Instead, she reaches out one trembling hand to the pale skin of her mother’s neck and spreads her fingers across her throat in the echo of a too-familiar gesture.
There is no pulse, of course.
‘He has out soar’d the shadow of our night.’
Odette snatches her hand back and turns to find Cecilia in the doorway. Cecilia has no obligation to wear mourning, but she has come in a sombre grey and mauve day dress, her jewellery plain jet, with a ring of her late father’s on her index finger, as a testament to the closeness of their two families for so many years. She looks only prettier in the soft colours, the flax of her hair and milky pink of her cheeks made delicate.
‘Envy and calumny and hate and pain can touch him not.’
Shelley. Odette remembers Cecilia spreading the book of poetry open on her knees as they sat side by side on the roof of Herne House, the weight of a summer storm thick in the air.
Odette means to speak, to offer some answer to Cecilia’s own line, but she can find nothing. She is no poet. The truth of it all is beyond words.
Cecilia pushes the door closed and comes to take Odette in her arms, to press their foreheads together like they are still schoolgirls whispering their love in the quiet dark.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ says Cecilia, and it is enough.
Odette curls into her warm body, lets the tears come, and shakes and shakes with the force of it.
‘Please never leave me,’ she speaks into Cecilia’s shoulder.
‘Never.’
They draw apart and turn to face the table.
‘For the eyes,’ says Odette, showing the coins on her palm.
Cecilia grips Odette’s arm as she readies herself.
Before she can begin, the door opens again and the women of the house flood into the dining room. Odette quickly slips the coins into her pocket and presses her back to the wall. Maids carry in basins of warm water and cloths and a large pair of scissors to snip away the nightgown Odette’s mother died in, should they prove unable to remove it themselves.
‘You don’t have to be here for this,’ says Odette to Cecilia under her breath.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ It is not a simple thing to ask.
‘It will be .?.?. taxing for you.’
‘I’m not afraid.’
Odette chews the meat of her lip. There is no way of knowing what will be a comfort. The washing of the body, its preparation, involves no decision on her part. A ritual tells her: this is how it is; you are part of something bigger than you, and it has its rules. You are safe. Held.
It seems churlish to want a person as well. Demanding. Odette is too demanding; she knows this is her terrible flaw.
And yet, shewants.
She touches her fingers to Cecilia’s, begins to speak, but Aunt Penelope interrupts.
‘We can be of more use elsewhere. Come.’
Cecilia is ushered away by her mother, who has donned sombre black for her dead friend.
They are now five in the room: Mrs Binx, the nurse and one housemaid, who is sniffing pathetically – and Aunt Claudine.
She stands at the head of the table, eyes fixed on her sister. She is the taller, lither woman, with hair that runs to brown instead of chestnut, and her hard years of spinsterhood and teaching in Germany show in the lines around her mouth and eyes.
It is no easier to understand her now. She watches her dead sister’s face with an intensity that could drive a hole through the wood, grey eyes flashing and dark.
Odette does not go to her.