After a lunch of indeterminate grey soup, a Dr Naysmith appeared. He walked between their beds, Sister Stewart two steps behind him, nodding at them in turn, occasionally saying, How are you feeling today?' The women, Elizabeth especially, got very excited, either launching into garbled monologues or bursting into tears. Two were taken off for a cold bath.
He stopped at Esme's bed, glanced at the name-tag on the wall beside her. Esme sat up, passed her tongue over her lips. She was going to tell him – she was going to tell him there had been a mistake, that she shouldn't be here. But Sister Stewart stood on tiptoe and whispered something into his ear.
'Very good,' he said, and moved on.
– and when he asked me, and here's me saying ask when what he said in the event was, I'd consider it a first-rate idea if we were wed. He said this on Lothian Road as we stood on the pavement. We had been to the pictures and I had waited and waited for him to take my hand. I'd dangled it over the arm of the seat, I'd removed my gloves, but he didn't seem to notice. I suppose I should have taken this as a-
– an hourglass with red sand, kept on top of the-
– and sometimes I take the little girl to the pictures. She is very grave. She sits with her hands laced in her lap, a slight frown on her face, attentive as the dwarfs go down into the mine, one by one, their little sticks over their backs. Someone made it by putting drawings together very fast, she said to me last time, and I said, yes, and she said, who, and I said, a clever man, darling, and she said, how do you know it was a man? It made me laugh because, of course, I didn't know but somehow you do-
– watching the red sand falling through grain by grain and she said, does that mean the gap is exactly one grain wide? And I had no idea. I'd never thought of it like that. Mother said-
– the boy with them, I will never know. The changeling, I call him, but only to myself and the maid. The woman said to me, it would be lovely if you could be his grandma too. Well. There is no way on God's earth I would consider him any relation to me. A sullen, sulking child with mistrustful eyes. He is not of my blood. The little girl is very fond of him, though, and he has had a difficult life, by all accounts. A mother who upped and left, and how any woman can do that is beyond me. It goes against nature. The girl holds his hand, even though he is a year maybe two older than her, and he never leaves her side. I always want to pull her away from him, from his clammy boy clutches but of course you have to be the adult in these-
– a terrible thing, to want a-
– on Lothian Road, I snapped the clasp of my bag shut. I wanted to close my eyes for a moment. The lights of the carriages and trams were very tiring, especially after the picture we had just seen. He stood waiting and I looked at him and I saw the way his collar was pinched too tight, the way there was a dropped stitch in the scarf he was wearing and I wondered who knitted it for him, who loved him that much. His mother, at a guess, but I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know who loved him. I said yes, of course. I breathed it out, the way you are supposed to, I smiled shyly as I said it, as if it was all perfect, as if he'd gone down on his knee with roses in one hand and a diamond in the other. I couldn't bear any more nights in that room without-
– had gone away, everybody said. To Paris, one girl told me. To South America, another said. There was a rumour that Mrs Dalziel had sent him away to his uncle's house in England. And even though I rarely saw him anyway, the idea that I might not run into him, that the streets of the city did not contain him was enough to-
– and I found a clutch of letters, nesting in the bottom of a hat-box. This was perhaps months later. I was married by this time and I was looking for a hat to wear to a christening. Mother and Father had said one night, just before my wedding, that her name would not be mentioned again and that they would thank me if I would act accordingly. And I did, act accordingly, that is, although I thought about her a great deal more than they realised. So I pulled out the letters and-
– never meant it to be for ever. I would like to make that perfectly clear. I just meant for a while. I came into the parlour when my mother called for me and the doctor was there. She was upstairs, still shouting and carrying on. And they were whispering together and I caught the word away'. Kitty knows her best, my mother said, and the doctor from the hospital looked at me and he said, is there anything about your sister that concerns you? Anything she has confided in you that you think you should tell us? And I thought, I thought, and then I raised my head and I made my face a little sad, a little uncertain, and I said, well, she does think she saw herself once on the beach, when she was standing in the sea. And I could tell by the look on the doctor's face that I had done well, that I had-
– the way it snapped shut, that bag. I liked that. I always carried it half-way up my wrist, never too-
Iris carries the salad to the table and places it half-way between Esme and Alex. The salad servers she angles towards Esme. She allows herself a small, private smile at the idea that it would be almost impossible to find two more different dining companions.
'Where do you live?' Esme is saying.
'In Stockbridge,' Alex says. 'Before that, I lived in New York.'
'In the United States of America?' Esme asks, leaning forward over her plate.
Alex smiles. 'Absolutely correct.'
'How did you get there?'
'On a plane.'
'A plane,' she repeats, and she seems to consider the word. Then: 'I have seen planes.'
Alex leans over and chinks his glass against hers. 'You know, you're nothing like your sister.'
Esme, who is examining the salad in its bowl, turning it one way then the other, stops. 'You know my sister?'
Alex see-saws his hand in the air. 'I wouldn't go so far as to say I know her. I've met her. Many times. She didn't like me.'
'That's not true,' Iris protests. 'She just never-'
He leans conspiratorially towards Esme. 'She didn't. When my father and Sadie, Iris's mother, were together, Sadie thought it would be a good idea for me to come along on Iris's visits to her grandmother. God knows why. Her grandmother obviously wondered what I was doing there. She thought I was the cuckoo in the nest. She didn't like me fraternising with her precious granddaughter. Mind you, there wasn't an awful lot of love lost between her and Sadie, either, if you ask me.'
Esme takes a long look at Alex. 'Well, I like you,' she says finally. 'I think you're funny.'
'When did you last see her, anyway?'
'Who?'
'Your sister.' Alex is busy mopping his plate with a hunk of bread so it is only Iris who sees the look on Esme's face.
'Sixty-one years,' she says, 'five months and six days.'
Alex's hand with the bread is halted half-way to his mouth. 'You mean-'
'She never came to visit you?' Iris says.
Esme shakes her head, staring at her plate. 'I did see her once, a while after I went in, but…'
'But what?' Alex prompts, and Iris wants to shush him but also wants to hear the answer.
'We didn't speak…' Esme says, and her voice is level, she sounds like an actress going over her lines '…on that occasion. I was in a different room. Behind a door. She didn't come in.'