The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Read Free

Iris's wrist.
    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.