‘Odette. Darling.’
Her mother’s rasping voice.
Odette thinks she will go mad – has gone mad. It is toomuch. Her mind has betrayed her, brought her horror at an unimaginable scale and yet – relief.
It is her mother.
She turns to look.
And there she is.
Lydia is as gaunt and pale as when they nailed her inside her coffin mere hours ago, dressed in the shroud that Odette spent hours embroidering. Even – there – the shorn lock of hair at her mother’s temple, where her hands shook holding the scissors.
Her mother is here, but she is not. She is indistinct around the edges, ill-defined, like faded ink on old paper. If it were daylight, she might vanish entirely.
‘I need you, darling, my girl.’
Odette will cry, will break in madness and hope. ‘Mama?’
Cold fingers stroke her throat. ‘Angel. You are such a good girl.’
Oh, she is crying now. There is no stopping the way her heart splits open. ‘Mama, why did you leave me?’
‘I did not leave you. I was taken.’
Lydia shifts above her, unreal and weightless in her translucent body, but heavy as six feet of earth, the force of her spirit like a rock that will crush Odette.
‘Claudine.’ The words are harsh and indistinct, as though they are dragged from a depth with great effort, like larynx and vocal cords are no longer the meat and muscle of her body.
A shiver of fear spikes through Odette. ‘What of Claudine?’
The cold fingers close around her throat again, and though it is not possible, it feels as though her mother squeezes.
Odette flinches away, but her view is filled by her mother’s corpse-face, twisted in an inhuman snarl.
‘Revenge me. For I am murdered.’
The Summer
July 1898, Herne House, Suffolk
Death, like a friend’s voice from a distant field
Approaching through the darkness, called
Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1
Cecilia
‘DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?’
Cecilia rolls over in the long grass, passing the cigarette to Odette, who is lying on her back, skirts pulled up to bare her legs to the summer sun.
‘Ghosts?’ asks Odette.
‘Yes, ghosts.’