Cecilia freezes, one foot resting lightly on the hall runner before her. Has she been caught? Did she make a noise?
No, the voice is coming from Uncle George’s room.
Claudine’s voice.
‘No one is suggesting any firm arrangements now – let’s not overreact.’
Hissing, now. ‘Overreact? I will not let my life end being Lydia’s nurse. She has taken enough from me already; she cannot demand this.’
Cecilia is endlessly overhearing things. It would be better, she thinks, if she could blind herself, stop up her own ears, make herself the unthinking, compliant girl her mother wants her to be. She is Eve, too tempted by the serpent, too weak for knowledge that can only bring her pain.
‘You’re tired. Let’s all get some sleep, and things will look brighter in the morning.’
It is precisely the sort of bland platitude that Cecilia is all too used to from George.
‘Has middle age made you a coward or was I too much of a fool to notice it when we were younger?’
She shouldn’t be listening to this. She should go; shemustgo.
‘Calm down. We’ve talked about this. The hired nurse is arriving in the morning. You’ll have help.’
‘Help,’ Claudine sneers. ‘I am telling you now, I will not give Lydia the years I have left. I will be no one’s caretaker. Whatever it costs me, I will not bear it.’
Cecilia screws up her courage and flees.
4
Odette
LYDIA HAS A DELICACYto her, as though she were one of the paper dolls she made when Odette was a child. They used to sit together in Lydia’s studio, sketching faces, Odette turning the pages of magazines, studying fashion plates to choose which dresses Lydia would paint, slowly building a wardrobe of outfits for her army of dolls. Lydia always gave her plenty and left Odette alone with the thin, unfeeling paper in place of a mother.
Now, her skin is as transparent as tissue, the map of veins and arteries beneath more like some drawing from an anatomical textbook than one of her paintings. Odette holds her hand, at once eager to be close and repulsed by the thickening of her curved nails, the sense that if she grips too firmly, the skin will tear apart.
Odette sits a long vigil. The hired nurse is here during the day now, but the household still take turns to stay by Lydia’s side. Odette takes as many shifts as she can, guilt driving her to stay awake through the night, reading by lamplight until her head aches.
But there is hope now. The doctor says so. This has not all been for naught. Her mother will recover, and they will both know that, when things were at their worst, Odette did not turn away, that she stayed true. She will never leave Lydia, just as Lydia will now never leave her.
Lydia sleeps fitfully, drowsing between worlds, pushed under by the medication the doctor leaves and dragged back up by the pain that still scourges her.
‘Angel.’
She is awake now. Odette sets down her book.
Her mother lifts her arm, a weak copy of a gesture Odette knows so well, and she obeys its summons, climbing onto the bed to tuck herself against her mother’s small frame and feel her fingers rest against her neck.
‘You’re such a good girl,’ says Lydia. ‘My own angel.’
‘I’m not that good, Mama.’ Odette looks at a point on the wallpaper where it has not been hung quite right and the pattern judders out of shape.
‘Oh, far, far, better than me.’
Their breathing falls into synchronisation; Odette feels the swell of her mother’s ribs press into her own, the soft flesh of her slack breast as they move as one. Even when her mother has slipped away from her, into her own distress, her own despair, there has always been the solidity of her body to return to. Her mother may not have been present in her mind, but there has been a warm, breathing piece of bone and meat that Odette can hold and know is her mother. Some things are beyond words. There is a world in a touch, in an anchor. Her mother is alive. The world turns around this point; she knows where she stands.
‘I have something for you,’ says Lydia. She tries to sit up, but her strength fails her and she slumps back. ‘I promised you I would give you a safe future, and I mean it.’
‘It’s all right, Mama, rest now. We have time. You know what the doctor said: you’re recovering.’
For a moment, it seems as though Lydia might protest, but she is too pale, the pulse fluttering in her throat. ‘It is important to me that I look after you. I have not – I have been neglectful. I know it. I told myself I was a good mother and hid my troublesfrom you well, but I don’t think that is true.’
