Audrey was always the best dressed. My clothes, originating from Woolworths or Marks & Spencer, came thirdhand, the hems faded and creased from being turned up and down. Audrey had new dresses, made by a seamstress in Bath or bought from the gleaming counters of Harrods. She would make me try them on, even though they were too big, and slowly turn, aching for her dresses, her splendid life: I think Audrey could only really appreciate her fine clothes by seeing them on someone else.
Something of that childish acquisitive excitement returns. My hands are already inside, clicking through the hangers—broderie anglaise, seersucker, crêpe de Chine, lawn cotton, pearl buttons, horn buttons, toggles, zips, hooks and eyes—working from left to right, amazed to see little girl dresses give way to older girl dresses, then much older girls’, enough dresses to clothe Audrey every season since she’s been gone. At the very far right of the rail, pressed against the cedar wood, a dress that brings back the past like a burn: blue—the shade of the cornflowers in the meadow, the huge summer sky—with a white Peter Pan collar and scarlet heart-shaped buttons, puffed with a tissue-thin petticoat. And yet. How can I possibly remember a dress of this size, with darts at the bust?
I slide it off its hanger and hold it against my body, imagining we might dance together around the room and it will tell me its secrets.
“Margot.” Sybil is a thin dark line in the doorway.
My stomach drops. “I was . . .”
“I can see what you’re doing.”
I don’t know where to put myself or the dress, swishing indecently against my legs. I inhale to speak, say nothing, wonder why Sybil isn’t shouting yet.
“Audrey will need new clothes when she comes home.” Sybil speaks in an unsteady voice, as if it is she who feels she must explain herself. “Clothes that fit.”
I bow my head, deeply uncomfortable. “Of course.”
“That was her favorite dress. The one she wore that . . . that day.”
“Yes.” I wish I weren’t still holding it.
“So I had it made up again, just the same.”
“How lovely,” I murmur quietly, like there is nothing odd about this at all.
Sybil watches me carefully, gauging my reaction, wondering if she can trust me. “Don’t mention it to your uncle, will you? It would only upset him. He won’t come in here.”
“I won’t,” I assure her.
“Or your sisters.”
I hesitate. It feels like disloyalty to promise such a thing.
“Margot, you really mustn’t tell your sisters. They won’t understand.”
“Okay,” I say, because they wouldn’t.
Sybil exhales, relieved that I’m going along with her. “It’s not the first time you’ve been in here, is it, Margot?” she asks, her voice soft, softer than I’ve heard it yet this summer.
I shake my head. There’s nothing between us, only an understanding that hasn’t made its character known yet.
“Why don’t you put the dress on?” she whispers.
I stare back at her blankly, hoping I’ve misheard.
“I know you want to, Margot. We do not have to pretend with one another. Not anymore. Not in here.”
I shake my head.
“I saw you take the domino, Margot. I saw the look on your face. I know you couldn’t help yourself then, either.”
My cheeks blast with heat. “It was just . . . just a silly impulsive thing. I . . . I’ll return it.”
She nods at the dress again. “Slip it on.”
“I’d . . . I’d rather not,” I say, almost faint with embarrassment. I’ve never felt more exposed, more seen, in my life. “It’s Audrey’s.”
Sybil’s gray eyes start to swim with tears. “It would make me so happy, Margot. I can’t tell you how happy it would make me. Just for a moment. Just a twirl.”
Mortified, unable to refuse, I self-consciously unbutton my shirtdress with fumbling fingers until I’m standing just in my underwear. The porthole window casts a shard of purple on my white pants, where the elastic hits my belly button. I hesitate, imagining my sisters’ appalled faces if they could see me now.
Sybil nods at me encouragingly.
I nervously step a foot, pointed, into the folds of the dress.
“Oh. It fits! Just that top button.” I try not to flinch from Sybil’s cold fingers, tugging the bodice shut. It won’t go. My back is too broad. “So almost perfect.”
Sybil’s face is very close to mine, inches away, smiling a long-forgotten smile that transforms her into the Sybil I remember as a child. “Oh, it really picks out the blue of your eyes, Margot. Just like hers.” She starts arranging wisps of hair around my face. “No, not quite right. A braid would look better. Audrey loved a braid.”
She’s making me collude in a game of her devising, just as Audrey used to. I start undoing the dress, fiddling with those buttons. “My sisters are waiting for me.” I pull my own shirtdress back on too quickly, ripping a seam with my foot.
“No hurry,” says Sybil. “Here. Let me.” And she’s standing too close again. “Oh, you have a little sunburn here, Margot.” She touches my hot right shoulder delicately. “And a heat rash, I think. I’ll get Moll to bring up some calamine. How are your knees?” And before I can answer, she’s picking up the hem of the dress at the back and is bending down inspecting them. “Oh, my darling. Oh, you poor thing.”
“It looks worse than it is, really.” And while it feels wrong on a level I can’t quite grasp, a little part of me is seduced by the attentive maternal concern, the slow trail of a cool finger over the raw heat of the itch.
“You have been terribly neglected by your mother, I can see that. But you won’t be neglected any longer, not under my care, my dear.” She drops the hem of the dress, smooths it lightly with a quick brush of her hand, a gesture that seems to give me permission to leave.
I pause in the doorway. “I’m truly sorry, Aunt Sybil.”
“Oh, I think I always knew you would come in here, Margot, that out of all of the sisters, it would be you. Don’t look so surprised.” Her eyes have unexpected warmth. “You are just like Audrey. She’d have taken that domino. She would have come in here, too, of course.”
It is only then that it strikes me that Sybil left the wardrobe door open deliberately. And it was she who found my hairgrips, not Moll. And she had seen my weakness that morning as I poked around the storeroom. Maybe she knew it was only a matter of time.
Sybil cocks her head to one side, her fingers rolling the seed pearls at her throat. “You see, I was planning to keep this door very much locked.” Her eyes roam my face. “But, for some reason, I thought of you, Margot, and I didn’t want to lock the room after all. Isn’t that odd?”
7