‘Paper – charcoal – I can sketch if nothing else.’
‘I’ll get it,’ says Cecilia quickly, and she slips from the room.
Lydia is too animated, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked. The heat radiating from her is something fierce.
‘I really think you should rest,’ says Odette, but Lydia ignores her.
‘Get Leo. I have a scene. Marat in the bathtub. It must be him.’
Odette tries to grasp Lydia’s hand, but she rips it away, nails catching sharply on Odette’s skin. It is a sharp slap of shock to be hurt by her mother in this way.
Lydia does not seem to notice.
Cecilia comes back with sketching paper and a tin of charcoals.
‘I said get Leo. We will do the scene right here.’
‘He’s not at home, Mama.’
He avoids her, Odette thinks. She cannot blame him. They are all so helpless here, she understands that it is easier for him to go to work, where he candosomething.
‘Oh. Well, we must make do.’ Lydia spreads the paper about her and makes a few initial sweeping lines with the charcoal. ‘A knife – we need a knife. Cecilia, lie across the foot of the bed. It is a bath – you will have to think about that.’
Cecilia and Odette exchange looks, unsure. Hesitantly, Cecilia sits on the end of the bed and lies back so that she is spread across it.
‘Odette, a knife, quickly.’
Perhaps it is better to humour her. Odette finds a letter opener on the writing desk and returns, hovering awkwardly by Cecilia. ‘Just a brief sketch,’ she says. ‘But you must rest – the doctor said so.’
Lydia is working already, with jerky, uncontrolled movements. Her hair hangs lank around her face; it should bewashed, but Odette does not know how to hold her mother in that way. She thinks, abruptly: who deals with her mother’s bedpans? Is it Claudine? One of the maids? Should it be Odette?
She does not know what she owes her mother, and she is frightened that, to pay the debt racked up, she must give herself up entirely.
‘Hold the knife to Cecilia’s breast. Open your shirt a little, darling – yes, like that. Now – press down. It is important to see the skin depress under pressure. Harder.’
‘Mother—’
‘Break the skin. Only a little – break it – there must be blood—’
‘Mother.’
The pain in Odette’s voice seems to shake Lydia back into herself at last. Odette drops the knife to the coverlet, tears welling. Cecilia sits up, fixing her blouse, looking between Odette and Lydia.
Lydia covers her hand with her mouth. ‘Oh. Oh, I’ve ruined it.’
Odette takes a shallow, shaking breath, before she can speak. ‘Nothing is ruined, Mama.’
Lydia is going to cry. It is old familiar weather passing through, and Odette finds herself comforted in some unkind way to at least stand on known ground.
‘Maybe we should ask Mrs Binx to sit with her for a while,’ says Cecilia. ‘Until the doctor can come again.’
There is the unspoken message beneath it:you do not have to stay here. You do not have to do this.
It is what Cecilia always says to her.
But Cecilia is wrong. She doesn’t understand.
This is everything that Odette must do.