Chapter 1
Odette
THE TICK-TICK-TICK of the clock fills the quiet drawing room. Odette sniffs, rubs at her eyes with her sleeve. The noise seems so loud that it fills her whole mind, as though she has been scourged and left empty but for the mechanical count of minutes and seconds.
Her mother stands in the corner of the room, silent, pale, accusing, shot through with light from the window like the half-shadow that she is.
She has stood there in life. Odette can remember it so clearly: her mother touching her fingertips to the china milkmaids on the mantelpiece or the oil-stained antimacassar on the back of the armchair, as though there were secrets hidden within the flotsam and jetsam of the world that she could discover if only she looked closely enough, some solution to the problem of her own existence.
Odette was delivered to Herne House a week ago in a flurry of whispers and averted eyes. No one has said a word of blame to her directly, but the accident hangs around her like a miasma, sickening all who come too close.
Odette has eaten little since that moment, and she feels faint, unreal.
It is not her fault. She tries to make this thought whole, shape it into something that can exist outside of her.
She did not push Penelope. She did not tell Penelope to be there.
It was an unfortunate tragedy in a busy station, and Penelope will neither be the first nor the last poor soul to be crushed beneath the wheels of a train.
It is no comfort. It should not be.
The worst thing is that she can imagine the colours her mother would have chosen to paint the bloodstained scene.
There was chaos at the station when Penelope fell. Odette screamed – or those around her did – and the world became all noise, the whistle of steam and stamping of feet, slamming doors as passengers alighted, and Odette and George shouting for the guard, for anyone.
She will never forget what she saw when she knelt at the platform edge to reach down for Penelope. There was a hand reaching up to her, pale fingers wearing Penelope’s rings, extended as though in supplication, and Odette strained to touch them.
When she did, the hand toppled sideways, the arm sliced off above the elbow and was tossed, somehow, to stand upright. A trail of blood and torn satin led to the rest of Aunt Penelope.
Odette knew she should not look. And yet.
There was not a person left anymore.
How awful, then, that she is now so profoundly grateful to have been gifted the body of her own mother to wash and dress and bury.
What is left to Cecilia but scrap meat in a box?
It must be right that she does not see Cecilia. They have shared one mind, one thought; how could Cecilia not look at her and at once see everything Odette had seen? Experience each horror as her own?
Cecilia’s first and only letter has come with the morning post. It is kinder than Odette deserves and harsher than anything Cecilia has ever said to her before.
It is done, then. Odette has pushed and pushed, like a cat nudging a glass towards a table edge, curious to see the glitter of the shards as it shatters on the ground. If the splinters cut her, then it is only fair. It is her doing, after all.
The door opens to admit Claudine and a short, brown-haired young woman in her early twenties, wearing a travelling dress, with an unremarkable, watchful face.
‘Ah, there you are,’ says Claudine. ‘Odette, this is Miss Rosebury – she will be your lady’s companion and travel with you to Bad Gastein. Miss Rosebury, this is Miss Fairfax-Waugh.’
Odette rises mechanically and the two women exchange the obligatory pleasantries.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ says Miss Rosebury.
She has not taken off her hat and gloves, and from this, Odette understands that they are expected to depart at once. It is good that she did not unpack her trunk from Cambridge. It has simply been delivered to Herne House intact and will go with her now to the Continent.
Miss Rosebury is unreadable. She makes no reaction to Odette’s hair that escapes its pins, the red rings around her eyes, the bitten quicks of her nails.
Odette supposes she must have seen women in all sorts of states in her career.
There is a trailing thread on the lace at Miss Rosebury’s collar and the flash of a fine gold chain at her throat – a locket?
A family? A sweetheart? Maybe she is kind. Odette hopes she is kind.
‘Well, you will have time to become acquainted on the journey,’ says Claudine, when Odette says nothing more. ‘Miss Rosebury, the kitchen will have some refreshments for you, I’m sure.’
There is a slight flicker in Miss Rosebury’s eye at being relegated to staff quarters.
She will no doubt perceive it as a slight, occupying that strange in-between position that governesses and companions find themselves in, neither welcome below stairs nor with the family.
Odette wonders for a moment if Claudine meant it intentionally.
She has been a governess, too, and a teacher in Dresden.
Perhaps it is a reflex, to hurt, to put people into the places she once found herself.
Miss Rosebury leaves, and Odette sinks back into her chair. She is too tired to think more hateful thoughts about Claudine. She has lost the battle. Surely she has. Aunt Penelope has died. It has gone too far now.
Lydia drifts across the room, the white train of her shroud dragging across the carpet. Her eyes are so dark now, sunken into her skull. It is as though her ghost rots along with her corpse in the ground, the softness of her mother in life sloughing away into something hard and cold and angry.
A bony hand comes to rest on her shoulder.
‘May I – may I see Cecilia before I leave?’ Odette asks. She knows what the answer will be, but she cannot go without asking once more. ‘I thought I should attend the funeral with her, if she intends to go?’
Claudine’s expression grows pinched. ‘I don’t think you should speak of her. She will do far better without you in her life.’
Odette is crying again, the tears a hot wet line along her raw cheek. ‘I only want – if there’s some way I can make it up to her.’
There is a moment’s pause, then the rustle of skirts, and Claudine sits on the settee beside her.
‘The best thing you can do is leave. You might not think it, but I am trying to help you.’ It is a shock to hear a near-softness in her tone. When Odette looks up at Claudine, it is to see the flash of Lydia in her face, the shape of her eye and the line of her nose. ‘You aren’t happy here.’
‘I don’t want to leave,’ says Odette.
Claudine taps a finger against her knee. ‘We do not always want what is best for us. I am not—’ She breaks off, as though something nearly got the better of her and now she has schooled it into obedience. ‘I am not the monster you think me. Go. Distance will help us all.’
Her mother’s cold hand digs into the meat of her shoulder.
If only distance were something possible.
Fine. Very well. Let her leave. Let her go far, far away from this failure she has made of her family, her home, her love for Cecilia, her duty to her mother. She is not wanted here by anyone, so it is immaterial whether she stays or lets herself be ferried to Austria by Miss Rosebury.
George puts his head around the door.
Odette stands rapidly. ‘Is the carriage here?’
If it is to be done, better to do it now.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The trunk is being loaded as we speak.’
‘Then I will not keep Miss Rosebury any longer.’
Her father gives her that gentle, paternal look, as though they are an idealised parent and child in an illustration, as though he can cover over the rot beneath with layers of thick, oily paint.
He has rejected her as completely as he has rejected Lydia, and yet even now he wants to pretend. She hates him.
And yet, she would still cling to him if only he opened his arms.
‘I will write,’ she says, because she cannot find any other words.
Her father smiles again. ‘It is a few weeks’ rest cure. You will feel the better for it. Your nerves have been too badly upset – we cannot blame you for your behaviour. But you must rest and recover.’
That is his explanation then. Ah, well. She cannot change him, as she cannot change herself.
‘I understand.’
The carriage waits at the front of the house. There is no one to see her off, save her father. Claudine watches from the hallway, hands folded tightly before her.
Miss Rosebury takes a seat first, and Odette lingers, looking at the roofline of Herne House against the sullen grey sky, where she and Cecilia have climbed out at night to share poetry and kisses; at the ivy curling around the windowpanes, working its roots between the mortar, the edge of the studio to one side, where she has spent so many hours with her mother as she worked.
Lydia has gone now; the ghost has not followed her into the daylight. She thinks, for a moment, that she sees a flash of chestnut hair in the studio.
Her father does not kiss her cheek as he once did. Instead, he shakes her hand and steps back, leaving her alone between the carriage and the house.
She looks again, one last time, at this wreck of a life.
And turns away, sunken, defeated.