Life can have odd confluences. Esme will not say serendipity: she loathes the word. But sometimes she thinks there must be something at work, some impulse, some collision of forces, some kinks in chronology.
Here she is, thinking about this, and she suddenly sees that the girl is driving the car past the very house. A coincidence? Or something else?
Esme twists in her seat to look at it. The stonework is dirty, stained dark in patches; a torn poster is pasted on the garden wall. Large brown plastic bins clog the path. The window paint is peeling and cracking.
They walked there, in their party shoes. Kitty was so in love with her dress she wouldn't carry the wreath of holly, so Esme carried it for her. Kitty held Esme's bag, which she had decorated with sequins for her. When they arrived and they were standing in the hallway, taking off their coats, Esme reached out to take the bag and Kitty let her have it: she uncurled her fingers and released it. But she didn't look at her. Maybe Esme should have known then, she should have seen the invisible weft and weave taking shape round her, should have heard the tightening of the strings. What if, she always thinks. She has spent her life half strangled by what-ifs. But what if she had known then, if a kink had occurred in the chronology and she'd seen what was about to happen? What would she have done? Turned round and gone home again?
It didn't and she didn't. She handed over her coat, she took her sequined bag from Kitty, she waited as her sister fiddled with her hair in the mirror, as she greeted a girl they knew. Then Kitty caught up with her and they went up the stairs, towards the lights, towards the music, towards the muffled roar of conversation.
Two girls at a dance, then. One seated, one standing. It was late, almost midnight. The younger girl's dress was too tight round her ribs. The seams strained, threatening separation, if she breathed in too deeply. She tried slumping her back in a curve, but it was no use: the dress bunched up like loose skin round her neck. It wouldn't behave, wouldn't act as if it was really hers. Wearing it was like being in a three-legged race with someone you didn't like.
She stood up to watch the dance. A complicated reel to which she didn't know the steps, the women getting passed from man to man, then returned to their partners. She turned to her sister. 'How long until midnight?'
Kitty was sitting on a chair next to her, a dance-card open on her lap. She had the pencil gripped between her gloved fingers, poised above the page. Another hour or so?' Kitty said, absorbed in reading the names. 'I'm not sure. Go and look at the clock in the hall.'
But Esme didn't go. She stood watching the reel until it spun to a standstill, until the music stopped, until the symmetrical formations of dancers broke down into a mêlée of people returning to their seats. When she saw the good-looking blond boy of the house making his way towards her, she quickly turned her back. But she was too late.
May I have this dance?' he said, closing his fingers on hers.
She pulled them away. 'Why don't you ask my sister?' she whispered.
He frowned and said, loudly, too loudly so that Kitty heard, so that Esme saw Kitty hearing. 'Because I don't want to dance with your sister, I want to dance with you.'
She took her place opposite Jamie, in a set for Strip the Willow. They were the first couple, so as the music struck up, he came towards her, took her hands and whirled her about. She felt the stuff of her dress inflate, the room veer around her. The music beat thick and fast and Jamie took her hand and passed her along the row of men and whenever she came out of a spin, there he was, ready for her, his arm outstretched to take her. And at the last moment of their turn, when they had to join hands and dance to the end of the line, people clap-clapping them on their way, Jamie danced so fast and so far that they burst out of the room, on to the landing and it made Esme laugh and he whirled her round so that she felt dizzy and had to clutch his arm for balance and she was still laughing, and so was he, when he caught her to him, when he turned her more slowly, as if for a waltz, round and round under the chandelier, and she threw back her head to see the points of light kaleidoscoping above her.
Where does the hand become the wrist? Where does the shoulder become the neck? She will often think that this was the moment that tipped it, that if there was ever a point at which she could have changed things, this was it, when she was turning round and round beneath a chandelier on New Year's Eve.
He was propelling her in circles, still holding her tightly. She felt a wall brush against her back and this wall seemed to give way and they were overtaken by darkness, in some kind of small room, the music suddenly far away. Esme saw the looming shapes of furniture, heaps of coats, hats. Jamie had his arms round her and he was whispering her name. She could feel that he was about to kiss her, that one of his hands was touching her hair, and it occurred to her that she was curious to know what it was like, that a kiss from a man was something one ought to experience, that it could do no harm, either way, and as Jamie's face came down on hers, she waited, she held still.
It was a curious sensation. A mouth brushing hers, pressing hers, his arms tight round her. His lips were slippery and tasted vaguely meaty and she was struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Two people in a cupboard, pressing their mouths together. Esme giggled; she turned her head away. But he was murmuring something in her ear. I beg your pardon, she said. Then he pressed her backwards, gradually, tenderly, and she felt herself topple, her feet losing their hold on the floor, and they landed on something soft and yielding, a pile of clothing of some sort. He was laughing softly and she was getting up and he was pulling her back and saying, you do love me, don't you, and they were both still smiling at this point, she thinks. But then it was different and she was really wanting to get up, she really thought she should, and he wouldn't let go. She was pushing at him, saying, Jamie, please, let's go back to the dance. His hands were on her neck, then, flailing with her skirts, on her legs.
She pushed at him again, this time with all her strength. She said, no. She said, stop. Then, when he grappled at the neckline of her dress, kneading at her breasts, fury flared in her and fear as well, and she kicked, she hit out at him. He jammed a hand over her mouth, said, wee bitch, in her ear and the pain of it, then, was so astonishing, she thought she was splitting, that he was burning her, tearing her in two. What was happening was unthinkable. She hadn't known it was possible. His hand over her mouth, his head ramming against her chin. Esme thought about how, perhaps, she would cut her hair after all, the sound of the rubber trees, how she must just keep breathing, a box she and Kitty kept under the bed with programmes of films, the number of sharps in F minor diminished.
And what seemed like a long time afterwards, they were on the landing again. Jamie was holding her wrist. He was leading her back towards the music. And, incredibly, the set for Strip the Willow was still going on. Did he think they were going to rejoin the dance? Esme looked at him. She looked at the candles, melting in pools of themselves, at the people circling and jumping in the dance, their faces tight with concentration, with pleasure.
She wrenched his hand off her wrist. It hurt her skin to do it but she was free. She stretched her fingers into the air. She took two, three steps towards the doorway and there she had to stop. She had to lean her forehead against the wood. The edges of her vision wavered, like the line of a horizon in heat. A face swam up to hers and said something but the music was thick in her ears. The person took hold of her arm, gave her a shake, twitched her dress straight. It was, she saw, Mrs Dalziel. Esme parted her lips to say that she would like to see her sister, please, but what came out was a high-pitched noise that she couldn't stop, that she had no power over.