Read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox for Free Online Page B

suddenly a new smell hits her.
    It's fetid, oppressive. Bodies left too long in the same
clothes. Food reheated too many times. Rooms where the windows are never thrown wide. They pass the first open door and Iris sees a mattress propped on its side, a couch covered with paper. She looks away and sees, outside the reinforced glass of the corridor, an enclosed garden. Paper, plastic cups and other litter swirl about the concrete. As she turns back, she catches the eye of the social worker. Iris is the first to look away. They pass through another set of doors and the nurse stops.
    They enter a room with chairs lining the walls. Three women sit at a table playing cards. Weak sunlight trickles through narrow, high windows and a television mutters from the ceiling. Iris stands beneath it as the nurse confers with another nurse. A woman in a long, stretched grey cardigan comes up and stands before her, close, too close, shifting from foot to foot. 'Got a cigarette?' she says.
    Iris steals a glance at her. She is young, younger than her maybe, her hair black at the roots but straw-yellow at the ends. 'No,' Iris says, 'sorry.'
    A cigarette,' she repeats urgently, 'please.'
    'I haven't got any. I'm sorry.'
    The woman doesn't respond and doesn't move away. Iris can feel the sour breath on her neck. Across the room, an elderly woman in a crumpled dress walks from one chair to the next, saying, in a clear, high voice, 'He's always tired when he comes in, always tired, very tired, so I'll need to put the kettle on.' Someone else sits in a ball, fists clenched over her head.
    Then Iris hears the shout: 'Euphemia.'
    A nurse waits in a doorway, hands on hips. Iris follows her gaze to the far end of the room. A tall woman stands on tiptoe at the high window, her back to them.
    'Euphemia!' the nurse calls again, and rolls her eyes at Iris. 'I know she can hear me. Euphemia, you've got a visitor.'
    Iris sees the woman turn, first her head, then her neck, then her body. It seems to take an extraordinarily long time and Iris is reminded of an animal uncurling from sleep. Euphemia lifts her eyes to Iris and regards her, the length of the room between them. She looks at the nurse, then back to Iris. She has one hand laced into the grille over the window. Her lips part but no sound comes out and, for a moment, it seems that she will not speak, after all. Then she clears her throat.
    'Who are you?' Euphemia says.
    'Charming!' the nurse interrupts loudly, so loudly that Iris wonders if Euphemia might be a little deaf. 'She doesn't get many visitors, do you, Euphemia?'
    Iris starts walking towards her. 'I'm Iris,' she says. Behind her, she can hear the cigarette girl hiss Iris, Iris, to herself. 'You don't know me. I'm ... I'm your sister's granddaughter.'
    Euphemia frowns. They examine each other. Iris had, she realises, been expecting someone frail or infirm, a tiny geriatric, a witch from a fairytale. But this woman is tall, with an angular face and searching eyes. She has an air of slight hauteur, the expression arch, the brows raised. Although she must be in her seventies, there is something incongruously
childlike about her. Her hair is held to one side with a clip and the dress she wears is flowered, with a full skirt – not an old woman's dress.
    'Kathleen Lockhart is my grandmother,' Iris says, when she reaches her. 'Your sister. Kathleen Lennox?'
    The hand at the window gives a small jerk. 'Kitty?'
    'Yes. I suppose—'
    'You are Kitty's granddaughter?'
    'That's right.'
    Without warning, Euphemia's hand shoots out and seizes her wrist. Iris cannot help herself: she jumps back, turning to look for the nurse, the social worker. Immediately Euphemia lets go. 'Don't worry,' she says, with an odd smile. 'I don't bite. Sit down, Kitty's granddaughter.' She lowers herself into a chair and points to the one next to her. 'I didn't mean to frighten you.'
    'I wasn't frightened.'
    She smiles again. 'Yes, you were.'
    'Euphemia, I—'
    'Esme,' she