Chapter 2
Cecilia
THE ROAD BETWEEN THE Gate House and Odette’s house is as wide and painful as a wound, an unnatural dividing line dug deep between Cecilia and Odette.
The workings of illness have separated them as painfully as a severed limb, as a body rendered into parts.
With each downward turn Lydia takes, Odette sinks further into the earth with her.
Cecilia does not know what she is supposed to do. Should she insist on crossing the threshold? On inserting herself into Odette’s life? What does Odette need from her now?
What could Cecilia give her that could compensate for the loss of her mother?
Cecilia sits in her window, watching Odette’s room, waiting for the light to brighten the glass.
Sometimes, Odette will still come to look out across the dark to her, and they will find their old place together: Cecilia will hold up a book of Keats, Coleridge, Milton, Malory, and they will read across the void.
There is much still to prepare for their departure for university.
They have packed trunks and toiletries and books and stationery.
All continues as though Lydia will last long enough for Odette to go and return.
The only time Cecilia dared ask Odette whether they should reconsider taking up their places, Odette gave Cecilia no space to explain herself, insisting that Cecilia must go.
Mostly, she sees nothing of Odette.
It frightens her.
Where has her friend gone? Her lover?
Who is she without Odette?
It is as though, somewhere in the last few weeks, the world has gone wrong, splintering and fracturing until she is consumed with panic, like she is only an animal body in fear.
Sometimes, in her bath, she sinks under the water as long as she can, holding her breath, as though she can hide down there, as though total immersion can cleanse from her this intolerable sense of danger.
Submerged, lungs aching, it is an experience so total that for a brief moment, it is enough.
Death is like a rupture that breaks open new ground.
This is not earth that she ever knew before was there to be trod.
Now, it is irrevocable. She has learnt of some new, frightening portal through which all will walk, and the only comfort is to pray it does not come too often or too soon.
Sometimes she watches Penelope and Claudine speaking, heads bowed close, in the hallway of the Gate House or on the front step of the Hampstead house or walking along the street in tight conversation. Do they plan together? Do they speak of the blackmail?
And then there is the matter of the paintings, the exhibition that Lydia is too ill to even think of. Might she leave something to Odette in her will instead? There is no way Cecilia can ask about it now without being deeply insensitive, and again, it is all speculation that leaves her powerless.
It is no good. She must see Odette. If she sees her, maybe she will understand some way to help her.
She packs away the sewing box and puts on her hat and coat.
There is a van waiting in the street, but she pays it little mind.
She is unpinning her hat in the hallway when she hears voices.
There are no walls for her to disappear into here, and panic rises up her throat.
Will she be seen? Will she somehow be in trouble?
She holds her hat before her and stays as still as she can.
The voice, she thought, was Claudine’s, but then two men appear, carrying a canvas wrapped in sackcloth. They nod at her but do not stop, making for the front door.
‘Where are you taking that?’ she asks as they pass. The paintings must surely be those that have been carefully transported down from Suffolk in hope of Lydia’s exhibition.
The first man gives her a practised blank look. ‘I don’t know, miss. Instructions to take these, that’s all.’
They pass and carry the painting away to the van.
Before she can think what else to say, she hears Claudine’s voice again. It is coming from the drawing room.
As quietly as she can, she slips down the hallway until she can hear the words more clearly.
‘. . . do you girls know nothing of nursing? It should not fall upon me to explain that bedsheets must be changed regularly if used by an invalid, no matter how much extra laundry that might entail. And do not turn your nose up at washing a bedpan, because I know you have done much worse in your sordid little lives—’
‘Miss Moore.’
Cecilia turns to see Mr King coming down the stairs.
‘Mr King,’ she says, darting away from the door at which she has been listening.
‘I take it you have also come to pay your respects to Mrs Fairfax-Waugh?’
He is much as she remembers him: dark, appraising eyes, mouth ever on the edge of a smirk. She is struck that again she finds herself alone with him, and she dislikes it.
‘To support the family,’ she says simply. He does not need to know the intimacies of her life.
A door opens, and Claudine emerges behind them. ‘Mr King. How kind of you to call.’
He dips his head in acknowledgement.
‘Please, do join me.’ Claudine’s gaze turns to Cecilia finally. ‘Odette is upstairs.’
With that, Mr King brushes past her into the parlour, and the door shuts behind them. She is dismissed.
Cecilia takes the stairs slowly, her stomach clenching. What business does Mr King have with Claudine? He has come to take the paintings, surely, but is not Lydia too ill for the exhibition? And what business is it of Claudine’s?
Is there no one who can be trusted?
No one but Odette.