Claudine’s expression is cold. ‘We require letter paper. And a supply of ink, if you have anything decent.’ Her voice is sharp enough this time that the shopkeeper understands the message and busies herself with bringing out samples.
The banns? A wedding expected? Odette files away this piece of information as she studies Claudine out of the corner of her eye.
Each type of paper in turn is dismissed as plain, low quality, inferior.
‘What a trial it is to do anything out of the city,’ says Claudine, removing her gloves to touch a sample. ‘This is for guests, not the clerk at the workhouse.’
The shopkeeper has gone pink, and she bends over to rummage in a low drawer.
‘This is the best we have, brought all the way from London.’ She lays out thick cream paper, so fine it is like silk to the touch.
‘I like it,’ offers Odette. ‘It’s so smooth, I am sure it will write well.’
The shopkeeper wraps their purchase, and Odette carries it back to the carriage.
Once they have passed the last of the houses and are back amongst the open fields, corn swaying high and golden, Claudine speaks. ‘I don’t appreciate being condescended to.’
It is like a stone has dropped through Odette’s stomach. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I had been condescending.’
‘You undermined me in front of the shopkeeper. I will not allow myself to be humiliated publicly, especially not by an ill-mannered child.’
Odette is unpleasantly aware of how close she sits to Claudine, that only a few layers of cotton provide a barrierbetween herself and someone she abruptly realises does not like her. ‘I really am sorry,’ she says quietly.
They sit in icy silence until the gables of Herne House finally crest over the hedgerows. Odette stares at her knees as she has done before and, as she does with her mother, finds herself letting her mind detach from her body and float up through the leather hood and into the hazy sky.
8
Cecilia
FROM HER VANTAGE POINT, high under the eaves of Herne House, Cecilia watches the carriage depart, the driver mopping sweat from beneath his hat, the horses’ tails twitching against the encroachment of flies.
Odette has left with Claudine.
Cecilia shoves her bitten fingers into the folds of her skirt and descends from the attic. Lydia made good work painting today, and Cecilia is sure it will make a fine centrepiece for a show. Odette’s mood is difficult to predict, but Cecilia is pleased with her own careful reading of it, the right word said at the right time, silence left when silence is needed.
There is only the bother of Claudine.
Cecilia worries at the scraps of her cuticles. Why have they gone off together? What if Odette likes Claudine after all? What if Odette changes her mind about everything and Cecilia is left all alone?
Nonsense. It is nonsense. Odette will never leave her.
At the panel to Claudine’s room, Cecilia waits, listening to the space beyond. Yes, it is empty. She knows the difference between the silence of a held breath and the noiselessness of a dead place.
The room has, of course, been cleaned since yesterday, and there are no tantalisingly obvious pieces of paper scattered to catch her eye. It is a tidy room, redecorated in a sparse style acentury before, and it is almost clinical with its pale yellow walls and polished boards. It seems impossible for a place like this to harbour secrets. But Cecilia knows how to be a quiet, small, sneaking thing. She will wriggle beneath the bed, behind the chests of drawers and the bedside tables, ferreting out anything that has been lost or hidden.
There is more dust, the dried bodies of fallen insects, withered petals from long-rotten flowers, nothing, nothing, nothing – then there, a pale buff colour beneath the dressing table.
Cecilia wriggles her arm beneath it to pull it out. Her elbow catches, and she knocks the table badly enough that a few scattered objects fall to the floor. She turns her prize over eagerly in her hand. The same paper with its soft, torn edges, and the same looping hand. Here, there is written only:art.
Penel. Penelope. Her mother.
Yes, yes, sheknowsthat.
Art– some other name? Christian name or surname? Or a segment of a word – start? Part?
Frustration is sour in her mouth as she gathers up the things she has knocked over. Amongst the cheap scent and combs and hairpins, there is one fine, glittering object: a silver bracelet with intricate workmanship, far more valuable than anything else. And yet, there are harsh scratch marks along a flat inside piece that once bore an inscription.
To CH, forever yours– and here the second set of initials has been so badly scratched out that it has torn jagged edges into the metal.
