The Things Esme Didn't Say

Esme's mother had offered to drive them to an exhibition at a university art school on Saturday morning. The trip was free, which Leila had checked before allowing herself to be pleased. She wanted to see what students made after the stage she was in now, when every project had to fit around other subjects and someone always needed the large table for a different class.

Then the Bellbridge viewing was provisionally arranged for the same morning.

Mum told her while brushing Toby's school blazer with the flat of her hand. He needed it for his secondary-school transition visit the following week. The blazer had come from a second-hand sale and still held a name label belonging to someone called Oscar.

“You don't have to come,” Mum said. “It's only a first look. I can take pictures.”

Leila stood in the bathroom doorway.

“I want to see it.”

“I know. I also know you've been looking forward to the art-school visit.”

“Can we change the viewing?”

“I asked. That's when the person with the keys can meet us.”

The words person with the keys sounded more important than the entire art school.

Leila messaged Esme to cancel. She explained the viewing, added sorry twice, removed one sorry because it looked excessive and sent the message.

Esme read it. No reply appeared.

At college the next morning, she was polite in a way Leila found harder to deal with than open annoyance. She asked whether Leila wanted a pen, moved her bag so Leila could sit down and discussed the coursework deadline as though they were people who had recently been introduced.

At break, Leila followed her out to the wall behind the science block.

“Are you angry about Saturday?”

Esme put down her folder.

“A bit.”

“I can't change it.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you angry?”

“Because I'd looked forward to it. Knowing why doesn't mean I wasn't looking forward to it.”

Leila sat beside her. The brick was still cold from the night. Someone had drawn a small face in marker near the place Esme usually put her hand.

“I thought you'd understand.”

“I do. That's not the same as being delighted.”

Leila looked away. She had been using understanding as a request that Esme stop having feelings inconvenient to her own.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

Esme rubbed a thumbnail against the edge of her folder. The green varnish was almost gone.

“I had something I wanted to talk about on the way,” she said.

“What?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Esme.”

Her friend looked at her. There was a weary recognition in her expression, as though they had changed seats in an argument both already knew.

“I don't think I want to apply for medicine,” Esme said.

Leila stared. Esme had wanted medicine since they were thirteen, or had at least been saying it since then. She chose subjects, summer activities and books according to a future Leila had assumed was fixed.

“What do you want?”

“I don't know. Something where saying I don't know isn't treated like I've set fire to my life.”

“Have you told your mum?”

“She keeps finding places where I could shadow someone. Clinics. Open days. People who want to be helpful. I haven't actually asked for most of them.”

Leila thought of Esme sitting opposite her in the art room with the biology folder open, reading sentences she could not explain.

“Is it the work?”

“Some of it. Mostly it's that everyone talks about how much I want it, and I don't know whether I ever wanted it that much or just liked knowing what to say.”

A group of younger students passed, laughing loudly enough to interrupt them. Esme waited until they had gone.

“It sounds ridiculous beside everything with you,” she said.

“No.”

“It does. I'm sitting here with a bedroom and a mum arranging opportunities, complaining about the opportunities.”

Leila recognised the calculation: whose difficulty was large enough to justify occupying the room.

“You don't have to win a competition to tell me something,” she said.

Esme looked down at the marker face on the brick.

“I know. But lately every time I start, there's a viewing or a form or your brother needs collecting. And I don't blame you. I just don't know where to put things.”

Leila wanted to defend herself. The reasons were all real. None of them changed the fact that Esme had been waiting.

“Put it here,” she said. “Now.”

They talked until the bell. Esme did not suddenly discover a new career. She mentioned psychology, then journalism, then taking time to work out whether being good at a subject obliged her to make a life out of it. Leila listened without telling her she would be brilliant at anything. That would have been pleasant and useless.

“Do you want me there when you tell your mum?” she asked.

“No. That would make it sound like an intervention.”

“Fair.”

“But can I come round after?”

Leila almost said that she could not come round to the hotel. Then she considered what come round actually needed to mean.

“Meet me somewhere. We can walk.”

“Without you missing the last bus?”

“We'll choose a time that works.”

Esme leaned her shoulder briefly against Leila's.

“I can still be disappointed about Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I had some disappointment left.”

After lunch, the gallery email arrived. Leila was outside the English classroom. She saw Anika's name, stopped walking and let three people go past before opening it.

They would like to offer her the summer assistant role, subject to confirming the usual details and arranging an induction.

She read the first sentence twice. The paragraph beneath it explained the hours, the training and what she needed to send back. None of it turned into a mistake when she looked again.

Esme saw her face.

“You got it?”

Leila nodded.

Esme made a delighted noise that caused everyone in the corridor to look. Then she grabbed Leila's hands and squeezed them.

“You got it.”

“I think so.”

“What do you mean, think so? Does it say they accidentally employed a different Leila?”

“No.”

“Then you got it.”

For a moment, Leila let herself be pleased without calculating what the hours would earn or whether the possible flat was on the right bus route.

Then the teacher opened the classroom door and asked whether they intended to join the lesson.

“Yes,” Esme said. “She's newly employable. It's taken us by surprise.”

Leila went in laughing, her phone warm in her hand.