The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell

She looks back at the pile of admissions records. She really should get back to the shop. It could take her hours to find Esme in all this. Weeks. Peter Lasdun said on the phone that they were ‘unable to identify the exact date of her admission’. Maybe Iris should ring him again. They must be able to find out. The sensible idea would be to get the date and then come back. But Iris turns again to Jane and her long walks. She flips back through time. 1941, 1940, 1939, 1938. The Second World War begins and is swallowed, becoming just an idea, a threat in people’s minds. The men are still in their homes, Hitler is a name in the papers, bombs, blitzes and concentration camps have never been heard of, winter becomes autumn, then summer, then spring. April yields to March, then February, and meanwhile Iris reads of refusals to speak, of unironed clothes, of arguments with neighbours, of hysteria, of unwashed dishes and unswept floors, of never wanting marital relations or wanting them too much or not enough or not in the right way or seeking them elsewhere. Of husbands at the end of their tethers, of parents unable to understand the women their daughters have become, of fathers who insist, over and over again, that she used to be such a lovely little thing. Daughters who just don’t listen. Wives who one day pack a suitcase and leave the house, shutting the door behind them, and have to be tracked down and brought back.

She turns another page with a flick of her fingers. He is gripping her tighter. ‘You know what it says here?’ she says. ‘That a man used to be able to admit his daughter or wife to an asylum with just a signature from a GP.’ ‘Iris—’ ‘Imagine. You could get rid of your wife if you got fed up with her. You could get shot of your daughter if she wouldn’t do as she was told.’