Chapter 5
Odette
IT IS A HEAVY, moon-rich night, cloudless and still as mown hay.
Odette is well-practised at climbing from her bedroom window up onto the roof slates.
There is an area where the slope is gentle enough that two bodies can stretch out beneath the stars.
Cecilia has reached their refuge first, still in her chemise, which she has pulled up to her thighs to air her bare legs.
Odette lets her gaze roam over the stretch of bare skin and imagines touching Cecilia there, fingertips, tongue, teeth.
Perhaps she will leave a bite mark there, that only the two of them will know about.
Odette sinks down beside her, sweating already from exertion. The air is thick and humid, promising a storm.
Her mind cannot settle.
After speaking with her mother, she scrubbed at her arms with her washcloth, yanked the pins from her hair hard enough that she took strands with them.
The precision and care required by the climb has taken the last of the patience from her, and so, when Cecilia knocks loose a slate and cannot seem to slip it back in place, despite how obvious a task it seems, Odette snatches it from her hand and rams it back so hard it cracks.
‘Fuck!’ She throws the broken pieces from the roof with all the strength she can muster. It is uninspiring, their arc low and flat, and they drop into the gravel of the drive all but noiselessly.
Cecilia looks at her, a little cowed, a little nervous. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have knocked it out.’
Odette presses her face into her hands, her fingertips into the hollows of her eyes. Takes a breath. ‘No. I am sorry. It is too hot, and I cannot bring my thoughts together. I am out of sorts.’
‘It is nothing.’
‘But it is not nothing,’ says Odette, and she feels it keenly.
It is Cecilia, her own Cecilia, without whom she would be trapped alone with her thoughts, and to do anything to push her away is to invite her own misery.
‘I don’t want to use you as some punching bag for my own unhappiness.
It is only that sometimes I feel so frustrated and confused, and I cannot articulate what is wrong or work out what I could do to change it, so it feels as though I am being prickled by brambles on all sides, like there are ants crawling all over my skin, and I would rather rip it all off and throw myself from the roof than swallow it all back down. ’
She peels her palms from her face and looks sidelong at Cecilia, unsure.
Cecilia fiddles with the frill of her chemise, tugging at a ribbon that runs through the eyelets in the lace. ‘You don’t have to pretend to be happy about your aunt showing up. Not with me.’
‘Not only that. It is all very—’
‘Unexpected?’
‘Disruptive.’
‘Was Lydia that bad?’
Odette should tell Cecilia about the money, but she can hardly think on it for fear of breaking the spell. Right now, it is a beautiful idea, a sketch unrealised. It could be possible. Her mother really might follow through this time.
If she says the words out loud, it will pin it down like a butterfly to paper.
Lydia is not possible to pin down.
Odette knows it too well.
But if she does not tell Cecilia, then she is no better than her parents and their dissembling.
She rearranges the drape of her nightdress, wafting the too-hot air against her skin in a futile gesture.
‘My mother said something to me earlier.’ Odette does not know how to convey the doubt and uncertainty her mother’s words bring. ‘She is thinking of selling some pieces. All the pieces she still has, in fact.’
‘What do you mean, all of them? Absolutely everything?’
‘She thinks she could do a show through a friend of Eddie’s, Mr King, and sell the lot.’
‘But whatever for?’
‘To give the money to me.’
Cecilia’s eyes widen. ‘But that’s – my God. You’d have—’
‘I have no idea what it could be, but she seems to think it would be enough that I could set myself up and not worry about – anything really.’
Cecilia clutches her hand again and squeezes it hard, an unruly grin curving her mouth. Her joy is contagious. ‘A little flat in Bloomsbury.’
‘A little flat in Bloomsbury,’ echoes Odette. ‘It could be real.’
‘Could? Will! Can you believe it? Finally. Finally!’ Cecilia rains kisses on her cheeks, then falters. ‘What’s wrong?’
Odette closes her eyes. ‘You know you can’t believe my mother.’
‘But Eddie Rutherford is coming. They’re all arriving tomorrow.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic.’
‘I’m not being pessimistic; I’m being realistic. What my mother says doesn’t mean much.’
‘But she wants you to have the money. It may take her a little time to work it all out, but she intends you to have it. Doesn’t that mean something?’
‘I don’t know. Does it ever mean anything?’
When Odette was eleven or twelve, her mother took her to Dulwich and the Picture Gallery in the bright, posied spring.
Lydia led her from Rembrandt to Gainsborough to Canaletto to van Dyck, talking through each style, each artist’s use of colour and composition, the quality of oil and water paints, the play of light and dark, and brushstroke and blending.
A small crowd gathered with them as they moved from room to room, mistaking Lydia for a learned guide, and Odette shone with pride. That was her mother.
These memories are like gold amongst the silt, a narrow vein she mines carefully, mindful of collapses.
Because Lydia is only ever one false move from collapse.
The unfinished canvases abandoned in her studio, the promised drawing lessons that never materialised – each new vision of her future that Lydia conjures so vividly for Odette never takes form. It is all always too much.
And fool that she is, Odette swallows each hook and feels the pain of it ripping out each time.
She does not want to be gullible.
But she cannot help hope.
‘Then we must make sure it happens,’ says Cecilia. ‘We will not let your mysterious aunt become a distraction.’
Claudine. There it is. The fault that runs through Lydia’s new fantasy.
Odette leans back on her elbows, digging her nails into the moss that clings to the slates. She looks at the expanse of stars above them, the fog of the Milky Way indistinct against the bright wash of moonlight. A day ago, a moment like this would have brought her peace.
‘She wouldn’t say a word about her. It was all very peculiar. No one in my family ever wants to talk about anything.’
It is probably the worst thing she could do in her father’s eyes: ask him to talk honestly.
Cecilia’s expression becomes fixed. ‘We shouldn’t think about Claudine. What does it matter? We will be away at university soon enough.’
‘I thought everything was set up for me to leave, but it can never be simple. There will always be something that comes along to drag me back to my mother’s side.’
Cecilia finds her hand and squeezes it.
At once, it is too much. Odette cannot bear it. The hope, the anxiety, the risk of disappointment, the fear that it will all undo her.
She sits up abruptly, pulls her hand free. ‘I don’t want to think about my mother anymore. What a waste of being here with you. Earlier, you said you had an idea.’
‘Oh!’ Cecilia looks at Odette from a sly side-eye. ‘Lady Godiva.’
Odette tips her head back and laughs. ‘If you wish to see me naked, you need only ask.’
Cecilia’s gaze flickers down to Odette’s body, half visible through the thin material of her nightgown. ‘Seeing you naked is why I know you will make the perfect Godiva.’
‘And you want to be the dirty peeping Tom?’
Odette means it as a joke, but it lands flat between them, this suggestion that there is something sordid or perverse in what they do, that Cecilia is somehow as crude as the men who cluster on the Haymarket in the West End.
Cecilia’s mouth is tight, waiting for the next blow.
‘No.’ Odette smooths over her mistake. ‘I see you’ll wish to be the horse. You would never tolerate me riding anyone else.’
At this, Cecilia goes pink and swats Odette on the knee – the tension is broken. ‘Stop it. Do you not want to do it?’
Odette considers. ‘You’re right. It could be a lot of fun.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Of course I am. We should do it as soon as we can.’
‘Tomorrow, then,’ agrees Cecilia. ‘After all, we hardly need prepare.’
Odette laughs again.
How much easier it is to hide inside this fantasy.
That is what her mother’s money will buy her: a way to make the fantasy real.
A flat with Cecilia. The means to live as she chooses.
If only her mother does not ruin it.
If only Claudine’s arrival means nothing.
Then, perhaps.
Perhaps.