The sky is a deep, cornflower blue, dense with summer heat, and the wildflowers grow tall here, hiding them in the depths of the meadow. In this paradise, it seems impossible to believe that any sinister or hateful thing could ever happen, in an England that also contains cricket and chaffinches and the boat race and afternoon tea, sea salt and the crash of waves on pebbles, the sweet smell of newly mown hay, tennis and Tennyson, Marlowe and Shakespeare.
‘Yes,’ says Odette, knocking off ash with a tap from her forefinger. ‘Oh, very much so.’
‘Really?’ Cecilia has plucked a long piece of grass and is tickling Odette’s temple with its feathery seed pods. ‘As in, the clock chimes midnight and the grey lady wails in the abbey?’
Odette bats the grass away, takes a long draw on the cheap smoke. ‘Yes. It is all possible. Don’t you think so?’
This is why Cecilia has asked. She knew Odette would say something delicious and unexpected. It is one of Cecilia’sfavourite things about her; she can study her every day like a botanist plucking petals from a hothouse bloom, and then a new season will turn and Odette will bear some strange, unexpected fruit.
Because itisall possible. The England of soft sun and meadows can only be so sweet because it is also the England of sacked monasteries, moons bright like sickles, black dogs, plague pits and sallow churches, ruined castles, battlefields beneath wheat and rye, graveyards thick with ivy,batter my heart, three-person’d God, and night-screaming from every wrecked house and manor.
Cecilia braces herself with her hands on either side of Odette’s head, blocking out the sun. ‘When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead and that thou think’st thee free from all solicitation from me, then shall my ghost come to thy bed, and thee, feign’d vestal, in worse arms shall see.’
‘Quite. Donne is appropriately dramatic.’ Odette lets loose a stream of smoke into her face. ‘Well, go on then. Kiss me.’
Cecilia grins and obliges.
With the heat of the sun on her back, she wriggles down through the grass to push Odette’s skirts up to her hips. The first time she kissed Odette here, it was with the nervous confusion of a dare, a fumbling towards something that they had only heard about in whispers from the other girls at school, or in the bawdy jokes Leo would tell when Mother was out of the room. It had not seemed obscene to Cecilia, though Odette had wrinkled her nose in confusion –what, your mouth? Your tongue?It had felt more like an enticement, like putting a toe into ice water or testing the point of a knife on a finger. Whatif.
Odette obliged her curiosity, and though it took a little practice, they both found it was not so outlandish an idea after all. What an art she can make of coaxing noises from Odette, of moving her tongue just so, of causing Odette’s hipsto jump beneath Cecilia’s firm hands and making the muscles of her thighs tense. Sometimes, Cecilia wonders if there would have been someone else, had she not met Odette, but it seems impossible. They are made for each other, and without each other, they will come undone.
When they are finished, Cecilia stretches like a cat, pointing her toes and reaching her arms over her head.
Odette slides a pair of small smoked glasses onto her nose to protect her eyes from the sun. It takes her a moment to steady her breath, and there is still a catch to it that makes Cecilia smile in satisfaction.
‘I suppose we must go back.’
Cecilia slumps. ‘Must we?’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ says Odette.
‘Tricky. I like tempting you very much.’
‘And as soon as all Father’s crowd arrive tomorrow, temptation will be entirely forbidden. It’s better when it’s just your lot and my lot, don’t you think? You hardly count as other people.’
‘It’s like inThe Book of Common Prayerand that big table of kinship laws. Once a couple are married, they become one family.’
Odette gives a small smile. ‘Is that a proposal? It’s terribly sudden; I shall have to disappoint all my gentleman callers.’
Cecilia swats her thigh. ‘I think if a gentleman tried to call on you, you’d have his eye out with a hat pin.’
Odette sighs happily. ‘More’s the pity I can’t use the hat pin on that dreadful lot arriving. God, they’re such bores. I’ve never met people who thought so much of themselves simply because they’ve written one poor poem.’
‘Poor poetry can be quite amusing.’
‘Now, you mustn’t start that again – I nearly laughed in poor Mr Wrexham’s face, because all I could think of was you pullinghis last piece apart.’
‘Fairy chimes trill in the dell, effulgently my heart it doth swell.’
‘Stop it.’
Cecilia pounces, straddling Odette’s hips to pin her in place. ‘By my troth, O my dear maid, all my life my love shan’t fade, this I swear on pain of death, I pledge to you my knightly heft.’
Odette covers her face with her hands. ‘Heft! Christ.’
‘All right, all right.’ Cecilia rolls off. ‘I suppose we ought to go.’
Odette does not get up. ‘Doyoubelieve in ghosts?’
