Chapter 8
Odette
THE BOAT TRAIN ARRIVES in London on time.
The station is crowded with travellers, jockeying hansom cabs and newspaper and chestnut sellers, and the smell of the river rises rank and thick from streets away.
There is a dense thicket of scaffolding around new houses, and in the distance, the spires of Parliament and Westminster thrust through the fog.
Home. What a strange word.
Odette has not slept since she read the paper this morning.
Not washed, not changed her clothes. A rime of sweat sticks her underthings to her skin and her eyes feel coarse with grit.
Her bags are lost somewhere. She has only the last of Miss Rosebury’s money and the stub of the third-class return ticket.
Cecilia is drowned.
It is the only thing she can think of.
Her own dear, beloved, perfect Cecilia.
It is monstrous and unbearable, and the guilt makes her too sick to breathe.
She thinks she will kill Claudine with her bare hands.
She is owed that much.
There is a blessed crush of people who distract her with the smell of bad breath and hair oil and sweat rising from woollen overcoats, their elbows in her ribs, and someone steps on the hem of her dress as they are all disgorged at Victoria.
She allows the flow of people to pull her down into the underground railway and onto a train on the Middle Circle route.
People carry bundles of shopping – presents, she realises – and posters display advertisements for pantomimes at Covent Garden Drury Lane.
Her mind is so full that she feels bloated, heavy, confused.
There were moments like this in Cambridge, when she would find herself swallowed up, the world unreal, and she might lose two hours, more, walking in a circle around the market or rubbing her finger along the soft edge of a library book.
At Charing Cross, Odette comes back to herself with a jerk when a woman knocks into her hard enough that she cracks her arm against the side of the door, sending a wicked jolt of pain up to her shoulder.
Shaking, she sits on the platform until it subsides.
The next train takes the waiting passengers, and soon, she is alone.
Distantly, there is the rumble of wheels, and footsteps on the stairs to the ticket office.
A mouse scurries over the tracks, quickly lost in the darkness of the tunnel.
From the corner of her eye, something moves along the platform.
Another mouse, she thinks – or a sheet of newspaper caught up in some subterranean wind.
She chances another look, sees pale skirts, white as a shroud.
Ah. Her mother is back. She lost her in the crowd for a moment, but now she comes to sit beside her and fold their hands together.
‘Why do you delay?’
‘I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so tired.’
A passing couple glance at the strange girl talking to herself. Odette ignores them.
‘Hurry. She must see justice.’
‘Yes. Yes, I will go now.’
She stumbles onto the next train and takes herself north, to Hampstead.
To Claudine.
To the end.
*
A cold wind races across the Heath and brings with it a clammy smattering of rain.
Odette blinks it away like tears. Night falls early in December, and she is soon alone on the street.
Her mother walks behind her like a shadow, matching her stride, their skirts and shroud blowing together and knuckles brushing.
The Gate House is closed up and dark.
So. They are gone.
Cecilia lies in hospital, all but dead.
Penelope is in the ground.
Where is Leo? Does she have it left in her to care?
If she thinks about Cecilia for more than a moment, the hysteria rises up around her like a fog, blinding her, turning the world to nothing.
It is impossible to cry for her. Odette does not deserve to.
The Hampstead house, in contrast, rises up like a fortress, busy with lights and the movement of servants.
The jasmine and the wisteria have been cut back far enough that the brick is exposed like bare skin, the marks of the vines carved in like veins.
She ignores the front door and slips around the side of the house, to the trellis that is still nailed into the wall, which Cecilia used to climb into Odette’s room, in the days when they feared nothing.
It is difficult work to lift the window from outside, and the rain begins to come down in earnest, making her hands slick and her hair straggle from its pins.
She lost her hat somewhere – she is not sure when.
Now she has only her fingernails. Her teeth.
With a screech, the sash jerks up, just enough for Odette to wriggle through and drop into her bedroom, dripping a puddle onto the floorboards.
Briefly, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. Gaunt, dark-eyed from lack of sleep, clothes dirty and tired, hair clinging to her cheeks. She is half revenant, more hate than human.
The room is cold and quiet, unlike the rest of the house. No fire lit, and already the walls have been skinned of the pictures she pinned up, the bed stripped, the cupboards emptied. There will be no memory of either Odette or Lydia when Claudine is done.
She feels her mother’s hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forwards.
In the corridor, she slinks silently to the top of the stairs, listening for the tread of the servants, for the sound of glasses or voices. The gas is turned high against the dark, casting bright spots along the patterned green wallpaper, and she moves carefully, bundling up her skirts in her fist.
There they come. Voices. From the drawing room.
Claudine. George. Leo.
The only ones left.
On hands and knees, Odette slithers down a step or two, pressed close to the carpet, until she can hear.
The entrance hall is empty, a few wet coats on the stand and umbrellas dripping into a pot.
From the kitchens comes the noise of cooking, pots and knives and the whistle of a footman polishing silver or a pair of boots.
The drawing room lies through the door directly at the bottom of the stairs.
She can picture the room: pale blue walls, long damask curtains, the sofas drawn close towards the fire, delicate colours that were out of fashion but pleased Lydia’s artist’s eye.
Lydia had liked to read there, stretched out before the window.
Cecilia had taught Odette card tricks sprawled in front of the fire during the cold winter evenings. All gone, all gone.
Now it hosts some conclave over Odette’s fate.
They are talking about her.
It seems as though her deception in Munich has been discovered.
So be it.
‘This is mad,’ says Leo. ‘Everyone has gone completely mad.’
His voice is hoarse, not that of the assured man she knows so well. He is taken apart, as well he should be. Claudine has destroyed his family as much as she has destroyed Odette’s. Does he not see it? Perhaps not. Her childhood friend has felt like a stranger for too long.
They are all broken now. All in pieces on the floor, like smashed toys.
‘Should we report her to the police?’ Leo asks. ‘Surely it is only a matter of time before she returns here?’
‘No,’ says Claudine at once. ‘The police will hardly take this seriously.’
Leo is agitated, speaking too quickly. ‘But she’s dangerous – clearly, she is dangerous.’
Ah. He takes Claudine’s line. Yes, Odette understands. It is easier for him. There is a singular evil amongst them, which can be sliced out like a cancer. Odette will be eliminated, then they can continue on, telling themselves they did all they could in the face of tragedy.
‘As far as anyone knows, she is still abroad, and so the matter will be out of their hands,’ says Claudine.
George has said little, but he speaks now. ‘I must attend to some business at the Commons.’
‘Of course you must.’ Claudine’s voice is ice.
‘I am sure this is all sound and fury and will signify nothing in time,’ he adds. Odette can imagine his bland smile, his pacifying hands spread wide.
There is no reply, or at least none that she can hear, and she has slid down another step to strain for softer voices when the door opens and George steps out.
Odette freezes, crouched on the stairs like some devil from Hell, clawed hands wrapped around the banisters.
Her father looks up at her, shock and distress plain across his face.
Odette cannot breathe. Any moment, he will speak, and she will be found.
Quietly, he pulls the drawing-room door shut.
The hall clock measures out the long seconds, the silence that lasts between them.
There is a blurring to her vision, dampness on her cheeks, and she is surprised to find herself crying.
Oh. Oh, there is some feeling spirit left in her still.
George hesitates a moment more, face twisted with pain. She thinks – hopes – for one wild second that he might come to her. Choose her. Listen to her. Together they might expel Claudine from the nest, bring her to justice. He might hold her as she cries for her mother.
But he does not.
Without a word, he puts on his hat and coat and lets himself out.
At the door, he gives Odette one last look, and she understands that this is goodbye.
This is all he can give her.
The door closes behind him.
Odette presses her hands into her face, hard, to hold back her weeping, to push against this weakness in her. She loves him – oh, of course she still loves him, her father, her useless, kind, deluded father. How awful it is to love someone who can only fail you.
When she can breathe again, see again, she turns her attention back to Claudine and Leo in the drawing room, now alone together.
They speak quickly, two strange bedfellows, in this to the end.
‘So we do nothing,’ says Leo.
Claudine, measured, careful. ‘I did not say that.’
‘But you said—’
‘There is no point in the police. Yes. I stand by that.’
‘But we must do something. I cannot bear the thought of her out there, roaming around as though she has not destroyed everything.’