Chapter 8
Odette
THE HEATH IS A SPLASH of oil and watercolour.
Great murky cloudbanks fill the sky with ashy light; the bare ground rolls out, in turns ochre-muddy and the golden-green of fallen leaves on frost-brittle grass.
The barren trees reach up together, tangled, more brown bark than vegetal.
It is a nothing kind of weather, neither the full frost of winter nor yet the fresh budding of spring, not for many months.
They are caught in some island damp, the humid, sodden mess of England, London, coal smoke and fox dung, fog and the half-light of early dusk.
Odette walks. The Heath spreads from Hampstead to Highgate, and she crosses it once, twice, doubling back on herself and drawing in tighter knots.
She is angry. If she stops, she feels it rise up from her stomach, in the heat in her throat and the shake of her hands.
It cost her everything to push Cecilia away. This is what Claudine has taken from her: not only her mother, her father, her home, but the very act of love itself. She has become cruel. She has given herself up to damnation.
Cecilia may never forgive her, and she should not.
But it is the only way Odette can think of to keep her safe.
Claudine murdered Lydia. Odette is sure of it.
Oh, maybe she is trading on nothing but a look, a moment, but it was like a fire iron striking her chest, like a bell rung inside her head, echoing still.
How is she to explain it? How is she to make that same epiphany bloom for any other?
Claudine’s guilt must be writ high; she must make everyone see it.
Her aunt cannot be allowed to keep her secret; it must be split open like the spiked shell of a horse chestnut crushed beneath a boot, the soft heart yielded and turned to a pulpy mess.
Her mother’s ghost trails her, somewhere behind her and to the left, a white shape moving between the trees, as skeletal as the leafless branches.
Odette will break Claudine open. She will expose the unjust heart of her.
She can see no other way. Claudine must be driven from her home like vermin.
Ever since she arrived in their lives, there has been some invisible battle of wills unfolding.
Claudine has declared that there can be only space for one, and thus first Lydia and now Odette must go.
They are trapped in a place of want and scarcity; there is not enough to go around, and Claudine will ensure she gets her due.
Odette cannot share with her. There is nothing to be shared.
Odette must win.
And to win, she must destroy.
It is past dusk when Odette returns at last to the house.
It is lit up bright as a furnace, each window blazing into the night, as though it is a castle, a fortification, into which she now delivers herself.
A little of its old glory remains, in the tapestries of rich thread, the carpets, the Turkish lamps and the paintings hung on every wall.
This is what Claudine wants to claim: this perfect nest, this comfortable bower.
A husband, a place, a home, a position. She shores up the defences around herself – George, Penelope – and cuts off each piece of land beneath Odette’s feet until she is standing with her back to a cliff edge.
Odette has been so blinded by her misery that she has not seen the moves made against her from the start.
Poor Lydia would never have seen any of it coming.
The fury rises up in Odette again as she strips her hat and coat, changes her boots for her indoor shoes and climbs the stairs to her room.
Her mother was defenceless. She was always a weak, fumbling thing, like a kitten, like a doll – she needed protection. Odette was the only one who could ever truly offer it.
Those cold fingers slip along her jaw, the line of her throat, in comfort, in claiming.
Odette will see justice done.
She will not let Lydia be forgotten.
The door to her bedroom is open, and she halts in confusion. The locked drawer of her desk has been forced open, and Claudine stands before the glowing fire, where a handful of papers are turning into ash.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice sounds alien to her, as though coming from an immeasurable distance.
She crosses to the drawer, yanks it out and searches its empty interior, but she already knows what it is Claudine has burnt.
‘The memorial – what have you done?’ There are tears choking her throat. She goes to the fire at once, but it is too late. The last memories of her mother curl and char, lost. ‘How dare you? That was mine.’
‘This is my house. Everything in it is mine. I do not need to explain my actions to you.’ It is as though the mask has been removed, and Claudine no longer feels any need to disguise her hatred of Odette.
‘Something you are too self-righteous to admit. This is my house, and you live in it by my good grace.’
It is almost shocking to hear it stated so openly.
‘It was my home first – and my mother’s,’ counters Odette. ‘You have only stolen into it like a cuckoo. I do not understand why you want it. Everything here is so intolerable to you. Everything is hateful. Does it ever occur to you that you are the sour and hateful one?’
The words pour out of her, and it is like falling, giddy and frightening and free.
Claudine’s eyes blaze. ‘You cannot help yourself, can you? I don’t need to be preached to by some sanctimonious child. Everyone walks on eggshells around you, so afraid to upset poor dear Odette, but you are so caught up in your own self-pity you do not see it.’
‘It is grief, and you are all so insistent to deny me it because it inconveniences you. But it is human, and I believe more and more that you are not.’ Odette keeps looking back to the scraps of paper in the grate, the last moments of her mother’s life, which she had taken painful care to record – gone.
It strikes her like her loss all over again, a blow to the body so full and inescapable it all but knocks her to the floor.
‘Why did you do it? To hurt me?’ she asks.
‘Or was there something in there you don’t want anyone else to know? ’
Claudine holds herself back, seems to shake with her anger, with the effort to hold onto the last shreds of control.
‘These endless dramatics. It is always about you, isn’t it?
I am sick of it. I will not stand for it any longer.
You have everything granted to you – your father indulges your frivolous demands to waste his money at university.
You have us all bowed to your precious grief.
Yet you do not spare a moment’s thought for the feelings of others.
You do not consider what I have been through.
When I was not much older than you, I was orphaned and had to go abroad to earn my own wage.
But you do not have a shred of empathy for anyone but yourself, and it is sickening.
I will not tolerate it. I will see you put straight. ’
Odette is crying; it is like a broken riverbank in a flood, and she is subsumed, the strength of her emotions taking her to pieces, working away at the mortar between the stones.
She does not know how to defend herself against Claudine, against such a vicious attack; she is not built for it, and she fears that she has made a grievous error moving against her.
Those cold fingers press against her neck again, and she all but leans into them for some scant comfort. It is like feeling ground at last beneath her feet, a tree trunk to brace against as the flood waters wash over her.
She returns her focus to Claudine, eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t you mean see me gone, like my mother? Father told me I am on borrowed time. You will throw me out.’
‘Once again, you insist on perceiving everything through your hysterics. It is about time your father took you in hand and had you married and settled.’
But Odette feels the force of her mission now; she holds right on her side. ‘Did my mother know you had designs on her husband when you came back?’ she asks. ‘Convenient for you that she died. Almost like you had a hand in it.’
The slap stings sharp across her cheek.
Odette holds her face in shock. ‘You hit me!’
‘I am teaching you a lesson that your parents have been too cowardly to teach you.’
Claudine raises her hand, as if to strike again.
Before she can, there is a noise beyond the door, and she steps hastily away from Odette.
Their commotion has drawn attention. George appears on the landing, and behind him are Cecilia, Penelope and Leo, dressed for dinner. Odette did not know they were due to join them tonight. No matter. The more people who witness this, the better.
‘Now, girls,’ says George, coming into the room with his hands raised as though he is calming a skittish horse. ‘This is not called for.’
‘Do not patronise me, George. Your spinelessness has caused half this problem – you cannot bring your daughter in hand.’
He wilts at once, as though pushed back by the force of Claudine’s anger.
Odette’s cheek burns. She wants to go to her father, hold onto his sleeve like she is a child again and cry. Tears prickle her eyes, and she feels humiliated to be made so small, so scared.
‘What’s happened?’ Leo frowns from the back of the group. ‘Are you fighting?’
‘Of course they’re not fighting,’ says Penelope. ‘Odette is overwrought. Let us all go downstairs and leave her be.’
Cecilia has slid through the group and is edging towards Odette’s side. Odette wants to reach for her, but she must not. Not now, not here.
Still, it is like a cut to the heart that Cecilia will come to her after everything.
The girl walks blindly into danger, for love.
How dare Claudine take so much from all of them.
Penelope touches her hand to Claudine’s elbow, tries to draw her off. ‘Come now. Leave her to her own dramatics.’