‘I should keep busy. That will help, won’t it?’ says Odette. ‘Do you think it will take long for a photographer to reply?’ They have dashed off notes to every photography studio they could find in the directory across Hampstead and Highgate and Kilburn. ‘Did we write to enough? Or was it too many? Oh God, what if five all turn up together and it is a photographic circus?’
‘Then they can all take pictures of each other, and it will set a new fashion,’ says Cecilia.
It is not funny, but Odette rewards her with a tight smile.
Her hands shake too badly to fix the hook and eye at the throat of her dress, so she turns for Cecilia to do it. The brush of Cecilia’s fingers against the soft hair at the nape of her neck is familiar – disconcertingly so. How can it be that this still feelsthe same? That her body will still respond to Cecilia’s touch? That she is some ordinary, base animal made of muscle and skin and appetite?
‘Do I really have to do this?’ she asks.
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
But Odette does not mean the photograph. She means all of it. To grieve. To mourn. To remember. To grow into someone new who lives in a world with no mother, a world her mother will never know.
‘Girls!’ Mrs Binx’s voice rises up the stairs. ‘The photographer is here.’
Want does not come intothispart. There is compulsion. Obligation.
This is something she knows shemustdo.
‘I’ll be right there,’ says Cecilia, squeezing her hand. ‘If you need something else to think about, think about me. The little flat in Bloomsbury.’
Odette smiles weakly. Their fantasy of a future seems so laughable now. ‘The little flat in Bloomsbury. I don’t suppose we’ll ever have the money for it, after all.’
Cecilia falters. ‘Do you not know what your mother wrote in her will?’
‘No. We didn’t .?.?. At the end, it wasn’t really the sort of thing we could speak about.’
At the end, her mother could hardly speak at all.
Cecilia turns to her, surveys her new appearance. ‘There. All done.’
‘I suppose one simply has to go on,’ says Odette, half a question.
‘Yes,’ agrees Cecilia. ‘Though you could always turn to drink. Rend your garments and roam the Heath, gnashing your teeth at small children. I believe, traditionally, there has always been the option of going mad.’
Odette laughs, despite herself. This is what she loves in Cecilia: the unexpected cleverness to her, the sharp, canny imagination. Without thinking, she pulls Cecilia close and kisses her, languid and familiar.
A noise sends them scrambling apart; Odette smooths her skirt and resists wiping her mouth with her hand, as though Claudine will see the press of Cecilia’s lips marked on hers. Claudine holds herself stiffly in the doorway, hand on the knob. There is always something of the schoolmistress about her, as though she is ever at the head of an unruly class of children plotting revolt.
‘It is bad manners to keep tradesmen waiting. They are your tradesmen, after all.’
‘Yes, Aunt Claudine.’
The photographer has set up in the dining room. Claudine has changed into mourning wear as well, and the servants wear crêpe armbands.
The footmen stand around Lydia’s body, considering how to manoeuvre her into the chair that has been placed in the centre of the room. Finally, they take hold of her under the knees and armpits, and fold her awkwardly into place. She is already growing stiff, but they must fix her head upright as best they can.
How will they position themselves around her? Odette has considered placing another chair beside her mother, so they can be as close in death as they were in life. Then perhaps maybe her father behind them?
And Claudine?
Before the photographer has finished his preparations, Odette hears the front door open, and she steps out into the hall to witness the arrival of a tall man in his mid-twenties. His cheeks are pink from the exertion of climbing the hill to the house, and his honey-blond hair escapes its pomade when he removes his top hat.
‘Leo!’ Cecilia dashes to her brother to draw him in.
‘Cessy.’ He kisses her cheek, unwinds the scarf from around his neck. He has found a crêpe armband somewhere on his way, and now he unpins it from his topcoat to refix upon his smart frockcoat. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be here sooner.’
Leonard comes forwards, embraces his mother, then clasps Claudine’s hand. ‘I am so terribly sorry. I cannot quite believe she is gone.’
