Chapter 7
Cecilia
WHEN CECILIA HAS STEADIED HERSELF, hours later, and she has cried herself hoarse, she dresses to go out, taking care over the setting of her hair and the touch of red on her lips. Her earlobes are red and tender; she hasn’t dared change the studs, and her skin is hot to the touch.
She must speak to Odette. It is past time.
Cecilia does not know if it is still possible for them to have any meaningful exchange, so far gone do things feel, but she must try.
She will present Odette with the things she has learnt and make a final bid for their escape.
Surely if she sees the true threat Claudine poses, she will be willing to listen, to leave.
As she pins her hat, she is struck by the certainty of it: if they do not leave now, this will be the end of them.
Penelope catches her before she can go. ‘You look very well,’ she says, with an approving smile. ‘I am glad to see you taking more of an interest in your appearance. You are a pretty girl.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Only on an errand or two.’ Cecilia hopes the lie is not obvious. She hardly thinks her mother would be keen for her to speak to Odette.
Some sentimental mood has clearly taken Penelope, and she draws Cecilia into the parlour to sit with her, clasping her hands in her own.
‘I am so sorry things have been so trying for you. You must believe that it has all been for the best.’
‘I am not sure how I can,’ says Cecilia, but she is unsettled to see real emotion on her mother’s face.
Penelope tucks a stray strand of hair behind Cecilia’s ear and cups her cheek.
‘Things are never clear when we are in the middle of them. I love you so very much, my girl. I have spent much of my life frightened and trying to pave a road ahead of myself. I do not want to see you reduced to the same.’
Cecilia thinks she should make some smart remark, reject her mother’s assessment of life, but she cannot. She is not that sort of daughter. Her mother does love her; she knows it. This would all be so much easier if she did not.
‘There is nothing wrong with marrying a man who is boring but safe and living a small life.’
‘Mother—’
‘Adventure seems terribly exciting when you are young, but consequences will follow you into middle age, and it all seems much more foolish with hindsight.’
‘I am not so keen on adventure as you might think.’
Penelope smiles. ‘No? Odette is an adventure, is she not? My darling, I know how these passionate friendships can cut deeply, but you must not take it to heart. She can always be important to you, but you do not need to cleave your future to hers. I only want you to be safe and happy.’
Cecilia cannot help crying again. Penelope draws her in to rest her head on her bosom, and Cecilia curls into her gladly.
She thinks: this is what Odette has lost.
Perhaps it is so awful. Perhaps it is maddening.
Penelope strokes her hair, as Cecilia turns it all over in her mind.
Safe and happy.
Cecilia is not sure she can have both at once.
While she is within Claudine’s world, safe is not possible.
But perhaps there is still a chance left for her to be happy.
*
The air is wrong inside the Fairfax-Waughs’ house when Cecilia steps inside.
It is like a subtle scent, some undertone of rot beneath the smart facade.
It is tidier than usual, she realises. Some of the lamps and ornaments have been removed, rugs taken up from the floors, mirrors and artwork stripped from the walls.
She is let in by a distracted maid who pays her little mind. By the doors down to the kitchen, Cecilia spots one girl crying into her hands, another comforting her, before the door is rapidly closed to hide them. There are whispers she cannot catch, about noises in the night, about a photograph.
Raised voices come from the study, Claudine’s and George’s, so Cecilia slips past as quietly as she can and scurries upstairs to Odette’s room. There is only so much courage she can scrape together within herself, and she will need all of it to unfurl to Odette the secrets she has been holding.
Odette sits on the end of her bed, looking sightlessly into the corner of her room.
No, not quite sightlessly. She is focused on some point in the middle of the air, gaze fervent.
‘Odette?’ says Cecilia softly as she closes the door behind her. ‘It’s me.’
It takes Odette a moment to register her voice and turn. Her expression falls, at first in anguish, then closes off, hard and blank. ‘Why have you come?’
‘What do you mean? Do I need a reason to want to see you?’
‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s not – I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
The dark hollows beneath Odette’s eyes are more pronounced than ever, and she cannot keep her hands still, picking at her cuticles and twitching at the buttons on her cuffs.
‘Have you slept?’ asks Cecilia, coming to sit on the bed with her.
‘That’s not important.’
Cecilia tries to take her hand, to still her worrying, but Odette yanks it back as though the touch burns, and she looks over her shoulder, through the window into the street beyond as though tracking something.
‘I wanted to apologise for how I reacted to the séance yesterday,’ says Cecilia, hoping to draw Odette back.
She has thought about how to approach this, and there seems no obvious way to go back to how things used to be between them, but she can start with softness.
‘You put your trust in me, taking me with you to that place, and I don’t feel like I honoured it. ’
Odette pulls at a hangnail hard enough that the skin grows red. ‘You gave your truthful account. That’s all I asked.’
‘It frightened me. I wasn’t kind. But it mattered to you, and I should have treated it more carefully.’
‘It was stupid.’
‘I don’t think it was.’
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Odette snaps. ‘I don’t need your pity.’
‘You assume it is pity when it is not. Will you listen to me?’
Odette seems to war with herself for a moment, then drags her attention back to Cecilia and nods.
‘There is something I have been meaning to speak to you about, but it has hardly felt like the right time for so long, and now it all weighs on me too heavily to wait any longer.’
Odette’s expression grows wary. ‘More secrets?’
There is no point denying it. ‘Yes. Though I never meant to keep them.’ Cecilia is out of her depth in a conversation like this; she can feel her feet reaching for the bottom that is not there. ‘I have been trying to find out what happened to the money Lydia promised you.’
Odette considers her for a moment, with a searching, sharp look, and Cecilia is struck with the sense that this is not Odette.
Not her Odette. The person she knew has gone, and she is left with this shadow, this imposter.
She wants to clutch at Odette and shake her, will her back into her rightful shape.
‘The sale never happened.’
‘No, but the paintings were gone all the same,’ says Cecilia. ‘I tracked them down to Mr King’s gallery. He claims he has bought them all from the estate.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither did I, so I asked Leo.’ Cecilia draws a breath to steady herself.
‘Lydia changed her will before she died to make Claudine her executor. Leo said Claudine was “helping” her with it. Which means she has been in charge of your mother’s estate, and she sold all the paintings to Mr King directly, and the money has all gone back to Uncle George and – and – Odette, I’m so sorry.
I should have told you I was looking into it all but I didn’t want to say anything before I had something meaningful to tell you. ’
The silence is too long. Cecilia cannot let it lie.
‘I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?’
Odette still does not speak. She closes her eyes, draws a slow breath, and Cecilia thinks she might be crying.
‘You should stay out of Claudine’s business,’ she says eventually.
‘But, Odette, she—’
‘I don’t want to hear it. Don’t speak of her. Don’t look into any of this anymore. Forget it ever happened.’
‘I don’t understand. Are you listening to me? She has been planning all this from the start. I mean the real start: before you were born, she and—’
‘Cecilia.’ Odette’s eyes snap open. ‘Shut up. I don’t care. Keep your mad theories to yourself. This isn’t one of our plays. This is my real life.’
Cecilia draws back, wounded. ‘I know that. I’m not making it up.
’ She has the terrible sense that if Odette speaks again, she will say something that will cut a jagged line between them that cannot be undone.
She grabs at her hands again. ‘Let us go. Anywhere, you name the place. Let’s run away, like we planned.
Bloomsbury, or – or Paris – or anywhere.
There are ways to survive. We could manage it. ’
Odette sneers. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be naive. You still think we have any chance of that without money?’
‘Why not? We have both tried our hands at living away at university – we are not so ignorant.’
‘My mother is dead and gone, and every promise she ever made is gone with her. She traps me even now. I will never be free of her. There is no future for us.’
‘There is, Odette – I know there is. There must be, or else – or else—’
‘Or else what? You would have to think for yourself who you are?’
Cecilia stills as though she has been slapped. ‘That’s not – you don’t mean—’
‘I don’t mean it? That is what you fail to understand, Cecilia – I mean all of it.’ Odette’s face grows cruel in anger, in disgust. There is some haunted, unnatural look behind her eyes that Cecilia does not recognise at all.
Odette has never hurt her before. Not intentionally.
She trusts Odette. She holds nothing in life more dear than the faith she has in her.
Perhaps it is that grief has cracked through to the truth of the matter.
Perhaps this is what Odette has been hiding from her.
She does not love her anymore.
Perhaps she never loved her.
Odette does not stop. ‘You cling to me like a drowning man because you have only ever been a poor copy of me, only alive when my mother and I let our light fall on you. Well, now she is dead and gone, so what are you now, Cecilia? What of a shadow when the light is gone?’
The blows are delivered with no pleasure, but are precise and cold and devastating.
‘Stop it. I won’t hear this.’ Cecilia speaks low and trembling. ‘I won’t let you ruin everything because you suffer. There will be a future after this – I know it, I promise you. Do not tear down everything you have – you will want it when you come through.’
‘Don’t you understand, Cecilia? This doesn’t matter.
We do not matter. Nothing matters. Love is like a dew – it lies across the world so briefly, then the weight of the day burns it out without fail.
’ Odette is speaking wildly, hair falling loose from its pins and lips drawn back from bared teeth.
‘She is dead. My mother is dead. I am dead – the Odette you knew. The things she wanted, that she cared about – how can I care about them now? They were desires in a world that is lost to me forever. It all means nothing. Do you hear me? You tell me I am changed, and you are right. Stop looking for me, because I am not here.’
Odette throws herself away from Cecilia, shaking like a dog, panting and beside herself.
Cecilia does not reach for her.
What will she do if Odette really does push her away for good?
The thought has not fully occurred to her before – but now it feels horribly possible.
Maybe they are not forever. Maybe they were only ever mayflies, for one bright, short summer’s day.
She does not know how they can come back from this.