‘Yes. Yes, I will go now.’
She stumbles onto the next train and takes herself north, to Hampstead.
To Claudine.
To the end.
*
A cold wind races across the Heath and brings with it a clammy smattering of rain. Odette blinks it away like tears. Night falls early in December, and she is soon alone on the street. Her mother walks behind her like a shadow, matching her stride, their skirts and shroud blowing together and knuckles brushing.
The Gate House is closed up and dark.
So. They are gone.
Cecilia lies in hospital, all but dead.
Penelope is in the ground.
Where is Leo? Does she have it left in her to care?
If she thinks about Cecilia for more than a moment, the hysteria rises up around her like a fog, blinding her, turning the world to nothing.
It is impossible to cry for her. Odette does not deserve to.
The Hampstead house, in contrast, rises up like a fortress, busy with lights and the movement of servants. The jasmine and the wisteria have been cut back far enough that the brick is exposed like bare skin, the marks of the vines carved in like veins. She ignores the front door and slips around the side of the house, to the trellis that is still nailed into the wall, which Cecilia used to climb into Odette’s room, in the days when they feared nothing. It is difficult work to lift the window from outside, and the rain begins to come down in earnest, making her hands slick and her hair straggle from its pins. She lost her hat somewhere – she is not sure when. Now she has only her fingernails. Her teeth.
With a screech, the sash jerks up, just enough for Odette to wriggle through and drop into her bedroom, dripping a puddle onto the floorboards.
Briefly, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. Gaunt, dark-eyed from lack of sleep, clothes dirty and tired, hair clinging to her cheeks. She is half revenant, more hate than human.
The room is cold and quiet, unlike the rest of the house. No fire lit, and already the walls have been skinned of the pictures she pinned up, the bed stripped, the cupboards emptied. There will be no memory of either Odette or Lydia when Claudine is done.
She feels her mother’s hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forwards.
In the corridor, she slinks silently to the top of the stairs, listening for the tread of the servants, for the sound of glasses or voices. The gas is turned high against the dark, casting bright spots along the patterned green wallpaper, and she moves carefully, bundling up her skirts in her fist.
There they come. Voices. From the drawing room.
Claudine. George. Leo.
The only ones left.
On hands and knees, Odette slithers down a step or two, pressed close to the carpet, until she can hear. The entrance hall is empty, a few wet coats on the stand and umbrellas dripping into a pot. From the kitchens comes the noise of cooking, pots and knives and the whistle of a footman polishing silver or a pair of boots.
The drawing room lies through the door directly at the bottom of the stairs. She can picture the room: pale blue walls, long damask curtains, the sofas drawn close towards the fire, delicate colours that were out of fashion but pleased Lydia’s artist’s eye. Lydia had liked to read there, stretched out before the window. Cecilia had taught Odette card tricks sprawled in front of the fire during the cold winter evenings. All gone, all gone.
Now it hosts some conclave over Odette’s fate.
They are talking about her.
It seems as though her deception in Munich has been discovered.
So be it.
‘This is mad,’ says Leo. ‘Everyone has gone completely mad.’
His voice is hoarse, not that of the assured man she knows so well. He is taken apart, as well he should be. Claudine has destroyed his family as much as she has destroyed Odette’s. Does he not see it? Perhaps not. Her childhood friend has felt like a stranger for too long.
