‘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 schooledit 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.
2
Cecilia
ADRIVING RAIN CHASESCECILIAinto the Gate House, Leo dashing behind her, holding his coat over his head.
The funeral was washed out. The rain was strong enough that it eroded the sides of the fresh-cut grave, and Cecilia, stepping too close, felt the ground give way beneath her feet. It was only Leo’s swift, strong hand on her arm, hauling her back, that saved her from entering the grave before her mother did.
Claudine did not think it proper for anyone but family to attend, sending instead a carriage on behalf of herself and Uncle George, and though they had sent out notices to many, there were only two mourners, Leo and Cecilia. Cecilia has read of funerals that were attended by no one. She should be grateful her mother was at least spared that.
In the hall they shake out their clothes, stamp the water from their boots. Cecilia does not feel the cold, nor the sodden wool against her skin. The colour has run from her hastily dyed dress, leaving a grey cast to her hands when she removes her gloves.
She can feel nothing.
How strange.