‘Yes,’ croons her mother. ‘Yes.’
‘You are not athreat,’ hisses Claudine. ‘You are the cuckoo I must oust from the nest, but you are ever the victim, aren’t you, stupid little Odette? You have had everything given to you while I have had to struggle and suffer and fight for any small scrap. I amowedthis.’
‘Why must you take it fromme?’
Claudine stalks into the room, eyes dark with fury. Odette wonders for a moment if she will strike first.
‘Take it fromyou? You were the one who took everything fromme. You came along and took my fiancé from me, my home, my friends, my future, all because my whore of a sister could not let me have one thing of my own, could not let me be happy, beseparate.’
For the first time, Odette falters. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t you know yet? Have you not worked it out? I thought you considered yourself so clever.’
Odette shakes her head. What – took what?
Claudine is shaking with rage as she speaks. ‘George wasmyfiancé. We were in love, we had been since we were very young. We were going to marry but – but Lydia never could stand to be excluded. If I had him, she had to have him, too, and then she was pregnant and that was that. I was thrown away, and she –you– took everything.’
Odette’s mind races. ‘That is why you left England.’
‘Yes, Ileft England,’ she echoes, mocking. ‘If you can call it that. I saydriven out. Exiled. My sister stole my life – because ofyou –and now I have come to claim it back.’
Odette feels so small.
So stupid.
The ghost stands beside her, teeth bared in a snarl. ‘Murderer. Viper.’
‘By poisoning her.’
Claudine has stepped ever closer. The light from the window casts a long shadow of Odette across the floorboards, so that she has already blurred into one with Claudine.
‘You are wrong. You do not know how wrong you are.’
‘But you burnt the memorial. Why would you do that if not to hide evidence of your plot?’ Odette sounds to herself like a child, naive and frightened.
‘Because I was sick of your great performance of grief. As though no one had felt what you felt before. As if the world should stop and arrange itself aroundyourpain.’ Claudine laughs bitterly. ‘Even after her death Lydia still found a way to ruin my life.’
Odette shakes her head. Tests her fingers around the wood. ‘I don’t believe you. I know you did something. She only became so gravely ill after you returned.’
Claudine throws her hands up. ‘Of course she did! Lydia was herself until the end. She could never let anyone haveanything. She was like that from the second she could speak. If I had a new toy, she wanted it, if I ate a cake, she must take it from my plate. She stole my jewellery, my ribbons, my books. One year, on my birthday, she contrived to fall down the stairs so the whole day was spent worrying if poor, delicate Lydia was quite all right, and I was entirely forgotten about. If I had a single thing for myself she wanted it and knew exactly how to get it. That is what she did with George. Shemusthave done; he would never have left me by choice. She seduced him, to take him from me.’
‘And you killed her to take him back.’
Claudine sneers. ‘Stupid, again. That was never the plan. George told me if I came home with him we could easily live together as we wanted to, and simply push Lydia out to the country. I was a fool to believe it would be so easy.’
Odette frowns. George asked Claudine to return to England?
Claudine notices the understanding dawn across Odette’s face with a satisfied look. ‘Oh yes. Begged me back. Found me in Germany on one of hisbusinesstrips, and told me he could not live without me any longer.’
‘He wouldn’t.’
Wouldn’t he?
Odette does not know why she protests anymore.
‘Came to visit me over and over, told me how miserable he was with his awful wife and maundering daughter. How he regretted it all. I could come back, we would find a way.’ Claudine’s expression falls. ‘And then Lydia had to take even that from me. I should have known. She became sick, so sick the world revolved around her again. And then right as I thought I might finally be free of her, that she would die on her own – she began to get better.’ Claudine snarls. ‘She took twenty years of my life. I was not going to let her take the rest of it. I had to end it that night – she could not be allowed to drag on in a wretched half-life, destroying everything again. It was easy enough with a pillow. No one would know anything. Only a moment of struggle – then a lifetime of relief.’
Finally. Finally, the words Odette has known to be true. Finally, she hears them.
