Then he looks directly at Odette and beckons her. ‘Join me for a moment. There are a few matters I would speak to you about.’
Claudine’s mouth is a set line, but she seems pleased, as though some argument that Odette is not aware of has been won.
Odette allows herself to be ushered downstairs and into her father’s study. It is warm, the fire banked high and the thick curtains half drawn against the cold that radiates from the windows. She has always liked this room, the jewel-box quality of it, the towering shelves of books and wood panelling and the great globe by one side of the fire. There are paintings on the wall of racehorses, prints of the Boxing Day hunt near Herne House, oddities her father picked up in his youth on his Grand Tour: a long, spiralling tusk, a curved sword, an embroidered hat. As a child, she loved to sit and listen to her father tell the histories of each item, like bedtime stories, the same words repeated over and over until she could tell the story herself, as though they were her own memories.
‘Sit, darling, sit.’
George takes his seat behind the desk and Odette takes the one before it. She knows he likes to talk to her in this way, as though he is holding an audience with a member of his constituency, or some junior minister come to press his case for a certain policy.
‘Are you well?’ he asks, steepling his hands. ‘Is it very different being at home after Cambridge?’
Odette pauses before she replies. She has not thought about how she wants to play her hand before her father. ‘I find things quite changed,’ she says. ‘I wish you had told me of your plans sooner.’
‘Yes, perhaps I should have.’ He moves on without further thought. ‘Do you intend to return to Cambridge in the NewYear?’
‘I – yes, I suppose so.’
‘Good, good. We are always happier when we can strike out from our parents. Lydia could never really be a proper mother to you, and I see now that you suffered for it. After everything that has happened, I think it is very healthy for you to want a life of your own.’
Odette cannot follow his meaning, and she is left with only a creeping sense that maybe he does notwanther at home.
‘But it is only university,’ she says slowly. ‘I have not left home.’
‘No, no. Of course not. Until you marry, you will live here.’
Until she marries.
‘I have no plans to marry,’ she says, though she hardly understands why she has to state it.
He wants something from her, there is some crack she is to smooth over, but she cannot work out what it is.
‘At the moment, no. But you will want to.’
There is a bitter tang in the air, something a little like burning, the undercurrent of a danger she cannot yet place.
‘Claudine and I have been speaking, and we agree it is time that you consider your future.’ George smiles, leans forwards. ‘This childish antagonism towards Claudine must stop. She and I do not see eye to eye on everything she has said to you, but it is simply that you are very different people.’
‘That is hardly—’
‘It would be better for everyone if the two of you were no longer under the same roof. Claudine is very understanding of how difficult this must be for you. But you are not a child, Odette. This is Claudine’s home now, and she cannot welcome someone who treats her in the manner you have.’
She is back in the gardens of Herne House that summer, her father calling her sharp, entitled. Casting Claudine as the victim.
The crack splits wide and there is nothing she could do to cover it. It would eat her whole to do it. Send her mad.
Odette can barely speak. She feels Lydia’s shaking fury in her bones. ‘Are you throwing me out?’
George laughs. ‘Don’t be so silly – of course not. You have said yourself that you plan to return to Cambridge in the New Year, and you will be there for some years yet. I will make enquiries to find a suitable husband if there is no one who catches your eye. Then everyone will be happier. You are too attached to me, Odette. It is not healthy.’
Odette stares, unable to believe what he is saying. ‘You are my father.’
‘Yes, and Claudine is my wife.’
He is captured. It is Claudine who speaks, not her father.
She stands so abruptly she knocks over her chair. ‘I need no reminder. It beggars belief that you expect me to sit here and accept all this without a single word. I am asaintnot to have said more, in these circumstances. How can you expect me to swallow it? Mother was barelycold—’
‘That’s enough.’