She is much larger now than she was then, and it is far more difficult to pass through the narrow space noiselessly, but she still remembers which steps to jump over, where the floor is broken or the ceiling lower.
At a shaft of light, Cecilia stops. Crouching, she can see into her mother’s room. Penelope is at her dressing table again, the piece of paper back in her hand. Whatever it says, it is apparently more important than her daughter.
Along the passage, she comes to the next spyhole, a break between the hidden door and the panelling, looking into Leo’s room. It is in its usual state: strewn with clothes, books, papers, collars hanging off the door handle, shaving kit spread about, socks hanging out of the drawers. Once the books would have been poetry, now they are solid tomes on torts and contracts. She does not understand how her brother has managed to reinvent himself so completely, cutting out all feeling and sentiment as though with a razor, and recasting himself as a rational legal mind. She wants to watch him, to understand who her brother has become.
He is not there.
Boring.
There are any number of freshly aired guest rooms waiting for the arrivals tomorrow, all as dull as dirt, then at the end of the passage a narrow flight of stairs with several steps missing. At the bottom, she can spy on the morning room – but Odette, Uncle George and Claudine are gone.
Is she alone in the world?
Sometimes, she wonders if any of this is real. Perhaps they are all only marionettes in the paper theatre of some invisible giant, heads lolling and arms jerking about as they are tugged this way and that. Or perhaps it is all some great dream of a sleeping god? She has never been sure if she is the same sort of human as everyone else. Even Odette seems alien to her at times, a creature of action and want and purpose. Cecilia thinks of herself like the blank space around the object. Aunt Lydia has told her about the principles of art, as she herself was taught them as a young woman at the Slade. The artist was called to look at the empty space as much as the thing itself – the shape of absence, without which, presence would be lost entirely.
Cecilia liked that.
Upstairs again, she looks for Odette in her room and finds nothing but a cold grate and silence.
Then, unexpectedly, voices.
A snatch of conversation draws her along the passage – Uncle George and an unfamiliar woman, who must be Claudine.
‘.?.?. you have me here – now what? What are you going to do?’
Cecilia frowns and presses her eye to the narrow gap around the concealed door. She can see a snatch of colour, a travelling gown, then black – legs – Uncle George.
He laughs in his placatory way. ‘Unpack, rest. All that can come later.’
Allwhat?
‘You mean to keep me here like some entertainment. It is childish of her not to see me. I thought you said—’
‘Lydia will come around. You’ll see. She’ll have her little tantrum today, and then tomorrow it will have all blown over.’
‘Blown over?’ Claudine’s voice is rich with scorn.
‘Unpack. Settle in.’
Uncle George has come into this woman’s bedroom, alone. They are a bohemian household, yes, but this is – this is—
Now there is some softer exchange that Cecilia cannot make out, then the sound of feet receding. George leaves.
A sigh. Bedsprings creaking. Claudine remains.
Cecilia is torn. Should she follow George? Find Odette? Or stay to learn what she can of this stranger?
A new voice stills her before she can decide.
‘Claudine.’
She recognises this one at once.
‘Penelope,’ says Claudine.
‘What do you mean by sending me this?’ Penelope stands in the doorway, clutching the note, pale as milk.
Claudine’s lip curls, cat-like. ‘You found it, then.’
