On New Year's Eve afternoon, her mother and Kitty go out to the dressmaker, a small woman with a bun, to pick up the dresses. While they are out, Esme wanders into her mother's room. She peers into her jewellery box, she opens the pots on her dressing-table, she tries on a felt hat. She is sixteen.
She checks the street. Empty. She cocks her head and listens to the house. Empty. She twists her hair into a rope and pins it high on her head. She opens her mother's wardrobe. Tweed, fur, wool, tartan, cashmere. She knows what she is looking for. She has known since she came in here, since she heard the front door click shut. She has glimpsed it only a handful of times, at night, her mother gliding along the corridor between her father's room and hers. A négligé in aquamarine silk. She wants to know if the hem will swish round her ankles. She wants to know if the narrow straps will lie against her shoulders, just so. She wants to see the self she will be under all that sea-coloured lace. She is sixteen.
She feels it before she sees it – the cold caress of silk. It is right at the back, behind her mother's second-best suit. Esme slips it off its hanger, and it tries to escape her, slithering through her fingers to the floor. But she catches it round its waist and flings it to the bed. She pulls off her sweater, keeping her eyes on the pool of silk. She is about to dive in. Does she dare?
But she turns her head towards the car window. She opens her eyes. She does not want to think of this. She does not. Why should she? When the sun shines? When she is with the girl who cares if she sleeps well or not? When she is being driven along a road she doesn't recognise? The city she knows, the buildings, the line of roofs, but nothing else. Not the road, not the strings of orange lights, not the shopfronts. Why should she think of this?
– no small amount of shame in it, I can tell you. It has never happened in our family, ever. And for it to befall my own son. Times have changed, he said to me, and I said, you have to work at a marriage, God knows, your father and I did, thinking, if he only knew. But. Is it absolutely necessary to divorce, couldn't you-and he interrupted me. We're not married, he said, so technically it's not a divorce. Well. Of course I've kept that quiet in our circle. For the sake of the child. I never liked the wife or whatever she is. Shapeless clothes and unkempt hair. He says it is amicable. And I must say he is very good about keeping in touch with the child. A pretty little thing, she is, she has a look of my mother but in terms of character I think she reminds me most of-
– I do not know if I like yoghurt. A woman is asking me and I don't know the answer. What shall I say? I'll say no. She'll take it away and I won't need to think about it. But she hasn't waited for my answer, she has left it beside my plate. I'll pick it up and that long shiny thing she has left with it, silver it is, with a round head, the name of it is-
– he would always count them after a dinner party. Wrapping wet bundles of them in teacloths, polishing their ends and counting them back into the velvet-lined cutlery box. It used to drive me mad. I had to leave the room. I couldn't stand the sound of him murmuring the numbers under his breath, the way he stacked them into battalions of ten along the emptied table. Is there anything more likely to drive you completely out of your-
– pebbles. I taught her to count with pebbles I collected from the garden in India. I found ten beautiful, even, smooth pebbles that I lined up on the path for her. Look, I said, one, two, three, do you see? She had bare feet, her hair tied in a ribbon. Onetwofree, she said back to me, and smiled. No, I said, look, one, two, three. She caught them up, the pebbles, four in one hand and six in the other. Before I could stop her, she hurled them up into the air. As they rained back down I ducked. Miraculous, really, that she wasn't hit, if you think about-
– the mother brings the child to visit me. She and I don't have much to say to each other but I confess I have surprised myself by conceiving a fondness for the little girl. Grandma, she said to me the other day, and she was making these circles in the air with her arm, watching herself as she did it, when I do something my skeleton does it too. And I said, you are quite right, my dear. My son may have other children, who knows, he is still young. If he meets someone else, someone nice, someone more suitable. I would like that. It would be better for Iris not to be an only one and I should know because-
– and when I found them, when I came upon them sitting together like that, the pair of them on the piano stool, and him gazing at her as if he was seeing something rare and precious and desirable, I wanted to stamp my foot, to shout, do you know what they call her, they call her the Oddbod, people laugh about her behind her back, don't you know that? I knew that it could not be, that it must not happen, that I had to-
– I do not like yoghurt. It is cold, oversweet and there are hidden lumps of sloppy, slippery fruit. I do not like it. I let the spoon drop to the floor and the yoghurt makes an interesting fan-shape over the carpet and-
There is a loud, sudden crack, like thunder, and she is thrown backwards. She feels the cold of the mirror against the bare skin of her arm. Her face is ringing with heat, with pain, and Esme realises that her father has slapped her.
'Take it off!' he is shouting. 'Take it off this instant!'
Esme's fingers are made slow with shock. She fumbles at the neckline for the buttons but they are tiny, silk-faced, and her hands are trembling. Her father bears down on her and tries to pull the négligé over her head. Esme is plunged into an ocean of silk, suffocated by it, drowning in it. Her hair and the silk are in her mouth, gagging her, she cannot see, she loses her balance and stumbles into a hard corner of furniture, and all the time her father is shouting words, horrible words, words she has never heard before.
Suddenly her mother's voice cuts into the room. 'That's enough,' she says.
Esme hears her shoes across the floor. The silk noose is loosened from around her head, yanked down. Her mother stands before her. She doesn't look at her. She unbuttons the négligé and, in one movement, strips it off her, and Esme is reminded of a man she once saw skinning a rabbit.
She blinks and looks around her. Seconds ago, she was before the mirror, alone, the hem of the négligé in one hand, and she was turning sideways to see how it looked from the back. Now she is in her underwear, her hair pulled loose about her shoulders, her arms gripped round her. Kitty is by the door, still in her outdoor coat, her hands twisting at her gloves. Her father stands at the window, his back to them. No one speaks.
Her mother gives the négligé a shake, and takes a long time to fold it, lining up the seams and smoothing out creases. She places it on the bed.
'Kitty,' her mother says, without looking at anyone, 'would you please fetch your sister's dress?'
They listen to Kitty's footsteps recede down the corridor.
'Ishbel, she is not going to the party after this,' her father mutters. 'I really think-'
Her mother interrupts. 'She is. She most certainly is.'
'But what on earth for?' her father says, rooting for a handkerchief in his pocket. 'What is the point in sending a girl like that to such a gathering?'
'There is a rather great point.' The mother's voice is low and determined, and she takes Esme's arm and pulls her towards the dressing-table. 'Sit,' she commands, and pushes Esme on to the stool. 'We shall get her ready,' she says, picking up a hairbrush. 'We shall make her look pretty, we shall send her to the ball, and then,' she raises the hairbrush and brings it down in a vicious sweep through Esme's hair, 'we shall marry her off to the Dalziel boy'
'Mother,' Esme begins tremulously, 'I don't want to-'
Her mother brings her face down to hers. 'What you want,' she murmurs, almost lovingly, into her ear, 'does not come into this. The boy wants you. Goodness knows why, but he does. Your kind of behaviour has never been tolerated in this house and it never will be. So, we shall see if a few months as James Dalziel's wife will be enough to break your spirit. Now, stand up and get yourself dressed. Here's your sister with your frock.'