Cecilia sits back. ‘Of course you are going. What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t rightly know, but how can I? I don’t sleep, I cannotread, I can barely dress myself without crying. How can I do something so momentous when I am like this?’
‘But, by your own logic, would it not be rash to throw away everything you planned, simply because you are “like this”? When it passes, won’t you want to still have a life to go back to?’
Odette cuts the stem before her with viciousness. ‘Passes? I am not sure this will ever pass.’
‘Then why not go anyway? Lydia would have wanted you to.’
Cecilia casts around for something she can say that will pin Odette, keep her within the bounds of the girl she has always known. They have had their plan neatly set out for so long: university, then, somehow, an escape to a life of their own. What would she do without it?
All is in disarray, and Cecilia does not know how to position herself amongst the debris.
‘You do not know what she would have wanted.’ Odette throws down the flower and rises, brushing the grass from her skirt. ‘She was drowning in life and would have taken me with her, if it would have kept us together longer.’
Cecilia scrambles up after her, nicking her hand on the secateurs so that she must pause and suck the small wound before she spills blood upon her clothes.
A white rabbit sits in the centre of the lawn, its side-eye trained on them, its nose twitching. In a flash, it is gone, into the vegetable beds, and Odette is walking stiffly inside, holding the basket of flowers close to her chest.
In the dining room, the coffin has been placed back onto the table with Lydia in it. The room is empty, and Cecilia closes the door behind them while Odette sets the basket down and idly takes up the round head of a hydrangea.
‘Please,’ says Cecilia, ‘don’t make any rash decisions about Cambridge. I don’t think it would do you good to stay here with – Claudine.’
This at least seems to reach Odette. She knuckles her eyes. There are dark-blue smudges on the fragile skin beneath. None of them have been sleeping, but Odette seems to have been half pulled into the underworld.
‘Perhaps not. Though I think she is trying, in her own way.’
Cecilia purses her lips. ‘Do you?’
‘Father says I must try harder to understand how difficult this has all been for her. She has been abroad for so long; she has come back to quite a group of strangers. It must be hard to feel part of the family, as an outsider.’
Now, here is the moment. She must say it.
Cecilia’s mouth is dry. Words abandon her.
‘We must find a way to rub along now, I suppose,’ says Odette.
Cecilia is a coward. A complete and utter coward.
She does not want to hurt Odette, she tells herself. She is protecting her. She will find out soon enough. Why take these last moments of ignorance from her?
So instead, she kisses her, less in passion than succour.
Cecilia will find the money for her and Odette to escape, and then whatever it is their parents do or do not do will not matter.
‘Here,’ says Cecilia, when they draw back. Fishing in a pocket, she pulls out two coins.
Odette smiles, small and tentative, but the first one Cecilia has seen in days.
Gently, Odette places the coins on her mother’s eyes, then together they dress the body and the coffin in the flowers and greenery, until it is teeming with colour and verdant with life. The scent of sap covers the rot that has spread throughout the room.
‘It is like something she would have painted,’ says Odette, and then, without warning, the tears come flooding out.
Cecilia holds her tightly, as though they can weather thestorm together and will survive by the strength of their grip.
Their moment is broken only by the sound of the doorbell, and a sudden flurry of movement in the hallway.
Visiting time has come.
