‘You killed her, didn’t you?’ she says abruptly. ‘Aunt Lydia. Odette worked it out.’
It is not bravery. It is only that nothing matters muchanymore.
Claudine smiles. ‘That poor, mad girl.’ She leans forwards and wraps one hand around Cecilia’s wrist as though in a gesture of comfort, but her nails dig into the delicate skin. ‘No one believes her, you know. And no one will believe you.’
There is no point in hiding.
It is as Claudine said: no one will believe her. None of this is really happening. Claudine will magic it away.
So she says, ‘You knew Leo and I were illegitimate, didn’t you? That is how you blackmailed Mother to spy on Lydia and Odette. And now you use it to drive me and Leo out. We are the last ones you need to get rid of, and then you will have everything you wanted.’
It is the wrong play. Claudine bursts into anger, like a sail billowing in the wind. It is as sharp a sea change as a crack of thunder.
‘A girl in your position shouldn’t stamp on spring ice. Your mother was a useful idiot, but you are simply an idiot. Do not think I care for your fate, nor that of your brother. No one cared about my fate. Your mother called herself my friend once, but she proved the word hollow. Neither she nor Lydia knew what true friendship was, what loyalty meant. No wonder there was no one to mourn either of them, save their brattish daughters.’
Cecilia sucks in a breath in shock. There, the curtain drawn back.
There is no one now who stands between Cecilia and Claudine, not her mother, not Odette. She is unprotected. Claudine knows she has won.
She continues, all restraint gone. ‘You are too like Odette – so self-righteous, though you know so little about that which you speak of. I suppose you have no idea that Lydia used your mother’s secret to steal her from me, when your father died. She held it over her, promised her support if only she wouldhelp persuade George to cut me off and marry her. If she would take Lydia’s side and spurn me in the scandal that followed. Your mother was my friend first, and she threw me away to save herself. Why should I not use my knowledge to my own advantage? You do not know the half of what was stolen from me – what everyone took from me.’
It unfurls before her: the anger, the hurt, the betrayal, the secrets. Claudine so trapped within her own pain that she is ruled by it, twisted into someone paranoid, jealous, vicious. The pain is a fist beneath her breastbone. Her mother, her poor, cruel, loving mother. She lost her life trying to protect Cecilia from this secret that will destroy her future all the same.
‘You told my mother to follow Odette and her father that day, didn’t you? You used her to spy on them as you used me. Could you not trust George to do your bidding unmonitored? Were you jealous of even that brief time he spent with his daughter? That is why my mother was on that train platform. You are the reason she is dead.’
Claudine’s face is a scowl. ‘No, that would be her own stupidity.’
‘You and Aunt Lydiabothused her,’ says Cecilia, eyes prickling. ‘She is not a pawn; she is mymother.’
Claudine shifts almost to lean over her, growing quiet in her menace. ‘Tears again. All you girls know how to do is cry. Who cried for me? Did any of them cry for me? This is not my doing; it istheirs, for what they did to me when I was so young.’
Cecilia quails. There is a quality to Claudine’s anger that brings up a visceral fear in her: that shimmering, latent tension like the shift of a crowd before a fight. They are no longer in a world of calling cards and tea and mourning wear. They are animals. Cecilia knows, so deeply and personally, that she is – and always will be – prey.
‘George!’ Claudine raises her voice suddenly. ‘George!’
There are footsteps, then Uncle George opens the drawing room door. ‘Yes? Oh, good morning, Cecilia.’
‘Cecilia was just leaving,’ says Claudine. ‘Would you walk her home?’
‘Of course.’
‘We have agreed I will find her a place as a governess – isn’t that right?’
‘What a relief,’ says Uncle George. ‘I will be so pleased to see you well-situated.’
Cecilia is too cowed with fear to speak. George is not her ally. He is not the absent, kindly uncle she once saw him as. If he will cast off his own daughter, then she will mean nothing to him at all.
Everything so neat and polite. Tea. A chaperone home. A rest cure. No one here will wear their claws openly.
No wonder Odette has gone mad.
‘I do not need to be delivered like a parcel,’ she says plainly. ‘I will go alone.’
‘Well. If you prefer,’ says Uncle George.
Cecilia walks, floats, from the door, across the rain-slick cobbles. At the Gate House, it is dark and the fires unlit. Perhaps they cannot afford coal. Leo has not said.
It is done, she thinks. No more. No more.
