On her return home, she meets Leo going out as she comes in.
‘Are you quite all right?’ he asks, searching her face.
She tries to sidestep him, but he blocks her. ‘Yes – no – it doesn’t matter.’
She fled the gallery, too ashamed to look for Cecilia. She has another task now: one she cannot put off. Not after what she has seen.
‘Look, I know—’ he fumbles for the right words ‘—all this is quite a lot to get one’s head around, but don’t you think you could lay off the dramatics a bit? It would be easier on everyone, and on you too, I think.’
‘I don’t want any more lectures, thanks.’ She pushes past him.
‘Odette,’ he calls after her, ‘stop being an ass. I’m trying to look out for you.’
Ignoring him, she heads up past her room, all the way to the top of the house.
She cannot be around them, any of them. They do not understand.
The slow rumble of approaching thunder greets Odette as she opens the door to her mother’s studio. The rain has not yet come, but the sky is already dark, and with only an oil lamp to light her way, the room is a mass of shifting shadows and the bobbing reflection of her own hand carrying the lamp. No one has thought to come and cover the furniture with sheets, sothere is a thickening layer of dust across each surface, and the windows are rimed with dirt.
Odette waits by the door for a moment until she is sure she has not been followed, then closes it and pulls a chair beneath the handle to fix it in place.
The last time she was with her mother in this studio, Lydia was bright and lively, dashing between her paint stores and the canvas as she made great, swooping brushstrokes across a scene of Ariadne arriving in Naxos.
The last time Odette saw her mother anything resembling her usual self was before Claudine came to England.
Revenge me. For I am murdered.
The spray of red blood across the front of Lydia’s dress as she collapsed against Odette.
At the writing desk, she sits and considers for a moment.
Her mother’s memorial still lies where she left it, the loose pages written in a messy, erratic hand. She reads through it, looking for some new understanding. If only she had written about her mother’s illness from the start. It is too convenient that it began so soon after Claudine’s arrival – does Claudine think her naive? Stupid? She had a hand in it, Odette knows this.
She reads the memorial twice, but can find nothing that paints any obvious guilt. It will be there, she knows it must; like some trick of the light, it will become clear when she least expects.
She folds the pages and slips them into her pocket, to take down to her own room.
For now, she must try another route.
How to do this? It is not the kind of task that comes with instructions in an issue ofCassell’s Magazine.
A pen and paper – that is obvious. Or should it be a pencil? Yes, a pencil, so the nib will not need recharging with ink.
Odette finds both and sets them before her, then, after amoment’s debate, holds the pencil loosely in her fingers and rests the tip against the paper.
What should she say? Should she speak to her mother?
Even alone, she is too embarrassed to do it.
Instead, she closes her eyes, lets her mind drift, loosen. Rain hammers at the glass, wind rushing down the chimney in gasps.
There is a flash of lightning as bright as daylight. Her eyes snap open, and in the arching glass window, Odette sees a figure in white behind her.
Her heart races, but she does not turn.
‘Mama?’ she whispers. ‘Tell me what to do?’
What a foolish want. Her mother could never have done as she asked in life – what hope is there of it now?