Esmée

Esmée is twenty-six and does the trapeze act that closes a winter cabaret in Amsterdam-Noord, in a tent of canvas and bevelled mirror pitched by the water. We made her up, with the tent and with the woman who stops her at the bar afterwards, and the editorial standards set out what that means. Nine minutes on a single bar eight metres up, braids wound into a bun so tight it has its own centre of gravity, and a drop at the end that leaves her hanging by her ankles above the front row. Then she comes down, zips a black hoodie over the sequins, and becomes hard to find. What follows is one conversation, with someone who found her anyway.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can.” The hood is up. She is looking at the woman’s shoes.

“Were you frightened?”

“Up there? No. Now, a bit.”

“Of me?”

“Of talking. Up there nobody expects me to say anything.”

“The part at the end, when you let go with both hands.”

“The ankle hang.”

“I stopped breathing.”

“Everybody does. I listen for it. A tent makes a sound when three hundred people stop breathing at the same time, and it’s the best sound I know.” It is the longest thing she has said all evening, and she looks faintly alarmed by it.

“Do you ever fall?”

“Every morning. Into a net, in an empty tent, in front of nobody. That’s where the falling goes.” A pause, while she works out whether to finish the thought. “So there isn’t any left for tonight.”

“Don’t you get tired of being looked at?”

“They’re looking at the trapeze.”

She means it. Earnest is the word for her, and it is the word that keeps her out of the bar most nights: she answers every question as if it had been asked properly, which takes time, and most people only wanted a compliment to agree with.

“Who taught you?”

“My aunt. In a school gym in Zuidoost, with a rope and a crash mat. She said the only thing you need up there is to want to come down in one piece more than you want them to clap.”

“And do you?”

“Most nights.” Her shoulders, built by nine years of hanging from them, go up round her ears and come down again. That is as close as she comes to a laugh in company, and the woman has earned it.

Then Esmée looks up, properly, for the first time.

“You hold your glass as if it might swing,” she says. “Were you ever up there?”