6 #2
‘Odette?’ whispers Cecilia, and Odette realises she is not beside her after all, but across the room. A flare of panic grips her.
‘Let us join together,’ says Mrs Weston, from somewhere in the darkness. ‘Take the hands of those each side of you.’
Odette bites her lip. The hand to her left is unfamiliar, childlike and clammy – the assistant, Rosina’s, she thinks, not Mrs Weston’s.
To her right, she hopes to feel Cecilia, but instead the hand is cold and smooth and bony.
This must be Mrs Weston – though she was sure from the sound of her voice that she was somewhere more distant.
‘I call today upon the dear spirit of Arabella, my guide, poor soul, poor unloved soul. Arabella, will you come to me again and open the way between the worlds?’
There is a pause, and then a gentle tremor across the table.
‘Will you introduce yourself to the kind people who have joined us today?’
The table rocks in rhythm with the subtle motion of the assistant’s foot – Odette can feel the movement to her left, and she is so disappointed.
Mrs Weston is nothing but a fraud. Of course she is.
Of course this was a stupid idea. It is like going fishing with a stick and a length of string and hoping to catch a shark.
The next time Mrs Weston speaks, her voice is high-pitched and childlike. ‘Oh, Mrs Weston, it is cold today, so cold I can’t rightly get warm no more.’
Odette hears a snort that can only come from Cecilia.
‘Darling Arabella is my spirit guide,’ says Mrs Weston, in her own voice. ‘She has been with me many a year – haven’t you, my darling?’
‘So cold, madam, and so dark, down at the bottom of the water.’
‘Drowned in the Serpentine,’ Mrs Weston explains. ‘Dear girl, we have come here today hoping that there might be someone waiting to speak to the young lady at this table. Is there any such spirit?’
Odette wants to sink down out of sight, though there is no hiding in the dark. She has done this foolish thing, and Cecilia is here to witness the depths to which she has fallen.
‘It hurts,’ says Arabella’s voice. ‘It presses all about me like needles.’
This is hateful.
‘Try harder for us, little one – let the door open! Throw it wide!’
The air turns icy, as though a window has been flung open – and perhaps it has, but it is not so cold outside today; it is unnatural. Odette frowns. Is there a block of ice brought in, a fan to send frigid air across them?
‘Yes – yes – she is here,’ says Arabella. ‘Oh, she is so angry. So angry.’ The word twists with a sound that must pain Mrs Weston awfully to make, the high-pitched child’s voice dropping into an animalistic snarl.
There is a sudden spattering of rain droplets across Odette’s forehead, as though the roof were open to the sky.
Something is turning. She doesn’t like it; in some unspeakable, confused way, it feels wrong. She can hear her own breath coming too fast, the pulse in her wrist pounding.
‘We long to hear her,’ says Mrs Weston. ‘Go on, Arabella. Let her through.’
There is an unexpected note of ill-ease in Mrs Weston’s voice, and in response, the table jerks violently, scraping along the bare boards before slamming back into place hard enough that it catches Odette across the stomach.
‘She remembers!’ The snarl tears its way out, Arabella’s sweet voice now like gravel. ‘She sees! She will not forgive!’
There is the touch against her ankles, something fleshy and warm, patting along her legs up to her knees – and then at once, it is gone.
A pressure builds in Odette’s head. Her ears are muffled.
For a moment, she is underwater, an immense weight pushing down on her, her ears and nose filled up – and Mrs Weston’s voice comes through distorted, anxious.
‘Restless spirit, take pity on us – this is – too much,’ she says, voice shot through with panic.
The hand to the right is gripping hers so hard she can feel the bones in her fingers grind together, and her breath is strangled in her throat.
‘Stop it – this is a cruel joke,’ cries Cecilia. ‘Stop it at once.’
The hand to Odette’s right yanks her sideways, ripping her other hand from Rosina’s grasp and almost pulling her out of her chair. She grabs at the table with her free hand – and then, as suddenly as it moved, the bony grip is gone.
She breathes hard for a moment, white hot and unreal with fear.
Almost too quietly to be heard, she whispers, ‘Mama?’
Cold fingers close around her throat.
Shock runs through her from her toes to the top of her head.
Odette thinks of the cold grave dirt under her hand at the cemetery. Undisturbed. Her mother is dead.
Then breath, rank with rot and loam, hissing in her ear. ‘Odette, why do you run from me?’
She says nothing, moves not an inch. She cannot breathe; she cannot even let herself think, for fear this apparition will comprehend it.
‘Why do you leave me alone, in the dark and the cold?’ The voice is soft and sibilant, like air whistling through bone. ‘Why do you not save me?’
She can almost feel desiccated lips against her skin. The voice is so close, as though it is coming from inside her own soul.
‘Odette, let me hold you.’
Two rangy arms close around her in a vice-like embrace.
She breaks. She cannot tell herself this is not real because it is – she can feel it, hear it.
She can never stop seeing her mother’s mouth howling revenge, murder, and she would rather leap from a bridge into the Thames than hear it a moment longer.
She flings herself from her chair with a howl, fighting to be free, and she is blind, desperate, struggling.
She knocks the table, hears something fall, and there is shouting, the clamour of voices, Mrs Weston’s and Cecilia’s, and Odette stumbles until she hits a wall, hands grasping in the dark for the doorknob.
She has to get out – she has to get out.
Behind her comes a flare of brightness as Mrs Weston lights an oil lamp, but Odette has found the door and is stumbling into the corridor, half falling down the stairs, cold fingers chasing at her throat.