The Serone house was dark, except for one night light on in the upstairs front room. Esther sat on her bed, amongst cardboard boxes she hadn't yet unpacked. A wedding dress hung over the door. It was white silk, with lace sleeves.
Two significant things had happened to Esther when she was young. The first was that she found that she was good at sewing. She was so good that Esther had trained as a seamstress, and made money from it for a while. The second was that she made her first and perhaps, only friend. In Esther's world there had been so few people who held the promise of something more. She hadn't ever taken to people easily, and found herself chasing after the ones who showed the spark that she could never have, because it just wasn't in her.
She held the sleeve of the dress to her nose and inhaled; jasmine. The strong scent had lingered, but now it was muskier than she remembered. Rachel's skin had exuded a sweetness only amplified by the jasmine she once wore. Esther held her own wrist up to her face and inhaled; her pores only gave off the sour smell of exhaustion.
She hadn't eaten since last night, and this morning nausea had kept Esther occupied. Her stomach churned with her every movement, as she took the wedding dress off the hanger, stroking the fabric. She thought of Rachel and how her hair was always glossy. How those blue-black curls trailing over the shoulders of a charcoal grey coat were reminiscent of an adult Snow White. The memory of her long eyelashes, veiled every time a prospective man walked by, made Esther's head tingle.
Her fingers struggled with the zip. There was not enough fabric to stretch over her swelling stomach so she yanked it up harder, grazing her thumb. It was a tight fit, so she held the back together with her hands before twirling around in front of the mirror. Esther stood there daydreaming, until the fabric fell from her bare shoulders. She saw herself as if for the first time then; all sallow skin and drawn out features. The fastening was stuck. She fiddled with it in a panic, trying to get out of the dress. She was a woman now so desperate to confess her guilt to anyone who wanted to hear, that just for a moment she thought about going out into the street and telling everything to the first person she saw.
A hot, flush rose up from her cheeks. Scarlet appeared in the corner of the room from out of the past. Esther knew she wasn't real, or even a ghost. It was just an over-active part of her imagination, as if it had been triggered by wearing the dress.
“Do you make dresses for princesses?”
“No, Scarlet.”
“Then who do you make them for?” Esther had hated Scarlet’s questions when she was alive. The more she wanted the truth, the less Esther wanted to talk about it. It was that fear of passing some kind of legacy onto her daughter. Esther didn’t know what; emptiness maybe.
There was a bag of toys on the floor, along with a pile of letters, all unopened except one. The rest of Scarlet's leaflets had been kicked out of the way in her panic at doing up the dress. She spied one word on the paper from the opened envelope at her feet; in her own scrawled handwriting; Happiest.
'I was at the happiest point of my life with you.'
All of the letters sent to Rachel were at Esther's feet, unopened, unread.
Sweat began to form in the small of her back. She cursed, pushing her small breasts higher up into the fabric. They strained against the bodice, cutting off the circulation near her armpits. The dress had never been worn to a wedding. Rachel fidgeted at fittings. Her body was speckled with pin pricks where Esther had tried to work with the material. Whenever she injured her friend in some small way, Rachel would only laugh. It didn't hurt, she reassured. She had developed a capacity for pain. Rachel disappeared before the big day, and no one was surprised. That was what Rachel did. Esther panicked. A guilty feeling remained, as if she had encouraged her only friend into leaving.
With one final wrench the whole front panel section of the dress ripped. Esther's belly button was exposed to the damp air in her bedroom. She sagged onto the bed, looking at what she'd done in amazement. Rachel and Esther were once the same size, but not any more. Motherhood had seen to that. The birth of Scarlet, and then whatever else was there, had caused her to body to change.
It was a familiar feeling Esther felt, as if the past affected the future, and the future affected the present. It all went around in circles until Esther found she was re-living events just as before, as if she was attached to them via a ragged ribbon and the chink of a rusty bell.
Scarlet's path had been no different. The threads of her life had begun long before either of them had ever come to Doore. Esther's friendship with Rachel was now a legacy that had been passed on, affecting them all.
On the nights leading up to Scarlet's departure, they had looked at photographs.
“This one's not like the others,” Scarlet noticed.
Esther smiled. “That's right, it's not. This one's of me, and Rachel and baby Lila.”
Scarlet clapped her hands together. “A baby!”
“She won't be like that now though, She'll be more like this one here, like her mum.” Esther had pulled out another picture. Her hand shook slightly, making the close up photograph of Rachel look odd.
“She's pretty,” Scarlet said instantly.
“She is,” Esther agreed. “If you see someone who looks like this here, you have to tell me."
“But you might see her first,” Scarlet said, with a serious expression.
“I won't. I don't want to scare her. She might, remember me.” Esther stopped. She didn't know how else to explain it to a ten year-old.
“So if I see her, I come and tell you?” Scarlet wrinkled up her forehead in concentration. She twisted one curl around her finger, then began to suck on it.
“Yes,” Esther took the photographs from her daughter's grasp.
“Will she be our friend if I find her?” Scarlet asked.
“Eventually,” Esther answered, looking away from her beautiful, flawed daughter.
*****
Scarlet lay down on the landing of the House at Nine, listening. She held up one finger high in the air and traced the looping wreaths carved out of plaster and set into the ceiling. It was just before bedtime that Lila had drifted off to sleep with her eyes open. Scarlet noticed that they changed colour when she travelled from one world to the next. Her irises turned an interesting shade of marbled grey.
Scarlet had made her hand hover over Lila's eyelids to close them, and then went in search of something to entertain her throughout the night. It felt good to stay up past her bedtime at first, but if she wasn't occupied a heavy sadness often settled on her limbs and across her back. The nights could be endless if Scarlet wanted them that way. But a protective loyalty towards Lila always kept Scarlet close, and in her nest by dawn.
Scarlet tapped away at the wooden banisters, along with the rhythm of the voices downstairs. Whatever remained of her in this life was bound to the living fibres of others. She loved the undulations of the tongue during conversation, the make-up of human hair and skin when it was shed. All the things the ghost lacked, she found she wanted more and more now that it was so out of reach. Even darkness had a secret, slippery feel to it that sometimes overtook her fear. She sat up and bumped herself down a few steps for a better view of the scene unfolding.
“Nothing works,” Millicent said. “I've tried to make sure she won't come to any harm, but it's impossible. The sleepwalking, the fits, it's all the same and I can't stop any of it from happening. It went away for a while, and I was hoping with you here, things might change.”
Richard looked at his mother in alarm. “Is she better than before?”
“No, no she isn't.” Millicent glanced at her son. “You know she isn't any better, don't you?”
Richard nodded.
“However bad it gets I don't want Lila relying on you, Richard. You have your own life on the mainland.” She reached over and patted Richard with her left hand. “I saw something between you this morning. You're far too old to be playing silly games with her.”
Richard stared at the angles shaping Millicent's delicate collarbone. “It hadn't even crossed my mind,” he said.
“So nothing's happened between you?” Millicent inched forwards, waiting for a response. There was a moment of silence, which also made Scarlet lean forwards to see more of the scene. The heel of Millicent's shoe dug into the carpet. Mother and son were sat on the sofa, facing each other.
“Nothing's happened, but I think she wants it to,” Richard said.
“Things can get complicated.” Millicent stroked the arm of the sofa, letting her gaze rest on her son. “Do not lie to me. Just because you've spent most of your time away doesn't mean I can't see it in your face.”
Richard held back his first response. It was clear he was amused by the way he curled up the edges of his mouth. “What am I supposed to do? You tell me to spend time with her, and then you warn me away. It's like you want me to be all things to Lila, yet I'm probably the first and only man she's ever lived with.”
Millicent took a cigarette from the open pack on the coffee table. She lit it from a nearby candle, then held the smoke down in her lungs for what seemed like a long time, before exhaling.
“Guide her, is all I ask." Her nails pinched the cigarette, almost slitting the sides.
“She should be guiding herself. You're her aunt, not her mother, you shouldn't be doing these things.” Richard replied, almost to himself.
The tobacco crumbled into Millicent's palm. “Don't you tell me things I already know. Don't start telling me how here works. I know it, more than you do.”
The candle on the coffee table was almost out. It faltered between them, growing thin. Millicent leant over so that it almost set her sleeve on fire. She watched the flame for a second, before snuffing it out between forefinger and thumb. Without any light, it took all of Scarlet's courage to drop herself further down the stairs. She clutched the banister, watching the dark shapes of mother and son conspiring.
Millicent spoke as if she wasn't really addressing her son. “You grow up with someone, and they suddenly change. It's not just them you have to get used to; the behaviour, the way that they treat people. You have to live with the way everybody else treats them. You see the way people look at them. They find it funny, because they don't know what all the fuss is about, because they haven't a clue what happens when the doors close, and the lights go out."
There was a pause, during which Richard stood up to go.
"You love the person still, in the before and the after.”
“Even the after?” Richard asked.
Millicent put her hand up to a blotchy patch of skin on her jaw line. She felt for something under the skin, and stood immediately up from the sofa. “Even after,” she said quietly.
Scarlet couldn't imagine Millicent confessing her love for Lila, if that's who she was talking about. She couldn't imagine anyone but herself caring for Lila. She was the only one, happy to sit quietly watching over her. Scarlet even pretended to stroke Lila's hair when she was asleep.
As Millicent passed Scarlet on the stairs, the little girl reached out one finger towards her patent heels. She followed Lila's aunt into the bolted bedroom, and watched as Millicent picked up a pair of tweezers that were laid out like surgical instruments on her dressing table. She began to attack her eyelashes. Scarlet winced, before realising that the spidery strands left on the table weren't real. After a few seconds Millicent placed two fingers over her jaw line to stretch out the skin there. Scarlet watched fascinated, as Millicent plucked fine, white hairs from her chin then let them fall onto her dress.
