The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell Page B

takes Alex with him. Iris's mother, Sadie, sometimes cries in her room when she thinks Iris isn't listening. Iris takes her cups of tea – she isn't sure what else to do – and Sadie jumps up from the bed, wiping her face hurriedly and saying
how her hayfever is bad this year. Iris doesn't point out that hayfever doesn't usually affect people in January.
    Iris doesn't cry but she sometimes stands in the room that had been Alex's with her fists balled and her eyes closed. It still smells of him. If she keeps them closed for a long time she can almost pretend that it hasn't happened, that he hasn't gone.
    Within a fortnight, Alex is back. George's new woman is a bitch from hell, he says, and Iris notices that Sadie does not tell him off for swearing. Can he live with them? Iris claps her hands, shrieks yes. But Sadie isn't sure. She'll have to check with George. But she isn't talking to George. Which is, she says, a problem.
    Alex calls his father and they have a long argument. Iris listens, sitting squashed into the same armchair with Alex as he shouts at his father. Alex stays. A week later George comes and takes him home. Alex comes back. George arrives again, in the car this time, and takes him away. Alex returns. George sends Alex to a boarding-school in the middle of the Highlands. Alex runs away, hitchhiking back to the city, turning up on Sadie's doorstep early in the morning. He is dragged back to the boarding-school. He escapes again. Sadie takes him in but warns him he must call his father. He doesn't. In the middle of the night, Iris wakes to find him beside her bed. He is dressed, his coat on, a bag beside him. He says he is going to run away to France and find his mother, who will let him live with her, he is sure. Will Iris come with him?
    They get as far as Newcastle before the police catch up with them. They are driven all the way back to Edinburgh in a police car, which Iris finds incredibly exciting. Alex says they'll have to handcuff him if they are to get him into his father's house. The policeman driving the car says, you've caused enough trouble for one day, sonny. Alex leans his head on Iris's shoulder and falls asleep.
    Sadie and George have a summit meeting in the City Art Gallery cafe. Head of the agenda: Alex. Everyone is terribly polite. The Stepmother from Hell sits at a table in the corner, eyeing Sadie. Sadie, Iris observes, has washed her hair and worn her blue dress with red contrast piping. George is having trouble keeping his eyes away from the low-cut, red-edged V at the front of the dress. In the opposite corner sit Iris and Alex. Half-way through Alex says, fuck this, and that he is going to look at the second-hand record shops on Cockburn Street. Iris says he has to stay. They'll just think you're running away again, she says.
    It is agreed that Alex will be allowed to switch to a boarding-school in Edinburgh on the proviso that he studies well and doesn't run away again. In return, he can live during his holidays with Iris and Sadie. But he must sit down with his father and stepmother once a week to eat dinner, during which – and George turns a steely eye on his son – Alexander will be expected to conduct himself in a courteous and orderly fashion. As George is saying this Alex mutters, up your arse, and Iris has to swallow hard so as not to laugh. But she doesn't think anyone else heard.
    So every Christmas, summer and Easter, Alex lives with them, in the windowless boxroom in their tenement flat in Newington. When he is sixteen and Iris is fifteen, Sadie says she thinks they are old enough and responsible enough to look after themselves for a while, and she goes off to Greece on a residential yoga course. They wave her off from the front door, and as her taxi disappears around the corner, turn to each other with glee.
    It doesn't take long. The first night Sadie is away, they have locked all the doors, pulled down the blinds, turned up the stereo, defrosted all the food in the