The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'farrell

Author:Maggie O'farrell [O’Farrell, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

—realised that I have no idea when my parents' wedding anniversary is. I should have asked Mother. They didn't celebrate it, or not so as we knew. The wedding would have taken place in India, of course, Mother quite the colonial girl and Father just arrived. A wonderful reception party afterwards at the club. Everyone came. Everyone who was anyone. I have seen photos, Mother in a beautiful satin—

—and I took hers, it was as simple as that, but Father said I must never say, that—

—my husband bought it for me, or someone else did it for him, he paid for it anyway, and it must have been his idea. Very handsome, it was. A perfect circle of tiny, many-faced stones. It always caught the light in such a pretty way. Eternity rings are commonly given on the occasion of the birth of the first child, he said to me, and this was just as I was feeling very pleased and touched and, of course, that ruined the whole thing. That officious tone of his. He always liked to do things by the book. He kept a list in his desk of things like that. He would consult it. When to give paper and when to give gold, and so on and so forth and anyway—

—and we were taken to a studio in the New Town and they tried to get our hair looking the same, which, of course, was a thankless task because hers was wild, long, with curls all over: it could never have looked like mine. Mine would brush down nicely and sit well, close to my head. We had to pose for a long time, perfectly still. It was usual, I think, in portraits of siblings, for the elder to sit and the younger to stand behind. But because she was so much taller than me she was placed in the chair and I had to stand behind her with one hand resting on her shoulder and I always regretted that because I had spent all morning starching the pleats on the front of my dress and, of course, they weren't seen, being—

—that satin wedding dress made it back to Scotland with us. Mother let us try it on once. Esme went first because I wanted to do it, I wanted to try it on so badly that, when Mother asked which of us would go first, I could not speak. And when Esme stood before the mirror, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed. It was so short on her! She had such long legs, like a giraffe, and it did look very comical. But I couldn't laugh as well because I saw the set of Mother's face, saw that she did not like Esme laughing at her dress. I looked perfect in it. Mother said so. She and I were the same height. You can wear it on your wedding day, darling, Mother said. And Esme was standing behind us, I could

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