A week to go. We try to think of a gift for our uncle and aunt as a thank-you for their hospitality. For me it is more complicated than this: a good-bye, a very sorry for thinking you a murderer, I’ll miss you, a good riddance, all at once. But it’s difficult since we have no money and can’t agree on anything. The day trip is Dot’s idea, shot with unexpected Dot-ish brilliance. Isn’t Sybil locked into this house by her own fear? Perry by the anxieties of his wife? What if we could guide Sybil through it, lead her into the outside world again before we go? Wouldn’t that be the most perfect parting gift? It’ll never happen, Flora says. Pam, looking for opposition, says, “Margot can do it.” Flora bets me the glass paperweight on her desk that I can’t coax our aunt out of the house into the local town. I tell Dot I’ll win it for her.
“I will be right with you, Aunt, right by your side. Just like Audrey was,” I tell Sybil shamelessly as she brushes out my hair that evening. She shakes her head, as if I’ve suggested she jump from the village church tower flapping tea towels as wings, but when I mention it again the next day she hesitates, the brush stills in my hair, as if she’s suddenly remembered something terribly important. I know the bet is mine.
“I suppose it is now or never, and I do need a new hat,” Sybil repeats anxiously that Wednesday morning. She looks well, her cheeks less hollow, her thread-veins disguised by Pan-Stik. She eats toast slathered with butter, two eggs, almost as if she is enjoying them. Perry watches approvingly, only gobbling a mean bowl of salted porridge himself. And it strikes me that the two of them are really one system, redistributing their appetites, that the marriage that once looked so dead may actually be alive at the roots.
In the hall, Sybil succumbs to nerves, clasping and unclasping her best crocodile handbag, in case she’s forgotten something critical. We link our arms in hers, steer her down the front path, chatting, pretending everything is normal, that it isn’t her first trip into town in years, that her hands aren’t shaking.
When we get off the bus, Sybil stumbles only once, when a blond girl leaps out in front of us, rolling a hoop with a stick. And if she notices the heated whispers of the locals, the gawping and staring, she says nothing, keeps her head high, braver than I thought.
After tea and cake—“the best Victoria sponge I have ever tasted,” Sybil marvels quietly, even though it wasn’t nearly as good as Moll’s—we visit the milliner’s, insisting she buy the most exuberant hat in the shop, the one with colorful silk flowers crammed about its rim like a May carnival float. Sybil protests. But she’s transfixed by her own reflection, seeming to glimpse another woman in that joyous hat, someone she could be again.
I think it’s a girl at first, hanging from the back of my bedroom door. And I don’t like the idea that Sybil’s visited my room and hooked it there as I slept. But I still can’t quite resist it. To my surprise, the top button does up this time. I realize Sybil has had it altered.
Oh, it is beautiful. I’d forgotten how lovely, light, yet full-bodied it is, the way the cool petticoat rustles against my legs.
“Margot?” Flora stands in the doorway, a pillow mark down the side of her cheek, her violet eyes wide. I still, but the dress keeps moving, already with a life of its own. “Where on earth did you get that?”
“Sybil gave it to me,” I explain awkwardly.
“Gosh. Well, lucky you.” She narrows her eyes, assessing it, head cocked on one side. “Have I seen it before?”
My heart stops. If Flora recognizes this dress as a copy of Audrey’s, I’ll be forced to explain everything. Flora frowns. I brace. The morning pivots.
“Oh, it must have been in a fashion magazine or something. Anyway, Pam will cut it from your back with her nail scissors. It makes you look like a film star, Margot.” She laughs. “I can’t quite believe it’s you.”
I exhale a long breath that I didn’t know I was holding, and the bodice loosens.
“Oh, before I forget, that paperweight, won fair and square.” Flora puts it on the chest of drawers. “Even if it’s not really mine to give away.”
“Or mine to give to Dot.”
“It’s the principle that counts. I’ll buy you something nice in Paris, I promise. Here.” Flora adjusts the dress’s Peter Pan collar with the same light fingers that have run up and down Harry’s freckled back, twisted into his sandy hair. It’s the first time I can remember Flora touching me in ages. It feels nice.
“We’re going to have a party tomorrow,” she says companionably. “At the stones. Just the six of us. A good-bye to the summer and all that.” She raises an eyebrow. “A wild party, if Harry has his way.”
“I imagine Sybil might have an opinion on that.”
Flora grins, puffs the dress’s folds with her fingers. “Sybil will be out for the night.”
I start swishing the dress around my legs again, looking down, admiring it. “She only just managed the milliner’s, Flora.”
“I have a plan.” Flora looks just like Ma lit by one of her mad ideas, and I suddenly miss Ma physically, like a twist inside. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Flora says with a glint of mischief. “It’s on in town, Harry told me. Sybil will love it. Perry won’t object to anything that encourages Harry. There’s a hotel round the corner, quite fancy, doormen and everything.” She leans into my ear. “Perry might get his first screw in years.”
The word screw is a shock, so fast, so wanton, not like Flora at all, making me wonder how far Flora and Harry really have gone. A couple of days ago, Flora confided to Pam, who promptly told me, that they did “everything but it . . . in the garden shed.” (“Wild exaggeration, obviously,” said Pam dismissively. “How could they? There’s not even a bed in there.”)
“You’re the only one who can persuade Sybil, Margot.” Flora starts to flirt, fluttering her long lashes. I get a sudden unsisterly urge to pick them out one by one like legs from a spider. “Please, please try, Margot. I need to go off to Paris with a bang.”
I’m not sure if this is Flora’s code for doing the “everything but it” again or a marriage proposal. Maybe both. I don’t want to know, anyway. The thought of her and Harry smooching at the stones at sunset is torment enough.
“What’s the matter? You’ve got your Strange Margot face on.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap. Sharp fragments of the summer fly at me: the blank domino, the kingfisher, Sybil’s fingers in my hair, Harry’s hand on my arm. “I don’t want people to call me strange anymore, okay?”
She leaps back from me, hands raised. “Crikey, okay.”
“And I’m not coming to the party.”