She is seeing things. In every flash of white skirts, every face looking at her, there is her mother.
Her panic, and her shame.
Behind her closed eyes, she sees Cecilia’s face crumple. The soft curve of the mouth she has kissed so often, pulled down in misery. Odette did that. Odette hurt her.
She worries that Cecilia is right: she is taking her pain and turning it into a punishment for all around her.
Cecilia is not wrong: Odetteisconcealing something from her. Cecilia, the one person she should trust above all others. The thought flashes briefly across her mind, like the warning glow of a lighthouse through fog: if she loses Cecilia, she will have no one left at all.
If only there was a way toshowit to her, to have Cecilia understand for herself.
The idea is there, in the magazine. Shecantry to prove the ghost real. She must stop prevaricating andact. Her cowardice frustrates her, shames her. She has been weighed and foundwanting.
The door to the room must have opened – though Odette did not hear it – because there comes, abruptly, the rustle of fabric.
She stills, sniffing back her tears. She does not want some well-meaning busybody enquiring if she is all right.
The rustle comes again, and then – soft footsteps.
A rush of cold sweeps through her.
Bare feet.
Unmistakably. It is the slap of bare soles against tile.
Odette draws back, pushing herself into the gap between the toilet bowl and the wall of the cubicle. The sound of her breathing is too loud and harsh and quick. It is as though all the noise of the world beyond has died away: the horseshoes on cobbles, the chatter of the crowds, the tolling church bells, all just beyond the windows – gone, and it is only her breath and the footsteps.
They come to a halt before her door. Beneath it she can see a dirty white hem and two ice-white feet.
It cannot be – it cannot be – her hands are shaking, and she is breathing so fast it makes her light-headed.
She thought—
Earlier – she thought she saw someone.
Sawher.
Just for a moment.
When she and Cecilia stood before Lydia’s painting, there was the faintest sense of cold fingertips at her throat, and she whipped round at once, searched for that white shroud, the chestnut hair, in vain.
Perhaps the truth is this: she hides from the ghost because she is frightened by how badly she longs for it to be real.
In her sick, broken heart, it is her only wish.
She remembers that monstrous, unnatural voice against her ear. The horror of her own madness.
She aches to hear it again.
‘Mama?’ She fumbles quickly, desperately, with the lock on the door, jerking it open. ‘I am here – it is me.’
There is no one there.
‘Mama?’ Her voice is plaintive. ‘Mama, come back. Don’t leave me.’
Silence.
*
