– I watched through the banisters as my father shook his hand in the hallway. My father led the way into his study, and when he turned his back, Duncan did this gesture that later I would learn he always did when he was nervous. He put one hand up and over his head and smoothed down the hair on the other side. It looked so odd, it made me smile. I saw him glance at the shut doors around him, at the corridor reaching back into the house, and I did think, is he looking for me? But I would never have-
Her father doesn't speak in the car. She says his name, she says, Father, she touches his shoulder, she wipes her face, she tries to say, please. But he looks straight out of the windscreen, the doctor beside him. He doesn't speak as he gets out, as he and the doctor wedge her between them and walk her across the gravel and up the steps to a big building, high on a hill.
Inside the doors there is a heavy silence. The floor is tiles of marble, black white black white black white. Her father and the doctor shuffle and fumble with papers. They don't remove their hats. And then a woman she has never seen before, a woman dressed as a nurse, takes her arm.
'Father!' she shouts then. 'Father, please!' She yanks her arm away from the nurse, who lets out a small tsk noise from between her teeth. Esme sees her father stoop briefly over the drinking fountain, wipe his mouth with his handkerchief, then walk away over the chess squares of marble towards the door. 'Don't leave me here!' she cries out. 'Please! Please don't. I'll be good, I promise.'
Before the nurse takes her arm again, before another nurse materialises to take the other, before they have to pick her up and carry her away, Esme sees her father through the glass of the doors. He descends the steps, he buttons his coat, he puts on his hat, he glances up towards the sky, as if checking for rain, and then he disappears.
She is dragged backwards down a flight of stairs, along a corridor, a nurse on either side of her, their crooked arms linked through hers, her heels scraping along the floor. They have her in such a grip that she cannot move. The hospital appears to her as if on a reel of reversed film. They pass through some doors and she sees a high ceiling, a string of lights, rows of beds, the shapes of bodies hunched under the blankets. She hears coughs, moans, a person somewhere muttering to themselves. The nurses haul her on to a bed and they are puffing with the effort. Esme turns to look out of the window and sees bars, running up, running down.
Oh God, she says into the fetid air. She drives a hand into her head. Oh God. The shock of it all boils over into tears again. This cannot be, it cannot be. She reaches out and rips down the curtain, she kicks over the cabinet, she shouts, there has been a mistake, this is all a mistake, please listen to me. Nurses come running with wide leather belts and strap her to the bed, then walk away shaking their heads, straightening their caps.
She is left under the leather belts for a day and two nights. Someone comes and takes away her clothes. A woman with big silver scissors comes in the dusk and slices through her hair. This makes Esme wail and then weep, her tears sliding sideways down her face and into the pillow. She watches as the woman walks away with her hair held in one hand, like a whip.
There is a smell of disinfectant and floor polish and the person in the bed in the corner mutters all night long. A light in the ceiling flickers and buzzes. Esme cries. She struggles against the belts, tightly buckled, she tries to wriggle her way out, she shouts, please, please help me, until her voice is hoarse. She bites a nurse who tries to give her some water.
She finds herself haunted by the life she has left, been pulled out of. As light drains from the room at dusk, she thinks about how her grandmother will be descending the flagged steps into the kitchen to see how the dinner preparations are coming along, how her mother will be taking tea in the front parlour, counting out sugar lumps with clawed tongs, how the girls at school will be catching trams to their homes. It is inconceivable that she is not taking part in these events. How can they happen without her?
In the blue light of the second morning, a figure appears at her bed. It is indistinct, blurred, dressed in white. Esme stares up at it. There has been a stray hair across her eyes for hours now and she can't reach up to brush it away.
'Don't fuss and fight, girlie,' the figure whispers. Esme cannot see the face because of the shadows, because of the hair in her eye. 'You don't want to end up in Ward Four.'
'But there's been a mistake,' Esme croaks. 'I shouldn't be here, I don't-'
'You must be careful,' the woman says. 'Don't slide down a snake. The way you're carrying on-'
There is the sound of feet striking the floor and the nurse who cut Esme's hair appears. 'You!' she cries. 'Get back to your bed this instant.'
The figure flits away down the ward, vanishes.
Iris breaks an eggshell on the side of a bowl and watches the yolk drop. Alex leans against the fridge, tossing grapes into his mouth.
'So,' he says, and Iris feels a prickling irritation because she knows what he is about to say, 'what's been happening with you, then? Are you still seeing that guy?'
'What guy?' she says to the ceiling.
'You know who I mean,' Alex says affably. 'The lawyer guy.'
Iris fits one eggshell inside another. She is so grateful to him for not saying 'the married guy' that she has a burst of honesty. 'Yes,' she says, and wipes her hands on a tea-towel.
'Stupid,' he mutters.
She turns on him. 'Well, what about you?'
'What about me?'
'Aren't you still married to someone you decided you should never have married in the first place?'
He shrugs. 'I guess so.'
'Stupid yourself,' she retorts.
There is a short silence. Iris takes a fork and beats the eggs against the side of the bowl until they start to blend and froth. Alex pulls back a chair and sits at the table. 'Let's not fall out,' he says. 'You live your life, I live mine.'
Iris grinds pepper into the eggs. 'Fine.'
'So, what's happening with you and Mr Lawyer?'
She shakes her head. 'I don't know.'
'You don't know?'
'No. I do know. I just don't want to talk about it.' She tosses her hair out of her eyes and regards her brother, sitting at the kitchen table. He looks back at her for a long moment and then they smile at each other.
'I still don't know what you're doing here,' Iris says. 'Do you want dinner, by the way, or are you heading off?'
'You don't know what I'm doing here?' he repeats. 'Are you crazy? Or amnesiac? I get a phone call from you yesterday, saying you're in the clutches of a lunatic, so what do I do? Do I spend the weekend lounging around at home or do I come over here to save you from the madwoman? I didn't realise that the two of you would be off gallivanting at the seaside.'
Iris puts down the fork. 'Are you serious?' she says quietly. 'You came for me?'
Alex uncrosses and recrosses his legs. Of course I came for you,' he says, embarrassed. 'What else would I be doing here?'
Iris goes over to him, kneels and puts her arms round him. She feels the slightness of his torso, the smooth nap of his T-shirt. After a moment, he slings an arm round her shoulders, rocks her back and forth, and she knows they are both thinking about a time that neither of them wishes to return to. She gives him a small squeeze and smiles into his chest.
'You cut your hair,' he says, tugging at it.
'Yeah. You like it?'
'No.'
They laugh. Iris pulls away, and as she does so, Alex nods towards the spare room. 'She doesn't seem that mad,' he says.