Chapter 1
Cecilia
CECILIA STOPS AT THE unsettled earth below the wooden marker. A host of stone angels watch her from beneath the branches.
In the months since Lydia’s death, she has learnt that gravestones are long, like teeth, stubby and blunt, with a tapering root going down to the nerve. One must wait for the earth to settle before they can be planted.
The winter day is low and pale. London spreads out to the south in a mass of smoking chimneys, coal smog settling across the houses below. It is not so cold, and already she sweats under her heavy woollen coat.
In her pocket is the letter from Odette that set out a time and location to meet.
Cecilia has read and reread it, looking for some hint as to Odette’s state.
Is she angry at her? Hurt? It has been two weeks since her previous letter – longer since anything meaningful from her, and Cecilia has spent the intervening time fretting, conjuring up horrible accidents or terrible illnesses that have taken Odette away from her.
Highgate Cemetery is a half-hour walk across the Heath, and she is glad of the exercise to keep her worry at bay.
She checks her watch – she is a little early, and there is no Odette.
Then the church bells toll the hour from St Michael’s at the top of the hill, and Odette steps out from behind a tree.
It is a piece of theatrics Lydia would have appreciated, like an attitude from one of her tableaux vivants. Cecilia can see it in her mind’s eye: Antigone at Polynices’ graveside, doomed for her forbidden mourning.
‘Odette.’ Instinctively, Cecilia goes to her, reaching out a hand in expectation that she will meet her halfway.
Odette does not move.
Cecilia falters, stops. Drops her hand.
I missed you, she almost says.
Instead, ‘It is good to see you.’
Odette wears small smoked glasses against the low winter sun; she is still in her mourning blacks, darkest bombazine with deep crêpe hems in the old-fashioned style of mourning reserved for widows.
She is used to Odette in flannel skirts and shirtwaists, rational dress or tea-gowns – it is strange to see her so neatly done, her corsets tightly laced and her dress so precisely fitted that it is like armour.
She is beautiful in her grief, her cheekbones cutting a sharp line, features brought into precise relief like clear air after rain.
It feels wrong to desire her when she is so acutely wrapped up in grief, and yet Cecilia does.
There is no end to her wanting when it comes to Odette.
‘You came,’ says Odette simply.
‘Of course I did.’
It is as though they are meeting for the first time, all the ease and familiarity with each other stripped away, and, God, if that is not enough to send a spike of fear through her.
Odette comes to her mother’s grave, toeing the edge of the sinking dirt as if looking for something.
‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘No,’ says Odette sharply. ‘What would be wrong?’
Cecilia considers asking about her clothes, the smell of cigarette smoke about her, the way she is measuring the length of Lydia’s grave with her footsteps.
‘You stopped writing.’ When Odette doesn’t reply, Cecilia continues. ‘Uncle George says they have heard nothing from you at all. You didn’t tell anyone when you meant to come home, only in that last message to me, and even then you come first here – what I mean to say is: we worried about you.’
‘We worried?’ queries Odette, with an arched brow. ‘I did not know you were so close with my father and aunt – forgive me, I suppose I must say stepmother now.’
‘I worried.’ Cecilia comes closer. ‘I cannot imagine what you must be feeling about it all. Truly, it has shocked me beyond all sense, but—’
‘I don’t wish to speak of it.’
‘But what will you do when you go home? You must say something to them. I do not know how you can bear it—’
‘Of course I cannot bear it!’ snaps Odette. ‘My mother is barely cold in her grave and yet my father has found time to take a new wife and looked no further than my mother’s sister. It is sick.’
‘I do not disagree.’
‘Then why do you ask so many questions?’
‘Because you won’t tell me what I can do to help.’
‘If you cannot change history and bring my mother back then you can do nothing to help me.’
There is something unnerving about the perfectly formed carapace of Odette’s appearance and the lurching, untempered emotion of her words, taking her from control to chaos in a single moment.
She holds herself as though she is primed to run – from what, Cecilia does not know, but Odette twitches at the small sounds of birds and mice in the undergrowth, darting furtive looks over Cecilia’s shoulder and to their sides.
‘What happened in Cambridge?’ asks Cecilia. ‘Your letters were . . . They made me frightened.’
Odette laughs, forced and brittle. ‘Nothing happened.’
‘I cannot imagine how hard the idea of going back home must be now that—’ She cuts herself off. ‘Would it be easier if we went together?’
She is so simple that she hates herself sometimes. Would it not be easier to lie down in the dirt at her feet and beg Odette not to leave her?
‘I cannot ever call that place home again,’ says Odette. ‘They have sown salt into the earth.’
‘You have to go home sometime. You can’t make it not real by never seeing them again.’
Odette stops pacing, so completely has she been struck. ‘That’s not what I’m doing.’
‘Isn’t it? I would not blame you if it were.’
‘Fine. I will go back – only—’
‘Only what?’
Odette hesitates, suddenly a girl again, young and unsure and lost. ‘Nothing.’
‘If it is nothing, then you might as well come back with me.’
They walk across the Heath together, stride matched for stride, but for the first time with Odette, Cecilia feels herself entirely alone.
*
‘Well? What did she say?’
Cecilia’s mother waits in the hallway of the Gate House.
When the letter arrived from Odette this morning, Penelope plucked it from Cecilia’s hand the moment she was finished with it, then demanded the others, everything sent from Cambridge.
Her eyes moved greedily over the words, eyebrows rising at Odette’s scrawling hand and her strange sentences.
It felt to Cecilia like being stripped and laid bare on the breakfast table.
And the fear: will her mother see what they are to each other?
Why had she given into her mother so easily? Why could she not say no?
‘Well, you must meet her,’ said Penelope.
‘I thought you said I should keep my distance?’ replied Cecilia, as much of a challenge as she could brave.
Penelope tutted. ‘Don’t be so literal.’
Cecilia did not know what to say to that, so she fell silent.
Now, she is faced with her mother again, and she is still mute.
She hides her face in the unbuttoning of her coat and unpinning of her hat.
She has spent the walk home turning over the conversation with Odette in her mind.
Whichever way she looks at it, she cannot make sense of Odette, other than that she is thrown around by the wild currents of her grief.
There is nothing she can repeat to her mother that will not feel like a betrayal.
‘You were gone for quite some time – surely she must have said something worth sharing,’ says Penelope.
‘I – don’t know,’ says Cecilia, slipping past her mother and into the parlour.
‘Good afternoon, Cecilia.’ Claudine is sitting on the settee, in a shocking pale-lilac dress and gold jewellery.
It is not wrong for a sister to enter half-mourning so soon, but Cecilia finds it jarring all the same.
Her mother has come in behind her, cutting off her exit so that she has no choice but to take a seat. Penelope shuts the door.
Why is Claudine here? Is this an ambush? What do they want from her?
‘I believe you have seen Odette? A rare gift she does not bestow on the rest of us.’
‘I have.’
‘What of her? How did she seem?’
‘I am sure you can see for yourself now she is back in London.’
‘Enough of your cheek,’ chides Penelope. ‘It is a simple question.’
Cecilia stills her hands and focuses on a point on the wall behind Claudine’s head.
‘She is not . . . well,’ she says carefully. ‘I cannot imagine how she could be.’
Claudine is tapping her fingernail against the varnished surface of the end table, the only sign of her disquiet. ‘The girl wallows,’ she says to Penelope. ‘I told you at the time – we should not have humoured her about the photography and the funeral. She has formed an unhealthy obsession.’
Penelope nods, quick to agree. ‘It is natural to grieve a parent – none of us would deny it – but I must say that I for one think she takes this whole performance too far.’
‘I do not believe it to be a performance,’ counters Cecilia, but her mother ignores her. You do not know her, Cecilia wants to say, but the room is full of other people’s words, other people’s thoughts, and she struggles to regiment her own.
Claudine continues to speak to Penelope as though Cecilia were not there. ‘If she spoils dinner tonight with her sulking, I will insist George gives her a talking-to. He is her daughter; he must straighten her out.’
‘Quite right. She must learn to behave herself.’
Abruptly, Claudine looks at Cecilia, eyes sharp. ‘You two seem very close.’
Cecilia does not react. ‘We are old friends.’
‘She trusts you.’
‘Yes.’
‘She will tell you the truth, I imagine.’
Cecilia moistens her lips. ‘I am not quite sure I understand what you are suggesting. Tell me the truth about what?’
‘About whatever it is she is hiding.’
Ah. There it is. This is why Claudine has come.
‘I don’t believe she is hiding anything,’ says Cecilia automatically, but the lie sits dead on the floor between the three of them.
Odette is hiding something – from her, as well as from the others – and it rankles like a pebble in her shoe.
‘Or whatever it is, it cannot matter all that much,’ she says weakly.
‘That is for you to find out,’ says Claudine.
She leans forwards, and her manner changes, like a theatre backcloth being raised and replaced by another.
‘You would be doing me the most terribly kind favour if you would speak to her a little, try to understand what lies beneath all this . . . extravagance.’
Penelope is staring at Cecilia with a too-familiar intensity, and Cecilia diminishes under the combined attention.
‘If Odette wants to keep secrets, she is not easily swayed. She is quite stubborn. Even if I tried to make her tell me, it would only make her withdraw further.’
‘Then try harder,’ says Claudine, mouth in a tight smile.
Cecilia stares at her feet, a rushing sound in her ears. This is all wrong. She shouldn’t be here, with them, drawn into her mother’s scheming. It is a horrible betrayal of Odette, and she despises herself for it.
But she is ruled by fear. Of Claudine, of her mother’s anger, driven by whatever secret it is Claudine holds over her. Fears the precarious future that balances before her.
She is a worm. She knows that much. She is pathetic and stupid and gutless.
The Gate House feels too small; Hampstead a prison yard, ringed round by watching guards. She is struck suddenly, intensely, by the notion that she and Odette cannot stay here any longer or she will end up in a grave herself.
A return to university is only a stay of execution. They need a way out.
There is only one narrow chance of escape: the money Lydia promised from the sale of her paintings.
Odette has dismissed it as a lost cause, another broken promise from Lydia, but Cecilia cannot let it go so easily.
Could Lydia not have put something in her will?
What has happened to all the paintings that have been taken?
She must keep the peace until she can give Odette a way out. She cannot lose her.
If she must play along for now, then so be it.
‘I will talk to her.’
‘Perhaps I can ease the way for you a little,’ says Claudine. ‘Should you happen to speak to Odette as intimate friends, and should I happen to be in a position to hear what was said, then there can be no charge of a betrayal of confidence on your part.’
Cecilia’s stomach turns in revulsion. ‘I think I understand the idea.’
‘Then all is settled.’ Claudine rises from the settee. ‘I am so grateful to you and your mother for making me so welcome. Mine is not an easy position, and I find myself in need of a friend.’
For a moment, the truth of the words bleeds through, and Cecilia does not like the new wave of guilt that comes with them. It cannot be easy for Claudine. She is no monster, only a woman.
She presses Cecilia’s hands between her own. ‘Your mother tells me you are a sensitive girl, and I can see it in your face. This must be quite distressing for you. I am sure it can all be straightened out neatly enough.’
Sensitive. She means weak.
Cecilia smiles, lets her hands be squeezed as though a pact has been made between them.
Claudine is not wrong.
She does not bend with the wind. She fears it breaks her.