Chapter 4
Odette
LYDIA HAS A DELICACY to her, as though she were one of the paper dolls she made when Odette was a child.
They used to sit together in Lydia’s studio, sketching faces, Odette turning the pages of magazines, studying fashion plates to choose which dresses Lydia would paint, slowly building a wardrobe of outfits for her army of dolls.
Lydia always gave her plenty and left Odette alone with the thin, unfeeling paper in place of a mother.
Now, her skin is as transparent as tissue, the map of veins and arteries beneath more like some drawing from an anatomical textbook than one of her paintings.
Odette holds her hand, at once eager to be close and repulsed by the thickening of her curved nails, the sense that if she grips too firmly, the skin will tear apart.
Odette sits a long vigil. The hired nurse is here during the day now, but the household still take turns to stay by Lydia’s side. Odette takes as many shifts as she can, guilt driving her to stay awake through the night, reading by lamplight until her head aches.
But there is hope now. The doctor says so. This has not all been for naught. Her mother will recover, and they will both know that, when things were at their worst, Odette did not turn away, that she stayed true. She will never leave Lydia, just as Lydia will now never leave her.
Lydia sleeps fitfully, drowsing between worlds, pushed under by the medication the doctor leaves and dragged back up by the pain that still scourges her.
‘Angel.’
She is awake now. Odette sets down her book.
Her mother lifts her arm, a weak copy of a gesture Odette knows so well, and she obeys its summons, climbing onto the bed to tuck herself against her mother’s small frame and feel her fingers rest against her neck.
‘You’re such a good girl,’ says Lydia. ‘My own angel.’
‘I’m not that good, Mama.’ Odette looks at a point on the wallpaper where it has not been hung quite right and the pattern judders out of shape.
‘Oh, far, far, better than me.’
Their breathing falls into synchronisation; Odette feels the swell of her mother’s ribs press into her own, the soft flesh of her slack breast as they move as one.
Even when her mother has slipped away from her, into her own distress, her own despair, there has always been the solidity of her body to return to.
Her mother may not have been present in her mind, but there has been a warm, breathing piece of bone and meat that Odette can hold and know is her mother.
Some things are beyond words. There is a world in a touch, in an anchor.
Her mother is alive. The world turns around this point; she knows where she stands.
‘I have something for you,’ says Lydia. She tries to sit up, but her strength fails her and she slumps back. ‘I promised you I would give you a safe future, and I mean it.’
‘It’s all right, Mama, rest now. We have time. You know what the doctor said: you’re recovering.’
For a moment, it seems as though Lydia might protest, but she is too pale, the pulse fluttering in her throat.
‘It is important to me that I look after you. I have not – I have been neglectful. I know it. I told myself I was a good mother and hid my troubles from you well, but I don’t think that is true. ’
Odette blinks back her tears. She feels like a cup overfilled. There is too much within her, and she cannot begin to recognise one feeling from another. ‘You did your best,’ she says.
It is true. And it is not always enough.
They lie there awhile longer, mother and daughter curled together like an ammonite fossil in rock, like oak and ivy, and it occurs to Odette that she does not know which of them is which.
The ivy helps the oak grow tall and strong, though the tree will stand without it – but without the oak, the ivy is nothing but a weak, strangling thing, struggling towards any support, no matter how ill-suited.
‘I want to see the sky and the light,’ says Lydia.
‘Mother, it is late—’
‘The sky and the light,’ Lydia repeats, almost keening. ‘Darling, please.’
Odette goes to the windows and opens the curtains onto the canopy of cloud that hangs above the Heath, blotting out any stars. No sky. No light.
But Lydia sighs, sinks back into her pillows. She is not seeing this world, Odette realises. She is somewhere else.
Odette strokes her forehead, as she remembers Lydia doing for her as a child. There. A body in space. Her mother is still here.
The door opens softly. Claudine stands in its frame, the light from the corridor casting her face in darkness. ‘You can go now,’ she says plainly.
Odette cannot stifle her yawn. It is painful to stay awake, but each time she leaves her mother, it feels like a betrayal.
Claudine steps aside, leaving the doorway free. The instruction is clear.
Odette hates the anxiety that cramps in her stomach when she is alone with her aunt, the shame of it, of not knowing how to behave to avoid bringing down her anger.
Her mother’s illness has filled the house so totally that Odette has been able to hide behind it, but she cannot help feeling her skin crawl, her hair prick, when Claudine looks at her.
‘Thank you for sitting with her,’ says Odette carefully.
‘You forget she has been my sister far longer than she has been your mother. This is my duty.’
‘Yes. Of course. I’m sorry.’
‘Go on, then. I have enough to be getting on with.’
Head down, Odette scurries from the room.
Her own bed waits for her, a warming pan freshly removed from between the sheets to counteract the cold night.
It is only September, but the year has turned hard, the leaves on the trees sagging under the weight of the rain, and the earth of the Heath becoming boggy and swollen.
She sleeps fitfully, reaching for Cecilia, who is not there, and dreaming of a powerful tide of rain washing all the ground away to expose a skeletal network of tree roots and sewers.
Odette wakes to the grey dawn light, confused. What has woken her?
The maid has not yet been in to light her fire or deliver a jug of hot water, but there is the sound of footsteps moving up and down the stairs in haste, doors closing, the urgent murmur of voices.
She pulls herself from bed, wrapping her dressing gown about her, and goes into the corridor. Her father and Claudine stand at the top of the stairs, in quiet conversation. At the sound of her door opening, they both turn to her.
And Odette knows.
She falls back against a side table, grasping reflexively for something that will hold her weight, but nothing can support the weight of this. She cannot bear it. It will crush her down and press all the air from her lungs, and she will die, too.
Her father comes to her, stops an awkward distance away, as though he does not know how to cross the divide between them.
‘Odette, I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘Your mother is dead.’