets only rarely. Once in a lifetime, almost. Haute couture, pure silk, a famous design house. When a woman had called and said she had been clearing out her mother's cupboards and had found some 'pretty frocks' in a trunk, Iris hadn't expected much. But she'd gone along anyway. The woman had opened the trunk and, among the usual crushed hats and faded skirts, Iris had seen a flash of red, a bias-cut hem, a tapered cuff.

  Iris eases it over the mannequin's shoulders, then works round it, tugging at the hem, straightening an armhole, adding a pin or two at the back. The dog watches from his basket with amber eyes.

  When she's finished, she goes out on to the pavement and studies her efforts. The dog follows her to the doorway and stands there, panting lightly, wondering if a walk is in the offing. The dress is flawless, tailored perfection. Half a century old and there isn't a mark on it—perhaps it was never worn. When Iris asked the woman where her mother might have got it, she had shrugged and said, she went on a lot of cruises.

  'What do you think?' Iris asks the dog, taking a step back, and he yawns, showing the arched pink rafters of his mouth.

  Inside, she turns the mannequin forty-five degrees so it looks as if the figure in the red dress is about to step out of the window and on to the street. She searches in the room at the back of the shop for a boxy, sharp-cornered handbag and lays it at the mannequin's feet. She goes outside to have another look. Something isn't quite right. Is it the angle of the mannequin? The snakeskin shoes?

  Iris sighs and turns her back on the window. She is edgy about this dress and she isn't sure why. It's too perfect, too good. She isn't used to dealing with things that are so untouched. Really, she knows, she would like to keep it. But she stamps on the thought immediately. She cannot keep it. She hasn't even allowed herself to try it on because if she did she'd want never to take it off. You cannot afford to keep it, she tells herself severely. Whoever buys it will love it. At that price, they'd have to. It will go to a good home.

  For want of something to do, she pulls out her mobile and dials Alex's. She casts another, baleful, look at the window as she hears the ringtone click off and she inhales, ready to speak. But Fran's voice is on the line: 'Hi, Alex's phone.' Iris pulls her mobile away from her ear and shuts it with a snap.

  In the middle of the afternoon, a man comes in. He spends a long time wiping his shoes on the mat, darting glances around the room. Iris smiles at him, then bends her head back over her book. She doesn't like to be too pushy. But she watches from under her fringe. The man strikes out across the empty middle of the shop and, arriving at a rack of négligés and camisoles, rears away like a frightened horse.

  Iris puts down her book. 'Can I help you with anything?' she says.

  The man reaches for the counter and seems to hold on to it. 'I'm looking for something for my wife,' he says. His face is anxious and Iris sees that he loves his wife, that he wants to please her. Her friend told me she likes this shop.'

  Iris shows him a cashmere cardigan in the colour of heather, she shows him a pair of Chinese slippers embroidered with orange fish, a suede purse with a gold clasp, a belt of crackling alligator skin, an Abyssinian scarf woven in silver, a corsage of wax flowers, a jacket with an ostrich-feather collar, a ring with a beetle set in resin.

  'Do you want to get that?' the man says, lifting his head.

  'What?' Iris asks, hearing at the same time the ring of the phone under the counter. She ducks down and snatches it up. 'Hello?'

  Silence.

  'Hello?' she says, louder, pressing her hand over her other ear.

  'Good afternoon,' a cultured male voice says. 'Is this a convenient time to talk?'

  Iris is instantly suspicious. 'Maybe.'

  'I'm calling about –' the voice is obliterated by a blast of static on the line, reappearing again a few seconds later '– and meet with us.'

  'Sorry, I missed that.'

  'I'm calling about Euphemia Lennox.' The man sounds slightly aggrieved now.

  Iris frowns. The name rings a distant bell. 'I'm sorry,' she says, 'I don't know who that is.'

  'Euphemia Lennox,' he repeats.

  Iris shakes her head, baffled. 'I'm afraid I don't—'

  'Lennox,' the man repeats, 'Euphemia Lennox. You don't know her?'

  'No.'

  'Then I must have the wrong number. My apologies.'

  'Wait a sec,' Iris says but the line cuts out.

  She stares at the phone for a moment, then replaces the receiver.

  'Wrong number,' she says to the man. His hand, she sees, is hovering between the Chinese slippers and a beaded clutchbag with a tortoiseshell fastening. He lays it on the bag.

  'This,' he says.

  Iris wraps it for him in gold tissue paper.

  'Do you think she'll like it?' he asks, as she hands him the parcel.

  Iris wonders what his wife is like, what kind of a person she might be, how strange it must be to be married, to be tightly bound, clipped like that to another. 'I think she will,' she replies. 'But if she doesn't, she can bring it back and choose something else.'

  After she has shut the shop for the night, Iris drives north, leaving the Old Town behind, through the valley that once held a loch, traversing the cross streets of the New Town and on, towards the docks. She parks the car haphazardly in a residents-only bay and presses the buzzer on the outer door of a large legal firm. She's never been here before. The building seems deserted, an alarm light blinking above the door, all windows dark. But she knows Luke is in there. She leans her head towards the intercom, expecting to hear the relay of his voice. There's nothing. She presses it again and waits. Then she hears the door unlocking from the other side and it swings out towards her.

  'Ms Lockhart,' he says. 'I take it you have an appointment?'

  Iris looks him up and down. He is
in a shirt, the tie loose at the neck, the sleeves rolled back. 'Do I need one?'

  'No.' He reaches out, seizes her wrist, then her arm, then her shoulder, and pulls her over the threshold towards him. He kisses her neck, pulling the door shut with one hand, while the other is working its way inside her coat, up and under the hem of her blouse, round her waist, over her breast, up the dents in her spine. He half carries, half drags her up the stairs and she stumbles in her heels. Luke catches her elbow and they burst in through a glass door.

  'So,' Iris says, as she rips apart his tie and flings it aside, 'does this place have security cameras?'

  He shakes his head as he kisses her. He is struggling with the zip of her skirt, swearing with effort. Iris covers his hands with her own and the zip gives, the skirt slides down and she kicks it off her feet, high into the air, making Luke laugh.

  Iris and Luke came across each other two months ago at a wedding. Iris hates weddings. She hates them with a passion. All that parading about in ridiculous clothes, the ritualised publicising of a private relationship, the endless speeches given by men on behalf of women. But she quite enjoyed this one. One of her best friends was marrying a man Iris liked, for a change; the bride had a beautiful outfit, for a change; there had been no seating plans, no speeches and no being herded about for horrible photographs.

  It was Iris's outfit that had done it – a backless green crêpe-de-Chine cocktail dress she'd had specially altered. She had been talking to a friend for some time but had still been aware of the man who had sidled up next to them. He was looking about the marquee with an air of calm assurance as he sipped his champagne, as he waved at someone, as he passed a hand through his hair. When the friend said, 'That's quite a dress, Iris,' the man had said, without looking at them, without even leaning towards them, 'But it isn't really a dress. Isn't it what used to be called a gown?' And Iris looked at him properly for the first time.

  He had proved to be a good lover, as Iris had known he would. Considerate without being too conscientious, passionate without being clingy. Tonight, however, Iris is beginning to wonder if she is sensing the slightest hint of haste in his movements. She opens her eyes and regards him through narrowed lids. His eyes are closed, his face rapt, concentrated. He lifts her, hoisting her from the desk to the floor and, yes, Iris sees him – she definitely sees him – cast a look at the clock above the computer.

  'My God,' he says afterwards, too soon afterwards, Iris feels, before their breathing has returned to normal, before their hearts have slowed in their chests, 'can you drop in every evening?'

  Iris rolls on to her stomach, feeling the prickly nap of the carpet against her skin. Luke kisses the small of her back, running his hand up and down her spine for a moment. Then he hoists himself upright, walks to the desk, and Iris watches as he gets dressed. There is an urgency to the way he does it, yanking up his trousers, jerking on his shirt.

  'Expected at home?' Iris, still lying on the floor, makes sure to enunciate every word.

  He glances at his watch as he straps it to his wrist and grimaces. 'I told her I'd be working late.'

  She reaches for a paperclip that has fallen to the carpet and, as she starts to untwist it, remembers irrelevantly that they are called trombones in French.

  'I should call her, actually,' Luke mutters. He sits on his desk and reaches for the phone. He drums his fingers as he waits, then smiles at Iris – a wide, quick grin that disappears when he says, 'Gina? It's me. No. Not yet.'

  Iris tosses aside the paperclip, elongated out of shape, and reaches for her knickers. She doesn't have a problem with Luke's wife but she doesn't particularly want to have to listen to his conversations with her. She gathers her clothes off the floor, one by one, and dresses. She is sitting to zip up her boots when Luke hangs up. The floor judders as he comes towards her. 'You're not going?' he says.

  'I am.'

  'Don't.' He kneels, wrapping his arms round her waist. 'Not yet. I told Gina I wouldn't be home for a while. We could get a carry-out. Are you hungry?'

  She straightens his collar. 'I've got to go.'

  'Iris, I want to leave her.'

  Iris freezes. She makes to get out of the chair but he is holding her fast. 'Luke—'

  'I want to leave her and be with you.'

  For a moment, she is speechless. Then she starts to prise his fingers off her waist. 'For God's sake, Luke. Let's not have this conversation. I have to go.'

  'You do not. You can stay for a bit. We need to talk. I can't do this any more. It's driving me mad, pretending everything's fine with Gina when every minute of the day I'm desperate to—'

  'Luke,' she says, brushing one of her hairs from his shirt, 'I'm going. I said I might go to the cinema with Alex and—'

  Luke frowns and releases her. 'You're seeing Alex tonight?'

  Luke and Alex have met once and only once. Iris had been seeing Luke for a week or so when Alex turned up unannounced at her flat. He has a habit of doing this whenever Iris has a new man. She could swear he has a sixth sense for it.

  'This is Alex,' she had said, as she walked back into the kitchen, her jaw tight with irritation, 'my brother. Alex, this is Luke.'

  Hi.' Alex had leant over the kitchen table and offered his hand.

  Luke had stood and taken her brother's hand. His broad-knuckled fingers covered all of Alex's. Iris was struck by their physical contrast: Luke a dark, hulking mesomorph next to Alex's lanky, fair-skinned ectomorph. Alexander,' he said, with a nod, 'it's good to meet you.'

  'Alex,' Alex corrected.

  'Alexander.'

  Iris looked up at Luke. Was he doing that deliberately? She felt dwarfed suddenly, diminished by both of them towering above her. 'It's Alex,' she snapped. 'Now sit down, will you, both of you, and let's have a drink.'

  Luke sat. Iris got an extra glass for Alex and slopped in some wine. Luke was looking from her to Alex and back again. He smiled.

  'What?' Iris said, putting the bottle down.

  'You don't look at all alike.'

  'Well, why would we?' Alex cut in. 'No blood relation, after all.'

  Luke seemed confused. 'But I thought—'

  'She's my step.' Alex glanced at Luke. 'Step-sister,' he clarified. My father married her mother.'

  'Oh.' Luke inclined his head. 'I see.'

  'She didn't say?' Alex asked, reaching for the bottle of wine.

  When Luke went to the bathroom, Alex leant back in his chair, lit a cigarette, glanced round the kitchen, brushed ash from the table, adjusted his collar. Iris eyed him. How dare he sit there, contemplating the light fittings? She picked up her napkin, folded it into a long strip and thwacked it hard across his sleeve.

  He brushed more ash from his shirt front. 'That hurt,' he remarked.

  'Good.'

  'So.' Alex drew on his cigarette.

  'So what?'

  'Nice top,' he said, still looking away from her.

  'Mine or his?' Iris retorted.

  'Yours.' He turned his head towards her. 'Of course.'

  'Thanks.'

  'He's too tall,' Alex said.

  'Too tall?' she repeated. 'What do you mean?'

  Alex shrugged. 'I don't know if I could ever get on with someone that much bigger than me.'

  'Don't be ridiculous.'

  Alex ground his cigarette into the ashtray. Am I allowed to ask what the...' he circles his hand in the air '...situation is?'

  'No,' she said quickly, then bit her lip. 'There is no situation.'

  Alex raised his eyebrows. Iris twisted her napkin into a rope.

  'Fine,' he murmured. 'Don't tell me, then.' He jerked his head towards the door, towards the sound of footsteps on bare boards. 'Lover boy's coming back.'

  Esme sits at the schoolroom table, slumped to one side, her head resting on her forearm. Across the table, Kitty is doing French verbs in an exercise book. Esme isn't looking at the arithmetic that has been set for her. She looks instead at the dust swarming in the light beams, the white
line of Kitty's parting, the way the knots and markings in the wood of the table flow like water, the oleander branches outside in the garden, the faint crescent moons that are appearing from under her cuticles.

  Kitty's pen scratches on the page and she sighs, frowning in concentration. Esme thuds her heel against the chair leg. Kitty doesn't look up. Esme does it again, harder, and Kitty's chin lifts. Their eyes meet. Kitty's lips part in a smile and her tongue pokes out, just enough for Esme to see but not enough for their governess, Miss Evans, to notice. Esme grins. She crosses her eyes and sucks in her cheeks, and Kitty has to bite her lip and look away.

  But with her back to the room, facing out to the garden, Miss Evans intones, 'I am hoping that the arithmetical exercise is nearing completion.'

  Esme looks down at the strings of numbers, plus signs, minus signs. At the side of the two lines that mean equals there is nothing: a black void. Esme has a flash of inspiration. She moves her slate to one side and slides off her chair. 'May I be excused?' she says.

  May I be excused...?'

  May I be excused, please, Miss Evans?'

  'For what reason?'

  'A...' Esme struggles to remember what she's meant to say. 'A ... um...'

  'A call of nature,' Kitty says, without looking up from her verbs.

  'Was I addressing you, Kathleen?'

  'No, Miss Evans.'

  'Then kindly hold your tongue.'

  Esme breathes in through her nose, and as she lets it out very slowly through her mouth, she says, 'A call of nature, Miss Evans.'

  Miss Evans, still with her back to them, inclines her head. 'You may. Be back here within five minutes.'

  Esme skips along the courtyard, brushing her hand against the blossoms that grow in pots along the wall. Petals cascade in her wake. The heat of the day is reaching its peak. Soon it will be time for a sleep, Miss Evans will disappear until tomorrow, and she and Kitty will be allowed to lie inside the haze of their mosquito nets, watching the slow circles of the ceiling fan.

  At the dining-room door, she stops. Where now? From the dank interior of the kitchen comes the hot, buttery smell of chai. From the veranda, she can hear the murmur of her mother's voice: '...he would insist on taking the lake road even though I'd made it perfectly clear we were to go straight to the club, but as you know...'