‘Do you ever think of my mother?’
For the second time that day I had surprised him. The carriage felt too small, we were folded in together in a way neither of us had ever been comfortable with.
‘I see a lot of your mother in you,’ he said. ‘Less of myself.’
I thought of my mother withering in the palace under the weight of her own complex moods. I thought of her days in bed, her flares of passion and her slow, miserable death.
‘She was like you. Content with books, a small, quiet life. Her reading glasses, the armchair by the fire. That is how I still think of her.’
‘My mother never wore glasses,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘Did she not?’
‘Ido. She didn’t.’ She was never content. She never liked her small, quiet life.
He had never known either of us.
‘Did you want me? After mother died, did you still want me here?’
There, I had said it. The question that had plagued me for years. It lay between us like a fish caught from the river, slick and squirming and grotesque.
And I realised it didn’t matter what he said. Whether he had wanted me or not, it would not change the way he had treated me.
‘No. Don’t answer.’
When I moved to leave, he stopped me.
‘I loved you and your mother.’
‘Loved,’ I repeated. ‘Not love.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
I unlatched the door. ‘Yes, it was.’
He held up his palms in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’m sorry that’s how you feel.’
I was tired. I was so, so tired.
He didn’t follow me out of the carriage, and I knew, now, never to expect anything from him again.
b
The rumours worked fast, expanding like a river with snowmelt as I was passed through the palace, greeted by Klara shrieking and pointing and hugging, my stepmother looking close enough to faint, before being plunged into baths, hair combed, clothes stripped, body scrubbed. By the time I was clean, all the city knew what had happened to me better than I did.
Wrapped in a dressing gown, my feet took me to my old room, unthinking. Inside it was empty. No, that wasn’t right – it was full of furniture, a bed, clothes’ press, washstand and desk – but everything of mine had been stripped out.
My stepmother appeared with a pair of maids carrying a storage chest.
‘We redecorated,’ she said, pointing to the mint green wallpaper in a modern Aesthetic style. ‘Do you like it?’
I stared around at the alien space. It was like I had been scrubbed out of existence. Just as after my mother died, and she had been cleaned away like a layer of dirt.
‘Of course you can stay here,’ she said indulgently. ‘I haven’t finished hanging the paintings, but if you like you can decide where they go.’
‘Thank you,’ I said mechanically. ‘Where are my clothes?’
The maids opened the trunk and I saw my dresses stuffed in with their skirts crumpled and lace crushed.
